I am busy with my draft and will also use the blog to reflect on my progress in order to refine the research question (s) and developing longer pieces of text that articulate and support my position – the idea to get to a critical investigation. I am building up my bibliography and keeping in mind academic writing asks for Harvard referencing – citations and reference to avoid plagiarism and demonstrate the breadth of my research.
Consider how theories around interconnectedness can open new ideas for making in a contemporary art practice
“Consider the role of artistic expression in evoking emotional responses and highlighting the interconnectedness, fragility, and vulnerability of nature and humanity in a contemporary art practice?”
My making in Advanced Practice part of this course helped me contemplate research questions that explore the links between art, emotional connections, and the fragility of nature and humanity. Here’s a reflection on development of my research question that encompasses these ideas:
These questions allow me to delve into various aspects of my interests. I explore different art forms, mediums, and techniques and allow myself flexibility with different applied methodologies. In terms of my making and the theories I consider, which are Posthumanism and Feminism – I find my research is about trying to find ‘a way back into‘ nature, connectedness, and contemplate death/decay as part of a beautiful creative life cycle. I could call my research a gathering of knowledge. Le Guin opened my eyes to how a single story can make an incomplete stereotype. Using the words ‘to find a way back into‘ sits with me as the visceral weaving process that my work process has started to follow through making and as a way of researching ideas around inter-connectedness. It reminds me of my awkwardness/clumsiness around trying to weave a bird’s nest, but a type of trust was placed in this process that offered me so much to learn and understand about the process of connecting and making with the non-human. I must remain open to new insights and adapt my approach when necessary. I ask myself if I have allowed nature to be my teacher. Have I started looking at feathers and mushrooms as subjects rather than objects? How, and if so, did mushrooms and birds become my teacher?
(On a personal level, I was even more convinced of this when my eldest son replied to my request that he critique my work and shared a video, His reaction was to share that he thought my work links to ideas and making of Neri Oxman and her research team. (Oxman, 2022) Oxman is an architect, scientist, engineer, and inventor, who has led the creation of scientific research and technologies with an emphasis on integrative design across scales and disciplines.I learnt that she coined the term Material Ecology to describe her research area.)
My tutor suggested additional research material I could benefit from to develop my position in terms of method, which is to explore Phenomenology. Here the study of lived experience may be beneficial. I will consider Feminist Phenomenology, which explores the female lived experience. I like the idea of describing a lived experience in my work. Still, I would not want to view this as neutral and, therefore, can associate it with the distinctive voice of Feminist Phenomenology and the ideas of Ubuntu. (See blog on Glossary for more) I thought about maternal and carer bodies and looked at how Ubuntu became a way of social belonging. Ubuntu touches on the ontological, as it talks about the nature of human beings. It is ethical when discussing a social bond and a moral obligation as human beings who must live together. I am working with non-human matter; could I say it is a space where sensing and perception come into play, where I explore a concept of the hybrid body through accepting the blurring of the lines between traditional human experience and the wider world/ non-human matter? The idea is to consider what kind of body experiences are in my work. I can consider their impact on viewers’ emotions, like investigating how art can convey messages of environmental conservation, social issues, or personal experiences, emphasizing our interconnected world’s fragile and vulnerable nature. A feather installation at a local exhibition gave me good insight in my making practice.

I also want to consider ideas around bio-art as I understand it is a hybrid artist-scientific practice that explores boundaries between the living and non-living. It has a playful, critical and creative artistic response to the presence and development of biotechnologies and techniques in contemporary scientific and cultural discourses. Here, I have a few artists whose work and methods can be discussed.
I have created a Glossary list as a separate blog to be added to the final Contextual Study. It is currently available at: https://karenstanderart.co.za/glossary/
PROJECT 1: REFINING YOUR CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE
I will share the current structure and text as I am building onto the work. I like to visual the work as suggested in the course material, by cutting text up. My image below, fig. 2, refers to this idea.

