Jordan, C. M. (2017). Directing energy: Gordon Matta-Clark’s pursuit of social sculpture. In Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect (pp. 36–63). New Haven, CT: The Bronx Museum of the Arts and Yale University Press.

Pink, S. (2011). Multimodality, multisensoriality and ethnographic knowing: social semiotics and phenomenology of perception. Qualitative Research, 11(3), 261–276. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794111399835

In reading Sarah Pink there is an effort to take the current definitions of sensory modality and expand them.  She writes that Guerts and Howes have demonstrated that the 5 senses we utilize are a western cultural construct, and further illustrates that KL Guerts, in studies of Angolan tribes, found that their perceptions of sensory stimuli did not map directly to our 5 sense modality.  She uses terms like synaesthesia, implying a blending of sensory inputs to create a unique perception, to describe that for which we in our culture do not have an accurate language taxonomy. 

The sensorial  dichotomy between written language and visual art is explored, with both critique of, and expansion on, some of the work of anthropologists. Kress’ assertion that words are in themselves “empty and vague” and that images specific and inherently precise seems a forced binary, and didactic; words can be quite precise and even totemic, while images can be filled with layers of meaning and possible perceptions.  Pink proposes the use of “affordances” a term that allows for both relational sensory perceptions and the inclusion of work of other scholars in broadening the language of meaning.

…

Revisiting CM Jordan’s piece on Gordon Matta Clark I was able to look at his work in a way that eluded me only a week ago.  In my first exposure to his photography I recognized the journalistic aspect and the gaze of the outsider. There were elements of the political (to me) in images of poverty and urban decay; the lens I viewed it through was that of distance and privilege.  In learning more of his immersion in the communities and environments I found his gaze to be less journalistic and more integrated sociologically. He was illustrating the life of the community in imagery that exists as both a single “journalistic” statement (photo-accuracy),  but allows for meaning to be derived through complete immersion in the social framework of that community in depiction and presentation.  As Matta Clark intended his work to be social anthropologic, and grounded in socialist democratic principle, I found ironic how his work “Graffiti Truck” which was meant to be the work of all the various graffiti artists that embellished the vehicle, wound up being viewed as his singular creation.

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