Searching for Flies by AA School

S E A R C H I N G

F O R

F L I E S A theory of fuzz

Małgorzata Stanisławek Tutor: Doreen Bernath

Fuzz is birth. Fuzz is death. Fuzz is love and betrayal. It produces the disruption of a surface. It is the anomaly. Fuzzing disrupts totality.

Categories of fuzz:

in corpus

ex corpus

love

trap

lure

betrayal

rupture

imitate

in corpus – incorporation ex corpus – excorporation love – desire to enrich, join betrayal – desire to destroy, leave

Exclusion Outside

Inclusion Inside

Exclusion Outside

Love Betrayal

Betrayal

The theory of fuzz is a method for categorising the production of differences as they may manifest themselves in relation to a surface. A surface that can fuzz is never one dimensional. At the very least it has a front and a back, it holds a potential energy that can be released, it comprises a threshold that encompasses the surface, and it has meaning. The interference with any of these properties results in trapping, rupturing, luring and imitating respectively. Fuzz self-identifies as ugly. It is ugly in the sense that it “contaminates”3 and it is “experienced both as being there and as something that should not be there”4. For each of the categories of fuzz it is essential to interrogate the contaminating agent and the contaminated host, and the nature of fuzz’s appetite for this contamination. Importantly, fuzz can be seen as what happens in “the distance between two edges”5. The theory of fuzz can be considered in the context of Hegelian dialectics which place two something-others in opposition with each other and a process of back and forth between the two6. In its broadest conception, fuzziness is the moment of in-between-ness that should not be discounted but rather can become a category of its own, a different, but interdependent something-other. In this sense, fuzz can also be interpreted as a simultaneously separate and non-separate part. It “constitutes the articulation between two others”7. There are four categories of fuzz, examplified by operations involving the fly, active states of: trapping, rupturing, luring and imitating. In trapping, the fly is ensnared between two laminae. The bulge of its body and increased opacity of the fabric are a clue for the cause of the increased thickness, yet this is not entirely evident. In rupturing, the fly breaches the barrier of the fruit and proceeds to explore depths beyond its surface. In luring, the fly and fly-paper suffocate each other in an act of irrepressible attraction. In imitating, the fly uncovers questions between different sets of realities. The surface is a distinct entity pre-disruption. What beckons the disruption to the boundary of a surface is an act of love or an act of betrayal, either of which can be an incorporation into the surface or an excorporation, where these acts are precipitated by the intensity of desire.

[Fuzz is the disruption of a surface. It is ‘fly’ (where the fly is an ‘insect’ but also means ‘great’). It is never ‘clearly’ in form, but it is most definitely fly.]

Fuzz is clearly fly Fly fuzzes up surface Fuzz you, fly!

TRAP

Fly Fly Polyester micro-cables Polyester micro-cables Flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Polyester micro-cables Polyester micro-cables Dead flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Polyester micro-cables PVDF Polyester micro-cables Polyester micro-cables PVDF Dead flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Trap Polyester and insect flesh crosslink Figure 1

A shiny new roll of white Flexlight Xtrem TX30-II. It is advertised by Serge Ferrari, its manufacturer, as “a very high performance membrane, thanks to its crosslink technology”1. The roll is mounted at the end of a Blackman and White CNC fabric cutter and stretched over a blazing wall of lights. The light shines through the fabric for close inspection. “If there are any imperfections the manufacturer leaves a tab. We then inspect the imperfection and decide whether to cut around it or to leave it in.” “What kinds of imperfections can there be?” “Well, if it’s a big tear we would cut around it. If it’s something like a fly that doesn’t impact the fabric performance then we would leave it in.”2 In the birth of TX30-II and the death of the fly, polyester and insect flesh crosslink.