Below I show how I gathered and patched together and seek for a structure that would translate into the first draft. I would like to contemplate the source text of M Kwon, ‘One place after another: Notes on Site Specitfity, October 1997. I am intrigued by the fact that Kwon never states her research question.
Introducing entangled thinking with my body of work
(Background and introduction)
I want to introduce my writing with the perspective that human life is entangled in many relationships, including non-human ones. My most significant learning experience during my making for this course was exploring the non-human as a subject and material. The story of this making begins with my inspiration and awe of the natural world whilst simultaneously being reminded of my insignificance. For the sake of my writing, non-human ones include other creatures (plants and animals) and the things (objects) of the world. I will explain this by exploring connectedness and looking at contemporary feminist theory and themes of the posthumanist with a non-anthropocentric ontology and ethics that decenters the human. This perspective sees the human entangled in multiple relationships with human and non-human others and refuses human exceptionalism. I found that my making process refers to different sites. or places, which is about that relationship.
(own comments: contextual my topic with an emblematic example _ Kwon examines two key early artists….
Finding my way into by looking at Feminist Phenomenology and Post-humanist theories: different methodologies used and contemplated.
It seems as a methodology; Feminist Phenomenology is unpicking the earlier writing of key Phenomenologists and questioning their assumption that the world was experienced as a male body. So perhaps, from my view, my learning is less explicitly a critique and more about what kind of body experiences the world. I will also consider if this is about my body as a hybrid body: a body working with non-human matter. Haraway refers to human and nonhuman bodies as ‘transspecies assemblages’ when she explains the actants that operate at the level of function in and on our bodies.
From Bellacasa (Matters of Care p 87), I took an ontology grounded in relationality and considered that interdependence needs to acknowledge heterogeneity. She reminds us that where there is a relation, there has to be care. I will apply a structure around the themes of connectedness to discuss other artists who also work with this theme and use theorists such as Dona Haraway, Puig de la Bellacasa and Bennet to compare these ideas. Donna Haraway emphasises the intertwining of the natural and cultural. She goes as far as to discuss the concept of “nature cultures”, organic and inorganic, material and immaterial, and co-constitutive relations between humans and nonhumans (companion species). Haraway refers to human and nonhuman bodies as ‘transspecies assemblages’ when she explains the actants that operate at the level of function in and on our bodies.
Symbiotic influences on my practice: Learning from others about connectedness
Haraway uses the idea of ‘storying otherwise’: her stories give us a vision to cultivate the art of living on this damaged planet.
“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it
matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters
what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what
descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters
what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”
—Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble
Through making, I have learned much about myself and realised that my projects shown as separate ‘para’-sites are stories about who I am and sharing a material practice. I have sad and good stories; it is part of a basket of many stories that formed me. I am not attempting to share all, but I hope the ones I share deal with my research question. I remember words that stuck with me when reading Braiding Sweetgrass: I am the woman with the basket, and how I fill it is a question that matters. (p 177)
I have learned from Haraway to consider my making as a way to blur science and fiction, and this sits well with my making in my different para-sites, where I hope my making will also be seen as thinking through and gathering ideas within the relationships I have discovered in work with, feathers, fungi, soil, rocks, clay, etc. I hope to share them as visual documentation of found objects and non-human materials, which tell and explore stories of connectedness, care, impermanence, presence/ absence, life and decay/death. I took a moment to consider Haroway’s idea that we have never been human. She considers transspecies assemblages. To me, this suggests that the concept of “human” is not a fixed or stable category but rather a complex and evolving assemblage of elements, including biological, technological, cultural, and ecological factors. This pertains to the fact that we are made up of different bodies of organisms that came together. Some of these are pathogenic microorganisms. One can think of fungal infections in various body areas, or Candida, which can cause candidiasis. The organisms, bacteria, viruses and fungi are necessary for our bodies to perform their essential functions and to survive. I want to consider future collaborative projects involving artists, scientists, and technologists that can explore the practical implications of transspecies assemblages. These interdisciplinary collaborations can result in artworks that blur disciplinary boundaries. This could encourage viewers to reconsider their own identities in light of the diverse and interconnected elements that shape what it means to be “human.
