It feels like falsehood -a staged stillness when no one is in the space, or using the objects. It is It all neat and tidy in the space, ship shape and spic and span. My tidy, our tidy materials, presented on platters, served up for viewing or possible encounter. They are loaded these objects but nobody knows they are laughing at you behind your backs as you are unaware of the disturbances they bring. In this sapce all is calm though and they are neatly balanced and equalised, pulling connections of red between themselves, they echo each other and are a family of things, they make all sorts of sense and no sense, not quite uncanny, neraly wrong , slightly juicy, seductive. However the conversations around the table pull at the objects and name them, tell their stories, what they enabled, what they did, what unfolded, what was performed. We are sitting also neatly amongst them. They are ready for something else.
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https://www.tate.org.uk/research/research-centres/tate-research-centre-learning/physicality-research Robert Morris writes interestingly about seeing, ‘vision is always mediated’ this idea that we see in certain ways, see what we want to see, what we already know or what we believe we need to see is very much connected with the idea of being present, aware or awake to encounter at a more heightened state of becoming. Morris goes on to say, ‘We believe to such an extent that we do not ‘see’ the absences’. (Morris 2008, 45) in prosthetic pedagogy.
It is interesting to question the importance or relevance of the absences the wedges that fill it between the perceptions we have already formed. The absences are in the wings like understudies that as an audience we never want to be aware of let alone let on stage. We are happy with our narratives and out truth as an anchor. The seeing is of course beyond the eyes “I perceive with my body or with my senses, my body and my senses being precisely this habitual knowledge of the world.’ P247/286 Merleau Ponty If we challenge a habitual knowledge or recognition to make way for the gaps in the wings then there is the potential for something new, Ponty’s ideas that within perception itself ‘we do not think the object and we do not think the thinking, p 248 makes the intuitive phenomenological leap all the more exciting and necessary. Can we see more or encounter more with an armband on our heads? Do we metaphorically float on the surface of experiences with half our bodies wet through, or are we saved from drowning and bob with the flow or tide of information? Some people at Tate wore the armbands on their arms but most didn’t. They were pushed up their ankles over their shoes, they were orange plastic hats or possibly crowns. The materiality of the object was more than the identity of its form, they were perceived and then entangled as accomplishes, extensions or bagged that followed the individual around the space. When the day was ending, it was mentioned that the unused armbands would be donated to a local pool for children to use in their swimming lessons and I thought of how the armband once on someone’s head would enable a different mobilisation around a space that was unfamiliar. A space that was risky and meant letting go (of standing) to float /to swim (to think differently). These objects when encountered stand for something more than themselves they are set free form the confines of their functionality and flung into a realm of perception where ‘we are directed toward the object and we merge with this body that knows more than we do about the world, about motives, and about the means available for accomplishing the synthesis’ p 248 |
Kimberley FosterKimberley's practice as an artist is pedagogical, it doesn’t just reference learning, it plays with, embodies and encourages learning at its core. The objects consider ideas of collaboration and authorship, discussions about touch and encounter, and bring into active consideration issues of learning within social and participatory practices. Archives
October 2018
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