Trap Fly flaw on fabric - Flexlight Xtrem TX30-II inspected on a lightbox. This flaw was allowed for fabrication. Figure 2

TRAP The surface traps. TX30-II+fly (Figure 2) belongs to neither the category of perfectly woven polyester coated with plastic, nor to the buzzing business of a fly. It is described as a flaw, and yet it is functional – the flaw is allowed. The fly splurges out into the fabric. The contamination is the layering of the separatrix, a multiplication of thicknesses. The insertion of the fly into the surface of the fabric is not just a quantum of fly that exists somehow in relation to the fabric – it disrupts the fabric’s colour, translucency, texture. Contamination is hashed into the warp and the weft of polyester and sealed between the front and back layers of PVDF (Figure 3). The polyvinylidene fluoride lovingly smothers the fly. In fuzzing, the fly operates as a separatrix. The separatrix is a tool of fragmentation, whereby methods of deconstruction treat it as the “divider [separating] the inside from the outside”8. However, the dialectic placement of, for instance, “ornament/structure”, where “the separatrix is the /… [the] ligne, barre, oblique, trait”9 may be too reductive. The separatrix as the layering agent of fuzziness requires addition and multiplication of love in corpus. As much as Kipnis argues for the separatrix as “rendering complexity manageable (from the French, traitable)”10, the separatrix solely as “/” is oversimplified. If we treat the application of the separatrix to ‘ornament/structure’ as a diagram, why not ‘ornament//////////////////////structure’? Thus the function of fuzziness applied to the separatrix compounds it and reinforces entrapment. Fuzz as trap emerges as the disturbance in a layering of laminates. Tomás Saraceno’s “On Space Time Foam”11 (Figure 4) is a set of three membranes overlaid on top of each other. The membranes themselves can be considered a fuzz that presses up against the surface of the walls of the exhibition space that encloses it, through their movement modifying the bounding volumes that contain it. The contaminating agent is the membrane itself. Further to this, the visiting public contaminates the membrane. Human bodies are trapped between the laminae and press on the translucent surfaces, bodies in the layer above constraining the space available for bodies below by the force of gravity. The many membranes act as a separatrix within the cuboidal, rigidly defined walls of the exhibition spaces, this action being multiplied by the visitors actively crawling, gliding and wriggling within.

Fuzz as amplified separatrix features also in the representation of a surface. In comparing three different techniques of scanning a surface, X-ray, MRI and laser, the first two would be a fuzzy representation whereas the laser would not (Figure 5). X-rays pass through and interact with matter through the whole depth of the surface that they pass through, imaged on photographic film or panel detectors12. Similarly magnetic resonance imaging records the thickness of a surface pressing upon neighbouring surface, where magnetic fields affect the entire dimension of the material scanned13. Laser scanning however produces a surface datum that is one bit of information, precluding any notion of thickness14. As a technique of representation, X-rays and MRIs trap the full extent of the trapped inner workings of a surface onto an image. The trapping of contaminants in a surface has a presence in itself. It is a build-up and not a nominal separation between two constitutive elements. Fuzz is the contamination of the space between the front and back of a surface.

Trap Contamination is hashed into the warp and the weft of polyester and sealed between the front and back layers of PVDF. Figure 3

[Description of the tensile fabric at a manufacturerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s workshop that I visited.]

Fly trap Fuzz scrap Flap flap flap Plastic wrap.

Trap Tomás Saraceno’s “On Space Time Foam” - a set of three membranes overlaid on top of each other. Figure 4

X-ray

MRI

Laser scan

Point cloud

Trap Fuzzy versus non-fuzzy methods of representation. Figure 5

RUPTURE

Fly

Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Fly Skin Skin Skin Skin Flykin Skin Skin Skin Fly in Skin Skin Skin Fly Skin Skin Skin S Fly Skin Skin Skin Sk Fly kin Skin Skin Skin Fly in Skin Skin Skin Fly Skin Skin Skin SkFly Skin Skin Skin SkinFly Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin Skin

Fly

Rupture Picture and film x-ray images showing a hole made by an olive fruit fly with extensive tunnelling inside the fruit. Figure 6

Fuzz refuses to fly in the face of the fly in the ointment. Refuzz.

