Derek Pigrum

University of Bath, International Semiotics, Alumnus

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I am an independent artist/researcher. I was awarded a PhD from the University of Bath in 2001 and published a monograph in 2009 entitled Teaching Creativity: Transitional Multi-mode Practices and in 2021 'The Wall Beside the Work: The Place of the Charged Image in Transitional Artistic Practices. I am a practicing artist (see Derek Pigrum home page for paintings, drawings, and a list of publications. In 2022 I became a collaborative researcher affiliated to the i2ADS Research Institute in Art, Design and Society, Porto University, Portugal Fine Art faculty.
Phone: 06508857796
Address: zedlitzgasse 3/13 Vienna , Austria

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Papers by Derek Pigrum

Drawing on the Expendable Surface of Inscription: Artistic Practices and the Implications for Teaching and Learning

Philosphical, semiotic and Environmental Questions for Education:The Woek and Scientific Heritage Of Andrew Stables, 2025

Why do some artists draw upon surfaces with pre-existent categories of the sign or what the autho... more Why do some artists draw upon surfaces with pre-existent categories of the sign or what the author calls <expendable surfaces of4inscription=. These surfaces are one of the mediate modes of the author9s model of Transitional Multi-Mode practices. The expendability of the surface on which the artist draws serves to postpone premature closure because open to destruction or eventual survival, and as such are what Winnicott, in his psychoanalytic theory of object relations, calls a <Transitional object= that serves to generate a <potential space= between the inside and the outside that, following Winnicott, is the source of all subsequent cultural and creative experience. Following both Lacan on the <object a= and Bracha Ettinger on the matrixial we explore an additional reason for the artist9s choice of the expendable surface of inscription as a response that wells up from the unconscious in the interweaving and condensation of the pre-existent signs and those that are superimposed upon it. In the context of secondary and tertiary education the use of the expendable surface of inscription enables the student to work with indeterminacy, with non-finito forms of signification, and with a provisionality that allays the anxiety and intellectual uncertainty of forestalling premature closure. Following Stables on language acquisition our research has revealed that drawing in dialogue with the other is the way the artist and student acquires the use of the expendable surface of inscription. Eventually, the student9s choice of the surface may provide access to an unconscious response to the arrangement of signifiers on the surface of inscription that corresponds to Stables9 notion of the sign as an <event= rather than a substitute.

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SEMIOTICS, CREATIVITY AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

International Education Principles and Practices, 1998

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International Education: Principles and Practice THE SIGNIFIER, THE SIGNIFIED AND THE SIGN Semiotics has its origins in the 8structural linguistics9 of Ferdinand Saussure who, at

International Education: Principles and Practices, 1998

Flechtwerk or Weave Work: Interval, Event and Circularity

PSIAX 7 Series II, 2023

Author of numerous papers on creative artistic practices. da trama como sintoma, oferecemos uma l... more Author of numerous papers on creative artistic practices. da trama como sintoma, oferecemos uma leitura alternativa, mas complementar, da trama e da malha de 'eventos' contingentes enigmáticos como espaços que servem na complexa formação da singularidade da obra de arte e no conhecimento prático da eficácia da repetição transformadora como a noção de referência circulante de Bruno Latour.

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Flechtwerk or Weave Work: Interval, Event and Circularity

The present paper traces the intermittent occurrence of the signifier of the weave and its variat... more The present paper traces the intermittent occurrence of the signifier of the weave and its variations like the mesh and the grid in notebook entries where the potential of the weave was neither assimilated or integrated with the author's creative agency but persistently deferred over a long period of time. Thus, the initial focus is upon the intervals between the appearances of the weave and their gradual increase in frequency in relation to the artwork where both can be seen as the emergence of the symptom. Here a parallel is drawn between Did-Huberman's study of Aby Warburg's Atlas Mnemosyne and the crowded montage of images on the board in the author's studio, the interstices between which also resemble an irregular weave, mesh or Flechtwerk. Continued deferral of the signifier of the weave was suspended with the three unforeseeable and contingent 'events': the etymological origin of the gate as a woven structure; a woven curtain in a Coptic Monastery separating the inner sanctum from the congregation; and sacking fissured by the interior pressure of plant growth. In addition to the psychoanalytic perspective of the signifier of the weave as symptom, we offer an alternative, but complementary reading of the weave and the mesh of enigmatic contingent 'events' as place holders that serve in the complex shaping of the singularity of the artwork and the practical knowledge of the efficacy of transformative repetition as Bruno Latour's notion of circulating reference. O presente artigo traça a ocorrência intermitente do significante da trama e suas variações como a malha e a grade em entradas de caderno onde o potencial da trama não foi assimilado ou integrado com a agência criativa do autor, mas persistentemente adiado por um longo período de tempo. Assim, o foco inicial está nos intervalos entre as aparições da trama e seu aumento gradual de frequência em relação à obra de arte, onde ambas podem ser vistas como o surgimento do sintoma. Aqui é traçado um paralelo entre o estudo de Did-Huberman sobre Atlas Mnemosyne de Aby Warburg e a montagem lotada de imagens no quadro no estúdio do autor, cujos interstícios também se assemelham a uma trama irregular ou Flechtwerk. O contínuo adiamento do significante da trama foi suspenso com os três "eventos" imprevisíveis e contingentes: a origem etimológica do portão como estrutura tecida; uma cortina tecida num mosteiro copta que separa o santuário interior da congregação; e saques fissurados pela pressão interior do crescimento das plantas. Além da perspetiva psicanalítica do significante da trama como sintoma, oferecemos uma leitura alternativa, mas complementar, da trama e da malha de 'eventos' contingentes enigmáticos como espaços que servem na complexa formação da singularidade da obra de arte e no conhecimento prático da eficácia da repetição transformadora como a noção de referência circulante de Bruno Latour.

