Researching for the essay and trying to get down out the outline this week. Find the ideas behind the subject area I’ve chosen are very exciting, but pinning them down in to a coherent discourse is a slow process.

Have been thinking about the link between the interface of surface, body and embodiment. How when walking you can feel absorbed in to that landscape.

 

 

‘As interface, the skin is obsolete. The significance of the cyber may well reside in the act of the body shedding its skin.’  Stelarc quoted in ‘Natural Born Cyborgs.’ Andy Clark

 

Reviewing and curating the weblog I came across one or two entries where I feel I haven’t been clear enough about the relevance of the content.

The 1st is around the work of choreographer Rosemary Butcher.

Butcher’s work became relevant because she bridges the line between dance and visual arts. Also she was one of the 1st UK choreographers to start using everyday movements to create works. Her work is grounded in the ordinary and banal, everyday movements… walking, running, standing,

 

‘….and the body’s physical relationship to contexts, environments and other objects.’

‘A ‘Conventional Subversive’.’ Josephine Leask: ‘Rosemary Butcher : Choreography, Collisions and Collaborations. ‘  Middlesex University Press 2005( P154)

 

With ‘Undercurrent’  the relevance was the change in the body when suspended in water.

 

‘The water and the trampoline were both what I call ‘interventions’. Their impact upon the movement was not caused by human decision, but by the nature of something else happening.’ 

 

Rosemary Butcher in ‘Rosemary Butcher: Choreography, Collisions and Collaborations.’ Middlesex University Press 2005

 

 

 Another entry I wanted to review was about the example of the traditional Japanese paper making process. The relevance was the level of embodiment involved in this process. In contrast to the level or kind of embodiment experienced using a mouse and keyboard.

Visited the DLI Museum in Durham to see the Jerwood drawing prize 2008 exhibition at last week.

Interested by the digital piece ‘ Trans Siberian Window drawing 200′ by Neville Gabie.

Partly through seeing this piece helped to push a query that has been edging in to my thoughts: that digital media has provided me with a new tool with which to question and examine physicality. And it is beginning to make me question my previous thoughts around the possible change in our understanding of our/ and need of physicality in the digital age. If I am finding digital media useful in examining aspects of physicality, it could be indicative of the fact that digital media isn’t necessarily bringing a dislocation from the physical self.

Reading ‘Digital Art’ by Christiane Paul (Pub. Thames and Hudson) raises these questions again.

Christiane Paul states:

‘Current interface standardization has led to an overall restraining mechanism for the human body, which is forced to conform to the computer and monitor – although these standard interfaces will probably radically change in the future. the tension between embodiment/ disembodiment can not be constructed as a choice of either/or but has to be understood as a reality of both/and.’

(Chapter 3: Themes in Digital Art. p.170)

Paul quotes the artist Eduard Kac :

‘The passage in to a digital culture – with its standard interfaces that requires us to  pound at a keyboard and sit behind a desk while staring at a  screen – creates a physical trauma that amplifies the psychological shock generated by ever faster cycles of  technological invention, development, and obsolescence.’

(Chapter 3: Themes in Digital Art. p.170)

http://www.ekac.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Kac

Have also been thinking about the role of our skins in social interaction, as Samuel’s is deteriorating again with the increasing pollen allergens.

And thinking about how much one is judged by the appearance of skin… how skin is linked to identity / self/ self image.

The idea that skin has an ability to help assign or affirm, our place in society (eg: in providing clues to age, health, status, race, gender.) for others when coming in to visual contact with us.

How the notion of invasion. Of the body as a state, of a fortress that is breached by infection and therefore perceived as a threat to others and society, as something devalued.

Donna Haraway in ‘Simians, Cyborgs and Women.’ (Free Association Books, London 1991)  states:

‘My thesis is that the immune system is an elaborate icon for principle  systems of  symbolic  and material ‘difference’ in late capitalism.’

(Chapter 10: ‘ The Biopolitics of postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of self in Immune system disorders’  p.204)

Western society spends much time and money promoting the idea of the necessity of our controlling our physical bodies and making them less unpredictable and therefore less threatening to a stable society.

‘Responses of disgust to the breaches of bodily control reveal the persistent power of the civilizing process.’

( p. 91. The Body in Society.’ A. Howson.)

On line…. there is freedom from the reality of the human body and it bodily betrayals.

