In Dialogue
growing conversation on knowledge, power and learning to unlearn.
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D:
Institutional criticism is heavily saturated in our current state of society. Instead of acting against it, what is proposed through this program is acting with it. Dismantlement of the institution is unrealistic and it can only be substituted with another model of power structure under a different name. This series of workshops and public interventions aim to work with the institutions to create an alternative model that is in between the current structure and complete unpredictability.
Understanding the purpose of institutions and their functionality matrix is the ground on which the initiative is built, however, it looks at broken links between institutional organs in order to create a possible solution to its dysfunctionality. Working With is a context where institutional methods are used and re-formatted, to offer reflection and collective learning. A process of learning to learn to learn to unlearn if you wish.
Progressive learning becomes possible when the roles become blurred. It allows for exploring one’s abilities and disabilities, that are observed in relation to the other. Practicing to learn asks for practicing to unlearn.
Learning in unconventional ways is often seen as unproductive and unreliable. The knowledge and its translation in the common institution is examined and systematized, the more information, the more skills in the least amount of time is desired. Therefore, learning becomes an experience where subjectivity and individuality are sectioned and pacified. The motivation to engage in slow, un-hierarchical forms of learning starts from understanding the differences between knowledge systems that are currently present in institutions.
To positively define an institution is a difficult task as it is often contained with a critique of the current state of society. The workshops define an institution as a working utopia. “Working utopias” welcome discussion between people and places that are capable of bringing forward utopian tendencies. “Working utopias” are types of change desired by utopian imagination. They are sites of “pedagogic action” where others come to learn how to practice differently, how to perceive, think and act in different ways.
Working utopias offer solutions for reimagining social situations and processes enabling social imagination, debate, and conflict. Working utopias are spatial models existing in the same context with the everyday. It is a work in progress that is changing together with participants and the space and time, allowing participants to understand what are their strengths and how they can expand them in a collective setting. Practice is a way of action - a set or sets of ways of doing or responding to gain experience, practice Practice is a radical shift in the power dynamics of knowledge systems.
Bodies are the main actors;
The act of drawing is a binding agent between participants as organs of the re-defined institution, where sharing a common goal of slowing down in public space enables the de-hierarchization of senses. By working against power structures imposing importance and functionality on a sensorial level, the workshop becomes a hybrid model where roles are undefined and unspecified. It is a flux of individual exchange in a collectively held place. Natural care exists between organs of institutions as each is welcomed in their capacity to give and receive.
Artists take up a role of an intruder of senses, focusing on one specific sense that they will aim to accentuate. Artists welcome new forms of interacting with the space while also being faced with immediate feedback on their knowledge.
By bringing artistic knowledge and research into the public space, the possibility to understand how art is privileged, the institution becomes a relevant focus point. It forces the artists to consider the audience and understand their methodology in relation to the other. The moments of interaction can become a part of a research process for the artists themselves as well as for the audiences, questioning the purpose of art, its predetermined aesthetic role in current society.
Witnessing my colleagues and friends, exchanging their skills and knowledge in public spaces had a great impact on me. I understood how secure in the knowledge we feel until questioned by someone who simply isn’t familiar with the artistic discourse. I hope that was a moment valuable for reflection on our position and privilege as artists protected by art institutions.
C:
The problem with institutional knowledge lies in the narrow focus on an illusional fixation on objectivity. Knowing is subjective. Objectivity is a myth. Nothing is ever fully objective and it’s through our movement and steps into the world we start carrying traces of knowing on our skin. To know is to feel, even when to know has been framed as an objective state.
Knowledge in institutional settings is a reproduction of power. The same names are recycled as ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘valuable’ names in the circulation system of knowledge. We too often keep returning to the same names - that too often still are white, European, upper-class male ones, when we want to trace footnotes in institutional settings of ‘why we know’. It’s as if certain names are ‘safer’ than others. The ones every curriculum of institutions keeps returning to instead of digging repeatedly for new ones.
As much as I value crediting and individual authorship as much do I question it, when knowledge is collective. We only know in relation to others. We learn through others. And we learn with others. We read the words of others. And our words are read by others. The same goes for speaking and listening; we listen to the words of others and our words move through others. But there is a difference between an institutional book-knowing and bodily knowing. And it’s the bodily knowing that unfortunately still has no place in the footnotes of academics. Academic settings have a history of being emotional deserts. Bodily experience is a neglected knowing. When systems of knowledge have a history of being systems of power; the power of the privileged. Where objectivity wins in a system of hierarchy. Where a namedrop can be an approval. Where the same name of privilege is repeated. Do we then need to return to our bodily selves to search for new paths of getting to know?