Bellacasa writes about matters of care as an assembling of neglected things. I took note of her idea when she later writes: “I want to discuss ways in which care can count for engagement with “things” from the perspective of critical interventions in technoscience.” (Matters of Care: p 29) She reminds us of these assemblages, which are knots of social and political interests – socially constructed or embodied. Bellacasa discusses Latour’s ideas to turn matters of fact into matters of care (MoC) in the rest of this chapter.
I have found many artists who work with natural materials and phenomena and will share some of these when I look at materials used how contemporary artists explore these in their work.
Contemplating real life versus ideal life: Ubuntu and Matters of Care as influence in my making practice
I learned that mutual dependence is the ethic of Ubuntu, and in its most robust formulation, it asserts that my very being derives from yours and yours from all of ours. During the transition from a violent colonial apartheid to democracy, Archbishop Desmond Tutu reminded South Africans (and the world) about the ancient African way of life and philosophy of Ubuntu. He described Ubuntu as the essence of being human. It speaks of how one person’s humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up in that of another. ‘I am human because I belong’. In this way, Ubuntu speaks about wholeness; it talks about compassion. Applying Ubuntu gives people resilience. I read the shift from hierarchical to relational to the day’s politics in this. My insight around Ubuntu is that it is a philosophy (African Humanism?) Aristotle insisted on the virtuous function of the human being within the bigger organism (polis), but these relations were hierarchical, as not all human beings contributed evenly in terms of their virtuousness and functions within a social order. As a political philosophy, Ubuntu recognises our relationship with and obligations towards others.
I need to ask if the non-human in the current Ubuntu philosophy is not based on human benefits (being of use to me), thus not acknowledging interdependency as essential: using it as part of a theoretical framework became uncomfortable after considering and comparing it to the ideas of Bellacasa about matters of care. I am open to a thought of Harraway:’ It matters what stories tell stories’, and I take learning from Bellacasa when she writes, “A posthumanist rehabilitation of things needs to remember the wider constituency that this word refers to..” (Matters of Care: p 60). In pre-colonial concepts of ubuntu, human and environmental exploitation issues are tied in a more holistic worldview, where humans and nature have intrinsic value. Has the change come through the pain caused by Apartheid and the political consequences of it? I plan to discuss this with a friend who is from academia (Prof in Politics) later in September 2023.
I am an African.
I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the
deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face
of our native land.
I do like the idea of meandering and would, therefore, for now, share an extract from a speech by a former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, given on 8 May 1996 and taken up in a book, Africa – The time has come.
My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our
sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders,
lashed by startling lightning, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope.
The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the citizens of
the veld.
The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and
the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the
foolish deeds of the theatre of our day.
At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to
the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the
pestilential mosquito.
A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land thus defined, I know that
none dare challenge me when I say –
I am an African!
I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful
Cape – they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who
were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as
a people, perished in the result……..
Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live,
fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel
occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to be inhuman again. …….
I am an African.
I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa. The pain of the violent conflict that
the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is
a pain I also bear.
The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a blight that we share……..
President THABO MBEKI
Conclusion
I revisit ideas I would like to think with, and Puig de la Bellacasa reminds me that I cannot leave matters of care out of this experience. Bellacasa (2017) argues about care and Feminist ethics: “Feminist ethics of care argue that to value care is to recognize the inevitable interdependency essential to the existence of reliant and vulnerable beings. Interdependency is not a contract nor a moral ideal—it is a condition. Care is therefore co-comitant to the continuation of life for many living beings in more than human entanglements—not forced upon them by moral order, and not necessarily a rewarding obligation.”
