16.3.20 Social engagement in a time of isolation
How can I continue the socially engaged aspects of my practice when everyone’s necessarily isolated? Online, of course! Today I’ve set up a new Instagram account, which I’ve called @socialengagement. I’m not sure what it will become, but I wanted to have a forum for any socially engaged work that I can still do in these strange times.
It’s so strange though, as my participatory art is normally so physical…. So, I need to think of ways to engage people without the allure of physical touch. In a talk I gave the other day I emphasised how critical it is to be allowed /invited to touch a range of textured surfaces in this age of screens and keyboards, but now we have no choice. Although Instagram is rather clunky for a group, I think its visual nature is useful in this respect. It reminds of the research I’ve done about cloth and touch before. Here are some excerpts, from my BA dissertation:
‘The materiality and multi-sensory nature (of cloth) blurs the boundaries of visual and tactile experience’ (Bristow 2011: 45)
‘There’s a merging of the senses of touch and sight associated with cloth; ‘The eye…does not simply look. It also feels. Its response is both visual and tactile…’ the senses are ‘…each enfolded in the other’ (Barnett 1999: 185).
‘The materiality and skin-like nature of cloth provides an alternative range of meanings to the use of cloth in art, operating ‘both through the haptic and the scopic simultaneously, the two modes of perception provide differing points of access to the viewer’ (Dormor 2008: 240).[i] (Baker, 2014)
I need to revisit this, as I realise it’s highly relevant to this current situation. Most of my work relies on its physical presence and surface for the greatest impact. How can this effect be transferred to a screen? I’m sure it can. It’s almost a form of synaesthesia; one knows how something feels by looking at it. It’s like touching with your eyes.
I’ve just written a proposal for a commission to make a 2.5m interactive brain for a Neurology conference so I found a number of images of textural surfaces I’ve made that have this allure. The conference will almost definitely be postponed, but I often find that writing a proposal clarifies my thinking….and this one certainly has!
Dormor defines the ‘haptic…(as) that which pertains to touch and induces the sense of touch. ..(and the) scopic... (as) that which pertains to sight and the act of seeing’ (2008: 251).
Reference list:
Baker, L. (2014) Second skin: used clothing and representations of the body in the work of Louise Bourgeois and Christian Boltanski, undergraduate dissertation
Barnett, Pennina, 1999, ‘Folds, fragments and surfaces: towards a poetics of cloth’ in Hemmings, Jessica (ed.), 2012, The Textile Reader, Berg: London, New York pp 182 -190
Bristow, Maxine, 2011, ‘Continuity of touch- textile as silent witness’ in Hemmings, Jessica (ed.), 2012, The Textile Reader, Berg: London, New York pp 44 – 51
Dormor, Catherine, 2008, ‘skin: textile: film’ in Textile, Volume 6, Issue 3, pp 238-253
How can I continue the socially engaged aspects of my practice when everyone’s necessarily isolated? Online, of course! Today I’ve set up a new Instagram account, which I’ve called @socialengagement. I’m not sure what it will become, but I wanted to have a forum for any socially engaged work that I can still do in these strange times.
It’s so strange though, as my participatory art is normally so physical…. So, I need to think of ways to engage people without the allure of physical touch. In a talk I gave the other day I emphasised how critical it is to be allowed /invited to touch a range of textured surfaces in this age of screens and keyboards, but now we have no choice. Although Instagram is rather clunky for a group, I think its visual nature is useful in this respect. It reminds of the research I’ve done about cloth and touch before. Here are some excerpts, from my BA dissertation:
‘The materiality and multi-sensory nature (of cloth) blurs the boundaries of visual and tactile experience’ (Bristow 2011: 45)
‘There’s a merging of the senses of touch and sight associated with cloth; ‘The eye…does not simply look. It also feels. Its response is both visual and tactile…’ the senses are ‘…each enfolded in the other’ (Barnett 1999: 185).
‘The materiality and skin-like nature of cloth provides an alternative range of meanings to the use of cloth in art, operating ‘both through the haptic and the scopic simultaneously, the two modes of perception provide differing points of access to the viewer’ (Dormor 2008: 240).[i] (Baker, 2014)
I need to revisit this, as I realise it’s highly relevant to this current situation. Most of my work relies on its physical presence and surface for the greatest impact. How can this effect be transferred to a screen? I’m sure it can. It’s almost a form of synaesthesia; one knows how something feels by looking at it. It’s like touching with your eyes.
I’ve just written a proposal for a commission to make a 2.5m interactive brain for a Neurology conference so I found a number of images of textural surfaces I’ve made that have this allure. The conference will almost definitely be postponed, but I often find that writing a proposal clarifies my thinking….and this one certainly has!
Dormor defines the ‘haptic…(as) that which pertains to touch and induces the sense of touch. ..(and the) scopic... (as) that which pertains to sight and the act of seeing’ (2008: 251).
Reference list:
Baker, L. (2014) Second skin: used clothing and representations of the body in the work of Louise Bourgeois and Christian Boltanski, undergraduate dissertation
Barnett, Pennina, 1999, ‘Folds, fragments and surfaces: towards a poetics of cloth’ in Hemmings, Jessica (ed.), 2012, The Textile Reader, Berg: London, New York pp 182 -190
Bristow, Maxine, 2011, ‘Continuity of touch- textile as silent witness’ in Hemmings, Jessica (ed.), 2012, The Textile Reader, Berg: London, New York pp 44 – 51
Dormor, Catherine, 2008, ‘skin: textile: film’ in Textile, Volume 6, Issue 3, pp 238-253