[Refuse means to reject, but also rubbish - something that can be discarded and become rubbish if it contains a flaw, and refuzz plays with the words refuse and fuzz, as well as fuzzing again and again, ‘fly in the face of ’ means to go against, ‘fly in the ointment’ is a slight flaw that detracts from value, completeness or enjoyment. As fuzz refuses to go against flaws, it is the flaw.]

RUPTURE The surface is ruptured. When the contaminating agent finds itself outside of the space bounded by the front and back of a surface, and subsequently violates these boundaries, a rupture occurs. The olive fruit fly breaks the skin of an olive and tunnels through the fruit. Evidence of this is forensically recorded with an X-ray15 (Figure 6). Rupturing is a method of division that tears apart, and a method of subtraction that removes, to reveal the depth of a surface. One such rupture is exemplified by Shibboleth, a “negative space”16 inscribed into the floor of the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern (Figure 7). The fuzz of the rupture is manufactured in the art piece as a chasm in the otherwise smooth concrete floor. The rupture “[subverts] the idea of land, with its implied sense of ownership and clearly defined boundaries into its very opposite: the terrain of the dispossessed”17. Shibboleth takes the potential of disruption, of war, of natural disaster, and feeds it into the production of art, to reconstruct the trauma of the crack. In this way “In the wake of these forms of destruction, surfaces are revealed as deep volumes, and hidden layers otherwise buried within the depth of materials and the ground are exposed to view”18. A rupture exposes the thickness of the surface and becomes the inverse of the trap. This means that separatrix as trap layers thicknesses on top of each other, whereas the separatrix as rupture evidences the thickness through incision. The “/” becomes not a layer but a slashing into the surface. Salcedo’s crack reveals a chain-link wire fence embedded into the concrete depth (Figure 7), manufacturing the materiality of the crack and thus proposing a “counterarchaeology”19. The fuzz of the rupture embodies the conflict of judgement between the realness and un-realness of the crack, the fabricated depths and the historical conflict that the crack embodies. Crucially, fuzz breaches the potential energy held in a continued surface. The violence of the “/” and its resultant exposure of materials upon materials is heavily dependent on the means of piercing. In his project ‘Splitting’, Gordon-Matta Clark states that “Beginning at the center of the house two parallel lines were cut through all the structural surfaces”20. The tools he uses for his ‘unbuilding’ operations are the “chisel, mallet, jigsaw, chopsaw, sledgehammer, jackhammer, handsaw, hammer, broom, blowtorch, plumbline”21.

Thus the proboscis of the jigsaw (Figure 8) becomes the contaminating agent that exposes the depth of the host house’s layers. The fuzz of the rupture “[takes] apart the relations between form/matter, exterior/interior, construction/demolition, professional/labourer, legal/illegal”22. Therefore the rupture is also a fuzz in the established ways of making architecture. “He is cutting at the structure that separates the practice and culture of architecture from the physicality of the building.”23 By inserting himself into the rupture between the architectural office and the construction site, Gordon Matta-Clark is the architect as fuzz. If fuzz is what can happen in the distance between two edges, then the architect as fuzz can blur the disciplinary boundaries that are imposed on them in practice. What is revealed in this rupture is the variety of roles that an architect may assume in between the categories of ‘design’ and ‘construction’. Fuzz is the rifting of a surface that releases the potential energy held in its unified, unblemished totality before the rupture. The contamination betrays the unified front that a continuous stratum may present, to reveal various substrata.

[The trajectory of a fly disrupts the illusion of the sky as a surface that envelops and therefore is fuzz. It is a play on baseball terms, where to hit a fly means to hit a ball that flies very far at speed so it is difficult to see as it breaks away from the line of vision.]

Hit a fly Fuzz in the sky Flies on by Overfly.

