This exposition unpacks the cosmogenesis of a photograph in generating an image, an identity. It questions the bifurcated role of the photograph/referent, body/camera, the outside/inside of the frame, instead, it acknowledges the relation of the inside and outside, always connected in a stream of multiple flows of energies and intensities, moving from inflection to inclusion and vice-versa in articulating the multiple images inscribed in a photograph: a metamorphosis of the virtual to the actual, fold after fold. Drawing from the work of Gilles Deleuze, The Fold (Deleuze, 2006), this exposition challenges the conventional notion of photography as static, brute, and representational instead, it reveals the multiplicity of folds, transformation and differences before actualizing a photograph.
This exposition will take you to the details of how a photograph is constituted, and how matters, objects and bodies became active agencies creating assemblages of folds, pleats, creases, and textures rendered in a photograph. These assemblages of folds are an elastic membrane, little pricklings that make something out of chaos. Each movement creates a fold, a screen, a filter, and a passage situated in between the out-of-frame and the actualized image, always connected and becoming, fold after fold. This moment is an event. The outside always folds with the inside (Nordstorm, 2013). In doing this, the experiment departs from conventional humanist social science research instead, this is an artistic practice where the creation of knowledge emerges and unfolds within the performativity of photography as an artistic practice. You will not find research questions and objectives that normally treat phenomena as a priori. As this exposition moves as folds, what you will encounter are bodies of entanglement, mesh, movements, stories of becoming, and movement of folds. This sojourn was inspired by Guy Debord's theory of dérive which means drifting, a passage from sensation after sensation without a predetermined route(Andreotti, 1996). In a similar vein, contemporary theorist Tim Ingold (2007) uses wayfaring as a way to uncover and create new spaces in unpredictable itineraries. Adopting Ingold's(2007) wayfaring concept, this exposition offers a foray into matters like cameras, food, street, aroma, computers and technology prosthetics and coffee and and and… folds brewing with intensities. Marvel through its places, run your fingers across the edges and go with the flow of folds. Get lost in a maze. Each lane offers a different lens, a different sensation. Uncover the hidden textures, and overlay them with a different one! You will stumble upon repetitions in circular motions, sometimes you will go to the inner depths. In many instances, it will take you to the smallest creases, yet, you will still come alive in a world full of textures.
What is a photograph? How is it actualized? It moves, feels, infolds, and unfolds. It’s a machine, a fluid machine. It slips and slurs between the virtual and actual, the inside and outside. In such case, the image captured is not separated from the out-of-frame but entangled with the outside.
Hanoi has gone a long way in establishing its global popularity and identity. Its unique blend of cultures and timeless charm exudes an aura of going back in time. These touchpoints were often seen in photographs promoting Hanoi: from postcards, billboards and digital photos across online platforms. These images embedded in photographs have constantly shaped public opinion and the country's identity(Chong and Druckman, 2007). It is here that my curiosity was heightened about how such protographs are constituted and actualized.
While we have been overtrained to analyze, interpret and appreciate what is inside the frame of the photograph, we failed to account for what makes the inside of a frame. Since the time of Fox Talbot’s invention of the camera, photography has been treated as a 'pencil of nature' (Emerling, 2012) brute, static and regarded as a mere representation of “reality”. The camera as an instrument is treated to be manipulated, disregarding its agency. Thus, photographs were used according to certain rules, an index of the past rather than a sign that stands on its own (Freeland, 2008 as cited in Bañares, 2023). This compounds the notion of dualism separating subject/object, human/non-human, and the outside/inside of the frame. In photography, such bifurcation has long penetrated and taught in academia, normalized and institutionalized and was steadfastly followed by both amateurs and professionals in establishing the principles of design that anchor the subject prominently, thereby putting centrality to the human figure-the ultimate yardstick in judging the beauty of a photograph. This is where the tension arises.
The Posthuman (Braidotti, 2013) turn, however, gave rise to the relational ontology of becoming (Caton, 2019) where subject and object are no longer separated but imbricated within assemblages. Material configurations are given value, their affordances and agencies that make us act have been widely recognized as part of the vibrant ecology (Bennett, 2010). It acknowledges the dynamic relationships between humans and non-humans as constitutive of phenomena (Braidotti, 2013; Haraway, 2008; and Barad, 2003).