When dismantling comes from within;
When knowledge today is situated within institutional settings as a power source, dismantling something in power comes from within. To dismantle the language of something in power can partly require speaking the language of power at times. Not to replicate the common tongue, but to take the words of a form and change its grammar. Building an institutional platform is therefore not a method of replicating something already in power, but it offers a way of questioning how an institutional body can be reformatted and grow rhizomatically.
A body only functions because of its organs and the un-hierarchial relation between all. To form a body with a specific purpose, therefore needs a formation itself. And in that forming a body, forming a non-institutional institution comes into play in the building of an open skeleton with open spaces of moving through.
But talking about how dismantling comes from within, we cannot avoid that we are dependent on the same institutions we might partly be criticizing. We are in an institution shaped to create within a market upon graduation. And even within this work of a platform, we do partly work with organizations that do not have the same fluid structure as we aim for. It’s a thin line; I find myself needing to understand something to criticize it, yet at the same time I need to remind myself not to replicate - as it’s difficult to see what you are in while you are inside of it. And whenever I place my body within a space, I start carrying traces of that space on my skin.
To learn to learn comes from learning to learn;
To learn is a static tense, whereas learning is a continuous tense. It’s difficult to grasp the process of learning without being in the process itself. To try to describe how to learn cannot be offered within a static chapter, but only a continuous dialogue. A dialogue in this case in written form, yet also the dialogue of continuously setting the framework of learning in a series of workshops without a fixed end. Learning to learn is to be in the open process of learning. To remain open and not look upon learning with a fixed origin or end.
D:
I remember our conversation as we were getting to know each other. I remember the text I was reading at that time, it was an essay on unlearning practices in art institutions. It has never crossed my mind up until that point how education is observed through cultural and political frames and how its structure follows the value system of the ruling system. Speaking about learning to learn in a specific way when you come as an international student from a different system of education is problematic. There are courses in universities molding Eastern students to Western forms of education. It oversees holding knowledge and examines its source through belonging to a certain developed culture or political sphere.
Considering this evaluation of knowledge based on its source is a translation of capitalistic and hierarchical, consumerist tendencies that our infrastructure is built upon. Take for example the current discourse around the origin of COVID. Currently, scientific research around COVID is undertaken by numerous countries in the world as a method of prevention and safe handling of possible future outbreaks. The US is leading an investigation examining the Chinese area where the virus supposedly exited from the lab, and China is withstanding any accusations or confessions. WHO is urging scientific communities across the globe to share knowledge on the outbreak to understand future threats. Knowledge is constantly being used as a toy in the hands of opponents, where using information and possessing knowledge becomes a danger to current homeostasis in political waters. WHO acts as a neutral ground working towards global wellbeing, but aren’t they just a peacemaker narrating and overseeing to take power? Information is a tool of power. The routes it takes are materials of different capacities.
C:
Having been in both educational systems in China, Denmark, Netherlands, and Belgium it is interesting to me to see how different educational systems also partly reflect a culture and political ideology as you mention. In China, I was not allowed to study politics by not having Chinese citizenship. Rooting from academic settings, studying politics is reserved for Chinese citizens only; a national interest for those in governmental power to recirculate a system of power. But the studies of politics are just one example out of many of how power is situated within educational systems.
As you mention, information is truly a tool of power. But withholding information is the same. Silence is too often used as a tool to sustain power structures when parts of history are left out of history books. In China, the topic of the Cultural Revolution is a sensitive unmentioned topic. In the West, art history and history in more general terms are carrying a Eurocentric discourse. History is not world history. It’s the history of Western Europe.
In Denmark, I went to the Danish School of Media and Journalism. To me, it’s also interesting to observe how the news we usually trust as our information providers are sustaining certain discourses just as well. What we often get to see and read are often the happenings carrying a political or financial interest of a government - not saying that the government is censoring or controlling the news channels of Denmark, but still we rarely hear of what’s happening in minor countries around the globe. And yet, even with the news we do see, information is simplified in a system of quick consumption where happenings are boiled down to simplifications, and certain countries are always portrayed as the enemy reflecting the same discourse.