She further argues that nonhuman others are not there to serve us but that they are there to live with. This is where the idea of interdependency and interconnectedness becomes an ontology for this writing. Later (p 74) she asks about caring politics in the practices of knowing in more than human relations: “Can we think of our transformation of matters of fact into matters of care as the doing of carers of a specific kind?” I think of my own involvement with making with non-humans as an embodied knowing. Specific attachments have grown from my making objects where mushrooms could grow out of of these objects – I have a routine of care in this daily art making (my ordinary living) I take note of what is happening, adjust plans of care, read and about concerns I have (mycologists on social media websites) and take photos to document my process to taking care. The experience is tactile, as I touch the objects, look at them, spray the water and cover them till the next interaction, which is at least 2 times a day. Before taking these images below, I moved the box into the sun in the late morning, outside on the verandah, as it is still cold and the maximum temperature outside is not more than 13′. I feel the box should be out rather than inside our home as it is too hard for the mycelium to grow in the cold temperatures. I take extra care to keep the box moist outside in the sun. Later today, I will bring it inside the house. I discovered contamination on the smaller vessel, but I hope it will survive this onslaught. This co-collaboration with fungi taught me that care is relational – ontological- about becoming and thinking with my material.



I was considering care and asked myself if I should abandon (kill) an artwork where something like touching it and, thus, possibly contaminating it with microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi)occurred. I am also contemplating the idea that I spend a lot of time trying to cultivate mushrooms, and less on sculpting with them. Does this contamination not offer a new transformation of the work? I recently was directed to bracketed mushrooms in a tree and learned that this fungus will eventually ‘kill’ the tree. On closer inspection of the tree, I could see that the tree was dying, and the bark was crumbling, mainly from the fungi that had almost taken over this tree. Interestingly, the other trees in this open space, seemingly of the same species, a type of Acer, are acceptable and have new leaves (growth). They all have a lot of lichen on their bark. (fig. 6-8) I have since removed the fungi from the tree and consider my use of the material as a form of transformation of this materiality. I have learned that Bracket or Conks can make a good paper. At the same time, I need to ask if is it ethical to intervene for the sake of producing a more interesting form. Shall I not just consider this as another site – an observation site to document what happens over time.



My way of analysis is to make connections between my studio work and ideas and writing around connectedness. I can now apply a structure around the themes of connectedness to discuss other artists who also work with this theme and use theorists such as Dona Haraway, Puig de la Bellacasa and Bennet to compare these ideas. I must remain open to new insights and adapt my approach when necessary. I later came back to this part of my writing, because in our tutorial my tutor and I discussed if my focus should be more expansive, than a ‘thinking with’, towards a ‘doing or being with’. Here I could then consider the work of Julie, Mehretu and the interest in the space in between – that place of ‘not knowing’. I can aslo research more about her ideas around scale as my tutor suggested in our tutorial.
(I am trying to find and use the film by Fabrizio Terranova called Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival (2016) and wrote to the producer to ask permission to use stills from it in my contextual study. I have read that this filmmaker took Haraway’s imperative to heart. Both subtle and explicit filmic techniques mimic, comment on, and evoke the rhythms that sustain Haraway as a thinker, a storyteller, and a human being. In experimenting with different kinds of storytelling—bending the genre of documentary by fusing the intimate everyday with the playfully surreal—Terranova brings one of the most evocative social theorists to life and demonstrates the supple, transformative nature of storytelling itself.
By now I realise my reflections on my pracitce are strong and there are so many research routes I can take. A form of makking exercise was also suggested which I think is important to reflect on in terms of to fix on my research question and methodology: I need to keep asking of my research questions, such as, ‘what am I doing, and ‘why am I doing it’ and ‘how am I doing it’. I have already stared to think if some of the ideas would be shifting away, namely ideas around Ubuntu and the work of Ingold. I am more aware of process in my everyday making and how I am exploring how to work with different materials.
