Research Collage ~ Persistent Bodies of Thought:

Research Collage ~ Persistent Bodies of Thought:

Spatial Bodies~Intermezzo~Alchemy : Nomadic Photographic Assemblage.

Heuristic Devices~Apparatuses : Speculative Fields/Spatial Practices.

Moreton's photographic assemblages extend the research collage into a speculative spatial environment. Fragments of bodies, architectural images, diagrams, texts, handwritten propositions and material traces are gathered without being brought into conceptual resolution. In Spatial Bodies~Intermezzo~Alchemy, the assemblage becomes an interval in which heterogeneous thinking bodies can remain in proximity while continuing to alter one another. The work does not simply depict an environment; it constructs an environment through which thought can move.

This movement is significant to Moreton's heuristic inquiry. Reading becomes spatialised as wayfaring: the eye and body move across fragments, interruptions, overlaps and partial interiors rather than following a predetermined conceptual route. The assemblage therefore operates as a speculative apparatus, establishing conditions through which correspondences can emerge without requiring convergence. Its atmosphere is not represented but generated through the relations between bodies, images, materials, spaces and temporal residues.

The photographic surface consequently becomes more than a surface of representation. It becomes an environment of thought-in-movement: a provisional interior whose depth is relational rather than physical. Intermezzo names this condition of suspension, while alchemy names the transformation produced through proximity. Building becomes a process of gathering and altering relations rather than the construction of a resolved architectural form.

In this sense, the research collage anticipates the later ceramic chamber. Both establish conditions in which heterogeneous bodies can gather, withdraw, surface and enter further correspondence. The collage remains open through its fragments; the ceramic through its material persistence. Both constitute persistent bodies through which thought can continue to become spatial.

Moreton's research collages provide an important materialisation of heuristic inquiry. Composed from texts, images, annotations, architectural references, diagrams and provisional constructions, they do not function simply as preparatory documentation for subsequent artworks.

 They operate as persistent spatial bodies in which thought is temporarily gathered while remaining in movement.

Reading becomes a form of wayfaring across the surface: a movement among fragments, quotations, images and handwritten propositions whose relations are neither fully predetermined nor finally resolved.

The collage consequently functions as a heuristic apparatus. Its purpose is not to organise knowledge into a stable hierarchy but to establish a speculative field in which further correspondences might emerge. Texts, images and material fragments remain distinct while becoming capable of affecting one another.

The collage therefore performs a form of correspondence without convergence: it sustains difference while making proximity productive.

This spatialisation of thought is significant for understanding Moreton's later ceramic chambers.

The research collage can be understood as a two-dimensional chamber in which relations gather, interrupt one another and surface otherwise. Its depth is relational rather than physical.

Pathways drawn across its surface enact a wayfaring mode of thought, moving between disciplines, images, sites and materials without requiring them to arrive at a common destination.

In this sense, the collage is not simply an archive of research already undertaken. It is a persistent body of inquiry. It retains traces of previous encounters while remaining capable of generating further ones.

Thought is caught, but not stopped; gathered, but not contained.

The research collage becomes a persistent body of thought-in-movement.

Is there still an aesthetic illusion? And if not, a path to an “aesthetic” illusion, the radical illusion of secret, seduction and magic? Is there still, on the edges of hypervisibility, of virtuality, room for an image?

— Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, 2005

Jana Sterbak

Remote Control 1989

A heuristic technique (/hjᵿˈrɪstᵻk/; Ancient Greek: εὑρίσκω, "find" or "discover"), often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals.

A Hut of One's Own, Ann Cline

Texts, Annotations, Foundations, Pathways, Corridors, Bookmarks, Walking, Thinking, Ramble, Cross Country, Disciplines.

Writing has nothing to do with signifying, it has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come.

Deleuze, Guattari. 1988.