D:
Observing information as a power tool is rather interesting as it can really take different shapes, as you mentioned. In the current, flow of information is unstoppable and its distribution, the source, is a political character. I often wonder if the way we distribute information in the present is why we are witnessing its political coloring? If we look up the definition of information, facts provided, or learned about something or someone, it is important to understand the position of where our knowledge about these facts is coming from. Sharing information is therefore never objective, never a pure fact as its form of expression stems from being familiar with certain contextual references. This brings me to question what are the possibilities of human communication and when can it be observed as simply a way to get in touch with others, and when can information be observed as purely social tools.
Take for instance the concept of a square in the city or a village. It is used as a place where people come together to exchange goods, to pause for a coffee. In squares, movement is drastically different than in the streets. An open space welcomes gathering and interaction, the information that is shared/created is affected by the space. The information contained in the openness of the space and its distribution directs these encounters. Space is political, but people need each other, they need exchange, interaction, and society to function, their intention of gathering is influenced both by spatial design and biological tendencies.
Therefore, as an artist working in public space, a certain sense of sensibility is present towards how space can make or break your actions. Approaching the politics of space becomes a tool for exploring comfort and systematic behaviors. Cities are imaginaries and experiences Experiences are tied to societal and political contexts, and that is what makes all public action political. Art as an intruder, an interrupter of the city, is possible when the contexts in which it navigates are observed and questioned through the work. Working between and with contexts allows for the de-anesthetization and depoliticization of public art.
C:
Talking about spaces and politics, I find behaviors are first of all defined by governmental policies, but they are also defined by unspoken cultural rules. Our relation to others in space and what is considered appropriate and inappropriate depends on what space our body is placed in. What would be appropriate to do in China might not be the case for being in Denmark, the Netherlands, or any other country. But even within countries, there are different spaces we daily place our bodies in; public and private ones as well. And we move in those sometimes without noticing how the space directly shapes our movement. Going to the beach promenade in the Hague, I find it fascinating how we unspoken walk on one side of the street for one direction and another for the opposite without public signs telling us to do so. And while walking horizontally next to one another, our steps at times even synchronize. Our movement in a space is not only shaped by the space itself but also by our body’s relation to others in that same space.
Talking about public space I cannot not think of China as also being a space where public spaces are political tools. In public parks in China, political
messages are at times on walls, sculptures, or even within flower beds as tools for propaganda. Space shaping movement is one thing, another is when
spaces are used for planting messages visibly.
It’s difficult to not partly become what one is in when a body is embodied yet embedded in space. To be in a space where certain political messages
are directly visible and others are left out and censored is where a space directly shapes a person, a body —and not only its movement.
D:
First two days of May we gave a workshop to children in AZC Almere and I think this is where I can relate to space as a main actor in shaping one’s identity. When entering AZC upon the first day, I felt a sense of fear and shame, because to work with people in this type of situation is rather confronting and it made me question my position of being an European, white, female artist with a safe home and family. I instantly felt shame and guilt as we started working with children because I felt my reality is so much different from theirs, and they find the activities of workshops as a form of play and togetherness rather than a part of a conceptual research practice.
I felt ashamed of my privilege and it was grounding as I remembered how my frame of reference, my frame of institutions I am entangled in, shares values that these children may not ever face due to their situation. What took place was an experience of deconstructing my view on their situation and finding common ground through communicating in the form of laughter, drawing, yelling and singing. We came to AZC two days in a row, and on the second day we were welcomed by the same group of children we met the day before running towards us telling us their secrets and sharing their personal stories of love, friendship and family traditions. I understood that this place is for them the world as my neighborhood was to me, there is no difference, and I had to put myself in their shoes, take my body to the past and remind myself of what does being a child mean.
To get back to the politics of space, I realized in these two days how these children are a society at large. First they were intrigued by us but didn’t trust us, we were from the outside, yet once we opened up to them they started opening up to us. Some of them, eleven years old or nine spoke three languages and communicated with us while also helping the others who didn’t know English to be heard. They helped each other translate their needs, and when words weren’t coming to the tip of the tongue, the body and its gestures showed us what they need and how we can provide. They learned to adapt quickly and create communities, they are incredibly wise and creative when it comes to ways of getting a message across. These moments were the hands down example of how being in between spaces influence our learning skills and can become building blocks of play and alternative modes of communication. It takes listening and asking questions, observing and allowing them to draw their worlds in order to build trusting relationships and collective care.