The question for me became what I want to fill my basket with for this research about how theories around interconnectedness can open new ideas for making in contemporary practice. I want to consider my basket at this stage and hope this gives structure to my envisioned first full draft:
- Work I made around thoughts and ideas around the cycle of life in fungi in particular and how we as humans can learn from symbiotic relationships and consider this transient aspect;
- The principles and theories of Ubuntu could be applied and compared to support my position when I consider ways of social connection as less ego (individuality) and more the effect of participatory and generosity that benefits all.
- I learned by observing nature that my work could evolve into other thoughts around connectedness with nature and non-human and thinking about ‘mycohesion ‘ with the other as words and ideas came together;
- This opened ideas around phenomenology, in particular how my body experiences the world and my attempts and collaborating with the non-human;
- Dealing with human experience of loss, death through collaboration with human and non-human, made me consider embracing impermanence and decay;
- I would say that, in a way, I turn the work back onto myself – that of work, taking care, and motherhood.
- This lead to a need to work with natural materials and consider weaving, knots and 3d structures or installations that could find a place outside in nature and not necessarily hanging on a wall.
Below is a sketchbook drawing of ideas that flow from observing a weaver building his nest – the bird fetches, carries, weaves, interweaves, knots, and constructs from various materials such as twigs, grass, leaves, feathers, and even mud, hair, or spider silk, depending on the bird species. I see my different ‘para- sites as showing how I work, make and think.

Ideas aroud a container in general, became thoughts or synonyms with my making. To me my making is a container about my ideas and questions. Le Guin describes a container as ‘a thing that holds something else’ (Le Guin, 1986:28) – I agree we (I) need something to hold something else – my writing holds my thoughts. I have connected her ideas around a container as my writing holding my thoughts. Did my reading become a method for me to understand how we engage with nature and how my creative expression is a container.
Caring for soil
Belacassa reminds us that soil is created through a combination of geological processes’ long, slow time. Here, one must consider how breaking down rock takes thousands of years. This can be described as ‘deep time’, so different from shorter ecological cycles by which organisms, plants and humans grow goot or decompose materials that also contribute to renewing the topsoil.
Bellacasa describes how she was involved in learning about permaculture: “I read permaculture as a timely intervention at the heart of the contemporary awareness that we live in a nature cultural world.” (2017:127) and then later (2017:129): “Permaculture invites us to think with the “edges”—of lands and systems, where the encounters are both challenging and diversifying beyond the expected and manageable. So there we go. Embedded in the interdependency of all forms of life—humans and their technologies, animals, plants, microorganisms, elemental resources such as air and water, as well as the soil we feed on—permaculture ethics is an attempt to decenter human ethical subjectivity by not considering humans as masters or even as protectors of but as participants in the web of Earth’s living beings.” I am inspired to consider an onsite installation to use permaculture principles and use mushrooms to invigorate a part of our garden. I want to use this site for work I will do during SYP and an exhibition on site.
Haraway adds to my ideas when she points out that with materials such as compost, the heaps often involve non-organic materials, such as plastics and metals. She draws attention to the connections between things in this dense entanglement of objects (Haraway, 2016). Her compost metaphor highlights the relationship between life, decay and death. Jane Bennett’s concept of ‘thing-power‘, similarly draws attention to the vitality and vibrancy of assemblages of humans and nonhumans, both organic and non-organic (Bennett, 2009;Bennett, 2004). I like to look at care as a gathering of things – that space were on ‘holds together’ the things of concern.
Embracing a Hybrid Body Perspective (how I signpost to the reader, what you can expect)
Focussing on artist, I need to acknowledge a huge field of artist, but I have chosen the following as I see their approaches as gathering knowledge
I came upon words written by American artist, Dorothea Tanning ( Birthday, 1986) where in the opening page she tells us that “the beginning is an impossible place.” (https://artherstory.net/the-life-and-art-of-dorothea-tanning/). Did she remind us of the complexity of storytelling and the almost impossibility of distilling the richness of lived experience into a single narrative or representation? I want to believe that my attempts to develop my research question took off from very much that place of overwhelmness. I looked at the work of Dorothea Tanning, a Surrealist painter who explained her work as her experiences, as her work developed over time, she focussed on her inner world as well as dreams of how she made sense of the fragility of life.
