Archive as Event

www.ligatus.org.uk/jla

Antony Hudek Athanasios Velios

John Latham by Ida Kar (NPGx131192)

John Latham outside Flat-Time-House

Cosmological theory

The Sibling Structure of Archive as Event

‘You will remember one of the brothers [Karamazov] was head-on into whatever happened to him, and he never observed himself in the least; the next one was observing himself so closely that the only free act ultimately open to him was suicide. However acute his observation the world was still an illogical farce. The third, youngest brother was reflective but not stuck on his intellectual rigour, and this left him free to ‘intuit’ right solutions in the context he was in.’

John Latham in conversation with Charles Harrison, ‘Where does the collision happen?’, Studio International vol. 175, n 900 [May 1968], 260.

Observer I (1959)

Book Relief Triad (1959/2003)

O1-1O [OHO]

‘If the symbol ‘0’ represents a state of zero action and least extension, and the symbol ‘1’ represents a state of least action and least extension then a ‘least event’ is the change of state 01 and the return to state 0. The existence of state ‘1’ presupposes state ‘0’ and vice versa. A possible alternation between these states was expressed in Andrew Dipper’s delightful equation, the prototype oscillation, 01-10.’

(Richard Hamilton, John Latham: Early Works 1954-1972 [London: Lisson Gallery, 1987], 14.)

One-Second Drawing [Time-Signature 5:1] (1972)

Three Times

‘Well, it’s an artist’s natural medium to use three kinds of time. And you

find it in music as obvious – there’s no question about it. There a

performance takes say half an hour, which is in clock time, and what I

would call count time, whereas the sound that you hear is an

organization of time-bases, which is virtually rhythms, intervals, and

insistently recurrent sounds….’

John Latham in conversation with Alanna Heiss at the Venice Biennale (9 June 2005)

Time-Base Roller (1972) Time-Base Roller with Graphic Score (1987)

Sun Times, Mitya Edition (12 June 2009)

APG Art & Economics exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery (1971/1972)