Caroline - Answers to questions, January 2018
What does the learning experience feel like? As an educator, it is both scary, enlightening and enriching (in that order) to be on the other side of the fence. It makes one examine one’s own methodologies and have a better understanding of the learning experience and how many assumptions can and are made in any given situation. It has revealed some of my own shortcomings, and pre-conceived views. It took a while for me to put myself in the position of the learner and I’m not sure I fully succeeded. My default position was to want to respond to the experience with questions but quickly realised this was most likely a familiar pattern as tutor questioning student. It could even be a defence mechanism to prevent revealing personal inadequacies. In terms of learning about and with things, this aspect has been exciting. Once we started to look at actual things it was so much more logical and meaningful. Looking back I wonder if the objects also acted as props (to confidence, to bestow thoughts onto). They were equally props in the other, theatrical sense and in this capacity they became imbued with whatever was bestowed upon them and this engenders a real feeling of freedom and openness in how one could respond. It stimulated the imagination and allowed thoughts to snowball and expand. When the unknown becomes known in whatever way we want to know it, it is rewarding, and when we touched and held objects there was an added tactile dimension to the process of working out what things were. One of the most engaging aspects was examining objects that could be read in so many ways. Their ambiguities were their strengths. Does what you have described above suggest any particular materials? Not really, as I have spoken more generally about the experience. Thinking in more detail, then my mind goes to combinations of materials that have different qualities, the unexpected, the robust (so they can be manhandled). Materials in themselves are loaded, but when fashioned into unusual ambiguous objects they develop other identities and this is what makes them interesting. Does what you have described above suggest any particular objects? Again not specifically, apart from what is suggested above. Objects of no certain use and those that are not immediately recognised might have more possibilities and therefore hold attention. What does the learning experience feel like in terms of a temperature – tone – feel – weight - noise? Variable, hot and cold, rushes and then quieter periods of contemplation, assimilating info and piecing together what knowledge could be gleaned. And then trying to make sense of it. Learning is a quiet process for me, solitude generates more thoughts and this often happens after the immediate event. I found sparking ideas with another person when working in pairs was great though I now I can sometimes over dominate and not listen long or carefully enough. So sometimes the experience was made too hot by my own pacing, and not until afterwards did I realise it would have been better to be slower, calmer, cooler.
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Jo lent over the barrior, positioned her body over the line to see looked closely but overstepped the mark. She is held behind the line and frustrated by its delination of space, of thinking and of connection. She wears her sleeves and her encased hands are then held again between her knees, as though doubly confined. The top of her body enters the space of the art work but her feet remain in the territory of the viewer. Later when she has removed her sleeve and has started to move with her object in the space, she positions it silently over the line, or under the cord of the corden. The object takes the same amount of space that her body did when it lent forward in the other space. The object points at the art work, tries to meet it, - she had done the same with her body. She is told to move the object back, but the object is only looking at the other object just as she had done. Behind her a gallery visitor is touching a sculpture and being told she cannot touch anything in the space. 'there were no signs saying I couldn't touch' I overhear her say. 'It goes without saying' said the woman from the security team. Jo comments below about the pull of the objects in her hands, the objects that I give her. I insight it, I create the pull, allow it, hope for it. But how can we seek out the moments of ownership of a disobedience to a tradtional interpretative state and yet adhere to the values and conditions of the spaces that the art and we inhabit. I have created a magnet of pull and push, it can annoy and disturb, so how do I sit with this ethically. In our first meeting at Tate we had unravlled a line, corden a dilineation of ribbon in the turbine hall. We had named the teritory or claimed it as our own, this was our yellow line. Was this new action by Jo the same, was the line of the gallery rope seen as someone elses ownership that stopped her from the experinece that she wanted? This time I had printed out the photo of the turbine hall and the ribbon and had sewn a climbing hold onto the image. It struck me that after Jo had held the altered photo and said that she wanted to take it home ; 'you can just give this to me now' she had said ...she had then moved in the space with her object and made her own climbing hold....foot hold. ....grasp onto the space that we occupied. The back of the image/object showed a puncture. This puncture was the stitches that held the climbing hold. The stitch was not concealed, tidied up, or trimmed. The puncture was visable. Jo : Thinking very simply about what happens when Kimberley gives me an object to take round a gallery; I hold the object I feel the object I make a connection with the object I move about the gallery I move around the work I hold my object, I feel my object. Then I get a feeling that makes me want to connect with the work My object becomes a conduit between me and the artwork. The holding of the object draws me in toward the work It feels like I am being drawn in It is a strong feeling A pulling in toward the work The barriers are extremely frustrating They are an interruption to a strong intuitive feeling of wanting to connect with the work. The circuit needs to be completed by placing my object with/on/next to the artwork. It does depend on the object that I am holding Some seem to have much stronger magnetism than others. Magnetism toward me and magnetism toward the artwork. These photos were taken when Jo joined group 2 of my research participants at Tate. Bringing with her the object that I had made, it interrupted, her thoughts were interrupted. She crossed the line.
Caoline had gone to one corner of the room and stayed there whilst the others moved around the work. I was uncomfortable in the space as there was not anywhere to pause and so I positioned myself at the edge of the door way and waited for the group to come back to me in the space. Everyone spoke about their encounters (which I detail later in the blog) but Caroline was quiet. She told the group that she had felt very emotional, whilst looking at a particualr piece of work that was hung in the cormer of the room. She went on to say, as though neraly crying, that she wasnt quite sure what happened, she want sure if the objects she had been holding had been the catalyst or had been reacted to in her hands. She said that as soon as she saw the work she took a postion with her hands and kept it the same the whole time she was looking. "it is still like it now" she said. "I want to show you". Carloine asked that Nell unpeel the sleeve from one arms and roll it up and over the hands, revealing the shape they had formed. What was intesrting was that it felt like this revealing, unpeeling allowed the skin of carolines hands to suddenly seeme exposed and vulnerable. The cloaking of her action within the sleeve masking her intent. i felt voyeuru=istic waiting to see her hands, but when we did we could see her grasp, grip was vice-like on the clay form with both hands holding onto it so securely. More than that her index finger was fixed -plumbed-into the thimble. Sucked in. All of the shlleve rested on one side of her body, on one arm as she remained glued into the action on the grasp. She duscussed how everything else had disappeared as she looked at the work in the corner, she had been absorbed -completely connected bth emotionally and also plugged into the object in her hands.
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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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