Lloyds object is ready to send. It feels odd to balance the complexity of the process of finalising his object with the actual outcome - a block of wood. I am interseted in what his response will be - the stack that is fixed, the nearly game of pick a sticks, the puzzle, the bowling ball, the building blocks. These of course are may interpretations and form from the material identifty of the 'stuff' I have used and the making itself. I have tuned these objects like instruments but they may not match what the particiapnats want - hope for. I am imagining that each participant may be slighlty dissapointed to begin with - I need to think about this further but expectations might have led them to imagine all kinds of objects and forms. However they may rememeber the plastacine and their ability to form and phycially maniupuate those soft forms -the ones that are sent are particularly formed and I see them as small statements - maybe a bit assertive in their concrete state. I am 5 days away from meeting half of the group at the SCVA and I feel a certain appehension and excitement of what they might tell me. I received an email yesterday from Laura telling me the object had arrived she said......Thank you for sending the object. I received it today. I haven’t opened it yet but will soon. I felt slightly anxious when I saw the email even before I opened it and I was very aware of how the object I sent was enclosed in her house waiting to be opened. I am giving the object an identity here i realise - it isnt waiting to be opened rather I am waiting for it to be opened and Laura is waiting to open it. I immedietly wondered when she would open it and whether she will look at the letter I enclosed in the box before seeing the object. I feel huge responsibilty to not let them down and to have thought deeply and thoughtfully about them individually. What is apparent in the current HE climate is the lack of time for the individual, the clipped time slots for tutorials where we imagine we can solve, gather, contain, answer and set targets for practice within 20-30 minutes. I am of course with different learners within my research and what I refer to as experieneced learners that are already aware of their position thinking and often their practice considerations. I am not teaching in the way that I would as a lecturer, am I teaching at all? When I discuss learning and identify it as a concern and the dominant core of my research what do I mean exactly? How are the people I work with, my research participants learning, what do they learn? The more I do the more I see that the learning I speak of is one that concerns a way of being or of becoming. This becoming involves the personal and the other, and whilst this can identify a subject and object I hope that these realms begin to dissolve and merge within my research practice. The collaboration between individuals and things provides a becoming that allows an emergence of knowing rather than knowledge. In education, we often are asked to identify and name - to classify and render something contained and controlled. When we become, and become with materials then the knowing that I am discussing is previously unknown by any party involved. A knowing emerges and solidifies through an experience of being with something else, this is new knowledge forming and we sit within it. It churns us up - this direct encounter or as Deleuze’s terms ‘fundamental encounter’. It is in the choppy waters that we find what we think, and what we believe and what we learn. Learning for me is at its most powerful when it concerns seeing what was already there but went unnoticed. It is new through its rearrangement or newly perceived form that it can emerged from was already there that we just didn’t see before. I have often used Allan Kaprows quote in my teaching ‘that attention alters what is attended’ and this statement speaks of a concentrated, condensed encounter which enables a reclassification of the things we know. This heightened awareness therefore is an unravelling of what we knew to find new knowing. This is one of the reasons for working with experienced learners within my research. I am aware of how the unravelling or letting go can be traumatic before a position is formed. You should not unravel if you haven’t knitted a little first. I can recall on my MA a tutor saying I needed to let go, and I remember saying ‘Of what?’. My intention is not to cause material trauma, but it to cause a questioning and a questioning that is enabled through a re- perception of what we already know. The objects that I have been making for the Sophie, Laura, mark and Lloyd are small gatherings of things already there. Things they have said, done, written and shared, their thoughts. My forming of their thoughts into physical stuff – matter, places those thoughts in the world as material object forms so we can look at them. Can we be objective about thoughts when they are made and sit in front of us. Are we in amongst double layers of thought and encounter. ‘standing inside a waterfall is a very different experience from standing outside and reflecting upon it’. (Atkinson, 2017.p.1). Who I am I to act as translator? My intention is to keep the participants are the forefront of my thinking and making. I am a teacher but am I teaching, - I am cooking, holding, connecting, listening, sharing, observing but I am gaining and learning too. I feel I am listening with all my senses, listening to them, listening to materials. Teaching and leraning experiences need attention, a dialogic co constructed and concentrated thought procedure. By sending the objects I feel less in control than when I can hold court with a group and gather the momentum of experiences with my actions and attack. I think the sending makes me very present but silenced and I hope gives space for each participant to engage their own perceptions and questions before we meet. When I went to the post office to send the packages the lady asked what was inside them….. I said ‘They are handmade presents’. She nodded and said, ‘Not worth more than £50 then?” I felt this small exchange brought so up so many questions of the objects value, identity and function. Their worth changed by entering into the normality or function of posting and it felt that as I handed them over they became momentarily free of the work they need to do. They were in a liminal space ready to come into being and to belong to someone else? Dennis Atkinson in his chapter ‘ The pragmatics and ethics of the suddenly possible’ (2017, p.3) quotes Spinoza ‘Have a care, here is something that matters’. (Alfred North Whitehead. 1968, p.116).