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Qualitative Inquiry as Gegenwerk: Connections Between Art and Research

International journal of qualitative methods, Dec 1, 2005

In this article, the authors apply the findings of research into transitional processes in the ar... more In this article, the authors apply the findings of research into transitional processes in the arts to a consideration of qualitative research. They identify and describe four types of transitional practice: the transferential, the transformational, the transpositional, and the transgressional. Transitional practices in both art and research are found to be dialectical, involving presencing and absencing, doing and undoing, and repetition with modifications, and to produce provisional or transitional outcomes. Such practices enable both artists and researchers to manage tangled connections, juxtapositions, intertwinings, overlappings, and dislocations. Research is therefore not a simple linear process but, like (other) artistic processes, involves absencing, transformation, and redetermination as processes of emergent disclosure. Transitional practices therefore involve "work against the work": Gegenwerk. An understanding of, and training in, such practices has the potential to develop quality, reflexivity, and criticality in both the undertaking and the reading of qualitative research.

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‘Propositions of the Wall’ 49 Rue Hippolyte-Maindron

Springer eBooks, 2021

‘The Board Behind My Desk’: The Wall-Beside-the-Work in Architectural Practice

Springer eBooks, 2021

Tools of Creative Agency: Non Finito and Das Gegenwerk

Academia letters, Aug 9, 2021

Working on the Linen Wall

Springer eBooks, 2021

The ‘Multi-mode Transitional Practice’ of Storytelling While Work Is Done

Numanities - arts and humanities in progress, Jul 11, 2018

The present paper is based on a reading of Walter Benjamin’s essay The Storyteller (1936/1973) an... more The present paper is based on a reading of Walter Benjamin’s essay The Storyteller (1936/1973) and the author’s extensive experience of storytelling while work is done in the secondary school art classroom; a storytelling linked to the author’s theory of ‘transitional multi-mode practices’, Peirce and Sini’s semiotics and the object relations theory of D. W. Winnicott. Contrary to what one would expect, the author has observed that listening to a story while working enhances focal attention and provokes doing, in what Benjamin calls a state of self-forgetfulness that impresses the story deeply upon memory. It is argued that this mode of storytelling is a deixis that points beyond the horizon of present meaning to a potentiality that is never fully realized but can be returned to, repeated, revised and reconfigured. In addition to Benjamin the author draws upon Gadamer’s notion of the story as ereignis or ‘event’ that is also related to Peirce’s notion of the immediate object, the energetic and action and final interpretant. Strawson’s notion of the episodic, that avoids seeing stories of life experience as frozen into a narrative thread, is discussed in relation to the author’s notion of Das Gegenwerk, or the work towards the work that avoids definitive closure, where completion continually opens onto ‘beginning anew’. It is suggested that the reflexive project of the self, central to much philosophical and educational thinking, be replaced by a notion of praxis embedded in place.

Drawing on the 'Ready-to-Hand

ACCESS: Critical Perspectives on Communication, Cultural & Policy Studies, Jun 1, 2011

What the author terms 'transitional drawings' are produced in both the social and autonom... more What the author terms 'transitional drawings' are produced in both the social and autonomous context, and employ abbreviated forms of drawing and other sign-use characterised by indeterminacy, the postponement of premature closure, and the use of ready-to-hand surfaces of inscription that are both dispensable and expendable. This paper correlates the relation of transitional drawings on ready-to-hand surfaces to the experience of early sign use, the mediation this allows between the inner and external world of signs, and the generation of 'potential space' (Winnicott, 1971/1982) or 'the space between the symbol and the symbolized [where] an interpreting subject comes into being' (Ogden, 1989: 11-12). The paper suggests that transitional drawing on the ready-to-hand enhances the agent's ability to effectively bridge the gap between the inner and the outer world of signs in the generation, modification and development of ideas.

Teaching Creativity: Multi-mode Transitional Practices

Introduction 1. The Sign Modes 2. The Operational Modes 3. The Modes of Place 4. But Can We Teach... more

The capacity to respond to the outside: transitional multi-mode notation in secondary and tertiary art education

Edetania, Jul 1, 2017

Transitional drawing as a tool for generating, developing and modifying ideas : towards a programme for education

Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessibl... more Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

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The Wall Beside the Work

Springer eBooks, 2021

The Object Relations Theories of Winnicott and Lacan

Springer eBooks, 2021

In the preceding chapter, we very briefly introduced the notion of the charge of an image and its... more In the preceding chapter, we very briefly introduced the notion of the charge of an image and its finding as situated at the interface between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the ordinary and the extraordinary. This raises the question of what in the image emits a charge for us: why this image and not that one.

The Studio: ‘The Whatness of Where’

Springer eBooks, 2021

Winnicott thought that the most useful thing to study in the context of creativity is the interde... more

On the Floor in Front of the Work

Springer eBooks, 2021

Francis Bacon (1909–1992) worked at Reece Mews No. 7, South Kensington, London from 1961 until th... more

The Work of the Wall: Walls, Windows, Doors and Floors

Numanities - arts and humanities in progress, 2021

Derek Pigrum

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