Chapter I
In this Chapter
the reader will find an overview of my research context, methods and
methodology at work. Six social sculptures pieces will provide a structure for
the reader to understand the interweaving between practice and research
writing.
The methodology
used in my research will be based on Nietzsche’s Triangulation. He proposed the
use of diverse approaches in order to increase knowledge, which echoes the
often interdisciplinary nature of practice based research
“Gaining knowledge, requires the resources of many disciplines; no
single approach is sufficient. Truth-seekers will have to became more
versatile, master many disciplines and methods, learn artistic creativity and
balanced judgment”[1]
The form of triangulation
that I deploy in my methodology incorporates the following three angles:
Philosophy (Theory, Dialogic); Social Sculpture (Social Engaged Art, SEA); and
Pedagogy. Pedagogy, more than being the third angle of the triangulation, will
be the element that transforms the triangulation methodology into something
that is in fact more akin to circulation in its dynamics. Rather than using
pedagogy as a separate element in my research, I will use it in an auxiliary
role to allow the philosophy and social sculpture elements of the methodology
to reciprocally inform one another. Therefore pedagogy is the transmission
(transversal?) element that transforms the triangulation into a
circulation methodology. For this reason, throughout the thesis I will speak of
“transpedagogy” rather than “pedagogy.”
The methods used
are the actions themselves, the documentation of the actions, the participants’
postexperience comments, my reflections during editing, and my writing. At the
same time, the writing method plays two roles, first as part of the practice
and second as documentation of process and conclusions.
During the doctoral journey, my social sculpture practice has
slowly been shifting from the visual arts to philosophy. I am understanding Social Sculpture as
the materialization and/or embodiment of philosophy if not the language of it.
I came through this realization during editing as I find on the experiences
philosophical questions, perhaps archetypes. This questions brought me to
Nietzsche “The birth of Tragedy”, Nietzsche’s Doctoral thesis. The tragedy that
Nietzsche is analyzing in this book is the Greek tragic theater, performance,
what in Greece they called poetry. He claims that tragedy was born on people’s
necessity to put a veil onto the reality of life which is to bad to look at it
strait. A veil to make softer the human impossibility to look at the truth.
That veil is art, that veil is the function of art, which was born from Dionysius
(music, inebriation) and Apollo (sculpture, dream, beauty). Apollo and
Dionysius as two artistic instincts sometimes opposites sometimes complementary
from this union of them Tragedy is born. Nietzsche believes that post Socratian
reason, intellectualization, dialectics (based on cause and effect, guilt and
punishment, virtue and happiness) killed the Tragedy, he believes that the
optimistic view where all the problems can be solved implies the death of
tragedy. Tragedy (poetry) exists because no matter how good the acts of the
plot’s hero can be; the problem is always there. He believes that this
intrinsic pessimism of life nature is matter for creation. Nietzsche writes
that when Socrates appeared the Tragedy committed suicide. For him to be
optimistic is not to create, is to denied the world or is to see only one part
of it. He believes that there are many good things in suffering, it is a ‘must’
to be friendly to our sufferings because that is what occurs in life, and from
that we can create and in fact Tragedy was born. When the pleasure for
dialectic, he said, had dissolved the Tragedy emerged the Comedy.
Every group of people have
their own Tragedy, during the social sculpture experiences Poetry comes to the
surface in different ways. Different group of participants relate to each other
differently and the relationship between participants and objects as well. When
the participants became extra reasonable, looking for intellectual associations
the social sculpture in fact reaches the end of the session.
Any person willing to
participate in a social sculpture piece is taking an out of ordinary, out of
every day life decision, that person is making a choice that takes him/her to
do something that is different to their daily routines. For them this paragraph:
[A philosopher] is a person who
constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary
things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if from outside, from above and
below, as if by his type of events and lightning bolts; who is perhaps a
storm himself, pregnant with new lightning; a fatal person in whose vicinity
things are always rumbling, growling, gaping, and acting in uncanny ways. A
philosopher: oh, a being who is frequently running away from himself,
frequently afraid of himself, – but too curious not to always come back to
himself . . .[2]
I use my practice to
convey the complexity and plurality of subjectivities and their transformations
during the interactions in my social sculpture making. I explore this by composing social sculpture
pieces with participants from different local communities in Miami. I use
language as an aesthetic element and as material together with other more
conventional materials. My social sculpture works are constructed through using
language, my own body, sound collections of the participants talking and other
possible props or materials such as fabric, cotton, clay, and a chair. All
construct my social sculpture pieces. At the same time, I am also material for
the research, so my practice becomes a mirror and reflection simultaneously.
