A Room in Four Phases: Attention Artists and the Margins of History

In Search of the Third Bird | Eds. D. Graham Burnett, Catherine L. Hansen, Justin E. H. Smith | December 2021 | 768 Pages

1.

The Milcom Room, properly titled the Milcom Memorial Reading Room and Attention Library, can be found at the Monira Foundation on the northern wing of the fourth floor of the Mana Contemporary Arts Center in Jersey City. On the morning of my visit, I enter through the sliding door and encounter a quiet, dimly lit space lined with bookshelves, maps and a glass-faced cabinet displaying a collection of curious and meticulously curated objects. My eyes travel: a pair of parallel mirrors beside the door multiply outward into a blue-tinged infinity. A swathe of crimson velvet obscures a framed painting on the southern wall. Numerous artworks depicting birds in all manners of flight and repose return my gaze. So, too, does the brass standing lamp bent over one of the many reading chairs. It seems to invite me to pick a book and sit a while, so that it might look over my shoulder.

Attention Library: the phrase verges on redundancy. But unlike in most libraries, where the act of attention is a means to an end, in this Library attention is the main attraction: one visits the Milcom Room to attend, as it were, to attention itself. Is such an exercise possible?

The mystery of “attention”—where it comes from, what it is, who practices it—is the animating spirit of the Milcom Room. Named for early twentieth century archivist and scholar Learned “Hogfoot” Milcom, the Room houses a selection of texts and objects from the so-called W-Cache, an archive of seemingly indeterminate size that bears upon the long history of an elusive network of so-called ‘attention artists’ of the Avis Tertia, or Order of the Third Bird. Over the years, the gravity of these archival materials, which were originally compiled by Hogfoot himself (a blurry greyscale photograph honors his legacy in the Room’s south-west corner; Hogfoot stands beside a window and reaches toward a parakeet on its perch), has drawn the interest of a constellation of scholars and amateur historians. These individuals have coalesced into the research collective known as the Esthetical Society for Transcendental and Applied Realization (now incorporating the Society of Esthetic Realizers), or ESTAR(SER). It is this group that stewards the Milcom Room. 

ESTAR(SER)’s presence is evident. Copies of their scholarly Proceedings lie neatly stacked about the space, like clues to a puzzle. However, the Birds (as members of the Order apparently identify) are curiously absent. Indeed, the more I learn about the Birds, the more I come to think of them in terms of this absence—or rather, of the way that they slip out of view the moment that one tries to see them. For a community so devoted to attention, they seem firmly opposed to attracting any. This makes efforts to chronicle their activities near-impossible.

Indulge a brief demonstration: focus your eyes on a point of the webpage before you. Now, without moving your gaze, shift your attention to a word in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. Note the strangeness of this maneuver: your eyes are in one place, and your attention in another. The historiographical work of ESTAR(SER)—by necessity of circumventing what appears to be a constant campaign of scholarly sabotage on the part of the Birds—has been enacted in somewhat the same manner. Its researchers peer into history and find the Birds dancing at the edges of their vision.

Still, in the face of such obstacles, the scholars of ESTAR(SER) have shown laudable dedication. Years of research have proven sufficiently fruitful to generate In Search of the Third Bird, a thumping collection of scholarly essays examining the history and historicity of the Order of the Third Bird. The volume, which numbers nearly 800 pages, was published in 2021 through MIT Press (my work as a copy-editor of a final draft brought me to the present inquiry). Of the Birds, according to the collection’s contents, at least this much is known:

The Birds convene to practice rituals of sustained attention, most often to works of art. While numerous variations on these rituals have been documented, the most common comprises four phases. They are as follows: First, Encounter: approach the artwork, wander about, and generally get a feel for the immediate environment. Second, Attending: step forward and attend to the artwork itself. Third, Negation: step back, turn away, “unmake” the artwork and oneself. Fourth, Realize: return to the work, generously, and contemplate what the artwork asks of you. These phases proceed in silence, although transitions tend to be marked by the sounding of a bell.

The Milcom Room sits in a converted tobacco warehouse; its ceilings are high and its floors are painted concrete. One imagines a bell might echo in a space like this.

2.

After some time wandering about, I find my attention drawn to the glass-faced cabinet in the south-east corner room. This is the space’s primary installation: an exhibition of objects from the W-cache that purport to shed light on the history of the Bird’s attentional rituals. Three objects in particular attract my gaze.

The first object (item 1 of the exhibition’s 33) is a miniature book, evidently ancient, leather-bound, its pages crimson-edged. It is here (as one Supplement to the Proceedings informs me) in scribbled notes on the inside back cover of this book, that the earliest known origin story for the Birds can be found. The scribbles elaborate on a tale by Pliny wherein a talented young painter judges the fidelity of his work—depicted: a boy clutching a bunch of grapes—by the reaction of the birds who flutter down to observe it. The first bird sees the painting and flies away, spooked by the lifelike human. The second bird flutters down and pecks at the seductively juicy grapes. The third bird perches before the painting and… simply looks. This Third Bird is, it appears, the Order’s founding member, his act of observation the Order’s very first attentional practice.

The second object (item 26 of 33) is the so-called Sennichi Kaihogyo Rock. Standing about six inches tall, the otherwise unremarkable stone is adorned with a line of paint that loops back and forth across its surface. Objects like these, I learn, are used in several East Asian traditions to represent landscapes whose vast dimensions otherwise resist such intimate, hands-on, contemplation. This particular stone is linked to the ritual practice of Tendai Buddhist monks in Japan. The curators speculate in their gallery notes that a group of Birds used the Rock for one of their attentional practices.

