Abstraction through the kaleidoscope

Playful concept creation with Irma Salo Jæger

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study the philosophical concept of abstraction based on a day spent with the Finnish-Norwegian artist Irma Salo Jæger. Our concept creation, where we experiment with different understandings of abstraction, is informed by new materialist theory-practice and Deleuze and Guattari’s (2009) philosophy of concept. Throughout the day spent with the artist at her studio, the concept of abstraction grows and becomes concrete in the stories, memories, paintings and books around us. Inspired by our concept creation, I argue that the concrete can be understood as the elements that create representational logic in abstraction: traditions, theories and mathematical patterns. The abstract of abstraction stems from the representation-breaking qualities: the sensitive and intuitive working progress and the agential and affective properties of the materials. Abstraction has both the abstract and concrete that constantly become each other. Representation is understood as a threshold rather than an impasse. The movement between the abstract and the concrete creates uncertainty, which can have educational potential. Playing (Harker 2005) enables the educational potential to unfold: it makes possible experimenting, balancing between the abstract and concrete and building a complex, kaleidoscopic understanding of the concept of abstraction.