When everyone returned to their lockers they took out the new objects. They immediately became animated expect one individual who had the brush in paper. She looked at everyone else’s object. They were already playing with the objects holding them up, shouting through the silenced megaphone, playing with the physicality of 3 hands with the gloved artists hand alongside their own. The brush frame was held up against the spaces, framing views and the expanding foam brush like trowel was stroked on the flattened underside. When I asked for their immediate reactions they all responded to the objects saying what they were and how they felt about them. There was a sense that these were their objects and they claimed them almost possessively as though the objects they had within their lockers had been made specifically only for them. This seemed to make them seek a connection as though I had been thinking of them when I made them. They knew however that the lockers were random and that it was chance that this object was theirs. They were already investing in the objects as we sat in the gallery, they knew what their job was and what they were supposed to do with them. The one with the brush said she was a little disappointed with hers in comparison to the vibrancy of the other objects but she played with the paper smoothing it out, ‘maybe it is alright’ she said. It is interesting that their reactions to the objects are stated strongly and my presence as maker made no difference to their acceptance or rejection. They were vocal as they had been when they first encounter the covered plastacine earlier that day. The objects are to blame for themselves, responsible for their own potential. Their material form out performs me. I felt like a bystander to the conversations between the group and their objects. I had chosen to go into the Rebecca Horn room. I had anticipated that this would be difficult and that the performative nature of the work itself may cause a conflict with the actions of the group. I didn’t voice this as I needed to see the effects of the space, but I felt as I was taking them towards an encounter that would be less than – diluted or problematic. The space itself is more formal that the previous space. We head towards vitrines and it is noticeable the amount of information about the work on the walls. I walk into the space ears still on my head and shell on my back, I feel connected in a direct way to the unicorn, the body extensions of horns work but whilst I am comfortable this experience is not comfortable for the group. I sit back within the space and watch them. They look around and start to read the labels, hold the objects low in their hands, flat against their bodies, they are quiet, passive. They have retreated to become viewers in the room. They are slow, they look at the work. I have to let them be but I am very aware of how they are out performed in the space. The playful engagement they had had with the objects before entering the space had stopped. Their physicality (both the individuals and the objects) felt muted. The group no longer interacted they seemed to be inhibited. I knew that the performative presence of the artists through film and image was claiming the space so strongly, the performance was hers. However, it was more than that the investment that they had made with the initial objects had been so strong that this new engagement with the objects from their lockers was had to contemplate. Not a conscious decision on their part but the extension from their hands towards the objects and beyond towards the exhibited work was diminished. I was very aware of my presence in this space and how my ears felt like a beacon on my head, leading the way, showing the way. I wanted to take the group out of the space knowing that a discussion wouldn’t be possible in the environment we were in, particularly as they were silent and slow in the small space. I was about to gather them but I saw one individual the one with the brush and brown paper who had initially been disappointed, she was smoothing and folding the paper, making creases and pleating it like the images of horns work ahead of her. She was close to the work and her actions were more concentrated now and engaged. I left her to fold and unfold for a few minutes before we all exited the space. The group all began to talk as we left the room, they played with their objects again and started to talk through or with them. The bristles within the meaphone had been pulled from a sweeping brush (see earlier blog posts) ,As their objects lifted and became animated again within their hands the groups started to engage with the matter of them differently. Outside of the performance within the gallery they began to perform.
They discussed how I had been appropriately placed in the gallery and echoes my feelings of the links between my costumed state and the appendages made by Horn. But we discussed together how they had lost their power and conviction in that space. This is a complicated set of ingredients that created their traditional and passive position within the gallery and something I am writing about outside of the blog. However, keys points are that the group had already invested. This is fundamental to the change in how effective the encounter can be. The objects in the turbine hall had become really important to them, they had already gone through a process of rejecting them and then embracing them which anchors their belief in the resonance if the objects. They had claimed them and importantly they had activated them and been activated by the them in the space with Otobang Nkanga’s work. This powerful transformative experience was still with them. The new objects had been given to them when they were still connected to their last prosthetic objects, in a sense still fundamentally attached. So, the new objects were playful for them before and after the Horn encounter but they could not invest as they were over invested with the smaller forms. Whilst I had imagined this happening, it was quite powerful to see the limpness of their arms when they held the objects in the space. It was as though they were weighted rather than charged. (refer to the SCVA pilot project when the ship met the ship). The same action happened at the SCVA when the participant links too easily with the form or action of the art work in the gallery. This also relates to my earlier ideas of metaphor and decoy. These objects were seen to be replicating actions they couldn’t have themselves. The power of investment also means that participants need to have power. The status of their thinking is elevated through object connections and equally when this is thwarted or challenged the impact of loss of power is substantial.
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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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