0 Comments
This is the text written in an envelope for each participant. It is placed on top of the wrapped object but within the box that houses the object. Your is wrapped within this box. This has been made for you in response to your discussions, actions and your answers to the questions that you were asked earlier in the year before our meeting at Tate. Before you open the packaging, I would appreciate it if you could consider the following, ideally you would be on your own when you open them. What expectations do you have before seeing the object? What is your immediate response when opening it? How do you feel about this object being made for you? If you could hold onto these thoughts and your general reactions about your object then we will discuss these when we meet. If you feel it is relevant then you may also want to make an immediate response. This could be in any form and I would not want to dictate what it should be as it will differ for all of you and so any form be it verbal, written, drawn, marked, made, photographed or held in your heads is equally valuable. If you want to contact me or send a response to me before we meet at SCVA then I can be sent something, emailed, phoned, face- timed or connected with you via live chat via through my website. However, if you wish to keep any thoughts or responses until we meet that is absolutely fine too. I am looking forward to meeting with you at SCVA, please bring your object with you and we will be able to discuss them, your reactions, how they developed and how they function. Best wishes, Kimberley On the front of each envelope it reads as below: This object was made for Laura Leahy and completed in October 2017. Kimberley Foster This object was made for Mark Aaron and completed in October 2017. Kimberley Foster This object was made for Sophie Eade and completed in October 2017. Kimberley Foster This object was made for Lloyd Evans and completed in October 2017. Kimberley Foster This object was made for Jo Conway and completed in October 2017. Kimberley Foster Mark's object is ready to be sent. It feels strange to be wrapping it up and packaging it for him. I don't have any feelings about not having the object for myself as I am used to relinishing my ownership to the material things I make or have made in the past. However the fact that it is going to his home and enters into the domain of his life, his family and his things is very different from an object existing within the gallery. I feel that the object is an interruption or may cause one in his routine at home. I am interested in how much I will be there (in his head) when he opens the package and I imagine that they will all feel a pressure to understand or like the object as they know my investment. They don't need to like it but they do need the encounter with the object whatever the encounter may bring in terms of response and thoughts. What am I providing, a provocation, a question, an action. This object/s feel very comfortable in ones hands, its weight for me is reassuring but there is a situation presented by the two elements of the object. When I first made the component parts they were intended to be held on either side of the double spoon, but through the making the spoon was made redundant when filled on both sides. I believe there is a potential and active element by the salt lick part being seprate, but I will see what Mark thinks.
The making of these objects has been particular and complicated. There words and responses are with me constantly as I make. There is a responsibility to them for the right object, the right material. Therefore the naming is a part of a given brief that I have to fulfill. Whilst I have made objects for individuals and for collections this particular event is contained within the relationship and narrative of this group of people. The dialogue that we have had now belongs to the group. They now the landscape of the research but equally the reactions that they have had already at SCVA and at Tate, each time the actions and confidence has grown so that the material discussions have enabled their response to become more critically clear and more emotional. The actions of my making have been pressured by my awareness of them. Some spoke very similarly about their experiences of the learning encounter but they are so different in their position in the group, their voice, feelings and actions that the objects I am making at time overlap and then split again. I am overly conscious of the objects and keep imagining the boxes they are sent in being opened and what that first encounter is. This event is already primed, they know something is coming and therefore the expectations are growing as I email and ask for their addresses. One of the group emailed me and said [I wonder what you have made for me....it is odd’ she said’ because it is sort of how you see me, how you have read the situation and what I have said’. “I am so interested to see what it is , it is sort of me’.
