Body – Object – Interweaving with the world

Contemporary Art in the ‘Developed’ World

I went to a fascinating talk today by Sylvain Levy about the dsl collection. Although speaking as a collector some of the points he raised were really thought provoking from my perspective as an artist working in the West.
At one point we were asked to put up our hands if we were still shocked by contemporary art, out of a room of about 70 (mostly MA students at Sotheby’s) only four raised their hands. He said that it was partly this apathy in the European art world that led him and his wife to focus on the contemporary art from China. In China, as with most other developing/war torn countries the art can often be far more exciting and engaging. There’s a fury a purposefulness in the making of work at these times. Through struggle you’re fundamental beliefs are bought into question and you are forced to confront these and renegotiate a sense of self in relation to a dramatically shifting environment. With the young artists in China and other parts of Asia this rapid change of environment seems to draw out brilliance…(I’m paraphrasing what he said as I understood it).
This caused quite a stir in me, challenging what it means to be an artist here in London, a so called developed country. Art is an amazing vehicle for transformation, it can be arresting, challenging and eye opening. Not every war/deep struggle in history produces great art but in some cases… where I think there is a strong desire to challenge and transform the struggle to something better great movements are formed…What are the points of rebellion for artists in the West today? What is the challenge? the drive? the revolution? the questions? the vision?

Drawing- the shift from analysis to empathy

The process of drawing is fascinating.

It’s all about learning to change how we see. It can help shift the way of experiencing the world from something analytical to something more empathetic, and it’s that latter viewpoint that helps us connect with our surroundings and transform our interactions with the world.

For a while I’ve been thinking about how valuable this shift could be to the development of our social, economical and ecological systems. If we could be more connected, more empathetic in our interactions both with each other and our surroundings perhaps it could help shift how we approach our lives in a really significant way. We might start caring more about how our actions and decisions affect others.

When teaching life drawing one of the things that I often notice is how quickly the students switch from seeing the model as another human to seeing them as an object. It’s a subtle difference but has a really dramatic affect on the way they approach the drawing. This subtle switch happens frequently throughout our day, not just in the drawing class…crammed inside a stuffy train in rush hour all the people around you cease being seen as people and become inanimate obstacles, personal space exists only in your head and we often retreat into our own world shutting off from the world around us.

I want to explore this shift from the analytic view to the empathetic, encouraging students to connect with the model from inside out.

In Butoh the dancer practices transforming imagery into feelings and the body moves in response, it is important that the movement is felt not just thought. In dance touch becomes a primary sense, the whole body an instrument for expression. We live in an ocular-centric culture and in drawing this can pose a problem. Sight presents the world as a collection of separate objects existing in space, it is through touch that we meet and connect with these objects and the boundaries separating one from another become less distinguishable. In the Life drawing class engaging our sense of touch often helps shift the emphasis of the drawing from one of onlooker to ‘felt’ experience.

I was recently asked to run a workshop at The Art Academy in London on drawing movement, and thought it could be an interesting opportunity to explore this further.

I have asked Florencia Gueberof (Butoh dancer) to run the workshop with me. The initial plan is that Florencia will engage the students in a Butoh workshop giving them first had experience of what it feels like to move, to feel their bodies respond to impulses etc. This session will be followed by a drawing session with Florencia performing for them. The idea is that through the dance workshop the students ‘activate’ their awareness of touch, becoming aware of the impulses that move them. I want to see if this same bodily awareness could transform the way in which the students draw. Does it make it easier to switch the way of looking? Are the marks created out of a felt response and experience? How does the connection with our sense of touch relate to our ability to empathise?

Butoh Dance

‘Imagine there’s a thread travelling up through the centre of your head, it’s drawing a massive circle on the ceiling as you move. Become aware of the space above you and around you, that awareness is like a big all-seeing eye…now move backwards around the room keeping the same pace, the thread extends from your back and you can now see everything above and behind you…’

Last week I attended my first ever Butoh dance class and this was the warm up…it got a lot lot weirder, but was an incredibly interesting experience.

I know very little about this dance form but had met the teacher a while back and was utterly blown away with her mesmerising performances. When performing it’s like she is a puppet, being moved and transformed by some other force. At the time I had been working on my series of the mountain paintings and her performance really struck a chord with the paintings (delicate puppet mountains moved, transformed and held by forces in the intense black surroundings).

I joined the class to find out more about the dance form and was particularly interested in finding out how Butoh dancers explore the relationship of the body to it’s environment. I’m planning on going every week so with any luck my experience and understanding of this fascinating dance form will grow and with it my understanding of their relationship of body-environment.

In Butoh there is a close link between the body and it’s surroundings, they are said to be intimately connected. The body doesn’t move on impulse but is moved by an impulse and for this to work the dancer needs to become acutely aware of their environment and ‘await’ an impulse. Here the body hangs like an empty vessel, without intention.

‘The empty body does not move intentionally. It is rather moved by something. The body is a blank canvas subject to infinite transformations. The body is a black charcoal absorbing the light. “What is expressed should not be something that a dancer tries to display. A dancer should concentrate on absorbing.” ( Nario Gohda from Yukio Waguri’s site: http://www.otsukimi.net/koz/e_yw_antho.html )

see http://www.florenciaguerberof.com/butoh_research/Butoh_Research_Project.html

Rather than visualising concepts or feelings, in Butoh, the dancer becomes the feeling of that thing from the inside out. This was an interesting thing to try and grasp, when it happens in a dancer you fully believe and feel their moving body, without it happening it’s like there’s some sort of disconnection, no matter how beautiful the movement it doesn’t ‘move’ you. Similarly when moving, when I’m consciously trying to ‘feel’ a movement it always feels forced, but when it’s actually ‘felt’ the movement follows naturally.

‘…landscapes and bodies … emerge through their interactions with each other, rather than being free floating or objective givens,…(the body) is emergent through it’s interweavings with the world,’ Damario 1999,

(Non-Representational Approaches to Body-Landscape Relations, Macpherson)

This blog is a scrapbook for my research and experiments exploring the relationship of the body to the environment and landscape.

I have become fascinated in how we interact with our environment.

From the simplest of interactions with our surroundings to our impact on the earth’s climate, we both affect and are affected by our environment. At times we feel deeply connected to things, at others painfully alone. Certain places evoke a sense of belonging other places make us anxious and claustrophobic. What evokes these feelings? How does our relationship to our surroundings shape how we experience the world? How has our evolution been shaped by the environment and how is it continuing to shape us? How important is an awareness of this relationship today?