Project 1: Establishing format, research methods, and a theoretical framework
The main ideas will be shared in the exercises and projects, with the following outcome in mind:
- To identify tools that will help me to explore and communicate my own ideas and responses,
- To develop my confidence in building an argument, or establishing a position that is informed by research and critical thinking.
- All these should contribute to the final Contextual study I will present at the end of the course.
Exercise 1.1: Planning
It would seem that a Contextual Study would be my choice to present my findings. When looking at the suggestion in the Study Guide, as highlighted below, it becomes clear that I am comfortable with finding kinships between my creative making and written work.
In your learning log or blog, write down your thoughts so far on:
● how you’ll link your written and creative work
● what your final written format will be
● any additional display format to supplement your final format (optional).
Briefly explain the rationale behind your choices in your learning log
I think the material I am working with asks for video or documentation, which is time-based, and by putting together a video presentation, I could visually share with viewers my process as well as thoughts whilst making. It will also be a form of documentation of planning, new learning, and explorations that followed in the creative making.
Exercise 1.2: Making Connections
I have learned from Bennett to embrace ‘vital materialism’, thus by seeing humans and non-humans alike, see all as material configurations of the same stuff, and not separate kinds of being, which makes us susceptible to ranking, but as different collections of that same stuff. She argues (2010, 122) that connections (kinship with others in the world) will lead to another concept of belonging when she writes: “I believe that encounters with lively matter can chasten my fantasies of human mastery, highlight the common materiality of all that is, expose a wider distribution of agency, and reshape the self and its interests.’ By looking at vibrant materiality I see a shared identity that is not just symbolic, but substantive. I hope that this would lead to what I would hope to create, namely participatory research with the more than human. From Donna Haraway I have learned that kin making is about building relationships with beings that co-habit my (our) world. I have experienced that through loss, death, and grief something of an ongoing ‘becoming with’. I would think that in my practice, I not only aspire to form new bonds with human and non human others, I hope to seek connections between my work and viewers who will engage with my work. I read the following wise words by Pema Chodron: “From compassion springs action, and true compassion emerges in, “realizing our kinship with all beings.”
I like the idea of being with companion species as my material and using the Latin work, ‘cum panis’, (with bread). In When Species Meet, Haraway writes about the grief she dealt with when her father died. (p 178). ” I wanted to know how grief reworks truth to tell another truth.” Soon after my son’s death I started a daily drawing practice by drawing feathers I would collect on walks. I shared this on my IG post from 20 January 2023, almost daily. I thought about mushrooms as a metaphor for the ongoing cycle of life, which is about death and renewal, these feathers held an ephemerality of their presence very much as mushroom spores, and thoughts of care, nurture, loss, and erasure became my idea of what Haraway calls her SF or String Figure – many possibilities or ongoingness were part of the materiality in my making. Emotionally I became a survivor of the most horrible personal disruption, that of self-death, and had to find ways into making again – my objects became companions as we kept company in my studio over the next months. Below is the first feather, it was drawn on 20 January 2023.
I wonder about making kin as a way to document my daily drawings and objects I create Soon afterward I read Hope, a poem by Emily Dickinson, and discovered the work of Kate MccGwire, who repurpose found feathers into 3d sculptures. I looked at the work of R Serra, firstly the verb list as a way to keep making and then how he used video and film as the softness of a feather became something I instinctively knew is kinetic – its falls from the bird during molting, this process cannot be captured, but it happens. Velour paper as being light seemed like a good material to work with for a text piece, inspired by R Serra. This way of working generated more explorations in my making.
I would like to think that my concerns are also about environmental change and the uneven ways that the consequences of living in this changing world are felt and experienced by humans and non-humans. I wonder about how to live differently if these concerns, which should be non-binary can be put into action in my own practice. I am aware that soil improvement is becoming part of my thinking, as a healthy ecosystem is needed for mushrooms to grow outside. Words that stay with me, are connection, interdependency, belonging, entanglement, and reciprocity. I value the fact that empathy and self-awareness became important in my practice. A big question is about learning, knowledge, and knowing – who is supposed (or to be understood) ‘to know’?
In an article called ‘watching whales watching us’, I read of the gray whales of Baja
initiating a connection with humans, who are receptive and responsive. Whale scientists note
that this is relatively new behavior – the whales seem to have learned that people in that part
of the Pacific no longer intend to harm them. A mother gray approaches the whale-watching
boat and checks out the passengers, turns away briefly and returns with her newborn calf who
raises its head above water and looks the author in the eye. ‘At precisely the time (calving)
when you’d expect them to be most defensive, they’re incredibly social’, says Toni Frohoff,
a marine mammal behavioralist. ‘They’ll come right up to boats, let people touch their faces,
give them massages, rub their mouths and tongues’ (Seibert 2009, 2). To our whale-watching
receptivity, whales respond with an overt act of connecting. The connection here is not just
in the act but in the parity, the mutuality, the reciprocity between the species. As Seibert
(2009, 3) writes, ‘I’d never felt so beheld in my life’.
What is this encounter but a moment of recognized kinship?