The production of social situations and experiences where the participants
create while I take a more passive attitude to let myself be material for the
participants.
I will start
this chapter reviewing my last body of work that started on February 20, 2016
with Imperfect destruction and
finished with Mute produced on May 28th,
2016. With the collaboration of
Eileen Karakurt, Camila Godoy and Caroline Santos, three students from Miami
Beach High School. They contacted me through the Internships program between
their school and the Art Center South Florida where I am currently doing my
artist-in-residence.
In the following
reviews each piece has a paragraph from Nietzsche “The birth of the Tragedy”,
then my own description later the internships comments and question, and a
conclusion. All of them in the same order. This specific order is a method for
me to reflect.
Later I will be
interweaving my reflections, their ideas during and after the experiences and
situate this body of work in a frame of context from Fredrich Nietzsche “The
birth of tragedy” creating a dialogue.
Mute
This deification of individuation,
if it is thought of in general as commanding and proscriptive, understands only
one law, the individual, that is, observing the limits of individualization,
moderation in the Greek sense. Apollo, as an ethical divinity, demands
moderation from his followers and, so that they can observe self-control, a
knowledge of the self. And so alongside the aesthetic necessity of beauty run
the demands “Know thyself” and “Nothing too much!”; whereas, arrogance and
excess are considered the essentially hostile daemons belonging to the
non-Apollonian sphere (…). For the sake of his excessive wisdom, which solved
the riddle of the sphinx, Oedipus had to be overthrown inbewildering whirlpool
of evil.[3]
This is the
final piece from this six social sculptures body of work.
In this
experience I asked them to review every of the video documentation and to write
three ideas and one question each of them for each video. During the time they
were doing it I prepared in another studio the camera, a table with a black
cloth and four burlap cones that were part of one of my former Installations. I
explained that once they finished with the writings they were going to enter
one by one to the other studio, as they enter they were going to find certain
materials. After (I didn’t specify what were they going to find), were invited
to do anything they wanted with the materials and the space. I also told them
to take any time between 10 seconds and 10 minutes. I asked them no to say
anything to others as they walk out the room. I did my part first, then Eileen
later Caroline and last Camila. During editing was interesting to see what each
one did. The different dialogue that each one establish with the materials and
the space. Although we enter to the space separately we maintained a dialogue
between us through the materials and the space, that dialogue can only be read
later from the experience through the video. In this last encounter the video
repositions to another role. We have a new experience as we watch at the video
and find out what the others did with the same materials few minutes before or
after.
1. The
bean bag resembled to horns for me so I used them in that way.
2. The
props were unusual and random.
3.
This project made us be creative and see what we can do with just a table,
blanket, and 4 bean bag horns.
Q: Why
did you choose these props?
Eileen
Karakurt
1. When
I saw the two pieces on top of the table I thought of devil horns like Eileen
suggested they were, and I want to change it into something else like building
something new from something falling apart.
2. I
used the blanket as support to try and keep the pieces together.
3. And
I failed haha.
- What
did it represent when you pushed the sheets in and out from under the table?
Caroline
Santos
1.
While I walked in and saw the props I thought back to what Caroline and Eileen
did with them and what I could've done that was different.
2. I
had to open up to new ideas thinking of what to do with only 3 props.
3. When
I placed the props on the table it resembled a body figure.
- What
did the beginning of the video mean when you were under the table?
Camila
Godoy
Plastic Waves
With those two gods of art,
Apollo and Dionysus, we establish our recognition that in the Greek world there
exists a huge contrast, in origin and purposes, between the visual arts, the
Apollonian, and the non-visual art of music, the Dionysian. These two
very different drives go hand in hand, for the most part in open conflict with
each other and simultaneously provoking each other all the time to new and more
powerful offspring, in order to perpetuate in them the contest of that
opposition, which the common word “Art” only seems to bridge, until at last,
through a marvellous metaphysical act of the Greek “will,” they appear paired
up with each other and, as this pair, finally produce Attic tragedy, as much a
Dionysian as an Apollonian work of art.[4]
Two women of
different generations--the older woman is the artist (myself), and the younger
woman is a high school student- are acting and reacting to one another and also
to an object. They are uncertain about what movement they will make next. Their
performance in this social sculpture piece is focused on their interactions
with any item of their choosing from my studio. In this case, the student chose
a plastic sheet. They are acting spontaneously, but they trust one another’s
actions and in their own decisions. The piece develops based on this
relationship. During this process nothing is pre established except the choice
of the material, the space and the camera’s point of view. These two women
establish a dialogue that has no beginning or end. The points of departure for
the dialogue are the ideas that the participants simply need to make it through
to the end of the performance and that they need to do so while being aware
that they are being filmed. It is a dialogue full of uncertainties, and one
that is perhaps guided by the participants’ gender and the generation gap
between them.
