Theory Research
and
connections
It took me a long time to find a theory that genuinely resonated with me and connected meaningfully to my work.
I realised that I work instinctively and through intuition, and that this is not a weakness but an important starting point.
this part of page highlights theory bits I feel I want to set aside as well as some of those were a starting points.
More theory and its application is woven throughout my experiments.
Bergson, H. (2001)
Time and Free will, New york, dover publications, inc.
Bergson’s Method of Intuition He argues that we cannot grasp qualitative multiplicity through intellect alone; we can only reach it through intuition. His idea that time is a continuous flow—something that loses its essence when divided into discrete units, feels closely aligned with how I experience my creative process.
time is a continuous flow.
it cannot be divided into discrete units without loosing its essence.
Emotions like desire, passion, joy, and sorrow intensify over time.
Their strength doesn’t grow because there is “more” of the feeling, but because the feeling spreads into more parts of my inner life. It creates and deepens own layers.
As these emotions connect with memories, thoughts, and creative impulses, they help me to reshape my overall attitude to the problems, challenges or issues i am facing.
Counting: Bergson has fascinating view on counting.
Where he highlights multiplicity is a repetition of each previous unit, he specify each unit must be identical for the line to continue.
"Each number is a collection of units ... every number is itself a unit ... it is a synthesis of the units which compose it" (p28)
(flock of sheep)
Reflection:
My emotional responses to materials, places, and making aren’t isolated moments, they evolve and deepen. I tend to follow intuition, often subconsciously, and I’m realising that these instinctive movements can become meaningful directions in my work once they permeate more of my thinking.
Understanding emotional change as
qualitative rather than quantitative
helps me value these subtle shifts and see how they guide the development of my work.
understanding each unit must be same for the counting part, yet content of each unit is as different as it needs to be. This is a way I interpreted weeks and years on my timeline work. where each year has same amount of embroidery lines - 52 weeks, they differ in the experience lived thru.
The structure is fixed, but the lived experience inside it is not. Each line becomes identical in measure yet entirely individual in meaning, echoing the way time passes evenly while life does not.
My making unfolds in a fluid, lived rhythm rather than in neatly separated steps, and recognising this has helped me trust my own way of working.
Line as a record of time
inspired by R.Long Line Made by Walking 1967
Line can be a record of duration. There is a fundamental tension in life that lies between spatialised time( line as a measurement ) and pure duration(line as living act).
Duree is heterogeneous. There are no two moments of consciousness that are identical. each moment carries a weight of the previous moments!
the past layers are not buried under the present layers,
they are FOLDED into present
the SELF is a continuous thickening experience.
Reflection:
When I overlay lines in my work, I’m not just creating marks, I’m spatialising time.
Each line exists only because of the repetitive temporal act that produced it, and together they form a visual trace of lived duration.
Deleuze, G (1991)
Bergsonism , New york, zone books
a line is a qualitative multiplicity.
it's something that cannot be contained by boundaries or reduced to a simple measurement.
To live in durée is to occupy a line that is always becoming.
Deleuze, drawing on Bergson, emphasises that the
present does not follow the past in a linear sequence; instead, the past co‑exists with the present.
relation to palimpsest:
nothing is ever truly erased. The lower layers are just as present as the upper ones. Past layers are active, not historical; they continue to shape the present moment.
A line is never finished, it constantly overwrites itself, folding new moments into old ones.
In this sense, the self becomes the sum total of all its layers, made up of erasures, slips, contradictions, and accumulations.
My work with line, either drawn, woven, or constructed , feels like a direct expression of continuous thickening of experience.
present does not follow the past
the past co‑exists with the present
I feel like this is a very important part in creating memory
Derrida, J. and Mehlman, J. (1972)
Freud and the scene of writing, yale university press
MEMORY:
'Memory is present not once but several times over, that it is registered (niederlegt) in various species of 'signs' . . . I cannot say how many of these inscriptions (Niederschriften) there may be: at least three and probably more. . The different transcripts are separated (though not necessarily in topography) in respect to the neurones which are their vehicles...Perception. These are neurones in which perception appears and to which consciousness is attached but which in themselves retain no trace of what happens. For consciousness and memory are mutually exclusive.
Sign of perception: the first inscription of the perceptions; it is quite incapable of being conscious and is arranged according to associations of simultaneity...Unconscious is a second inscription . . . Preconscious is the third inscription, linked to verbal images corresponding to our official ego ... '(P.13)
Derrida, drawing on Freud, dismantles the metaphysics of presence by showing that what is written can never be fully erased. Every mark leaves a trace.
Even when new layers are added, the old ones remain active beneath the surface. Erasure only depresses the earlier layer, it never removes it. What is suppressed becomes a kind of ghost that continues to haunt the present moment.
'Abandoned to itself, the multiplicity frayed surfaces for the apparatus as a dead complexity without depth.
Life as depth belongs only to the wax of psychical memory.' (p.114)
Derrida drawing on Freud argues, that erasure is never complete. Every mark leaves a trace, even when it is covered, overwritten, or removed.
Suppressed layers become ghosts that continue to haunt the present. In this sense, Long’s vanished walked line still exists as a trace in the altered space, and my removed stitches still exist in the fabric’s memory.
Derrida’s idea of the trace helps me understand my own work: nothing I make is ever fully gone. Each line, either walked or stitched adds another layer to my story.
