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).
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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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