24.5.20 Reflections on Self and Other, as a joint submission
Self and other syncretises two seemingly disparate aspects of my practice, making and facilitating. My ‘Self’ becomes a wearable, knitted sculpture, yet also a series of photos of the same, unworn, in my domestic spaces; embodied, yet abject. The ‘Other’ becomes the stranger, the passer-by, who maybe chooses to also become a participant. Between the two, in these strange times, is a very real and rational contamination anxiety, a discomforting threshold between Self and Other.
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I’ve reflected on Self: Body cocoon in depth elsewhere  and on Other: Wishing trees here, so now I want to consider the connections between these two very different pieces of work.

Public and private
The Covid-19 lockdown has greatly polarised the private and public aspects of my practice. I normally do most of my knitting in public, around other people, whenever I can and wherever I am. It’s portable and it comes with me wherever I go. My knitting studio is anywhere and everywhere - the pub, the bus, a plane, the beach, during uni lectures, on the ski slopes, in a tuktuk - wherever I can, I knit. This means that my attention is normally shared between my knitting and whatever is going on around me. There is also normally a performative aspect to it. Knitting alone, or very privately with just my partner here, feels very different.

My participatory installations, in the past, have often taken place in unusual places but I haven’t before situated them outside in public places.

I have knitted Body cocoon exclusively in the private sphere, which has connotations of domesticity and associated femininities (Parker), and my participatory work has become much more public, and thus more political (Ranciere). Habermas’ descriptions of public and private spheres resonates here (1964)

The Wishing trees have also been connectors between private and public, inside and outside, myself and other people.
Self and Other  
Knitting privately has been a much more introspective process than my normal practice. I have given it a different kind of attention. My knitting has become much more a part of my daily routine around the house and garden. It has accompanied my isolation and it will be associated in my mind with many aspects of the lockdown forever. It is as if it has become part of the private me, my self. Wearing it and photographing it in place of me, a discarded cocoon, in my private domestic spaces enhances this.

As soon as I began to realise the implications of lockdown, I wanted to connect with others. I had to think of a way that I could still facilitate participatory art in these strange times. Schalk (2011) describes the connection between self and other thus
‘The binary of self and other is perhaps one of the most basic theories of human consciousness and identity, claiming, in short, that the existence of an other, a not-self, allows the possibility or recognition of a self. In other words: I see you. I do not control your body or hear your thoughts. You are separate. You are not me. Therefore, I am me.’

I realised that I needed an Other to still be truly my Self.

The Other that I expected to connect with, albeit remotely, through the initial invitation on my first Wishing tree was the passer-by, a stranger, who would walk past my house on the way to the shops or during exercise, possibly daily. I was surprised then that the Other became virtual too, as friends, followers and, ultimately, many other strangers began to connect with me around the trees via social media.
My audiences
Consequently, my audiences have changed and also become much more polarised: my knitting ‘audience’ is mostly an audience of one, my partner, Dave or I have had no audience. At times I have posted the progress of my knitting to social media and then the audience widens for a short time. Then it’s back to solitude. For me this highlights the fact that my knitting is not subject to the normal expectations. Knitting is generally regarded as a private pursuit, possibly because, stereotypically, following a pattern requires a high level of attention. The way I knit intuitively means that I can easily focus my attention elsewhere. It is definitely performative and it makes me realise that I really have really missed having an audience as I knit. How has knitting without an audience changed how I’ve knitted or the final product? I’m not sure that it has. It just means that I’ve knitted whilst listening to audio books and watching Netflix, maybe more like a ‘normal’ knitter?
The audiences for my Wishing trees have changed more dramatically. Each of the settings for the Wishing trees is slightly different; maybe they deliberately became more public as they were ‘planted’? The one outside my house feels like an extension of my home. I can see it from inside the house and watch people stopping and reading the messages or adding their own token. I was able to tend it and document it every day without fail. The one on Horfield Common is about 10 minutes’ walk from home, so in the early days of the lockdown when we weren’t meant to be driving anywhere it became part of our daily walking route for exercise. Again, we could visit it and tend both trees every day.
‘Planting’ the tree on The Downs felt at the time like a rather uncomfortable change in control. We were still not meant to be driving unless it was essential and The Downs is about half an hour’s walk from home. We couldn’t go there every day, so I had to relinquish some control over it.

Purdown is further away still and we only started going there when lockdown was loosened a little. It’s a ten minute drive away, so possibly feels more public still, and also less out of my control.
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Situations
Each situation is different and consequently has a different ‘passer-by’. Horfield Common is a small local park surrounded by terraced houses and is frequented mostly by the local community - families, dog walkers, students and others. It’s also a cut through to the large, local Tesco. It’s probably not somewhere you’d drive to specially.