The third object (item 33 of 33) is… missing! I cannot find it behind the glass pane of the exhibition case, nor do I find it detailed in the Supplement. “Thirty-Three Objects from the W-Cache” have been promised, but there are very clearly only 32. Could a research collective displaying an otherwise astounding attention to detail (the bibliography of In Search of the Third Bird alone numbers 31 pages) commit such an obvious error of omission?

This surfaces, I’ll admit, some suspicion. But first, let me be generous:

I’m charmed by the philosophy of this “Third Bird”—to sit and perceive, free from acquisitive or fearful impulses, seems to me a sorely needed practice in our hyper-commercialized and socially fractured historical moment. It is in search of this relief that I have traveled across New York City to visit the room on this weekday morning.

Indeed, the Milcom Room offers a sense of promise. Like the Sennichi Kaihogyo Rock, the contours described in the pages of the Proceedings and in the beautiful, mystifying objects on display suggest a vast, possibly endless landscape of attentional communities operating in near-secrecy at the edges of our historical memory, like a guerrilla network devoted not to war but to the summoning of beauty. What a thought!

And just as the missing 33rd object reifies the supposed infinitude of the archive that produced it, the very absence of the Birds where one expects to find them makes their existence only more plausible. Now, more than ever, with our every call and click and purchase surveilled and monetized, can’t we sympathize with the desire not to be observed?

But still: suspicion. What if the Milcom Room is not an entryway into the otherwise elusive universe of the Birds? What if its contents bear, in fact, no relation to any archive beyond its walls? What if the suggestive absences whose borders it charts and populates are filled with just that: nothing at all?

3.

When advance copies of In Search of the Third Bird were released last year, they came with a bashful publisher’s note and a stapled packet of negative peer reviews that had been mysteriously “sequestered” up to the eleventh hour of the volume’s publication. It seems that I’m not the first to ask the above questions. I find the previously-sequestered stack in a manila folder on a high shelf along the northern wall. These reviews, penned by esteemed historians from high-ranking schools around the world, visit the work of ESTAR(SER)’s scholars with sentiments ranging from measured skepticism to outright indignation. 

The first, penned by Prof. Darrin M. McMahon of Dartmouth College, bristles that the present volume is “NOT a work of historical scholarship in any conventional sense” (emphasis in original). Professor Jimena Canales of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign defers the request for peer review altogether, describing the book as an “information-swallowing/distorting [source] of mischievous energy.” Prof. Benjamin Breen of UC Santa Cruz identifies numerous historiographical fallacies in the first 75 pages and dismisses the entire project as “beyond salvage” (again, emphasis in original).

The researchers of ESTAR(SER) already rely heavily on the imagination and trust of their visitors. To their credit, several copies of the Proceedings scattered about the Milcom Room acknowledge the limits of their historical method with great candor. I can be compelled to accept that there is a world beyond what we can know. But to find that what we supposedly know is, in fact, falsified? Even if these scholarly errors are earnest mistakes, I find myself at the limits of my belief, and my patience.

As I return these critical reviews to their place on the high shelf, I survey the room around me with a sinking feeling. This space, which before had appeared generous, magical and infinitely capacious, now seems to me finite, deceptive, and cheap.

4.

And yet, I reflect, how lovely it is to linger in a quiet space, surrounded by books, away for a time from the rough and tumble of the outside world. The midday light through the northern window is butter yellow and satin-soft. The clink of silverware issues from the small cafe in the hallway. I permit myself a deep breath. The room has the tobacco-sweet smell of old paper and the dry, comforting musk of rugs so plush that they swallow one’s toes. I notice a cut-glass decanter in a low shelf beside the sofa. The stopper emits a musical pum when I remove it to smell the contents: Scotch.

I return this to its place. No thing for a Monday morning, and although there is no directive dissuading me, I feel icky taking what isn’t mine. Plus, to sneak a nip of the scotch would make me the Second Bird of that old tale, pecking away at those grapes, and did I not come in the spirit of the Third?

I consider this a while longer: the first bird fleeing, the second bird taking. I have harbored both of these impulses over the course of my visit. But instead I chose to sit. Why? The quiet. The light. The surrender of a deep exhalation. Because this room asks nothing of me—not even that I play along. If it asks anything at all, it is merely that I attend to it. 

This I have. And I find, upon reflection, that I am no poorer for having done so. I am, perhaps, more mystified by these Promethean scholars and their eccentric quarry, and more conscious of the way that perception dissolves at the edges of my field of vision. I feel myself drifting from the waters of what I know toward their confluence with what I imagine. I wonder about these waters: where they flow, to where they lead, and which combination of the two might quench my thirst. I consider the Room. It was always just four walls, wasn’t it? And yet, the strange people of ESTAR(SER)—for there are always humans behind these acronyms—elected to take these four walls and to make of them an entire universe. By some combination of skill and care, they made a concrete room both impossibly vast and cozy.

Certainly, I could subject this effect to my scrutiny by stretching a measuring tape along its walls, taking its dimensions, and comparing it in objective terms to the many rooms that constitute my daily environment. In doing so, I might appeal to those supposed virtues of certainty and rigor.

But at what cost? The world is crowded and solicitous enough. There are vanishingly few spaces where we are asked only to receive, and I see no reason to diminish them further. What’s more, if taking part in the project of these spaces is half as playful and as beautiful as the objects in the glass case over in that corner, I see no reason not to take part. If I could create a more beautiful and capacious world simply by choosing to believe, why wouldn’t I?

As I go to leave, I pause by the door and catch my reflections in the parallel mirrors, iterating endlessly away and out of sight. We observe each other, these countless Peters and I. Perhaps they live in a reality where what I can only imagine is known to them beyond doubt. Perhaps they look at me and think the same.