Bulletin "New-Method" No. 42 - New-Method

"New-Method" No. 42

We introduce the email bulletin "New-Method" with our works and guest contributions. This issue No. 42 features Gemma Urano, who used to be an enrollee of "'Method' and 'New-Method'" lecture by Hideki Nakazawa held at Rikkyo University in the first semester of academic year 2013.

[Contribution]

New-Method Links, or Can't
Gemma Urano (Jobless)

New-Method makes hyperlinks for "Reference" as their traces, which simultaneously entails the risk of link rot.

Hirama's "TL-Scape," which Hideki Nakazawa once described as "a new kind of landscape painting" characterized with "lack of arbitrary selection" and "documents for documenting" (*1), inversely alludes presence of a camera - a machine that unselectively captures data. I this sense TL-Scape is seen as photography rather than painting. Following C.S. Pierce, who associates photograph with a purely naming practice, which he sees irreducible to definite description, TL-Scape as landscape photograph can be similarly understood as an act of giving names=links to the external world in its sight, whatever exists there, while accepting possible disappearance of the linked object in future. New-Method, seen in this light, reveals their general activity to be "links for linking." It employs the form of tautology, just as Method did, always deviating outward.

Baba encloses links to pursue "de-materiality" by directing their referents within themselves, simultaneously exposing the limits of the pursuit (See his work in Vol. 38).

Kaido leaves links contingent as in his "Kaido Links to..., or Can't" works (See his works in Vol. 17-19). The referent is even disposed sometime, as he threw it into a bin in Yokohama (See his work in Vol. 40).

Hirama creates absolute links through his No Work Work series, in which the title denotes no work, foreshadowing link rot latent generally in New-Method.

New-Method is briefly mentioned in the last chapter of "Art History: Japan 1945-2014," an art history book published last year by Hideki Nakazawa. Writing a history is to spatialize time, and Nakazawa's historic cycle model represents an extreme of such attempts as he fabricates a chronology out of de-temporalized events then modifies the resulting linear timeline into a two dimensional diagram by forcing line breaks along with recurring comparative patterns. As art for the art's sake, work of Method is very compatible with his historic cycle, where their de-temporalized autonomy enables themselves to be contextualized historically.

In comparison, the use of links by New-Method, which continues to deviate from categorical outlines, is nothing but an archaic and utopic alien that undermines the premise of history-making. It appears as if fish in river bed, with its identity being suspended, escaping our hands while leaving slimy touch there (see Vol. 17). With a net of the historic cycle model, Nakazawa attempts to catch catfish-like New-Method. Will his historical grids eventually succeed in capturing his Les Enfants Terribles?

*1: Hideki Nakazawa "Japanese Documentation Art Today - Genes of Andy Warhol" in Bijutsu Techo Vol.1000, Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2014.

[Web Works of the New-Methodicists]

- Takahiro Hirama

___ to Achieve the Goal

http://hrmtkhr.web.fc2.com/new-method/042_e.html

No description.

- Shogo Baba

Multi-Layered Matrix of Numbers No. 2

http://7x7whitebell.net/new-method/shogobaba/042_e.html

The website format can deal with dynamic transformations to displayed objects. In this work, the number and size vary with scroll position.
Since visual and symbolic changes of signs are invisible on a screen it raises a kind of paradox that we can't recognize how are the parts that we can't watch changing.

- Masaru Kaido

Un-uploaded Web Work

http://masarukaido.com/newmethod/b042_e.html

My previous work tried to make a work of art by extracting a sentence from a novel. However, in reflection, the resulting impression of the work seems somewhat different from my original intention. This work consists is based on the website format, just as my works in No.36 and No.38, and composed of a title, its URL and its description, i.e., the word, the letter and a blank webpage.

[Information]

- "New-Method at Super Deluxe" http://7x7whitebell.net/new-method/superdeluxe_e.html

- "New-Method" official webpage has been updated. http://7x7whitebell.net/new-method/

- Takahiro Hirama has updated his website. http://qwertyupoiu.archive661.com/

- Shogo Baba has updated his website. http://7x7whitebell.net/

- Masaru Kaido has updated his website. http://masarukaido.com/

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[Editor's Note]

TL-Scape in the contribution refers to snapshots of timelines seen from Hirama's Twitter account (@qwerty1357), which retrospectively captures a certain number of tweets from a certain point. TL-Scape archive is available in the URL below: http://qwertyupoiu.archive661.com/works/tl-scape.html (M)