Meeting in turbine hall. How do we make impact on this space? How are we listened and how do we count? I spoke to the group about how today meant shifting their normal or default experience of being in a gallery and looking at work. We already knew how to do this, today we would be using objects as our conduits to new thinking and approaches to the gallery and the work. These objects would be prosthetic extensions of us and our thinking. Ears and chair back, were introduced through the idea of the fable and the relevance of belief and potential meaning or moral. The fable allowed a packaged tale, a short articulated moral position, where characters and actions were relatable as metaphors for more generalised perceptions. Ideas were categorized as right or wrong. Good or bad, intelligent or unthinking etc. As I started to discuss the position of the ears and how the small transformation had turned our perception and reading of an object, I tapped the chair back indicating its solid form on my back in relation to the soft and vulnerability of my stomach, all elements I had discussed and written about before when wearing the objects. As I said that the objects indicated a particular position within approaches to learning –I corrected myself and said ‘it’s not really leaning – it is more that than that, it is what comes before, it is thinking.’ One of the participants suddenly spoke out and told the group how two of them had been discussing the questions I had asked about learning experiences and what they felt like, he commented how on the journey that day he had thought it wasn’t learning and that it was thinking. He had thought about saying it to me but had been worried about how I would feel by his shift with the term I had used. He remarked how interesting it was that I myself had said that as almost the first comment that day. I gave them keys and let them go and find locker. It was important that the objects felt like they belonged to them and that the space of the locker allowed the objects a space, the key unlocked their potential, the objects were waiting for the person. By placing the objects in this space of the locker the objects became belongings. The participant’s belongings. One person said that they were happy that even before the box was opened that it was reassuringly heavy. I thought back to working with the group at the SCVA and how the weight had been equalled to importance and value and it seemed relevant again. The group opened the boxes and sniffed, held and played with the 3 things as though trying to juggle what they were physically and intellectually. We had discussed how the plastacine balls now in cased in felt became something else. The group commented that the materials the objects felt as though they were less able to yield than any other time they had encountered objects with me. How could they activate them? This was interesting as the objects did feel more inert and still and all of the groups reflections and those within BCU workshop etc. had talked about the very physical and visceral stuff of learning processes. Tacky and heavy and contradictory. These objects all tight and presented in the box with no mess no visual entanglements but presented and dry. Whilst I knew that this would shift the perception of the objects I was very aware of the way they were investigating the objects and the heightened reactions that they were having. They felt removed from the physicality of the plasticine balls that they and experienced before and the small grey objects that were always meant as the starting point of a session had now changed in status. The group were annoyed and unsettled that the felt had hidden the surface that they had previously been able to manipulate, and they told me that it wasn’t yielding in the same way. The familiar had become unfamiliar and cloaked in another form that denied access to a previous understood encounter. As commented on by Shaun Gallagher as a ‘transcendence’ there is a need to ‘it means risking that familiar ground to allow the unfamiliar to find its place. P139 hermeneutic possibilities. The plastacine ball had taken centre stage by its slightly removed or manipulated identity. The truth of its material and the accompanying process associated with it was not allowed. I discussed the need to have the plastacine present even if in another form and they all agreed but visibly they were rejecting the object. One person threw it down and another said ‘No, I hate it’. These heightened reactions were almost childlike as though a recognised toy had been replaced with something nearly the same. The dismissal of the new toy for daring to replace something so important. However, the object, the small plastacine ball sewed within felt had never been so important as it was now. This repositioning of the object We discussed how other people or onlookers would not understand how this small grey felt sphere was so irritating and had made them feel so strongly. They continued to examine the objects. The red object they named as a stone, or a potato. They gripped it in their hands and one person tapped it repeatedly on the ground, listening to its sound. The clay grip was turned in people’s hands as they tried to find the place for their own fingers their own grip rather than the one formed in the object. “I feel ok with this objects’ said one individual, another found a way for their hand to settle into the form of the grip and said, ‘I am holding someone’s hand, I think it is yours’. Another said, ‘it feels like we have a bit of you today and need to be a bit like you today, a bit `Kimberley’. These remarks evidenced a slightly closer relationship with the objects, they were connecting and connected to it. It was humanised, relatable and whilst formed with my hand they could accept the object and even see it as a gesture of holding a hand. As this nearness and acceptances was voiced it was noticeable that the other objects were being handled again. The grey felt was being squeezed and held by some of the group with two flattening the shape so that the plastacine inside began to fill the felt and create a disc filled to the edges of the felt. One individual said it was like a skimming stone and almost asked permission to skim the surface of the turbine hall with the felted shape. It flew across the floor stroking the surface and they remarked how well it worked. The object sat momentarily on the concrete floor so tiny in the architecture of the space yet weighted now with significance form the group. I felt its presence on the floor and away from us before he went to retrieve it again. Another individual said, ‘I don’t mind it now’ and took the earlier dismissed grey shape into her hands, but remarked how she was worried that the hairs from the felt would have imprinted themselves into the grey plastacine underneath, ruining it slightly. This asserted the material of the plastacine again over the felt covering, when another said ‘I am wondering if it is even grey plastacine now and whether you have changed it without us knowing.’
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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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