Contemplating on this, I began to question the photograph's materiality and how it is constituted. Curious about what will unfold, I situated myself in between the process, tagging along with other photographers during our photo walk in Hanoi’s Old Quarter district. I found myself slipping and slurring between matters and bodies, documenting how we photographed, acting as a hinge in between, following where the mobile camera would take us while letting my senses drive the photographic journey.
“In this experimental sojourn, I found myself in the middle of interlocking bodies, cameras, and non-humans getting lost: slipping and swerving in a maze of alleys, bodies and matters intertwined, blending with the sounds and sirens of the streets of Hanoi while taking photographs. These movements are folds that are so elusive to the common eye. While the common eye’s discriminating gaze is situated as fixed within the boundaries of a frame, what is behind the lustre of a photograph is a chaotic space: an outside that constitutes the inside: a metamorphosis of bodies and matters infolding to the inside. The folds are mystery spaces where matters and bodies collude before actualizing a photograph. ”.
Applique Method
The images in this exposition reveal the multiple textures that constitute the folds in photographs. It is the unfolding of the non-humans as seen in multiple layers of images captured by the body camera. The footage is from different points of view at a single area/time capturing the out-of-frame, the behind-the-scenes while doing photography. This method emerges while documenting the mundane, the becomings in between as my body continuously folds and unfolds within the peripheries of the frame. As a result, my subjectivity is continuously moulded and (re)shaped by the ongoing interaction and experimentation with the footage as I became part of the folding and unfolding of images not of recognition but of participation when sections of footage start to 'glow' (MacLure, 2013) and activate my sensation. What came out is an imbricated assemblage of footage data. Weaving footage through overlays from the multiple photos of participants shows the vibrant space of Hanoi - in other words, assemblages of APPLIQUE. Instead of an orchestrated standard photo, these overlays show the constitution of a photograph, the outside as part of the inside where agencies of the outside are included in the composition of the image. It shows the multiple assemblages of photographic images, a metamorphosis.
Applique is a technique reminiscent of an art form developed and applied in quilting by the ancient Hmong people in Vietnam. Legend says the Hmong people have their own language but when defeated by Han Chinese during war, they were forced to flee. In an attempt to save their script, they applied it to their clothing using the applique technique well known today (Mangeshkanwate, 2020). Their method involves applying multiple fabric shapes by hand to produce decorative patterns. Instead of following a principled pattern like embroidery that cuts off excess ornaments, this method integrates multiple shapes and lets these shapes create their own textures and forms. "In applique, small pieces of coloured fabric are sewn onto a background to create patterns. Various coloured fabrics are cut into geometrical forms and sewn onto the fabric, while the threads are hidden behind the applique" (BaoTang, n.d.).
Images of the outside and inside of the frame were put together to create an image of what really constitutes the event of photography. This involves juxtaposing images taken by the body cameras from different perspectives as I photographed the site. Here, the outside frame is integrated into the inside by layering the images of the outside with the inside. The subject or photographer/researcher is part of the folds. The applique of images created a patchwork of interlacing objects. bodies, cameras, in a scene, an intra-acting phenomenon. This is what Maggie MacLure termed as "experiments with order and disorder" (MacLure, 2013, p. 229) - an ongoing metamorphosis of data that never closes but instead opens up new possibilities (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari describe applique as patchworks of various fabrics, a shift from a formula dominated by embroidery "as though a smooth space emanated, sprang from a striated space, but not without a correlation between the two, a recapitulation of one in the other, a furtherance of one through the other" (Delueze and Guattari,1987, p. 477). The images operate as movement images, an affect, a sensation on a plane of immanence.
The Folding Wayfarer
We started the Photowalk armed with mobile cameras, gimbals and other equipment used in photography. Intended to creatively capture the most iconic scenes of the place, my curiosity as a photographer shifted towards the movements, matters, smells, and sounds that constitute the act of photography. This is where my artistic practice became an inquiry.
While photo tours have a predestined destination of the sojourn such as identifying the ideal touristic place of Hanoi, our bodies are diverted from the fold's tangent point, to navigate places where our feet would take us thus, breaking specific plotted points and itineraries that are normally followed by photographers, an Inflection! We figured out alleys, got lost in the maze, and followed where our senses and camera would lead us, letting the materiality of ecology create the map. As Tim Ingold(2007) distinguishes wayfaring against tours: "A tour would consist of a series of such destinations. Only upon arrival at each stop, and when his means of transport come to a halt, does the tourist begin to move" (Ingold, 2007, p. 79). Wayfaring replaced destination-driven travel. He coined wayfaring as meshwork.