It equals growth and adaptability in unimaginable ways, it means establishing boundaries and learning how to trust, how much to give and how much to take.. We find ways of humanity and sharing no matter what kind of privilege we hold. To question privilege is necessary, to live off it is ignorant.
C:
What you write is beautiful, but I don’t believe we can ever speak on behalf of the children when it comes to displacement and belonging. To be honest, it made me angry. Angry at structures. Angry at institutions. Angry at theory. Angry at trying to press people into theory. And angry at having to have a goal or motivation behind an action. The personal is political. To question privilege is important, but there is a line within privilege as well. As we as intruders of a space will never fully know how it feels to be in their bodies, I do not believe nor think we have the right to start theorizing or speak on behalf of them, when it comes to their concept of care nor belonging. We can observe, but even through observation we are projecting and any sentence left in words is only our own projection pointing back to oneself. Sometimes words can only confirm a violence. My response might come from a personal place having been in-between countries and institutions, but again the personal is political and as we are the ones in the privileged position, I really don’t think we should be the ones speaking on behalf nor start theorizing, as I also do not believe in ‘two worlds meeting in the same spot’. To speak of two worlds meeting in one spot is to create an us/them. A separation that I do not support. Some things are not meant to be categorized nor boxed into theory.
D:
I value your point and thank you for questioning me. I never wanted to project my words onto someone’s feelings, yet it is a vulnerable place to be in, to understand that I am still learning how to work against structures and beliefs I was fed through my life. These moments of reflection show me that editing thoughts and unlearning to the core are two distinctly different actions.
D:
A question about my role as a carrier of the workshop interests me. Each of the workshops we initiated had a different feeling, a different agency. Engaging
in the workshop in a fully open and accessible public space comes with fear and excitement. The expectations have to be left aside as it is an experience of time and space. The openness we as constants give toward those who we encounter in these moments is the predominant requirement. I felt overwhelmed with emotion, being unprotected by the pages of a book, which is a typical setting for me to engage with my research practice. It takes awareness and courage as you as a person need to be fully present and read the situation and people that approach you to properly communicate your aim with the workshop so that they feel invited to take part, as well as to keep in mind your safety and safety of those around you. I believe it is a different type of awareness than the participant has when entering the place of the workshop, and it comes with fear of not fulfilling their expectations which leads to you as an initiator being left without any results. I used sound and drawing as a method not only to create a piece of public art within the workshops but as a method of grounding myself in the moment and wondering what could the other, the participant feel, how could I make their experience more enjoyable. I realized that simplicity is the key in communicating, a simple: ‘Hey would you like to leave a mark on the pavement?’ can lead to discussion or finish after a few seconds. The presence of activity allows for silence to grow from within and feel less uncomfortable and less confronting for both sides to engage in the conversation, or not.
Workshops where the main audience is artistically educated, fluid and considered politically liberal allow for easier translation of intention but require
structure and programming of activities. These people are saturated with similar types of activities in their everyday conversations and encounters,
so the outcome is not the major worry, there will be an elaborated aesthetically pleasing drawing left as a mark. It is the question of whether they see
depth, quality, and purpose in our initiative.
As a research-based artist, I approach the making process in phases. Understanding the interest requires diving deep into the subject matter and examining it from various perspectives. The knowledge that is accumulated in my research serves as a way for me to position myself in the research matter in an objective way, where awareness of the reach of the information I am trying to work with is examined and questioned constantly. This method is of protective nature as understanding and examining others’ views and findings opens the possibility of gaining an understanding of what works and what is lacking, and what are the blind spots. This method is my first phase and it is a phase where others are as important as I am. My subjective sensibility and frame of reference influence the way I read and translate the information, therefore, the knowledge and
of my own body and mind.
On roles;
It is hard to define roles in the experimental platform that is based on examining and reworking institutions and not mimicking them. Together, we have defined the organs of this initiative into facilitators, artists, participants, collective, material, senses, and public. This definition of roles is already different from the usual institutional system as singularity and plurality are embraced, as well as organic and inorganic matter. I wanted to reflect upon my experiences in the workshops when it comes to the roles I was taking to understand how I can position myself in the future.
