Forms of Inquiry

You’re possibly looking at the wrong thing. That’s the thing about an inquiry – if you are interested enough – it immediately leads you to another, totally different inquiry. In art school they call it “research,” but it’s actually just “being interested.” So, immediately there’s a double inquiry here.

I have a funny relationship to this image. I found it by chance via google image search one day, searching using the words “dolos – wave – breaker” and not “hot – girl – beach – tits.” When I came across it, I knew straight away that it was significant. I’ve lived with a great deal of images of dolosse for years; I collect them. Not just dolosse, but also a number of similar forms that masquerade as dolosse; Xblocs, accropodes, tetrapods… And also not just images but models, similar shaped toys and diagrams associated with these forms. The function of these massive concrete blocks, said to have been invented in South Africa in the early 1960s, is to prevent coastal erosion. They are produced in great quantities and scattered along shorelines with the objective of absorbing the energy of the sea.

So why is this image significant? What is the magic in it? What alchemic quality about it stops you in your path? Well… I’m not entirely sure, but I know it’s not the topless girl. Maybe it’s because there is a terrible collision of aesthetics and materiality, the grotesque and the beautiful, the warmth and softness of the body in opposition to the cold, hard brutality of the dolosse. Maybe it’s because of the depth of ambiguity. As someone with no more information than the file name ‘dolos.jpg’, there are details to be filled in: location, time, situation, photographer, the girl’s relationship to the photographer, etc. These questions are truly seductive to the imagination. Similarly, if you have never encountered a dolos before, there’s a mass of queries around the ambiguity of the object itself, in addition to the girl’s relation to it: use, cost, function, worth, authorship, ownership, are they solid or hollow? Are they made in relation to the scale of the human form? How did they get there? How were they transported? And the question I always wonder when I see any image of a dolos: which way up does it go?

The point is, the potentiality of an inquiry can often be more interesting than things discovered by inquiring. When your numbers have been called, there’s no more buying mansions in your imagination until next Saturday night. You’re possibly looking for something that’s already found you.

Inquiry

You’re looking for something that’s already found you