Are We Coming to an End?

The event horizon is described as a boundary, and at first I imagined a continuous line. I turned to the left and away it ran. I turned to the right and there it was, running away. However, the event horizon is more accurately conceived as the surface of a body whose interior will never be seen because it is impossible to see, from here. [1] And that body’s skin hides something that we are desperate to look at, if not with our own eyes then by some other means.

That means is the image. An image is an instrument, a way of seeing what can’t be seen, whether due to the contingencies of the present moment or because that thing can never be seen. Image-making is always an act of pragmatics and imagination.

 

[1] Masaru Siino, ‘Topological Appearance of Event Horizon: What Is the Topology of the Event Horizon That We Can See?’, Progress of Theoretical Physics, vol. 99, no. 1, 1998.

Lynette Smith wrote recently that she has been in 'a long, long argument with myself, and the world, about art—its possibilities and why it should be done and why I should do it'. Much of that argument has been carried out in the form of drawing, with a recent shift to moving image and writing. www.lynettesmith.com.au