I keep rememebering an experience from a project I was involved with some years ago and how one moment in a collection of many learning encounters for myself and the participants seems still so important and relevant to my thinking actions. It took place during a project with a gallery and school for children with special educational needs that i worked on for over a year.
In one session, the class was presented with a sack of potatoes. I undid the top of the sack and poured the potatoes onto the floor of the gallery. They rolled and clustered together but had formed a mound in the middle. The shiny wooden floor was occupied by these potatoes, not grubby but their organic physical presence was very clear. They seemed beautiful in the space as they fell from the sack but I was aware of their noise as they pounded the floor in front of the children. Some of the children were sensitive to noise and so I felt an amplification of the potatoes making contact with the gallery although none of the children flinched. One young girl who was severely autistic had stared intently at the action. I had never heard her speak in the sessions I had run with the class but she had always participated with determination and intent. She walked to the potato mound and sat in the middle of it, taking potatoes in her hand and when she had settled holding the potatoes she began to sing. She sang loudly and beautifully, with an operatic- like voice that filled the room. The potatoes were suddenly all hers, she suddenly owned them. She seemed powerful as did the potatoes. The potatoes afforded a space of clarity for this little girl as she spoke with them and through them. It was this action that remained so relevant to my practice. There is a way of being so present in an experience that the engagement or agency becomes almost overwhelming. The girls approach and understanding of the potatoes presence was palpable. There was no doubt in the objects relevance and no need to treat them as potatoes - they were objects to use and play with and encounter. The term ‘critically looking’ is discussed as a form of intense interpretation by Heywood and Sandywell but I want to extend this into a embodied experiential action, where ‘critical looking’ becomes ‘critical materiality’. A place where action drives meaning. This becomes that and all possible functions and identities are thrown into a state of flux. They land in the context of the person that holds them and activates their new meaning. Their becoming is formed and realised through their new meaning, It becomes a truth, 'a truth procedure' badiou.
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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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