A manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.
Something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form:
ORIGIN mid 17th cent: from palin ‘again’ + psēstos ‘rubbed smooth’.
This symposium was part of a month long Invisible Fabrick project headed by Adam Pugh of artists platform Promontories and produced in partnership with Norfolk Museums, Outpost, Colchester School of Art, and the Sainsbury Centre.
It ticked boxes for me ‘Figured by the relationship of text to land, of history to space … the appropriation of histories as archetype, moral instruction or contemporary allegory’ (Promontories 2014) the symposium offered an opportunity to hear and see how others viewed the palimpsest as a vehicle for metaphor.
A few months ago I went to the Questioning the Masterpiece symposium at the Sainsbury Centre particularly to hear by John Onions talk on neuroscience and art. He spent some talking about the cave paintings at Chauvet in France and what he believes to be the original representative drawing – the first attempt to create an image of an animal on a surface – at least within this group of humans. This is a wonderful idea, but probably impossible to prove. The important point he was making though was what happened after the first image was made, each subsequent image being a copy based on the sight of the original, and becoming more stylized (or degraded) with each redrawing, no future image could be created without being affected by the first. So I was very interested to see if the idea of the mind as a palimpsest would be explored.
The afternoon spent listening to writers and artists’ talking about the palimpsest was enjoyable, informative and interesting, I was primarily interested in what the artist Adam Chodzko would say and how the metaphoric palimpsest might exist within his work. In fact his talk was the least interesting in terms of the subject of the symposium, nevertheless his concern with the nature of knowledge within communities, particularly those that are displaced or marginalised; The Pickers (Chodzko 2009) and how knowledge can be displaced, rearranged and overwritten is relevant to my own work. His other concern – The End Of Art – holds less interest, except to observe that art, as a form of knowledge seems to be its own palimpsest, each artist obscuring and re- revealing what has been made before. I wonder how and when an artistic ‘clean sheet’ can exist, cataclysmic social or environmental disaster?
He ‘explore(s), the idea of art becoming a vehicle for a community’s collective mythology, … excavating processes of memory, empathy and the imaginary.’ (Adam Chodzko n.d.)
His art is catalysed by imagining a collapse of the category of Art, requiring not only a new audience but also a new status for the art object. (Adam Chodzko n.d.)
Sarah Dillon provided an overview of the history of the palimpsest and it’s use as a metaphor, popularised by Thomas de Quincey, but also used by Coleridge, and apparently by Plutarch and Cicero. It was de Quincey who described the brain as a palimpsest so well that I have included the quote used in the symposium.
What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is the human brain? Such a palimpsest is my brain; such a palimpsest, oh reader! is yours. Everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet, in reality, not one has been extinguished.”
– Thomas de Quincey, ‘Suspiria de Profundis’ (Promontories 2014)
In a way Sarah’s lecture completed my afternoon, understanding the mind as through the metaphor of a palimpsest is well documented, but perhaps historically recent.
Dr Claire Preston’s lecture was interesting as an introduction to the life of and times Sir Thomas Browne (born in 1605) An area that I have to put into the mental box ‘to investigate when I have time’ she described the general belief that humanity was suffering from lost innocence, the state we were in originally. At this time (the time of Adam, original man) all knowledge was innate, and I’m presuming, understood. In 1605 Francis Bacon published ‘The Advancement of Learning’ a book that influenced Browne’s thoughts on the nature of knowledge and loss.
At this point in the afternoon I realized that my capacity for receiving information had been reached, I know too little about seventeenth century theology to understand precisely what Claire was describing. I have to settle for incomplete understanding. As she finished she mentioned that there was plenty of academic detail that was left out. I am left with the understanding that acquiring knowledge is an endless process. It can be acquired like jewellery and displayed in the same way.
The final lecture on the ambiguous nature of modernist architecture as it becomes subsumed by heritage was memorable (at least to me) because Owen Hatherley worked his way round to discussing the Park Hill housing estate in Sheffield. This huge estate was erected to house those people cleared out of the slums in Sheffield it became a ‘blot’ on the Sheffield landscape as it aged, and eventually lay derelict until it was designated as a Grade 2 listed building in 1988. This is the limit of my knowledge about Park Hill. I was bought up to date by Owen; he agued that the estate had been neglected by Sheffield council, given to property developers, who then used money provided by English Heritage to renovate parts of the property that have now been sold to private buyers. This said Owen was an act of ‘gratuitous class war’. I really didn’t expect to hear this phrase in a semi academic symposium. This tiny diversion into politics completed the talk and the question and answer session reverted to the main topic of the afternoon.
Bibliography
Adam Chodzko. Adam Chodzko. www.adamchodzko.com (accessed may 21, 2014).
—. “The Pickers.”
The Pickers. Video. Directed by Adam Chodzko. 2009.
Promontories. “’The Palimpsest’ symposium.” Invisible Fabrick, Accompanying leaflet. 2014.
—. ‘The Palimpsest’ Symposium Promontories. 2014. http://promontories.org/invisible-fabrick/the-palimpsest- symposium/symposium/#more-595 (accessed May 21, 2014).