Rupture Manufactured chasm Figure 7

Rupture Proboscis of Gordon Matta-Clarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jigsaw Figure 8

[Fuzz messes up plans. Aside from the fly as metaphorical fuzz agent, here it plays with rugby terminology and breaks the completeness of a rugby kick (fly hack) by a fly flying into the eye of a rugby player (fly half position). The exclamation â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;ack!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; sums up the indeterminacy of fuzziness.]

Fly in the eye of the fly half fuzz up the fly hack ack!

LURE

Poison - Paper - Poison Poison - Paper - Poison Poison - Paper - Poison FlyPoison - Paper - Poison Flyyyy Poison - Paper - Poison FlyflyflyPoison - Paper - Poison Dead flyPoison - Paper - Poison FlyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison FlyyyyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison FlyflyflyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Fly Dead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Flyyyy Dead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Flyflyfly Dead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Fly Dead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly FlyyyyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly FlyflyflyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly FlyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly FlyyyyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly FlyflyflyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead flyFly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead flyFlyyyy Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead flyFlylyly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - Poison Dead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly Dead flyDead flyDead flyDead fly Poison - Paper - PoisonDead fly Dead fly

Lure Fly lured by flesh Figure 9

Lure Violent attraction between poison of fly paper and fly Figure 10

LURE The surface lures and is lured. There exists an irrepressible attraction between the contaminating agent and host. In Yoko Ono’s film ‘Fly’, the insect explores various body orifices, seemingly allured by heat, smell, moisture24 (Figure 9). As the fly explores the landscape of flesh, tension builds up in the conceivable moment before the surface of the skin might be pierced with a proboscis. In a similar seduction, flies stick to fly paper (Figure 10). The dependency between the fly and poison illustrates that fuzz is resolutely not “in space and time an individual thing”25. It is not independent, it is not pure. Fuzz disrupts the individuality and purity of the host surface it contaminates. This is the way in which luring fuzzes the lured. Fuzz as lure aligns itself with the concept of the parergon which is “against, beside, and above and beyond the ergon, the work accomplished, the accomplishment of the work. But it is not incidental; it is connected to and cooperates in its operation from the outside.”26 The flies stuck to the fly paper envelop the yellow surface until it is covered with a hairy layer of crunchy black insect flesh. Indeed, the metaphor of the lures of the flesh is very productive in describing the encounters between a contaminating agent and contaminated host. The forms of Anish Kapoor’s ‘Marsyas’ structure are corporeal, often compared to skin and flesh: “for which fold is now sinew or muscle?”27 Marsyas invites different scalar perceptions of the sculpture from vantage points that are nearby or far away from the PVC stretched between the rings of the frame. When examining the red polyvinyl chloride up close, one can see multiple scratches on the surface, vestiges of the construction process, handling of the fabric, an embrace between the construction worker and red plastic (Figure 11). Construction can be classed as “the work beside the work”28. If the ergon of architecture is form then the parergon lies in the formation of it. The physical handling of the materials of construction, “while being neither part of it nor absolutely extrinsic to it”29, is crucial to the erection of structures and marks the surfaces that are handled. In attaching the singular surface of the PVC to the frame that stretches it, construction is the act that facilitates the attraction between the frame and the membrane (Figure 12). Luring is an irresistible force of desire. Rather than allow PVC to maintain its relaxed, crumpled rest state, it is stretched between steel rings (Figure 13). The frames of the Marsyas lure the membrane away from its resting state as “they do not belong within it, but border upon it [aber stossen doch an sie an:

they touch upon it, put pressure on it, press against it, seek contact, exert pressure at the boundary]â&#x20AC;?30. The surface of the lure can either be the contaminated host or the contaminating agent. As the interplay is between the external surfaces of membranes, the attraction is mutually magnetic. Whether it is the pull between poisonous film on paper and fly cells or the edge of PVC and a steel frame, fuzzing occurs at the threshold of edges that are lured to each other and meet.

