Carina Lopes

Differentiation as Potential

‘The concrete is the different. The different is a prime reality, the only singularity. How to think difference in itself and not relatively to other difference - as it would no longer be singular.’

(Gil, 2008:14)

In the introduction of The Imperceptible Succeeding of Immanence José Gil explains, (in relation to Gilles Deleuze’s work) how ‘different’ is a prime reality, the starting point to understand the concrete. Difference is not, in this case, the result of a comparison between two distinct singularities, such as two objects, instead it can be understood as a starting point to reflect and reconsider what one assumed as already known.

In 2009, Jacob Love presents a body of work that evokes through photographs and a video piece, spaces rarely experienced by their users in the way they are presented. Kings Hall Shallow/Emotional Freedom Technique® and Porchester Deep/What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know™ are images created from swimming pools empty of their swimmers. Their concreteness is brought to light through what is not usually experienced or shared. These photographs are populated by a perseverant multiplicity felt at various levels within these same spaces. If, at first instance, what is perceptible seems constrained by a sense of predictability, there is also present an inherent potentiality as a result of the space’s uniqueness, resulted from its own condition within these images. It is this intrinsic duality between predictability and potentiality that lends a sense of exquisiteness to Love’s work. When for example, the swimming pool environment contrasts with the quality of its reflection on the water; or when the management is seen as diametrically opposed to the experience of the worker, in terms of the relationship of power established within the space itself. If the direct gaze of the management may imply the predictable, then the evanescent reflection on the water and the diverted gaze of the worker will refer to a potential.

Evocation in Love’s work happens in these fragile moments of potentiality. The instant when the building itself is briefly reflected in the surface of the water, only to then change and blur away. Or when the worker stares beyond what is visible as an experience of the now and engages with what lies ahead, not just in terms of the physicality of the building but also in relation to hope and transcendence. To evoke is therefore, not related to the opening hours of the portrayed spaces, to their busy environments or even to the moment when one comes face-to-face with the one that stares (the worker). To evoke relates to the unseen or not stated visually; it refers to a positive openness.

To refer back to Gil’s notion, what makes the concrete is difference, and this singularity (ability to be unique in itself) refers therefore to a self-condition. The singularity of a condition is written by the variations that this same condition suffers, as an actualisation of potential. Yet, actualisation is a never-ending process - therefore, the reference is to positive openness. The continual process of differentiation symbolises the uniqueness of the environments portrayed: the reflections that the swimming pool contains are an immaterial grounding of such activity; while the one who is photographed waits – they are waiting for tomorrow. In either case, what the viewer is confronted with is an acceptance of the now as a resonance of that which is to come. Brian Massumi in Parables for the Virtual refers to potentiality as ‘unprescripted’, in the sense that potential ‘is the immanence of a thing to its still indeterminate variation.’ (2002:9) This is the variation expected by the one who waits for tomorrow, the constant unfolding beyond the now. The “reflection” or the “waiting” are activities in evolving motion: their variation happens during the swimming pool opening hours, or when it is empty of its swimmers; it can be also the consequence of what is static, such as the building structure or the direct gaze of the management.

Variation as motion signifies the potential of utopia, in its most strict sense, driven from the Greek, as a no-place. No-place refers not only to what is thought to be impossible, but also, to a positive openness. No-place is not the inability to accomplish a state of order or ideality, because such state is unknown. The concern is with the potential, with the “what lies ahead”, with the staring toward an infinite waiting – always beyond the materiality presented to the one that experiences.

The materiality of the swimming pool structure might be encountered at first as a constraint to variation or potential, to what is not predictable. But the evocation presented by Love’s work, ridden by the dichotomy of use and non-use, reminds the viewer that “what lies ahead” is always presented. Hope and transcendence live ahead of the constraints. The look beyond materiality and the search for the difference within the “visual” unity is a daily condition; there is also a no-place outside these swimming pools. For we all inhabit the no-place.

Gil. J, O Imperceptível Devir da Imanência, Lisboa: Relógios D’Água, 2008, p.14.

Massumi. B, Parables for the Virtual, Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2002, p.9.