This piece
writes itself during those minutes and in that particular space through the
manipulation of the simple material and our own bodies in a spontaneous process
in which the bodies move as a reaction of themselves and the material and vice
versa.
On the video the
sound creates another space, an autonomous space that situates the spectator
inside the piece. The space created between the images and the sound is now
where the spectator is located, centralizing him/her making her/him part of it.
The noise is great choice for this video.
I liked how the plastic was wrapped around me and as I was walking
back and forth I was unraveling myself.
The making of this video was very random and calming.
Q: How did we end up making a video like this without planning it?
Eileen Karakurt.
As Eileen enravelled herself she was looking more free, like in
life it takes time to let yourself go, but as soon as you MOVE on and continue
putting effort to free yourself.
Q: how did you feel when you were wrapped around the plastic?
Camila Godoy (Camila was not present on this social sculpture
experience she writes it by looking at the documentation)
The way the plastic moved and made waves reminded me of a child
moving in the sand as air pushes it.
As Veronica wrapped herself and hid in a cubby hole it reminded me
of someone trying to hide from their true self and looking for shelter.
Q: why did you decide to hide in the hole and wrap yourself?
Caroline Santos
(Caroline was not present on this social sculpture experience she
writes it by looking at the document)
Emotions, a social sculpture in 3 parts.
That
striving for the infinite, the wing beat of longing, associated with the
highest delight in clearly perceived reality, reminds us that in both states we
must recognize a Dionysian phenomenon, which always reveals to us all over
again the playful cracking apart and destruction of the world of the individual
as the discharge of primordial delight, in a manner similar to the one in which
gloomy Heraclitus compares the force constructing the world to a child who
playfully sets stones here and there, builds sand piles and then knocks them
down again. [5]
I asked
Camila and Eileen, fifteen and sixteen years old high school students with whom
I am currently working with, to walk around my studio and pick some objects
that they felt either attraction or rejection to. During that time I left them
by themselves while I went to the other studio, where we knew we will be
filming the work's process. It was with the materials that the came back with
that we started filming what in the editing session ended up being "Part
I", where they drew each other's faces and then got close to the camera
with the drawing of their friend's face.
During
"Part II" we threw the orange and we follow it one by one parallel to
the camera.
In
"Part III" they decided that they wanted to paint the orange golden,
converting it into another object and later destroying it. We used the restroom
to film this part.
At the end
of the session they described the experience as parallel to their life
experiences during three periods of their lives: childhood, adolescence and
adulthood. It is because of this that this film is divided in three parts.
When I
reflected on it, I found out that the dialogue with the materials chosen is
directly related with their age and the gender.
Would have
man chosen the same materials? And if they did, would have them interacted with
them in the same form? The answer could be as simple as to say that nobody
would have done the same, that each individual would have chosen and acted in
different ways without paying attention to age or gender.
However,
I want to focus on the difference of generations between us. All of us women,
them in their adolescence and me in my forties. I tend to take care of objects and
relate to them with respect, trying to understand their simplest sense. I
create an space for the object, in which I enter in a dialogue
with it, reacting to what I perceive it "asks" me to
do. They, instead, tend to dominate the object, changing and destroying
it, like in the case of the orange; in which they first wanted to
change the color and when they couldn't accomplish that, they ended up
destroying it. The dialogue that they have with the object is aggressive
and authoritarian.
On the
contrary, the relationship that they establish with me (older than them)
is one based on submission. It is difficult for me to establish a dialogue of
actions with them because I perceive that they loose spontaneity when I appear on the scene.
As a result of my appearance, they wait to see what I do to then follow
me.