"Wayfaring, I believe, is the most fundamental mode by which living beings, both human and non-human, inhabit the earth. The inhabitant is rather one who participates from within in the very process of the world’s continual coming into being and who, in laying a trail of life, contributes to its weave and texture. These lines are typically winding and irregular, yet comprehensively entangled into a close-knit tissue" (Ingold, 2007, p 81).
Here, inflecting the folds happens when we divert from the predetermined line and instead draw our own curves diverging from the straight lines, from convexity to concavity. Such diversion is affected by intra-acting matters passing through the bodies, entangled, and creating a relational affective rhythm of the process of photography as artistic practice and inquiry. The wayfarer is always on the move, folding and unfolding as it becomes part of the ecology in creating the artistic practice of photography as a phenomenon making inquiry as a performative photographic practice.
This exposition takes the mobile camera as an active participant in the inquiry. While the camera listens to my body, the mobile camera has its own agency. It moves, captures our breathing, magnifies our shadows, it sways as my body moves. In many cases, it creates circular movements to accommodate the matters in space. It (re)creates images and reconfigures what will be in the frame. Every movement creates new textures distinct from previous ones. Fold after fold, a new trail of patterns emerges. The mobile camera becomes part of our bodies as our bodies become the camera itself. Just like the body, the camera is a wayfarer.
Media studies have accorded great attention to the relationship between camera and body as entangled apparatuses in constituting the image (Cartwright and Rice, 2016; Bañares 2022) acknowledging the dynamic agencies of camera in the image production and knowledge creation. Karen Barad (2003) has primarily indicated the non-separation of observer and observed in her theory on Agential Realism. She calls this intra-acting to describe the inseparability of subject and object in research. For Barad, this "does not merely mark the epistemological inseparability of observer and observed, or the results of measurements; rather, phenomena are the ontological inseparability/entanglement of intra-acting agencies" (Barad, 2007, p. 139).
The inclusion of non-humans opens the door to new characters as part of the research data (Menning, et. al., 2020). The camera becomes a companion species of our journey. The camera becomes part of the ecology of knowing. One advantage of using a body camera is it reduces the human’s sense of mastery in filming the phenomena as we shoot photos instead, surrendering it to the body camera’s capacity to record the event (Caton, 2019). In her book, Posthuman Photography, Joanna Zylinska(2017) further argued that photography entails a non-human mechanical element (Zylinska, 2017). Challenging the Cartesian way of using visual technologies in research, Karen Barad contends:
"Knowledge making is not (emphasis added) a mediated activity, despite the common refrain to the contrary. Knowing is a direct material engagement, a practice of intra-acting with the world as part of the world in its dynamic material configuring, its ongoing articulation. (...) Knowing is a distributed practice that includes the larger material engagement" (Barad, 2017, p. 379).
Wayfaring is a relational process where matters, bodies, equipment and even the weather- are not divorced from the material-discursive practices of photographs rather, these non-humans are imbricated in the creation of images. Photography as artistic practice is a wayfaring phenomenon that emerges during performativity when bodies, apparatuses and other matters interact, fold after fold.
Nestled in the northern part of Vietnam, Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam. Unlike metropolitan cities, Hanoi boasts of its unique blend of culture preserving its French, Vietnamese, and Chinese influence. The Old Quarter is Hanoi’s central hub located in the city’s Hoan Kiem District. Tucked in small alleys one would normally encounter its charm through its architectural heritage, food, people, and the local's life. One unique aspect of Hanoi is the way they organize the streets. Also known as Hanoi 36 streets, the old quarter is organized according to the craft villages sell: silk is located in one street, those who need paper crafts can easily find it on another street, bamboo at the bamboo street, noodle street and so on(www.flavorsofhanoi.com).
Old Quarter’s architecture retains the timeless charm of Hanoi. A walk into its main thoroughfare is a journey to houses built around the early 20th century and bustling with colourful shops and markets. Ancient shops create a classic atmosphere reflecting the craft traditions of the Old Quarter. Interestingly, the ground floor of ancient houses are converted into shops while the upper floors are preserved for their architectural antiquity. These houses and shops are interconnected with narrow, dark alleys where many family quarters are hidden. Popularly known as the tube houses because of their elongated and longitudinal structure, its upper decks are well preserved and still serve as houses for families while the ground floor is converted into shops.