As a facilitator of the workshop, a sense of responsibility and guidance is required. As a creator of such a platform, it is impossible to remove this role from my body. What does it do to me? When we started with the workshops I felt the pressure to document the interactions, to be aware of all the people joining and passing by and I felt the pressure to engage in the conversation. Receiving questions and offering answers became again a hierarchy that I tried to dismantle by engaging in close contact and showing interest in the people not into what they were doing, or shadowing them with expectations.
I understood in this process that what matters to me is to be left with a mark on myself, whether it be through a strange contact or a fear when being yelled at for drawing in the street. Prioritizing this, rather than a beautiful photograph as documentation allows me to feel into the space and collective itself and readjust what is needed. The camera in my hand became a barrier between me and the other. The camera in my friend’s hand didn’t help either. To be observed and documented redirects attention from the participant and de-purifies our intention. So, how to document became a question that I kept asking myself. How can you translate an experience to someone who was not there? This is where this dialogue comes into question. A dialogue between two constants in the changing spaces and time. A dialogue paired with photographs of reminders of workshops as a way to fight the rain that will wash the chalk down.
Roles we as initiators take in each space and situation differ drastically in regards to who the participants are, and I find this beautiful. The methods stay grounded in conceptual and research frameworks, however by reading the situations, bodies, receptiveness of others, we are able to create a fluid structure that is site and experience specific. This possibility of constant fluidity and change is what I aspire to see in current institutions, the fluidity and flexibility towards sharing, giving and generating knowledge.
C:
I find beauty in the fluid structure of the workshops held in public spaces. Our first workshop was less focused on a group of people and more focused on opening up a space for encounters. By creating the space of those encounters with guidelines open for interpretation, I am learning a lot through observing different people interact differently within each workshop. When people from a distance either hear the soundscape or see the activity of drawing and approach with curiosity without knowing what they are walking towards. It’s in those encounters I find myself learning the most, when a work, a thought, a research get to escape its borders of institutional settings and project descriptions as we are partly taught to explain ourselves within. It’s in those public encounters with people that used to be strangers, I realize what language I have been taught to speak when I enter new dialogues with people who may or may not be working within an artistic field (whatever ‘artistic’ even means, as I am not a supporter of fixed definitions and artistic as only meaning having a diploma in art)
How an institution such as an art or academic education has shaped my choice of words - often resulting in (mis)communication and a multiplicity of interpretations in the random encounters with people in a public space, as I am in new situations of explaining myself, what I previously did and what we currently are present in a public space to do.
Our third workshop was with Stichting Atelier de Kunstvlieg. An art organization in the Hague focused on offering different creative and artistic activities to people with mental, physical and/or socio-emotional disability. I learned a lot in the sensorial dialogue with others as I realized my sensitivity towards specifically sound is different than the ones of the participants. A more concrete example was when the bell of the church tower around the corner rang in the public space and one of the participants found herself paralyzed by the sound. On a personal level having experienced a panic attack in my own body, I still remember how sound can have a calming effect. When we therefore moved from the public space and inside for the session with hydrophones, a collective composition, and deep listening, I was extra aware of both the sound design of each microphone but also the volume of the speakers, as the sound was not only a medium for calmness of mind but also a medium of triggers to some of the participants. When working with the body with a workshop focused on the body, it’s important to remember the differences of bodies and abilities. Each body is different; carrying different needs and different abilities. And it’s only in a dialogue of tuning in and asking questions, we can assume how others feel. My sensitivity towards sound is different from others, yet I will never fully know how they heard the sound we co-created or felt during the session. As the sound artist of that part of the workshop, I found myself only being able to ask questions and being observant in case my sensorial experience did not correspond to the participants. In case what I found calming was not the case for them.
