“Embodied knowledge, while often denigrated and disavowed within the modern colonial episteme, confirms that Western scientistic validity comprises only one kind of knowing. Manifest through poetics, aesthetics, and other bodily attunements, sensuous knowledges open to alternative modes of relation. […] A sensory, embodied, affective, and imaginative relation to the world opens to a different kind of ethics and politics.” 

To seek other ways of being within the world that are not just reduced to the visual can connect us to places we inhabit, concepts and information more closely. Our initial collective research on Derek Jarman and Feliz Gonzalez-Torres motioned the above scenario into one that is vital for building empathy and connection between the viewer and subject. Watching Blue is to learn about another person’s experiences and situate yourself between the stories and understanding them, whilst being transfixed by a steady blue screen. A static visual accompanying the voice allows a more personal and meditative experience of what is being said or heard, playing with complicity from the viewer as to the importance of ‘viewing’ the piece. The questions around the importance we place on the visual or listening, in relation to Blue, was interesting to consider. If split into two the sound element would carry more weight and content, giving the audience more to connect with and learn from, therefore the visual could be seen as an accompaniment or way of ‘being’ and behaving in a gallery/cinema space (if this is where it is being viewed/listened to). Gonzalez-Torres relies more on the participation value of the work to function as intended and have the desired results of changing form within Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA). The participants role requires taking and taste, becoming closely linked and vital to the artworks success of emotive capacity it involves, both from the actual participation and learning about how this artwork evolved overtime. Higher levels of sensory participation are central to these artworks to allow an audience to access they’re emotive and relating capabilities fully.  

I thought more about the visual’s relationship to sound and how this could conceive more relational attributes to artworks. This is something Lawrence Abu Hamdan utilises within his politically motivated works to situate an audience inside a far-away moment of history or physical building. This is achieved within Eyewitness Theatre, as we ‘experience’ the contours of a Syrian regime prison through both visual and sound elements. Engaging with survivors, Abu Hamdan created a range of sounds using various objects to ascertain what life would have been like within Saydnaya and how, in this mostly dark prison, these sounds would have acted like alarms for a guard approaching, what time of day it is and what was happening around them. Placing this within a large dark space of Turner Contemporary enables the sensory aspect to come through and bring the viewer into the space that Abu Hamdan has been researching and creating; leaving the artwork with a greater sense of what sensory deprivation means and its resulting impact on survivors. This is also true of Tai Shani, who won the Turner Prize the same year in 2019, who creates large scale imaginary landscapes, often originating from history, mythology and literature. D.C Semiramis takes over a whole space with clean-cut lines, hard and soft materials and hanging sculptures, permitting the viewer to walk around this fantastical utopia that is anti-history/anti-future and void of time and space. Adding context to this embellished world is a sound piece of twelve characters, real and mythical, based on Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies. The viewer is able to listen to this material whilst exploring the cities forms and structures, thinking about what element is what and how it would be interacted with by this set of characters. These questions were given some resolution by a series of performances that took place in the installation by the twelve characters. Listening to this mix of music and robotic voices adds much agency to the visual and permits imagination from the viewer as to what is in front of them and what each component can mean.  

The Calton Hill trip was an informative process to learn ways of interacting with objects, people and surroundings. My group set out to summarise our experience on paper through a series of pressings that people would be able to hold and touch during our presentation. As a group we decided upon areas of the hill that we saw as important to document and that could be performed well as part of our idea. We had two parts of our ‘story’ that consisted of the hill itself and the gallery space; one that felt like more of an ‘experience’ and one that felt more like a refuge from that experience. We felt it important to cover much ground as possible to be able to authentically present our experience of Calton Hill; this was in our favour as much of the ground was uneven and full of textures and the monuments and rocks surrounding these had strong patterns and indents, making this a straightforward task. We also recorded some sounds of the trip like leaves blowing around, people talking, traffic and the artwork inside the gallery (Collective), but this felt secondary to the imprints we were making. When presenting this to class, it was weird seeing these prints ‘out of context’ and laying on a table as if it were evidence to be surveyed. We could now see the forms from which they came, as you trace certain lines, they are more in keeping with rock forms and manufactured monuments or grounds, and more wavy delicate lines that showed the more arduous task of pressing on soft sculpture (Katie Schwab). My favourite part of this trip was recording the strong winds on paper that sometimes flew away or ripped between the people holding the paper. This led to thinking about ways of recording weather or natural occurrences and how a perception of this changes when seen, felt or heard within an unnatural space for that occurrence.   

The Calton Hill exercise was a good way to explore the scenario of how sensory experiences can fill a gap of relation with place, people or things. I feel by spending time with the actual formation of a place, feeling and hearing it more deeply, I have come to not only understand but appreciate it more, becoming more connected to the experience the group had, revisiting it and researching its colonial histories. I feel this improved my perception of artists that I have previously researched including their methodologies and how research (especially that of the unseen) can turn into a physical artwork (Takis/Olafur Eliasson). If I walked into a gallery and approached a sound piece on headphones the visual and other sensory aspects are always present like the colour of the wall that is in front of you, the surrounding artworks and people roaming the space; the headphones may feel too tight or loose or you may have to remove a hairband from your hair to wear them. I’m not sure how this kind of impact can be measured but we are told by the small signs what and where the art is and can decide the rest for ourselves.  

reflective analysis- beyond the visual / Kate Hudson / Themes in Contemporary Art (2022-2023)[SEM1] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0