A question is that this distancing from our bodies promotes us to be even less accepting of our physicality and lack of control.

‘’…. The idea of the cyborg offers a Utopian model that challenges dualisms and their negative consequences and raises important questions about the production of social hierarchies in relation to bodies…the cyborg troubles supposedly ‘natural hierarchies and suggests the human body can no longer be viewed as beyond social intervention and modification….. the cyborg then is more a description of social circumstances. ‘

(p. 91 The Body in Society.’ A. Howson.)

These photos are of my son’s bed and the skin he scratches off through out the night.

I was not brave enough to photograph his bedding at the worst phase of this current bout of infection.

I took these pictures in order to think about how the expectation of a bed can change from a symbol of rest and peace for the healthy to a pace of acute discomfort for many who are sick and to look at the ideas of childhood are being a time of protection provided by the ‘good parent’ and the concept of illness being a form of bodily betrayal and perceived as an enemy to society.

There fore these pictures maybe perceived as distasteful, or voyeuristic, or exploitative .  Rather than, as I intended,  a statement of my son’s painful skin condition and societies’ lack of acceptance due to expectations of what childhood should be and the criticism that this sort of chronic illness reflects some form of bodily betrayal that should be managed, controlled and hidden by a socially responsible parent.

‘Much of childhood is taken up with being encouraged to control one’s own body and learn appropriate forms of bodily conduct.’  (P.141)

‘Indeed, in recent years, sociologists have noted that childhood has become equated with the management of risk(Brownlie 2001), a preoccupation with prevention and with constant vigilance in order to forestall potential threats to children’s well being….’ (P142)

‘Moreover, the body of the child was increasingly constructed as a problem within pediatrics as shifted its concern from diseases of childhood to concern about the health and development of children as a whole…’ (143)

(Alexandra Howson , ‘The Body in Society: An introduction.’

Chapter 6 Images and Experiences of Childhood, Aging and Death.’)

My concern is that we socially in the west keep distancing ourselves from the unpredictable nature of our bodies and that this process is promoted and continued in cyber space.

There is a lack of acceptance of the body’s perceived ‘imperfections ’  in western society and an expectation that we can eradicate through management irradicate the unpredictability of our bodies.

 

 

 

Identity and expectations:

 

 

These are two terms which have been playing on my mind over the past few weeks.

 

 

Over the summer I have been trying to review possible development and direction of  ideas and work done on the MADA course over the past year and was struck by the fact that much of my work has been  becoming increasingly performance based and could be seen to be investigating in some ways the idea of image and the self.

 

There has been for me an increasing belief that my body is and should be the starting place for my practice and a greater clarity of understanding of this kind of practice in the field of performance art.

 

 

With the discovery of having thyroid disease where the medication has produced a range of  unpleasant and dangerous side effects there followed a questioning of myself, my expectations about my identity, and my practice as an artist.

 

The realization came that I have had an expectation of myself that I should create an iconography around my body and illness, develop a strategy for making artistic practice from this point.

 

 

I wondered if in some way I was subconsciously expecting that I needed to under go some sort of painful transformation to become acceptable as a ‘serious’ artist.

 

 

Is there in some way a parallel iconography to that of those of church’s female saints weeping or pierced with the stigmata attaining saint hood, who have gained an altered and higher status through suffering.

 

 

 

Had I the expectation that in order to gain acceptance as a female artist it is necessary to take up this stereotypical and familiar role, rather than questioning it.  Was I feeling that in some way to be worthy of acceptance as an artist I should have to under go some sort of physical and psychological transformation.

 

 

 

There is a question arising for me as a woman, about my expectation to portray myself in a visceral and harrowing manner, in order to achieve an intellectual standing.

 

This raises the question for me of why I may have this need for these understanding and expectations around identity and gender. And queries how to examine and question them.

skin prints

      

 

Some further skin prints…..

Skin

A side effect of the thyroid seems to be that I come up in hives easily.

 

This has meant that I can blind print on to my skin.

 

It has been good to have the summer break to adjust to the idea and implications of having thyroid disease. one thing that I had always had confidence was my body. It was strong, quick, flexible a really useful tool. It has taken adjusting my ideas to accept that I have a physical disease. A sense of security has been removed for a while.