Lure Construction of the Marsyas Figure 11

Lure Scratches on the surface of the PVC Figure 12

Lure Membrane is stretched between the rings of the frame Figure 13

Fuzz lures, Line pulls: Surface tension Contours.

[To lure is to forcibly attract. Lure is a play on words: attract/fly lure for fishing. The line that pulls refers both to the seams of the Marsyas and a fly fishing line. Surface tension is the totality that is primed for disruption, by scratched out contours.]

IMITATE Fly

Fly

F ly

Imitate Fly decals on bathroom surfaces Figure 14

Fuzz on the fly Flying the fuzz, Fuzzbox in use Fuzz flies by.

[In one meaning, the fuzz is on the fly literally, which flies the fuzz, the fuzzbox fuzzes surfaces. In a play on words, fuzz is fleeing the police (the fuzz) but by using a fuzzbox interrupts the policeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s radio communication and manages to run away. Fuzz is disruptive. It interferes.]

IMITATE The surface is imitated and imitates. Fuzz is the incongruity between the two realities presented in front of a viewer. Trompe l’oeil is one vehicle for the fuzz of imitation. As Charpentrat states, “disciples [of trompe l’oeil] do not impose an untruthful Presence, but deliver us up all the better to the effects of Presence.”31 Decals of flies (Figure 14) are manufactured areas on surfaces, such as those stuck to a toilet seat and bathroom tiles, that are not actual flies but nevertheless suggest that which flies might be attracted to and fill in for a reality that is not immediately evident, but evocative in rendering other readings of activities that occur in a bathroom. In the “Portrait of a Carthusian” painting by Petrus Christus the fly is also a flat surface that is suggestive of vastness beyond its flatness (Figure 15). First, the frame around the portrait can be classified as a parergon as “the frame, the invisible limit of (between) the interiority of meaning (protected by the entire hermeneutic, semiotic, phenomenological, and formalist tradition) and (of ) all the extrinsic empiricals which, blind and illiterate, dodge the question”32. Yet the frame in the painting fuzzes weakly, if at all. It is true that the frame is already an example of trompe l’oeil, and as a frame it is the “work beside the work”33. The fly has alighted on the frame. The fly re-fuzzes the relationship between the frame and the painting, and the frame and the outside world: the parergon is intensified. The fly is a schizophrenic element that is both part of the painting and part of the world outside the painting, and neither in the painting nor in the outside world, “determined not by distinguishing itself, but by disappearing, sinking in, obliterating itself, dissolving just as it expends its greatest energy.”34 The effect of an oscillation in the mind of the viewer between the belonging and unbelonging of the fly to the painting is enhanced by the diminutive size of the fly in relation to the painting. The contamination of the fly expands the conceivable thickness of the frame to a three dimensional object that exists in the three dimensional world beyond the painting. The inclusion of trompe l’oeil suggests an interpretation of depth, of a monk in a wooden cubicle. “There is recognition; there is not illusion”35. Yet for a moment, there can exist a moment of illusory trickery, followed by disbelief. Stories were told by artists who admired Giotto that he had painted flies so realistically onto figures in his paintings that his master Cimabue attempted to brush them away36.

Numerous artists following Giotto have painted flies that attempt to play with the recognition of a painted versus a real fly that has landed, and is about to lift off and fly away (Figure 16). The perversion of perception of what belongs to the three dimensional world versus what belongs to the two dimensional painting surface is a fuzz, the separatrix between presence/absence in the confrontation of the real. The layering of surfaces of paint on top of each other attempts to escape the two dimensionality that enslaves the fly, but the fly doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t quite succeed in escaping this surface, except in the imagination. The imitations of phenomena on a surface betray its flatness. In this way imitations also have a thickness that expands the depth of action of the surface beyond its two dimensionality. The contamination is between differing interpretations of reality.