While navigating these, one can sense an attempt of the intrusion of commercial globalization into the nomadic style of living but the locals' effort to preserve this heritage is still a priority despite the massive development in the city. The small alleys and streets can sometimes be overwhelming where street vendors, motorbikes, and cars all ply this space for a living. Exploring the small streets means getting lost in a maze, and letting your feet decide where the next wonder will be. Undoubtedly, every photographer’s lens would feast on its beauty: from food, people, customs, traditions, and structures.
The Fold
The fold is a philosophical concept by Gilles Deleuze that describes the process of how subjectivity is constituted from the virtual to actual. Like a Mobius strip, the outside(virtuality) is not separated from the inside but twists and turns; the former creating folds within folds to create the inside. Deleuze distinguishes three stages of folds: '1) the inflection, point of position and point of inclusion' (Deleuze, 2006, p. 25). The fold is an inflection from a line. A metamorphosis. Inflection is the point-event that crosses a tangent. 2) The inflection creates a fold, a point of view. Such point of view is the worldling that leads to what could be included in the expression such as mirroring hence, 3) the inclusion. For Deleuze, inclusion is a process, an event(Deleuze, 2006). In many cases, the inclusion is the finality when the outside becomes the inside: the transformation of a concept to a subject.
"The fold affects all materials that it thus becomes expressive matter, with different scales, speeds, and different vectors (mountains and waters, papers, fabrics, living tissues, the brain), but especially because it determines and materializes Form. It produces a form of expression, a Gestaltung, the genetic element or infinite line of inflection, the curve with a unique variable" (Deleuze, 2006, p. 39).
In his book The Fold, Deleuze(2006) uses the metaphor of the architectural style Baroque to elucidate the events of the fold. Consisting of the upper and lower chamber, the baroque architecture separates the facade and closed room but such physical separation is a matter of what the eye sees. Deleuze reconnects these two as the folding and unfolding of an event to constitute the actual, being the upper floor, a fixed point, rigid, stabilized and normalized while the lower chamber is where matters of potentials not yet constituted are imminent (Deleuze and Strauss, 1991). Deleuze(1987) refers to this as the virtual where composites are woven together to actualize a Form.
Susan Nordstrom (2013) succinctly explains the concept using the object-subject relationship as a metaphor: “The fold, without beginning or ending, produces both subjects and objects such that the two can no longer be thought apart. Thus, it is more productive to think of objects-subjects, the hyphen denoting the infinite folding, or correspondence, of the two, which can, in fact, never be separate”(Nordstorm, 2013, p.12).
Applied in this experimental artistic inquiry as both a concept and method, the fold oscillates between the doing of inquiry and photography in visually expressing the cultural image of Hanoi. The fold is situated in between, the transversality, and the becoming. Central to this exposition is the body and camera's materiality within a situated assemblage constitutive of the folds that act as filters or screens during the process of selection thus, creating multiple points of view---possibilities but does not condition the actual. The body is a location where folds are realized and modulated, creating creases, pleats and textures, to determine the actual(the image).
Consider this exposition as fields of folded fabrics in different textures. it describes the process of photography as a living fold. Each texture is an effect of movements created by formations on its surface. Movements are enacted from the collision or convergence of heterogeneous matters and bodies. Each fold forms the textures of a photograph actualizing it in an image: a cultural rendition of what Hanoi is. Some are felt, tunic, cotton, linen or polyester fabric. Such fabrics create variations of different textures when they intra-act (Barad, 2007). The folds have their depth. Each is never the same in its structure each time it moves; a result of the heterogeneous intra-action of folds. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) call these as assemblages within the smooth space. A smooth space is the plane of consistency. The smooth space is where most photographers assemble, pick up objects, and intra-act which gives rise to images. Such activities within smooth space create variations as they form new textures over time. In this exposition using photography as artistic practice, I argue that Photography is a continuous variation of “folds” in curating the visual image of Hanoi. These folds are constitutive of matters and bodies intra-acting to actualize an image. This means that the frame is a mediating machinic fold where the organization takes place, the folding of the outside to the inside thus, placing response-ability on photographers for a more productive becoming in the posthuman world.
“Treating my mobile camera as part of the body, I found myself situated in between shadows of intervening matters taking part in the event, affecting while being affected as the mobile camera captures the mundane, the not seen, and the out of frame”.
“My body’s elastic skin clung through the metal contours of the gimbal. Images captured by the camera swell outside its frame, the outside is the labour force behind the inside."