D:
I can relate so much to the calming experience of sound. I often use this medium as a way to experience and trigger emotions, a soft sound can bring out what is buried as a fast-paced rhythm helps me release. The workshop in Kunstvlieg was a place where I learned a lot about myself, and I realized that the aim to experience the other is possible trans-language, trans-systems. Unable to communicate with words, to understand each other on the most used and basic level on which our society is relying, I realized how body language can be a source for exploring the truthful space of togetherness. In a busy street, a car appears and a participant unable to notify me verbally pulls me with full strength by the hood of my jacket. A woman standing still, not saying a word for the 3 hours that we were there but simply nodding, using her facial gestures to express her preferences, to state her boundaries. We communicated through touch and observing the body and I became aware of the impulsivity in which we move constantly. This woman I could strongly relate to, becoming paralyzed when faced with a decision of which color or stencil shape to use. It reminded me of the time in which everyday tasks and choices paralyzed me and all I needed was time to understand what is in front of me and what the possible consequences will be. The impulsivity therefore is to some extent freeing, but becoming aware of how it can affect the other, how they might get scared if I move too quickly, is a method of becoming aware of my own body through the body of others. I realized how privileged I am to be able to bend down, to mute the environment to some extent to focus. This experience in particular made me aware of how unable I, we, are of perceiving other’s positions if not given resistance, if we are not given the reaction our action presupposed.
Communicating through bodies is in no way harder than communicating through words. All that we had to do was understand and situate and feel our bodies in order to feel theirs.
C:
The process of documentation is interesting to me. Visuals are such a way of documenting, but not everyone carries the ability to see. The sense of gazing is only one sense out of many where so many things are left unsaid. Visuals are a powerful tool, but so are other sensorial ways of remembering and translating. Writing in dialogue is one, yet even writing is visual as it requires eyes to see and an understanding of a language to read. Sound is another way of documenting. Each workshop is documented through both field recordings, yet an ultrasonic sensor is also placed in the space of each workshop translating the distance and movement of participants into live sound recorded together with the sonic landscape of the city. Sound allows another experience of a past space that used to be. Together I find that visual and sound and writing and speech all together allow documentation and translation of an experience carry a different kind of intimacy - as we have different relations to different senses and we remember differently through each of them; individually and culturally. I find my body carrying memories from China more often through smell than in the Netherlands, where my memories often are attached to visuals.
I would be curious to explore how a space can also be documented and traced through smell, taste, and touch, yet not having much experience with those (yet), I am leaving that for the future to explore.
D:
Sometimes I question why there is a need to document things we witness. Is it possible to create documentation that can really make you feel as you did in that specific moment of time? Senses carry memories, but senses are personal. Creating an accurate documentation would mean taking into account individual experiences and formatting them so that they communicate with an outsider. As with any information sharing and translation, the point of view, the source, and the receptor play a role in how information is perceived. This can not be fully controlled, and that is the beauty where individuality comes forward. As mentioned previously, I found how involving a camera can easily become an intrusive action when it comes to observing natural human behaviors. People alter their behavior when they acknowledge that they are being observed. However, I realized that when I am immersed in the present moment when I read the bodies and situations, I am unable to catch every detail and every movement that might offer an insight into other’s experiences. Therefore, apart from what you Cecilie already mentioned, documenting through a variety of ways and mediums allows for accessing and focusing on missed signs and interactions. Documentation doesn’t function purely as a method to fully translate the experience to an outsider. Positioning the camera on the outside, away from action and interaction allows us as makers to treat this material as research into social dynamics and allows us a space of reflection on our methods. After looking through the footage of Cecilies listening session I noticed how some participants were interacting with contact microphones constantly, but because their presence was overpowered by other participants who were more expressive, most of us missed their part of the contribution to our collective listening session. By going back and zooming in, we can pay closer attention. Understanding that each one of us is able to contribute in our own way.
C:
Growing up bilingual, language has always been a territory of confusion to me; communication-wise and identity-wise. It has always felt as if I had to choose, even when the multiplicity of languages is attached to one; my body at its core. When words are power and power is exclusion, how can we return to our bodies to speak in a way wordy language does not allow us to? Language shapes bodies and interconnections, but in the end bodies are bodies. A common that words cannot escape.
D:
Just looking at the semiotics of language is rather interesting. The concept of semiotics explains how the form of a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, and the meaning is related to a subject that depends on the sign's interpreter. The relationship between a sign and a meaning is loose, but once the relationship between a meaning and a subject is established, it is impossible to break it. Simply, when you read the word CAT, a fluffy soft cocoon pops into your mind. The cat becomes a subject. Can you imagine anything else when you read CAT? This is where I find the practice of listening and hearing extremely important.
Semiotics as part of linguistics therefore predetermines the inability to unlearn established connections. By listening, we can understand the connections that are formed and try to reimagine them. When hearing, we passively decide to stop questioning the connections between signs, meanings and subjects. Reimagining welcomes a fictional world of possibilities.