[Reference to trompe l’oeil. ‘There are no flies on me’ meaning I am no fool because I can tell the imitation from the real thing. ‘Fly on the wall’ puns on ‘observer’ versus a real fly next to the trompe l’oeil fly.]

Fly on the wall on the painting Fuzz me Fuzz the fly There are no flies on me!

Imitate The fly and the frame Figure 15

Imitate Fly decals on bathroom surfaces Figure 16

[The free flying of the insect that embraces all altitudes is trapped, compacted (spissitude), between the layers of a surface. The accrual refers to the thickening of the separatrix within the boundaries of a surface. The verisimilitude refers to the bump in the thickness that could be read as a dead fly, but its provenance could be contested. Verisimilitude can also be read as trompe lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;oeil, where the accrual of layers of paint render a two dimensional fly that desires to burst out of the painting and fly/gain altitude in three dimensional space.]

Fly spissitude Trap altitude Fuzzing accrued Verisimilitude.

LOVE, BETRAYAL AND DESIRE All fuzz is an object of desire. The creation of the new TX30-II+fly means a loss of the original TX30-II. The new fabric becomes an object of desire, a representation, as “all objects of desire are representations, since they are substitutions for something that is experienced as being lost”37. Fuzzing of a surface prevents the attainment of perfectly formed, shiny tensile fabric. Fuzz plays with reality, and “reality is that which, being an obstacle, both arrests and denies us our pleasure”38. This is the case for each category of fuzz, whereby the actions of trapping, rupturing, luring and imitating actively deny the pleasure of the totality of a surface. Yet rather than turning away from fuzz or destroying it, fuzz invites a turning towards. The fabric flaw of TX30-II+fly is allowed to be, even when its ugliness is examined up close. Not only does the Shibboleth manufacture fuzz, it also attracts visitors. There is a fascination with the production of disruption. There is also a kind of delight in catching flies with fly paper or being momentarily tricked by a particularly deceptive instance of trompe l’oeil. In fact, fuzz is irresistible. In the introductory text to Shibboleth, the St Petersburg dialogues are quoted where in response to The Senator’s comment “This is an abyss into which it is better not to look.”, The Count replies “My friend, we are not free not to look.”39 There is a responsibility to examine the fuzzing of totalities. Fuzz can be interpreted as a gap that has a thickness. “[The limit] is the distance between two edges… The limit would be a way between two frontiers, a way that would use their extremities to make its way”40. Fuzz interferes with the edges of the two frontiers by multiplying a thickness, or inserting a break, or ensnaring one with the other, or creating conflicts between the presentations of two realities – by trapping, rupturing, luring or imitating. Most importantly, fuzz is not neutral. The limit could be identified as a utopia, a “neutral place, a locus whose characteristics are semiotically negative, whose specificity consists in being neither one nor the other, neither this edge nor the other”41. Fuzz is not utopian. The non-neutrality of fuzz, embodied in its impetus to contaminate, emphasises that the gap is always an area of contention. Fuzz presses upon the edges that define it, even as the edges push back.

Fuzziness is always a space of contention. It is never neutral. Figure 17

APPENDIX Rationale for the design of the booklet: The ink is printed on the back side of the page in such a way that the ink is layered between the sheets of tracing paper. On the outside of the object of the stacked sheets the paper is pure, whereas on the inside the print is an impurity that is trapped between the layers of paper. The text has to be read peering through the cellulose fibre sulphite pulp42 that has been washed and dried to provide a surface of low opacity. Besides this, the text is overlaid on top of each so that some of the material that is applicable across the essay can peer through the thickness. The pages can be read all on top of each other or rearranged to provide various thicknesses and play with different opacities. The sheets of paper can also slide outside the 210 mm x 297 mm boundary. Therefore there are three layers of information: 1. main spine of the argument for the trap, rupture, lure and imitation.; 2. illustrations 3. interspersed mini poems that play with ideas of fuzz.

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