A perspective to consider is that we humans are the visitors – a diversion; therefore they anticipate and respond positively to our presence. When a whale “presents” her calf, she is not showing the calf to us but showing us to the calf. This theory does not depend on anthropomorphic interpretations involving emotion and forgiveness. Rather, it interprets the behavior from the whales’ point of view.
Reading Point
Read the section ‘Realism and Real World Research’ from Robson, C. (2011) Real
World Research (3rd edition). I could not open the link in the study guide, but managed to I find the Fourth Edition on the SCRIBD app (reading section in Chapter 2, page 30)
Notes on the reading:
The author asks one to look at the approach of social research with a focus on post-positivism and constructionism. He shows an increasing popularity of a strategy that combines quantitative and qualitative aspects and also suggests that both pragmatist and realist approaches have relevance to real-world research. I agree that a pragmatic approach is a middle ground between philosophical dogmatism and skepticism. and that it recognizes the existence and importance of the natural world, as well as the influence of human experience, or the inner world. It speaks specifically to me for this part of the course as it is about my own inquiry which is about observations I make in my daily practice about the natural environment I choose to focus on. Even if I call them truths, I acknowledge these as provisional and not unquestionable facts.
I am more sensitized to the idea that the ‘real world’ is complex (very?) as well as stratified into different layers – we have individual, group, institutional and societal levels. Looking at a Realist view of doing research it is important to note that it almost always takes place in a non-laboratory situation; and an open system that cannot be sealed or protected from external influences, and is seldom replicated. I learn the importance of the explorative “why” question, thinking about explaining what is going on and how I might explain it should always be on the agenda.
Ideas developing from this reading
I am thinking in terms of care, empathy and feminism and wonder how I can facilitate action – change or make improvements. I remember reading in Entangled Life that the author, Merlin Sheldrake had the experience of doing field research with different researchers, from different fields of interest, and they learned from each other’s different approaches and worked on a participatory approach. If I am not mistaken, this is also what happened with the work of Anna Tsing, where knowledge was shared between environmentalists and indigenous people. Here I was aware of a certain awkwardness that could show unequal and unstable qualities, which I would see as an opportunity for creativity. In her work as well as that of Merlin Sheldrake I understood a participatory approach moving towards the more than human. I am interested in cooperation and knowledge that could happen in this space and which could be experienced in my making as a co-creation or co-production as well as to show entanglements between the participants, which include the ‘other’, non-human. I think my questions are about how I care for and engage with mushrooms as a material by trying to grow them, exploring how I could create an environment for them to live and grow, and using/exploring spore prints. Work would be made by cultivating mushrooms and or deconstructing an artwork, or constructing new work by growing mushrooms onto a work. I also see potential in the fact that making art with mushrooms could become a way to motivate other people to start growing mushrooms as food, but also an opportunity to think about caring for the soil and the need to survive in the world through deeper personal connections.
I am wondering if I could look into something called ‘eco feminism’ or eco-art. Here Haraway comes to mind immediately.
Exercise 1.3: Introducing research methods
I would like to think that I have started to use reflective practice in my explorations. I think Anthropology and biographical research will be developing as I start with my site-specific work in my garden. Working with personal emotions of grief and loss asks that semiotics will come into the work – as signs and symbols will be discussed in the making of feather work and how meaning is assigned to growing mushrooms.
How will my theoretical framework look?
I am comfortable with the theory of Posthumanism as I view it as an umbrella term for different types of movements which also included Posthumanism and New Materialism. Donna Haraway is providing deeper insight into kinships between nature (animals and other non-human beings),(machines _ I will not look into this part), and humans as we produce more knowledge. My previous learning/reading on Bennet will also be used. I am happy with the rejection of anthropocentric thinking (namely that humans are the apex of consciousness and life) and would like to consider the importance of entanglement, relationships, and processes. I started reading Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene , and our current ecological crisis is discussed. it is my understanding that she brings art into this entanglement of biology and activism, ( “art science worldings” )The fact that science and creativity are seen as one in the same web of possibility and awe, can provide the artist with opportunities to explore and engage with. In my practice i think making kin is to be open and vulnerable. Much of my work is informed by living on a farm in the South Western part of South Africa.
I connect regularly with a group of OCA students via WA and Zoom and we share daily practices and the effect is influencing each other’s work and sometimes reacting upon each other’s work by making a work as a response.
I was also influenced by the work of Anna Tsing around collaboration and working together with the more-than-human. I recently broke my leg and ankle and was reminded of where Tsing wrote about spraining her ankle and enlisting the assistance of a stick to help her walk – to me this is a form of collaboration.
Harraway asks: “To whom are we responsible” ( Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (page 24)
Quotes I consider within my work:
“We need stories (and theories) that are just big enough to gather up the complexities
and keep the edges open and greedy for surprising new and old connections.”
Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble
Quote that I have taken from previous learning to continue this journey.
“Knowing is a direct material engagement, a practice of intra-acting with the world as
part of the world in its dynamic material configuring, its ongoing articulation…Ethics is
about mattering, about taking account of the entangled materializations of which we
are a part, including new configurations, new configurations, new possibilities- even the
smallest cuts matter.”
Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway
But science and technology are first imagined, before they are performed. In Albert Einstein’s words: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world” (Viereck, 1929: 117).