DAN SHIPSIDES - ha ha - syzygetically speaking (Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival)

 

 

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Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the roof above the Ulster Sports Club Bar - above a billboard saying "Ulster Says Yeoo".

Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the BSoA - clearly displaying 'ha ha'.Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the Belfast Telegraph building - clearly displaying 'ha ha'.Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the Belfast Telegraph building - clearly displaying 'ha ha'.Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the MAC Art Centre building - clearly displaying 'ha ha'.Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the MAC Art Centre building - clearly displaying 'ha ha'.Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the roof above the Ulster Sports Club Bar - above a billboard saying "Ulster Says Yeoo".Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the Oh Yeah Centre building - clearly displaying 'ha'.Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the cage entrance to the Sunflower Bar - clearly displaying 'ha ha'.Image of two 'ha ha' flags on a high wall with a painted mural - clearly displaying 'ha ha'.

Two CQAF events by the CQAF Visual Arts Bursary Award recipient Dan Shipsides:

'ha ha – syzygetically speaking
public artwork for CQAF 27th April to 26th May 2023.

and

ha ha Syzygetic Summitt Stammers (Bearnagh)
Exhibition at the Green Room (Black Box) 4th to 26th May 2023.


ha ha – syzygetically speaking
Deployed around seven sites throughout the Cathedral Quarter area, Shipsides presents a public artwork featuring a series of twinned flags that play with and celebrate the expanding communicative beauty and potential of the spaces between laughter and language.
ha ha

https://cqaf.com/ha-ha-syzygetically-speaking/

 

 

ha ha Syzygetic Summitt Stammers (Bearnagh) at the Green Room, Black Box Thursday 4th May to 26th May.
A photographic series of the flags from another location exhibited in the Green Room, Black Box from Thursday 4th May to the 26th May, capturing the syzygetic unfurling and furling of the uttering of time, space, language and laughter.
ha ha

More info here

Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the summit of Bearnagh Mountain - displaying 'ha ha' partiallyImage of two 'ha ha' flags on the summit of Bearnagh Mountain - displaying 'ha ha' partially.Image of two 'ha ha' flags on the summit of Bearnagh Mountain - displaying 'ha ha' clearlyimage showing two "ha ha' flags mounted on the wall in the Green Room bar.image showing two 'ha ha' flags mounted on the wall in the Green Room bar above the toilet doors.Images of ten photographs  of the 'ha ha' flags in a line onthe wall of the bar.


Prevailing Winds: ha ha.

It is revealing to recognise the role of prevailing winds in our engagement with the transmission of words, symbols and images. There are many prevailing winds. Some are so light we barely perceive them and others so strong they dominate everything. Ubu’s winds blow ill from every orifice, and we can be justified in equating Trump (in name and nature) as a real world Ubu. However, in the flap and bluster there is hidden potential of what such bellows, gusts and wafts can expose of over-assumed axiom or dogma.

Whilst being able to speak, the only words the bottom-faced baboon Bosse-de-Nage, Faustroll’s sidekick in the Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician, (Jarry, 1911), utters throughout the story are, “ha ha”. The book however, elaborates on the meaning of these utterances, duly expounding the ontology of being and the measurement of time and space. Daumal, in his essay Pataphysics and The Revelation of Laughter (Daumal, 1929), rearticulates these ideas, locating laughter as a creative force at the centre of the universe.

Like any flag, (although, as they are ubiquitously deployed in authoring and asserting fixed and symbolic identities, this might not be generally or widely accepted, and under such winds, those flags are invariably celebratory or a provocation) the only time a flag’s signifier – whether motif or text - is fully produced is when the wind fully unfurls the fabric to fully display the text or motif. This even more rarely occurs with two flags that should read together, where this event could more cosmologically be understood as a syzygy (the coming together of worlds), in that it takes the flukes of the wind, sunlight, and perception all to come together at a single moment to fully capture the two unfurled flags rendering as ‘ha ha’.

At all other times the signifier is partially disclosed or undisclosed and therefore, we should also accept that it might potentially then be disclosing something quite different (for example, like similar words which denote very different things). With the ‘ha ha’ flags*, described here via machine writing, we might see such things as; ‘h’, ‘(‘, ‘(a’, ‘/:’, ‘h;’, ‘\a’, although this also goes to show the slippage between machine writing and those letters appearing in material space. Furthermore, this demonstrates the inadequacy of the representational signifier to firstly; always render itself fully, and secondly; in both partially furled and unfurled forms, fully account for reality.  In many ways words are usually in a wind of some sort, prevailing or otherwise, which like laughter and like the stammer, ought to open challenges to our representational and linguistic faith.

Speaking as someone who stammers and likes to laugh, the partial or semi-furled utterances of the ‘ha ha’ flags, and Bosse-de Nage’s more-than-human utterances, and Daumal’s laughter, act in the same way that we might consider a stammer, not as a limitation or failure to be fluent with hi-fidelity expression, but as a difference gateway that configures new material patterns of reality and offers insight to the sleight of hand and limitations of language.

Of course, with another prevailing wind, the flags could clearly simply celebrate laughter.

­‘ha ha’.

*If you apply this idea to territorial or identity-based flags such as: UVF / UDA / IRA / MAGA then, phonetically, you could end up with such wonderful open possibilities as, for example; uUvVvFf, uVuuFfF / UUUDda, UuuDAaaa / iIrrAaaa, IiiRaaaA / mMaaagGa, MmmmaGggga or versions where the linguistic phonetic possibilities absolutely breakdown to rich utterances of {/<< or \?ñ.

 

Shipsides, an artist based in Orchid Studios, Belfast, exhibits nationally and internationally and has received multiple awards. He works individually and within collaborative dynamics, notably that of Shipsides and Beggs Projects. He also teaches at the Belfast School of Art.

Dan Shipsides is the 2023 recipient of the CQAF Visual Arts Bursary Award.