When it comes
to the objects, they feel empowered, almost to the point of abusing them, but
when it comes to me, they submit to my ideas. My guess is that it might have to
do with the age difference.
I have no idea why we destroy an orange…I felt bad though I don’t
eat oranges.
Now that I look back on this video I really don’t know why we
destroyed an orange.
The part where we kept throwing the orange was very calm and
collected.
Q: Why did you edit it backwards instead of the way we did it in
order?
Eileen Karakurt.
In part III I peed the orange apart. The orange just represented
our openness to play around it.
Part II we were drawing each other, acting like kids with no care
we were just laughing and relieving the anger portrayed in destrying the
orange.
Part I seemed like a complete charge where we simply threw and
picked up the orange. Much like in real life how we let go of anger and child
like behavior and goes through maturity in the simplicity of life.
Q: why did we have to walk around and pick up the orange so many
times in part I?
Camila Godoy
I think in part III the oranges represented their inner emotions
they were able to let out because they had a tool to do so.
In part I the oranges represent emotions and feelings they are not
able to let out, like the peel is a type of boundary.
In part II when they drew each other it seemed like were at first
trying really hard to make it look like each other.
Q: what made you chose these materials for this video?
Caroline Santos
(Caroline was not present on this social sculpture experience she
writes this comment by looking at the documentation)
Trenzadas
There
is an old legend that king Midas for a long time hunted the wise Silenus, the
companion of Dionysus, in the forests, without catching him. When Silenus
finally fell into the king’s hands, the king asked what was the best thing of
all for men, the very finest. The daemon remained silent, motionless and
inflexible, until, compelled by the king, he finally broke out into shrill
laughter and said these words, “Suffering creature, born for a day, child of
accident and toil, why are you forcing me to say what would give you the
greatest pleasure not to hear? The very best thing for you is totally
unreachable: not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second
best thing for you, however, is this — to die soon.” [6]
In the previous social sculpture “Strings attached” the
idea of hair started coming naturaly during the experince and edition and
originated the first idea for Trenzadas. Trenzadas means embreided. I wanted to
embreid their hair toghether and exposed them to the experience of being phisycally contected. I started embroiding
their hair while they were sitting in a triangle back to back, once I finished
I left the scene. For each movement they did they had to communicate to the
other to avoid hurting or falling. I see them having fun and moving through the
studio with this “condition” of being connected. They decided to call me and
they instructed me to sit on the chair. With a black fabric the wrapped me up.
During the coversation we have after the experience they told me that more than
wrapping me up they were putting hair on me, for them the black fabric became
my hair.
The music noise in the
beginning reminds of the radios in the old times when you scrolled through the
chanels.
I felt like I couldn’t do
anything I wanted when I was attached.
The end when we wrapped
Veronica in the black cloth it represented hair being wrapped around her.
Q: how do people who are
permanently attached to one another do this everything?
Eileen karakurt
It was hard to move along when attached with the
other girls through the braids.
You realize how dependent you become when you
have to rely on others to do your own thing.
As soon as we let go and we were all free from
each other, it felt like a weight upon me, that I can be my own person.
Q: how did you feel when you were wrapped around
the cloth?
Camila Godoy
When Veronica braided our hairs
together I felt really connected to the other girls.
I also felt like I grew a
dependency on them because everything I was going to do was dictated by what
they were going to do.
It made me realize that I do
not like to depend on other people, because it felt like unnecesary weight on
our backs.
When we wrapped Veronica with
the black cloth it represented our hair and how heavy it felt to be connected
to Eileen and Camila.
Q: How did it feel when we
wrapped you with the cloth?
Caroline santos.
Strings attached
In order to be able to live, the
Greeks must have created these gods out of the deepest necessity. We can
readily imagine the sequential development of these gods: through that
Apollonian drive for beauty there developed, by a slow transition out of the
primordial titanic divine order of terror, the Olympian divine order of joy,
just as roses break forth out of thorny bushes. How else could a people so
emotionally sensitive, so spontaneously desiring, so singularly capable of
suffering, have been able to endure their existence, unless the same qualities,
with a loftier glory flowing round them, manifested themselves in their gods.
