'Things that talk are often chimeras, composites of different species. the difference in species must be stressed: the composites in question don't just weld together different elements of the same kind; they straddle boundaries between kinds' (Daston, L . 2004, p.12) Things that talk; Object lessons from art and science. This object started as the spill from a cast of a buoy/fender that can be seen earlier in the blog. The spill itself became more intersting than the cast as though the overflow of the material formed its own object and through the hardening of the foam it became an appendage with this perfect fit for an arm. It gently hooks and the the smooth side of the form is then held against skin.
This overflow sat for a long time in the studio and one day my father picked it up and placed it on his arm. In that one action the form, the spill became a pallette. All the more so as my father is a painter and whilst he doesn'y hold a traditional palette when he works the action he made unified the object to at once fot his body and seemingly find an intention. As one of my research participants had discussed how a transformative experienec was like paint moving, moved and in flux, I wanted to use paint for her object. the important thing was the authenticity of the paint and action of paint rather than a represnetation of paint or a painting of paint. Her ideas of controla and lack of control were so important to the nature of not only in the object i made up in the action of making the object itself. A visable making mark, action that enabled an eleemnt of time to be held within the object. I gave my father the form and asked whether he would use it as a palette in his studio and whilst not holding it in his arm the object would be next to him as he painted and wiped his brush. He had the palette for 2 months and used it each time he painted, deciding which surface was best to wipe or mix the paint on. I never saw the obejct in that time, he told me things about the surface of the expanding foam and waht it did to the paint that was wiped there. It was part of his process, although the quiet visitor in the studio. Two days ago he rang and said 'I think it is finished, every mark is true and was made from the paintings that I did.'. He said ' I will send you a photo and bring the object back next week'. As i saw the image in an email I thought how much it had become his painting by holding the marks of the paint he had used in order to make other images. I thought it was beautiful ... but this is not a formed aesthetic it is a live imprint of an artist process on an object formed through another process for someone else who imagined a transformative process visually. This isnt what she thinks her object will be, it isnt what I thought it would be. I am percieving this object encountering in on a screen but know that to see and hold it will be fundamnetally different. My father took the photo in his studio on the floor away from all other objects, images, references and I couldn't help thinking that he had documented it as I would have. This was his decision. A singular thing, offered up ( as it was referred to by my supervisor). I feel even through the image the force of the object and now I will wait to meet it. I wonder about the paintings that he made during ths time and question if I need to know if my participant needed to know. I think it talks of the paintings that have formed already.
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Presentation of information. hoover bag, dollie, dental alginante, fake ryvita additional shuttlecock. Serving up the ingredients. The piles or arrangements that I am making are with one of my research particaipants in mind. They are the compliations that are shifting and settling. As I have said they are presently without the event of encounetr except for my initial material encounters. These can not be sent and they are difficult to handle but they are forming a catalogue of materials for each person. This is like a 1970's plane meal, or a Sunday afternoon, it is both familiar and yet still and unpalatable. the dental alganate forms a blancmange (smells of mint) and is so wet and cold against the fake ryvita. The materials choice of materials is so important and as I push towards the objecst that they will be sent the materails become almost like puns of each other. The dental gums on the dental alganate - the food that isnt food, the hoover bag as a plate. This to and fro of meanings and matter becomes more dense as the objecst form and the individuals words sit with me. These objects are pit stops in the making and that whilst they might never being used in their physical form by the group they do already belong to them. Their words form the materials that form the objects. I am present, I know my actions but I am cooking for the group. Cooking whilst they go about their business, I am stirring the words and metaphors. I am casting the cardboard forms used for fruit, there is something so blank about these soft forms and slighlty sad they exist and function for the fruit, the 4 apples that fit their cups. Or the twin avocadoes that sit in their cardboard beds. The dollies so dated and gendered, stiff collars, antimacasser, bad curtains, uptight tablecloths. The cast apple form, on the dollie on the salt lick brick - I mentally eat this obect, crunching the salted and medicinal brick with the dollie in my teeth and then swallow the green minted alganate. This reaction or my bodily reaction and activation of the stillest object can confirm or negate the objects appropraieness.
Their is a constant balance between the object and how much space it has. Its affordance and its responsibility to do a little bit more than it should. It has to live for the particiapnt/activator and yet be constantly open to the interpreation of other material stuff, other art work, other meanings. the artwork that has its own brief -this is why I have talked about the objects being operational -are they designed for the person, they are certainly made with the intentionality of another. I feel the rlevance of the material and material as object is increasing in relavance and potency in my research. There are many occasiosn when badiou, Grant Kester, Dennis Atkinson, (for example) state that the event and the enounter are often or are without the object or an object, that the encounter is dialogic and discursive. I would argue that the event is more discursive and more tranforamtive if it is driven by material encounter rather than the thing or object being seen as a diversion or a hinderance in the truth of the encounter. The language is activated by this material provocation. This is of course a simplification that I am exploring and crtically anchoring but the polarisation of the thing and the experience (in terms of an art framework) is tangled. Pears, pistachios, pencils and punctuation: performative encounter and the art of conversation This paper is co authored by myself, Karl foster Associate Lecturer in Fine Art, Norwich University of the Arts, research student Fine Art Chelsea, UAL and Victoria Mitchell Research Fellow, NUA. it is currently with Interllect journals/books for peer review so we forsee changes will occur It is for the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice. this particular issue is: Education, Curation and Creation: What role does writing play in the production and distribution of contemporary visual art?
Between the paddle becoming both a spoon a shovel and a tongue. After referencing ‘up shit creak, I was also thinking of shovelling shit, being spoon fed…the allegory of the long spoons and needing to feed each other rather than being able to feed oneself. (This object needs the arm extension, to be held at arm’s length).
The objects movement conceptually is important in earlier images the paddle was a flag or an arm waving, but becomes a spoon or shovel or weighted hand. This increases by the weight on the end (like stepping on someone’s toes) the shoe starts to do this. The threaded connector at the top of the paddle is changing through the interventions and added and subtracted objects. It moves from a connector to a valve as though we could blow into the paddle and inflate it. Does it then become an armband, life saver? This restlessness seems to echo the states of flux indicated by the participants the movement from and to. The paddle as steering tool or lifesaver, tongue and spoon. The group often relate to food and this direct link to a transformative process makes complete sense the ingredients needed the changing state the elemental attributes involved but also the tasting or the digestion (this is something detailed within my recent co-authored paper as the digestive tract of knowing) but in this sense the consumption of an idea or thought is considered. The objects I am using in the objects here lack the water or saliva needed to swallow and the matter offered up on the spoon shovel are unpalatable husks. The more reading that I do in relation to matter the more complex and problematic it becomes. From allowing a freedom and shared ownership of being that extends across, beyond and between. A status that implodes human non-human object subject associations, but equally it can dilute the very definitions that allow us to navigate distinctive points of reference. |
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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