C:
Listening is also an intimacy of crossing borders. As hearing is involuntary, listening is the voluntary act of letting one’s body become one with other immaterial and material bodies of space. Yet I don’t think listening on its own allows us to unlearn established connections, as we are taught to listen in a specific manner culturally. Can I imagine anything else, when I read CAT is one question, another is if I can hear anything else when I listen? Words cognitively connect to imagery for me, yet knowing that each mind/body is different, it might not be the case for everyone. But I do find it’s only when one is not taught to listen within a language one speaks that a reimagination of the sound of words welcomes another fictional world of possibilities - within the framework of the relation between sound and semiotics. I can take a personal experience as an example: I have been spending the past few months in Bruxelles studying at École de recherche graphique; a French-speaking and French-taught research and art academy. I do not speak French and placing my body in an environment where I do not speak the tongue has been an interesting experience. First of all, you realize bodily how much exclusion language carries. Secondly, you listen to words differently than others when they no longer are a means of communication. My mind has been paying more attention to the movement of a tongue in the speaking of French; the sound of it above the meaning of it. And in that sound of it, my mind is allowing me to interpret in a multiplicity of ways as I do not connect sounds to words (yet).
Talking about spaces of possibilities, I find negative spaces deeply interesting. A negative space is a void of possibility. As you say, reimagining welcomes fictional world(s) of possibilities. But are those only fictional? I often find things between what we call ‘reality’ and ‘fiction’ are not that binary as such. Everything exists to a certain extent already but becomes a possibility when we name it. Naming something to claim its existence. The same goes for knowledge; things become a matter and existence, when we name it and call it a theory.
Possibilities also seem to exist in the ‘accidents’ of play. When a process is not focused on progress and result, the act of playing allows space for re-imagining or dismissing how things are ‘supposed to’ look. To escape borders and so birth space for what we at times would consider ‘accidents’. But accidents of a system are moments of slowing down and supposedly stopping entirely. When play does not have a result as a purpose, play almost becomes a purposeful resistance on its own, when institutions have a purposeful purpose as a goal.
D:
I would say that reality and fictions as contrasts can become binary constraints of imaginary minds, leaving no place for wondering. This is where I would like to introduce the concept of heterotopia, a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow 'other': disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. They exist outside of real or imaginary and I believe that these places can serve as spaces of resistance towards excluding one for the other to exist. Heterotopias function without necessarily being bound to the outer system and in this manner I would equate them to play, they contain relationships between members that do not need to relate to each other, yet it is the place of freedom and slowing down that allows them to create a bond and share. These connections cannot be bookmarked or saved, they can become theory once they are digested together with contexts of the past and present, intellectual and bodily knowledge. Body knows in ways we are unable to translate, the body is a heterotopia on its own.
C:
When a body is embodied, yet embedded in the world as a space, would you still consider the body a heterotopia on its own? I believe a body becomes what it is in and so I start carrying traces of spaces and people on my skin. To separate myself, my body from the world seems impossible. When it comes to knowledge and theory, knowledge is situated. Donna Haraway, a critical feminist philosopher, thought of the term situated knowledge.
To separate bodily and intellectual knowledge is therefore not separate as such. I do agree that my body knows more than my footnotes do, but knowledge is always embedded in the knowing person. And that knowing person will always be embedded in the world. And so, a person’s knowledge is never fully objective nor that separate from the body, as any knowing person’s body is entangled in and with the world.
Just like you and I - or any other person; place any of us in a room and I am sure we will leave the room having seen different things. Each body has different sensitivities. Each body sees differently. The same goes for both of us in our research. We have defined how we are focused on senses and institutional criticism, yet even within that space of research we feel and see different points of criticism. Returning to the workshops at Vrolijkheid I felt angry and happy at the same time. Happy to have shared such beautiful moments with the children, yet angry at structures and theory that tries to categorize people as parts of the children’s situation resonated with my own past and memory. Again; each body is different. People will read our dialogue differently as knowledge resonates differently in the movement of one body to another. And so, each time we placed our body in a space of our workshop, we also left the same space with different impressions and different interpretations. Yet in that carrying interpretations, it is also through placing our bodies in a space we start learning and carrying knowing as traces on our skin.