 

I have a sense of frustration at the time lost over the summer because of this. I am very behind in the work needed for the research paper and will need to ask if an extension may be possible.

 

U2 W10

The work that I looked to as a degree student contained a lyrical content.

This maybe was reflective of the era and society that produced it.  Between or after the wars there was a need for nationalism, romanticism, reassurance and the lyrical with the aim to create a nationalist propaganda identity through drawing on the countries’ folklore and idealistic stereotypes.

A few weeks back when doing the mail art issue I was exchanging some emails with Bob Milner and discussing guillotines for paper cutting. For some reason the imagery in that exchange reminded me of the Little Red Ridding Hood story.

So I did some on line research into this folk story using the links below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_Riding_Hood

http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrPathNeedles.html

Here is a quote from the  Path of Needles page.

‘The bzou (werewolf) gives chase, and soon the girl can hear him on the path just behind her. She runs and runs until she reaches a river that’s swift and deep. Some laundresses work on the river bank. “Please help me cross,” she says to them. They spread a sheet over the water, holding tightly to its ends. She crosses the bridge of cloth and soon she’s safe on the other side.

Now the bzou reaches the river, and he bids the women help him cross. They spread a sheet over the water — but as soon as he is halfway across, the laundresses let go. The bzou falls into the water and drowns.

The werewolf is finally destroyed not by a passing woodsman or hunter, but by a group of women engaged in traditional women’s labor. Verdier comments: “This double role held by the laundresses — on the one hand allowing the girl to pass, thereby rescuing her, on the other drowning the wolf, killing him — is consistent with their role in the social reality of village life. In fact the job of assisting in ‘passages,’ of helping in childbirth and helping people to die, is held-at least in the Châtillonnais-by one and the same person, an aged woman, a woman who can at the same time handle the swaddling and the shroud, who washes infants as she washes the dead….If the laundresses bring about the death of the wolf, they bring about the [re-]birth of the girl.” ‘

My attention was caught by the laundresses role and symbolism. It tied in with the work of artist Alison Watt who I came across on a search round the National Gallery web site when researching artists who had been of interest when on my degree course. While I was at Chelsea on my Foundation course one of our tutors was artist in residence and I remember visiting the studio  there.

I was interested in Alison Watt’s use of fabric and interest in it

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/alisonwatt/film/phantom/default.htm

In ‘Fabric and Flesh’ podcast Watt says

‘the body becomes a series of lines and creases and folds and becomes abstracted.’

This idea began to link to the idea of the traditional role of women outlined in the original Little Red Riding Hood story and my thoughts around identity and movement.

I have been looking for smaller movements than those made in the dance studio and that tie in with an identity.

I spend much time washing and ironing  because of my son’s skin condition so thought to try to draw together some of these references in this small sequence.

This is a still from the above slide show. I am using slide show as I am having resolution problems when saving video files and need to look to find some solutions to this. I have brought a cheap 2nd hand digital video camera in the hope that the files will provide better resolution videos to work with.

u1 w12

Began to work on a small video of photographic stills  over the weekend.

Reading’ The Body In Society’ Alexandra Howson.2004. Polity.

Howson looks at the shift of view point by sociologists towards the human body from the Marxism understanding of the body as a unit of work to current sociological  understanding which describes the human body as being ‘central to the establishment and maintenance of social life. And ‘the body as a site of knowledge, consciousness and experience.’

 Monday’s chat included further discussion of the essay and outlines tasks for the next four weeks. 

Came across this site while internet searching skin.

http://www.ineradicablestain.com/skin.html

u1 w11

sketch book trial 3

 In Monday’s chat there was quite a lot of discussion around year one meeting and really the group gelling. I wanted to look at the idea of threads and skin and identity and on-line communities. So to make some sort physical of integration I started to use  print outs of our achieved chat sessions and of imgaes I was working on.  I wanted to think about skin, identity, groups, threads of communication etc. How our identies change and grow through this process.  Stuff we are familiar with but  is maybe less understood by us as we lack our usual physical land marks in this process of body language, touch, sensory input etc.

I thought the leg piece worked best when wet and still on my leg. But it did peel off nicely, like shedding skin.

It has raised many questions about links with skin and our identity.

 Spent some time on athens trying to access some psychology papers linking skin, neurology and identity. They are out there but couldn’t currently access them. Will try to track them by alternative routes.