There are Two Planes
Spaces and dimensions, lines and points. The first plane is given as such; it has form and composition. It settles in a concordance of geometric shapes arranged in blocs of colour, framed by the insinuation of depth, a play of textures on a familiar surface. Surfaces. The surface is the form of this organisation of colour, of textures and spaces contained within discrete boundaries. Colour modulates the composition of the plane, forging boundaries in sympathetic juxtapositions. The plane is made in this modulation of colour. One colour (always, already several) creates a surface. The surface extends to a boundary that is itself the expression of an encounter between planes, between surfaces. There are no lines on this plane, only encounters between surfaces. The geometry of the plane is expressed in this encounter of surfaces, one surface abutting the next. Its geometry appears settled. The plane is at rest. All of its movements have been stilled. Spaces hover, lines stall, colours repose. This is the first plane.
The first plane is a cartography of colour. Colours. The colouring of the plane. Yet colour is not itself a cartography, it is not just a surface. Colours create space, giving form and content to the plane without themselves becoming spatial. Colours resonate, they meet. Their encounters generate affects. They affect the plane. The creation of the spatial plane of colour, of colours encountering one another, is also therefore an ethology of affects, relations and events. The event of colour draws in the subject (always, already several) who expresses a relation with the event, with the event of colour, the event of the surface. The subject is affected by these events, these surfaces. Colours and subjects meet, they express a relation, a boundary that moves with the event of their encounter. Slowly the surfaces of the plane move; shapes lift and recede, sliding into one another. Colours that appeared flat begin to oscillate in relations of transparency and opacity. Depth is added to the more familiar geometries of the surface. Spaces emerge. Planes fold over one another, articulating spatial and affective relations that move with the event of their encounters. Scale retreats. The geometry of the plane dissolves.
The first plane now has an atmosphere; a nimbus of resonating affective tones. It is no longer flat, it is no longer still. It has dimensions. It begins to move. The plane becomes active, active with its events, the event of colours meeting in space, and the event of the subject encountering these colours. This is the second plane; the plane of immanence. Affects. The first plane, the plane of organisation and composition, is the product of this second plane, no less important for being hidden, implicated is the first plane, articulated in its affects and events. The second plane is activated in these encounters. It involves the addition, the meeting of new dimensions. The subject and the surface. Look for these other dimensions, the encounters between colours. Follow the lines, unfold the geometry, dwell with the opacity of the surface, wait for the movement. Allow the colours to affect one another. Look, keep looking. In the looking there is the crowd, a crowd of teeming surfaces, colours, affects and subjects. The surface is no longer a geometrical plane. There are now as many dimensions as there are events, affects and relations moving among and between its resonating surfaces. Look, keep looking.
Cameron Duff