Beginning this sprint into Weird Studies felt like a collision into an unknown space where I was to find out how or why it exists, and to justify it being there. Starting with a mind-map was a good way to conquer the problem of deciphering this largely unidentified space, placing words onto it and seeing what connections or other ideas appear. The start of this map was within the physical with wide-reaching nouns. The connections off of these words were much more intangible; a way of modifying the primary map areas. I began to think that this was where the Weird was located, in sub-categories that signify unfamiliar territories, especially when sub-categories are then split further into sub-sub-categories. The ways of explaining various objects are getting smaller and smaller and a way of zooming in with the correct apparatus is required. I am mostly interested in what the line is that connects subjects together and why I have drawn it; this is allowing contradicting things to interact with one another, causing a friction or need to draw more lines and add other elements into the mix. To process this and come up with more material that possesses potential factors of the Weird, I began to write in a creative way looking at how to research the Weird, how I may choose to encounter it and what to say when this happens. I suppose this could be seen as a more comprehensive mind-map but instead to placing far-reaching ideas onto a chart, an idea is allowed to flow into some imaginary and ‘weird’ places. I thought about how much easier it was to gain access to the Weird through doing this. Creating an imaginary space to then talk about the imaginary or other abstract ideas felt much more of an acceptable method of entering and explaining a largely unexplored territory. By quantifying this abstract and fragmented knowledge within the shape of a hallway and a door, I think of the spaces that lie behind the door but also the spaces that came pre-hallway too; an unfixed entity and a finite arena. Language is a secure medium of explaining and expressing knowledge and ideas but looking at and perceiving art, in a way of visual media, allows the viewer to converge with an ‘absent’ or ‘silent’ language. Is the pre-hallway purely a preface to the uncanny? By writing creatively about the Weird, am I really understanding it or am I merely adding to it? Succumbing to an already spiralling spiral that cannot be mitigated or controlled. I believe Weird Studies is both possible and necessary although for it to stay on the Weird shelf it has to ‘resist any settled explanation’, meaning this shelf is only temporary and items may be shelved elsewhere after being academically investigated.

This helped build an interpretation of the Weird centering around ‘speculative realism’ and ‘auto-theory’, more specifically, associations of fictions and myths that posit themselves within the real. Looking into superstitions; how they appear, transition and adapt, made me think about the reasons for them existing and how they are learnt. I thought about how I myself sees superstitions, of why I feel a supernatural quality when an established ‘superstition’ happens and I immediately reject it with enthusiasm. Perhaps it is an idea of the ‘progressive’ that makes me or others actively reject old ideas, inadvertently claiming what is modern and what belongs within the modern. This has turned superstition into an ideal associate of Weird Studies as it is a persistent supposition based within irrationality and beliefs that stray from reason. I wanted to look into more concrete ways of seeing these ideas so I began looking at predetermined ‘set-up’ examples and thought about the work of Andreas Gursky. It was interesting to think about what would provoke the desire to take a photograph within in a specific moment or environment and then to take this a step further to superimpose a level of distortion over it. Watching this video about ‘Amazon’ (2016)- Andreas Gursky: I pursue one goal-The Encyclopaedia of Life – this video is describing this image, that has gone through various methods to make it wholly in focus, as having a supernatural quality. I thought this was quite an elaborate suggestion at first but to stand in front of this image, which is of large scale and containing no ‘distracting’ camera optics, would be variably imposing to any viewer. What is contained within it is an ordinary everyday warehouse scene but the actual perceiving of the artwork is bordering on the surreal, constructing frictions between truth and invention. Delving deeper into how to access and explain these binaries, I looked back on a seminar I attended at the Institute of Contemporary Art in 2019. The Labyrinth: A Convening on the Work of Kathy Acker. I began to consider how to place language onto the Weird and other remote entities to find notions that could have words allocated to them. The lecture I focused on was regarding Kathy Acker’s bodybuilding of which she claimed she couldn’t write at the time of doing this and couldn’t find a language to describe it. The lecturer claims due to non-conscious cognition it is “impossible for introspection”, developing a ‘negative space’ which repels an explanation or language like two repelling magnets. I thought this was an interesting concept in relation to the neography lesson where we thought about a potential for composing a language that can fit any purpose or fit into any ‘narrow’ space. This made me question whether the ‘negative space’ spoken of within the lecture needed a language or is the non-conscious cognition process a language we inherently partake in but do not need to acknowledge with words.

The Weird could be seen as a multi-faceted collective with correlations towards the ‘cultic mileu’; a ‘deviant’ entity that ‘ doesn’t and can’t exist’. This is akin to the artworld, a body of conditions and artefacts that requires a ‘belief’ within the viewer to participate and engage with them. Perhaps it is more ‘acceptable’ to seek or find the Weird within an exhibition or gallery, often within an ornate building, where a bulk of informed voices can make an idea or concept valid.