A story to be told about co-collaborating with nature and materials, which is non-human matter but which I consider interconnected with me as human matter. Is it the experience of a hybrid body involving human-art-mushroom interaction? Does It challenge our perception of artistic agency, prompt reflections on nature’s cycles, and foster a deeper connection with the environment? Such art-making practices offer a unique lens to explore themes of collaboration, transformation, and the delicate interconnectedness of life forms.
It seems as a methodology; Feminist Phenomenology is unpicking the earlier writing of key Phenomenologists and questioning their assumption that the world was experienced as a male body. So perhaps from my view my learning is less about feminism explicitly. Still, more about what kind of body experiences the world – and maybe it is also about my body, as a hybrid body: a body working with the non-human matter. ( tutor: ‘We know that we are already a collection of bacteria anyway’). Thinking about the human-soil connection how Puig de la Bellacasa describes ways of social belonging that
could respond in a meaningful.
For the sake of my writing, non-human ones include other creatures (plants and animals) and the things (objects) of the world. I will explain this by exploring connectedness as an ontology and looking at contemporary feminist theory and themes of the posthumanist with a non-anthropocentric ontology and ethics that decenters the human. This perspective sees the human entangled in a multiplicity of relationships with human and non-human others and refuses human exceptionalism. From Bellacasa (Matters of Care, 2017:87) I took that an ontology grounded in relationality and interdependence needs to acknowledge heterogeneity. She reminds us that where there is a relation, there has to be care.
Donna Haraway emphasises the intertwining of the natural and cultural. She goes as far as to discuss the concept of “nature cultures”, organic and inorganic, material and immaterial, and co-constitutive relations between humans and nonhumans (companion species). Haraway refers to human and nonhuman bodies as ‘transspecies assemblages’ when she explains the actants that operate at the level of function in and on our bodies. The organisms, bacteria, viruses and fungi are necessary for our bodies to perform their essential functions and to survive. I have found that her writing and ideas opened up a way to blur science and fiction, and this sits well with my making in my different para-sites, where I hope my making will also be seen as thinking through and gathering ideas within the relationships I have discovered in work with, feathers, fungi, soil, rocks, clay, etc. I hope to share them as visual stories of found objects and non human materials within this study.
Fungi grow by extending the tips of their hyphae and by branching to initiate new hyphae. As the organism expands, it forms a maze of filaments, which can be seen as invasive. This mycelia develop inside substrate (or the food source)to be utilized by the fungus. (Sheldrake, 2021)
Words I like to use when making and thinking about materials I use for my body of work:
- entwine,
- connect,
- entangle,
- weave ideas together
Learning and living better because you are starting to learn/ know how to (understanding more?) Belacasa writes about appropriating the experiences of ‘other’ when she states, “care will require a different approach in different situations of thinking-for.” (Matters of Care: p86) She refers to an example of being a spokesperson for tortured animals. It also made me think of being involved in these matters, having an engaged curiosity and of the ongoingness of such interactions, and about sorrow and grief as unavoidable effects when thinking with care. It becomes involved, and it is not about observing from a distance. It reminds us of how previously oppressed South Africans overcame colonialism and apartheid despite the efforts to dehumanise them.
I consider Practice-Based Art. I read an online blog post shared by Simone Maier, a LondonMet School of Art, Architecture and Design lecturer. The ideas met with so many of the processes dealt with at workshops I have done with OCA.
She describes Practice-based Art as ‘where the practitioner makes something – anything – as a way of exploring or researching their own theory and practice.’ I feel comfortable with such an exploration and it reminds me of reading Fortnum, On not knowing how artists think.