Even when the material mark disappears, the experience remains active.
My work becomes a record of these traces, a layered palimpsest of actions, attempts, failures, and transformations that continue to shape the present moment of making.
My stitched line behaves in a similar way. It is only as permanent as the thread that stays in the fabric. Stitches can be removed.
But whether their removal leaves a mark depends entirely on the base material.
Some fabrics hold the memory of the stitch—tiny holes, distortions, shadows—while others allow the thread to vanish cleanly.
Reflection:
This idea resonates deeply with ideas about layering, duration, and the palimpsest. In a palimpsest, the past is not gone; it coexists with the present. The bottom layers are just as present as the top ones. They shape what comes after, even when they are no longer visible. Derrida’s notion of trace helps me understand why the past in my practice never feels “finished”—it is always folded into the present, influencing each new gesture. Writing becomes a technique of memory, but a fragile one.
A sheet of paper can preserve indefinitely, yet it saturates quickly. This mirrors my own experience of working with materials: each action records something, but the surface can only hold so much before it becomes overwhelmed, overwritten, or transformed. This theory gives language to what I feel in my making. My work is built from layers that never fully disappear—failed attempts, intuitive decisions, slips, contradictions. They remain as traces that shape the next action. The self, like the line, is never singular or clean; it is the accumulation of all these layers, always rewriting itself while never escaping what came before.
Things disappear, but they do not vanish. They persist as traces, as echoes, as layers within durée.
As I continued exploring palimpsest method of expression and research, I found myself questioning what kind of “layering” truly describes the way stories and memories evolve.
The traditional palimpsest suggests layers that accumulate over time, each new inscription written on top of the previous one. Yet the earlier layers remain present, still distinguishable beneath the surface. This aligns closely with Deleuze’s understanding of the past. For Deleuze past layers coexist with the present, they are not erased but preserved. Each retelling of a story becomes a new layer, while the earlier versions remain intact and theoretically retrievable (Deleuze, 1994).
However, when I compare this with Sutton’s account of memory, a very different model emerges. Sutton argues that memory is superpositional, not layered.
There is no firm layer beneath the new one. Instead, each time a story is recalled, the act of remembering rewrites the memory itself. If I would compare these two theories to coffee and cream, then Deleuze is placing whipping cream on top, where Sutton is pouring cream into the coffee and steering it. Sutton describes memory as a dynamic, constructive process in which traces are stored across overlapping neural networks. Because these traces coexist in superposition, they are continually reshaped by each new experience or retelling (Sutton, 1998). In this model, the original is not preserved, it is transformed.
This essential difference between palimpsest and superposition brings the question of ephemerality to the forefront yet again, just like the moment I was looking into the fire.
If memory is rewritten each time it is recalled, does the original ever truly remain?
Or does it dissolve into the new configuration, leaving only an echo of what once was?
My experiments with photocopying, layering, and mechanical writing mirror this uncertainty. Each repetition alters the trace, raising the possibility that the “original” may not survive in any stable form.
Reflecting on this, I realise that my project sits precisely in the space between these two models.
I acknowledge the palimpsestic desire to uncover hidden layers, yet I also recognise the superpositional reality that some layers may no longer exist in their original state.
Thinking moment
of reflection
From the very beginning, the phrase “material takes time” sat at the centre of my project, even before I fully understood its significance.
I knew I wanted the work to remain material, slow, grounded, and real — not digital. This instinct naturally led me toward movements like Mono-ha and Arte Povera, which emphasise raw materials, presence, and the simple fact of things existing in time, and stands critiquing consumerism. This was very relevant in the beginning.
When I began thinking about materials, I found myself thinking about quantity, about excess, overproduction, and the environmental consequences of material abundance. This led me to microplastics, and from there to the idea of things being interwoven into the environment. That was the moment the project became more real, more embodied. I didn’t yet realise that the essence of “material takes time” was already guiding my thinking. It was there from the start, shaping the project before I had the language for it.
I am drawn to multiplicity fusion, duree and layering.
When Clare spoke about heritage and baskets, she mentioned how difficult it is to find documentation of old baskets because once they served their purpose, they were thrown into the fire and disappeared. That struck me.
A basket exists, it is used, and then it is gone — reclaimed by fire. Richard Long’s Line Made by Walking works the same way: the line exists only while he walks. When he stops, the line disappears, and the land slowly reclaims it.
This made me realise that my project has always been about time — disturbance, duration, durée. The logical outcome of this thinking was the Timeline: a way of measuring time, marking time, acknowledging that everything I make takes time — my time, my timeline, my small disturbance of existence in space.
I wrote a note to myself:
“To live in durée is to occupy a line that is always becoming.” (Deluze, 1991)
This became a key idea. Just because something is no longer physically present does not mean it is gone. It has been here, and it leaves echoes.
These echoes live in memory. You return to a place after twenty years and think, “There used to be a tree here.” The tree is gone, but the memory remains active. Or you walk into your grandmother’s house and remember a chair that is no longer there. The object is gone, but it continues to exist in you — in the layers of experience that keep it alive.
This is the metaphysical principle at the heart of my project:
absence is not erasure.
problems of ephemeral:
by ephemeral one can understand several thing.
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Temporal Transience: a state of existence, only within a specific limited life frame
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Evanescence: process of fading away or vanishing
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Impermanence: in philosophical context states all things are in constant state of flux.