Lloyds object is difficult I am pulled in different directions towards his comments and towards his materials. The materials are of flux between here and there. Most of the group have indicated the state of flux within a learning experience, as I would expect but Lloyds actual material suggestion are specific and particular. I resist the literal representation of his responses, so not to dish up a meal he already knows. This reconfiguring of information is guided by them and for them as if I mimic them materially. I cannot rest on what I know and have to shift assumptions, it will never just do when it is for another. Is there a vanity in looking for yourself in gift made for you? Do we look for ourselves to see ourselves more clearly to learn more about who we are –how we come across. These objects have to be bespoke, they need to feel right rather than liked. They need to perform straight away as soon as they are seen. Their arrival is more than a posted parcel, it is a manifestation arriving. Thoughts made solid, experiences and potential all wrapped up. So, my criteria for success is complicated. I am stuck with the objects now until Lloyds is complete as I wrestle with the materials around me and sources new ones until the fit is found. I made something today, it felt right in my hands, a certain weight but it isn’t his object it says something different. It is linked to my writing about exchange and transplant, this object is of body and so the feeling I have of it in my hands is mine not Lloyds. In a conversation with me he said when we met at Tate. ‘when we work with you it’s about thinking’, we went on to discuss the ideas of thinking and learning and the interplay between the thought and the application of the thinking through learning. I am thinking about Lloyds object, over thinking so thoughts disappear and slow. Maybe his object will be difficult for him too, when I reach its fit I will need to think about what that struggle was for my learning. Mark Aaron What does the learning experience feel like? Aside from the pleasure of discovery through conversation, initially, learning doesn't feel like anything; epiphanies are rare, it's only when you recall sessions and apply it to your own practice and develop some context around the experience that you realise that you've absorbed some essential knowledge or filter, like a memory that's feels new but has always been present. Does what you have described above suggest any particular materials? Not materials, but senses. I was thinking that the abstract process of learning is difficult to categorise and explain. We have words for colour and shape and material that could be applied to the experience but they would be personal and very abstract. Instead, I'd like to try and define the abstraction itself in terms of senses. I was thinking that its very difficult to categorise smell. How does petrichor relate to mustard or chocolate or petrol or roses? This sensory experience can only be categorised and shared by naming it with comparison to other things. Therefore the materiality is ethereal, fleeting, like sparks. Does what you have described above suggest any particular objects? Describing the abstract process of learning as a material feels simultaneously earthy but transitional; lava - solidifying, water - evaporating, gas - condensing, ice - melting. What does the learning experience feel like in terms of a temperature -tone-feel-weight-noise? An improbable juxtaposition of states - not the states themselves but the relationship between them; warm but painfully hot, ambient and complex, empty and heavy, compartmentalised and conjoined, a continuous atonal feedback that becomes harmonious through repetition. What does the learning experience feel like? I think it can depend on the type of learning experience: Skill based – active experimentation, processing and retaining factual information, problem solving, reflecting on past actions etc... As well as the subject, learning in which ‘progress’ is more measurable may feel different to learning in which progress may be less defined in terms of specific targets and skills. I have answered in relation to how learning has felt within the context of an Arts based education. Hazy Jumps – not steps Anxious Slippery Frustrating Rewarding / exhilarating / Manic Open / Closed Woven Ebb and flow Heightened Charged Loose Threshold Build / Over there Reactant – ‘a substance that takes part in and undergoes change during a reaction’ Does what you have described above suggest any particular materials? Velcro Smoke Thread/rope Mud Ice – Water – Melting Does what you have described above suggest any particular objects? Rubic cube with a different colour on every square. Frayed rope Mirrored Tunnels scaffold What does the learning experience feel like in terms of a temperature -tone-feel- weight-noise? Hot Pitted Sharp Smooth Fast - stop Grain Close Graduated Heavy |
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
Categories |