Below is a list of actions the author suggest: (https://aldinhe.ac.uk/take5-90-reflecting-through-art-culture-and-practice/)
- Set a weekly date with yourself – it’s your special time to yourself!
- Give yourself permission to make something – anything.
- Find materials/tools that make you feel something. You might like:
- collage because the paper sounds nice
- found bit of litter/nature because of their colours
- pastels because they’re soft
- charcoal because dark marks suit your mood
- LEGO because you’ve always loved construction
- photos because you select what to focus attention on
- Sharpie pens because they’re bold
- fabric because the texture makes you feel…
- Use a timer (decide if it’s 10, 20 or 50 minutes) and allow yourself to make
- Permit yourself to play with the materials you’ve selected.
- Permit your materials agency, this means not getting frustrated that it’s not how you’d imagined or hoped. Accept your making for whatever it is.
- Avoid perspective drawing. If you draw, draw based on movement, mood, line-walking, or markmark as a gentural response to something.
- Silence your internal critic – it doesn’t matter if it’s scruffy, clumsy, dirty etc.
- Take a photo of your making (unless your medium is photography)
- The next day, look at your making carefully
- Spend 10 minutes stream-of-consciousness writing to answer the question: My making expressing my …
This led me to more questions regarding research, namely structure and focus. In the course, it now becomes necessary to show a structured approach which asks that I adhere to a plan – I understand this will ensure that my research aligns with the goal and I will have a focused output. Something I believe I find difficult. It is also important for me to consider the creative process, and I would argue that it involves a balance of structure and freedom. Engaging with the unknown can lead to innovation and new perspectives, while having a clear sense of direction can result in a coherent and purposeful work. The choice between the two often depends on the artist’s personal style, the nature of the project, and the desired outcome.
List of Illustrations
Fig. 1 Stander, K. (2023) Work shared at a local exhibition [Photograph in exhibition space] In possession of: the author: Langvlei Farm, Riebeek West.
Fig. 2 Gathering knowledge [Photograph of collage of pottery fragments] In possession of: the author: Langvlei Farm, Riebeek West.
Fig. 3 Stander, K. (2023) Black box with fungi [Photograph of my growing/caring process with mushrooms] In possession of: the author: Langvlei Farm, Riebeek West.
Fig. 4 Stander, K. (2023) A work in progress: Hand with fungi [Photograph of my growing/caring process with mushrooms] In possession of: the author: Langvlei Farm, Riebeek West.
Fig. 5 Stander, K. (2023) Containers filled with fungi : a work in progress [Photograph of my growing/caring process with mushrooms] In possession of: the author: Langvlei Farm, Riebeek West.
Fig. 6 Stander, K. (2023) Bracket mushrooms on the tree [Photograph in a landscape where I found these mushrooms] In possession of: the author: Langvlei Farm, Riebeek West.
Fig. 7 Stander, K. (2023) Foraging [Photograph in landscape] In possession of: the author: Langvlei Farm, Riebeek West.
Fig. 8 Stander, K.(2023) Foraging sample [Photograph in landscape] In possession of: the author: Langvlei Farm, Riebeek West.
Fig. 9 Stander, K.(2023) Sketchbook Thinking [Photograph] In possession of: the author: Langvlei Farm, Riebeek West.
Bibliography
Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (2018) [Podcast] Always Already Podcast, Episode 65 23/05/2018. At: SCRIBD (Accessed 04/07/2023).
Fisher, E. and Fortnum, R. (2013). ‘On not knowing how artists think’. Pdf At: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337331636 (Accessed on 08/072023).
Haraway, Donna J. (2007. ‘When Species Meet‘. PDF on SCRIBD
Le Guin U. (1988). The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Published by Literary Trust, 2019, with an introduction by Dona Haraway.
Lange Berndt, P. (2015) How to be complicit with materials. In: Lange-Berndt, P. (ed) (2015) Materiality. London: Whitechapel Gallery.
Latour, Bruno ( ) The Inner Voice
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