The same impulse which summons art into life as the seductive replenishment for
further living and the completion of existence also gave rise to the Olympian
world, in which the Hellenic “Will” held before itself a transfiguring mirror.[7]
This social sculpture is a feminine piece, the girls’ hair and the
material selected that has hair characteristics itself. They decided to hung
the material from the ceiling of the studio and letting it fall in a natural
way which recalls long hair as well. The colours of the lights they picked add
to the feeling of femininity to the piece. During this experience I left the
building for half an hour because I wanted to know what could change without my
presence. During the video editing I saw Eileen dancing on front of the camera,
their attitude in general was much more spontaneous when I was not there. They
explored the studio and did not limit themselves to a personal space instead
they took over the studio in a social space approach with a natural attitude leaving
a feminine Installation that is also connected their own bodies.
The string fabric was hair to us.
We used colourful lights to make the room more
vibrant and like a type of “jungle” scene including the hair.
This one has for sure my favourite out of all
the videos we’ve done.
It was so awesome.
Q: How long did you take to edit this awesome
video?
Eileen Karakurt
In the making of the video, Caroline, Eileen and
I were enjoying ourselves because we noticed how much time it was taking to
attached the thick hair like strings to the ceilings and walls.
Attaching all the strings was making it harder
for us to go through or walk to the other side like obstacles.
After stepping back and looking at what we did
we realized how interesting the room looked in the art we made.
Q: what did you feel about the room?
Camila Godoy.
The effort it took to put the strings up upon
the ceiling to me felt like the effort it takes to take care of our hair.
The strings represented our hair.
Also the effort and strength it took to put the
strings up felt how heavy our hair feels to us.
Q: what did the strings represented to you?
Caroline Santos.
Imperfect Destruction
Greek tragedy above all checked the
destruction of myth; people had to destroy them in order to be able to live
detached from their home soil, unrestrained in a wilderness of thought, custom,
and action.[8]
This social sculpture was made in the first encounter between the three
students and myself. I first explained to them the idea of social sculpture and
social engaged art. I told them that we were going to make a series of social
sculpture experiences. I also explained that all this work was going to be part
of my research based practice and I made them signed a simple consent form. Later
I asked them to walk around my studio, to look at everything and to pick
anything they liked, or they don’t like. They were walking very insecure not
knowing what to do. I proposed them to destroy one of my sculptures, I told
them that I needed more space and that anyways I was thinking to take it out. I
was also interested in the idea of braking one of my “traditional” sculptures
as a symbol of my own practice transformation tors my present interest in
social sculpture. They liked the idea, we prepared a table with tools. We
picked a point of view for the camera, I explained how the camera was there for
a documentation purpose.
It was a profound moment for me and full of symbolisms, I left the
studio while listening to the noise of destruction, the hits. I knew there was
no return, I didn’t want to go back. It was affecting my body roughly. I knew I
needed to do it and I would never have done it by myself, I wouldn’t be able.
This destruction for me was a beginning and an end.
Angry vibe.
I loved when we all tried to put it back
together because I felt loving that day instead of anger.
I love the creepy music in the background.
Q: Why did you let us destroy the sculpture you built?
Eileen Karakurt
Watching the video makes me realize how long it
took to destruct the sculpture.
While making the video, as in breaking the
sculpture I felt myself be free because I usually don’t break things using
tools. It felt different.
After watching the video I notice how it was
taking so much effort to break something…as if breaking something requires
dreadful effort rather than building something new.
Q: how did we look when we were destroying the
sculpture?
Camila Godoy
This video makes me sad because we destroyed a
imperfect sculpture. It showed me that it makes as much time to destroy
something as it does to build something.
The music goes very well with the video but it gives me a sad and haunting vibe
because it shows me how dangerous these objects we were using are and how
incorrectly we were using them.
Q: what made you decided to change the colour of
the video and put that music as the background?
Caroline Santos.
[1]
Schroeder, W.
Continental Philosophy – A Critical Approach, Wiley Blackwell, London,
2004, pg.118
[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of
the Future, Edited by
Rolf-Peter Horstmann Humboldt-Universitat, Berlin, translated by Judith Norman, Cambridge texts in the
history of philosophy, Cambridge University press 2002. Aphorism 292, pg. 174
[3]
Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston
Vancouver Island University Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg.19
[4]
Friedrich
Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island
University Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg. 11
[5]
Friedrich
Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island
University Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg. 83
[6]
Friedrich
Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island
University Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg. 16
[7]
Friedrich
Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston Vancouver Island
University Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg. 16
[8]
Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Translated by Ian Johnston
Vancouver Island University Nanaimo, British Columbia Canada, pg. 80
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