The Downs is a much larger and wilder public, green space, more of a common than the Common. It’s surrounded by the large mansions and wide tree lined residential streets of Sneyd Park and Clifton. The area is much more affluent than that around Horfield Common. The Downs is also much busier than Horfield as it serves a much wider community, especially at the moment. When I first ‘planted’ my tree on The Downs, we weren’t meant to drive to exercise, but in the last few weeks that has been allowed again so technically that will mean that my audience there is even more diverse now.

Purdown is different again. It’s larger and wilder again than The Downs, in an urban kind of way, set on a high hill overlooking the cityscape and adjoining several different local communities – a fairly deprived area called Lockleaze, with mixed and social housing but less owner occupied, and an area called St Werburgh’s which has a reputation for socially, environmentally and politically conscious residents. Interestingly, it was only when I ‘planted’ my tree on Purdown that I began to get complaints, although one complaint was specifically about The Downs Wishing tree.

My other site for making and showing my work has, of course, been home, and that has, naturally been so much more private over the last 11 weeks than normal. I have discussed already how I am generally quite selective about what I make public, but this situation has forced me to make more of my home more public than has been comfortable at times.

In a sense, I also feel as though yet another site for making and showing work during this time has been online. It’s almost as if I ‘planted’ a fifth Wishing tree on social media, as many people have commented and added messages to that virtual tree when they couldn’t physically visit the real ones. I think social media is a curious mix; it’s potentially very public and yet there’s also a real sense of intimacy about it. Maybe that’s because I almost exclusively enter it through the portal that is my hand held phone. The conversations I’ve had and connections I’ve made through social media because of the trees has meant a great deal to me.

Documentation in domestic spaces and online
Another interesting aspect of my art being made and shown at home has been my partner’s involvement. He has been a willing critic, sounding board, technician, collaborator, photographer and videographer and he’s been utterly supportive of all the strange things I’ve been doing; for all of that I am extremely grateful. But I know that had I had access to the University and its facilities during this time, for example, a photo shoot would have taken a day; at home, with limited facilities, it takes a couple of minutes, and photos and videos have been taken normally with a phone, in the garden or around the house. I think there’s something quite interesting about the intimacy and immediacy of photos taken like that, with the phone that also has become an extension of our brains and bodies. Possibly it mirrors popular selfie culture.

Another curious aspect has been being the subject of the photos, the performer, rather than the photographer. It has obviously been necessary, as I am exploring my own Self, but, in a way, I would like to be both. That is partly why I decided to photograph my Body cocoon without me in it. It meant that I could be the photographer of my shed skin, rather than the performer within it. My original intention was to do a parallel photo shoot, with me wearing the Body cocoon and Dave taking the photos, but in the end I decided that wasn’t necessary. The photos I have selected already speak volumes about presence and absence, and about me.

The way that the Wishing trees were documented is noteworthy too, I think. It began with me taking photos and videos, again with my phone, but with so many messages via social media I also began to take screen shots. Some of all these images I then posted as messages for the growing, virtual Wishing tree on social media. Once I ‘planted’ The Downs Wishing tree, so many other people began to share the most wonderful photos and videos online. It’s as if some people participated by sharing their fabulous images and hopeful words with their followers, their messages added to the same virtual Wishing tree. I have attempted to capture at least some of these responses in my documentation of the Wishing trees.

Relational aesthetics vs relational antagonism
Claire Bishop suggests that setting up art work in unexpected places can create what she calls ‘relational antagonism’ as a counterpoint to Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’. She says this happens when artists engage more diverse audiences who may not be gallery goers. I think this is almost certainly the case with Purdown, but I also wonder whether it’s about contamination anxiety as well.

Kristeva, Douglas, ‘matter out of place’ and contamination anxiety
Both Wishing trees on The Downs and Purdown are hawthorns, the other two are set up around the metal cages that the Council use to protect newly planted trees. It feels to me as if those who complained about the Wishing trees were most concerned about the well being of the hawthorns, birds and wildlife and were not especially concerned about the well being of the humans who might be enjoying and interacting with them.

The first complaints started as we were emerging from the first intense lock down, when everyone had had a very high level of anxiety about rational fears of contamination by the virus. I think that these responses to the trees might be about that as well, almost a deflected contamination anxiety. A couple of people were worried about ‘litter’ which is definitely ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas, 1966). Others worried that the ribbons would damage the trees, scare the birds or trap wildlife. These were all understandable concerns and I did my best to allay them. I’m conscious that only a proportion of people who disapproved will have complained, but in fact I only had a handful of negative response compared with an avalanche of positive posts and comments on social media.

That I called it ‘art’ might also have made people uncomfortable, as art can be alien to many and for it to be somewhere so unexpected could be seen as a form of contamination too. It’s installed in a wild, green space, not an art gallery. It transgresses people’s expectations.

And maybe for some people, it was a question of taste, they just didn’t like it – where it was, the aesthetics, the synthetic cloth, the sentiments or the interactivity? I will never know.

Another aspect of contamination anxiety at the moment is obviously the ubiquitous fear of infection with the virus and that other people are the potential contaminants. Others become utterly Other. Especially in the early days, people looked very fearful when they passed one another on the streets. It meant I couldn’t leave materials for passers-by to add to the trees as well. Contamination anxiety seems to be part of the threshold between Self and Other.

My virtual audience
I think the most unexpected and exciting aspect for me has been the extent to which a virtual audience has engaged with the Wishing trees. Initially, and very quickly, this virtual audience consisted of family, friends and followers on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, but within a few days of setting up the first tree outside my house, strangers also posted about it. ‘Planting’ the trees more publically still, expanded not just the physical reach but also the virtual reach, and soon many people were messaging me publically and privately, and posting images/words/videos of the trees on social media. The hawthorns are especially photogenic, and their exponential transformation with messages and tokens also coincided with the blossoming of the tress, especially on The Downs. It was exquisite. This of course added an extra level of Instagram-ability! The Wishing trees are also very heart-warming and affirming in these difficult days and provide a sense of community and connection that we’re all missing.

Self and Other
This period of lock down has also created a wide separation between my Self and the Other. I have spent much more time alone than I would normally and my Body cocoon embodies that. My Wishing trees have, conversely, engaged a much more diverse and larger Other than my work normally would, both physically, and virtually. I have also had face to face chance conversations with a good number of strangers when we have all been looking at one of the trees.

Fluid boundaries
Through the research I have done for this module I have been most struck by the ways that so many boundaries are described as fluid by critical thinkers and I’m very interested in these thresholds.

Richard Crossman, for example, says ‘the boundary between the public and private sphere is not fixed; instead, it is flexible and permeable, and is always fluctuating and evolving’ (2019).

As part of Julia Kristeva’s discussion of contamination anxiety she states that
‘Contamination is the breaking down between inside and outside…a phenomenon through which I am moved or touched, by my fellow being’. (Sjoholm, 2005, p105) However she also maintains that ‘Such a notion of the body holds contamination not as a risk or disease but as an immanent possibility of openings and becomings’ and goes on to describe ‘the trace of another person being inscribed in an experience wavering between pleasure and displeasure, crossing the borders inside/outside’ (ibid).

Mary Douglas discusses impurity as the line between order and disorder thus: ‘What culture ascribes as defilement, profanity or impurity is something which is perceived as an anomaly and a break from the orderly boundaries of social and cultural order.’ (Cultural Studies Now, 2017) and that disorder ‘has potentiality. It symbolises both danger and power.’ (1966, p94)

Jonathan Faiers, relates knitting to Bataille’s notions on form and formlessness, by saying that knitting is ‘an operation that attempts to produce form from nothing’  (2014).

And finally, in discussing the boundaries between Self and Other, Claire Bishop suggests that ‘the presence of what is not me renders my identity precarious and vulnerable, and the threat that the other represents transforms my own sense of self into something questionable’ (2004, p66).

So many flexible boundaries- public and private spheres, inside and outside, pleasure and displeasure, order and disorder, form and formlessness, Self and Other. I feel as if this current submission, Self and Other, touches on many of these contradictions, and the spaces between them. I know that borders bring certainty, security; removing them, or acknowledging them to be fluid, brings uncertainty, anxiety and, as Douglas pronounces, can bring not only danger, but also, power.
 
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Bishop, C. (Ed.) (2006) Participation, Documents of contemporary art, Whitechapel: London
Bishop, C. (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London & New York: Verso, Available at: https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/bishop-claire-artificial-hells-participatory-art-and-politics-spectatorship.pdf (Accessed: 17 December 2019
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Douglas, M. (1966) Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
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Sjoholm, C. (2005) Kristeva and the political Available at: file:///C:/Users/TEMP/Downloads/1005927.pdf (Accessed 5 May 2020)