DANCE NOT DANCE CLIMB NOT CLIMB – AUG 2009
SENSING. FEELING. DOING – OCT 2009
CIVILITY AND ALTITUDE – OCT 2009
UNPREDICTABLE SPACES – NOV 2009
TEXTURES IMPRINTS FRAMEWORKS – JUNE 2010
EMBODYING LANDSCAPE AND VERTICAL LEVELS – Sep 2010
THE DAY SNOW CAME - Dec 2010
MEANING AND LOCATION – Jan 2011
THE LOCATION IS WHERE IT SHOULD BE – Jan 2011
IDEA BASE CAMP – Jan 2011
THE COVE – Mar 2011
NAMING SOME THINGS (1) – MAY 2011
NAMING SOME THINGS (2) – MAY 2011
SOPHORIFIC RAIN - JUNE 2011
SCALE / EDGE / THRESHOLDS
Immediate thoughts after two nights at the Cove.
Hi Dan,
I am also digesting... many thoughts and feelings. I really enjoyed to just be there and wander around... scramble... sit... enjoying being wet... I think a lot about the scale issue... that really at the "big" scale there is no impetus to "do" anything much... just eat... sit... clean.. wander... think... so the small scale details become the scale of creativity... of dynamic engagement... already I started to get deeper and deeper into the incredible amount of variation in the textures, colours, formations, sounds, smells, in what is a comparatively small area... noticing my affective responses to the variations... the topophilia/topophobia.... I like the rounded, dolphin rocks at the edge of the sea near the archway... they make me happy... the rock at the top of the slope on the west side, the big block seems perched ready to fall, it makes me nervous... the grey wall on the west side? I don't trust it... it beckons me but feel it may betray... I feel the relief coming out of the cove into the east side every time... the sound is less intense, the light more welcoming. There is an intensity in the cove itself... it doesn't feel like a peaceful place. I don't feel like meditating there. Dancing on the pebbles, rolling sliding, jumping.. the texture is very playful... on the edge of discomfort but the sound is a joy. The crunching, gentle grinding, the crispness of the sound... mmm. Going over the wee bridge feels like entering another world... "The Peninsula"... the feeling you could just keep going walking into the sea beyond the perched cormorants. I watched you go along there from high up above... you seemed very very far away... further than the real distance. I liked to scramble to feel myself slowly getting to know my way on rock. My feet gradually more keen and my rhythm more practical... one extremity moving at a time... taking time in a balanced place to appreciate, enjoy and consider...
let's skype Wednesday night around 9...
I enjoyed spending time with you. I feel I'm learning a lot. Thanks
Steve
Hi Steve,
Scale:
The cove has a scale which isn't massive but because of it's aspect is quite daunting somehow - it carries an anxiety and edge. So I don't fully feel the draw of small scale as a space of activity - or the main attraction in terms of activity.
The larger scale and it's edge for me brings that element which we avoid in manageable and nice experiences - but something I crave for and get through climbing and sometimes art. It maybe goes back to those thresholds you have talked about before - moving from one level to the next from lying to kneeling, from crouching to standing(vertical levels)- it takes a commitment decision to cross a threshold. In away this is my reading of the potential resonance of the threshold concept - but it works for me. The cove demands something from you to encounter it - and it's something that isn't necessarily gentle and might not be nice... So this in a way is not about small scale (although it's the attention to small scale that might enable you to tackle the big scale). I should say at this point in terms of climbing the cove is tiny - but even so it has something intimidating - especially in wild or wet weather as we have mostly encountered it. I also felt the scale is something to negotiate - as it is complex and has various elements.
The peninsula drew me because of it's scale - a thin strip of rock leading out into the Atlantic ocean. On the thinest part the sea seemed massive and swelling and about to swallow me up. I was quite anxious there but felt logically I was ok - I know a bit about waves and could gauge things - but no the less the further i dared myself to go the further i needed to go until sensibleness decided enough was enough....
On a much smaller scale then the scrambling we did was gentle, warm, playful - but still had a sense of space and scale which for me wasn't about looking it was about moving, holding touching, sensing and negotiating - not a lot about deep looking - it had a focus which probably closed out the deeper observation you talked about.
So scale is relative - the range of scales is amazing and fascinating however beyond fascination I'm drawn to the spatial excitment of the spaces, things and relationships that are bigger than me or that encompass me....Freud would have field day! Time, height, weight, swell, light, weather, rock, sky. These are things that manifest the edge and the thresholds that presents. The cracks, legdes and corners I climbed in the wet in boots offered some thresholds but mostly I avoided facing anything too challenging. But that's the nature of climbing inthe wet - you avoid the risks (thresholds) you might more readily take in the dry because of better friction and grip. Also a threshold I didn't really get to was being properly warmed up to climb - this for me is important - until I'm warmed up i usually feel and climb like a sack of spuds.
For me two words seemed to resonate: the edge and the threshold.
I agree outside the cove has a totally different sense - softer, lighter, quieter. Much better for camping and existing in a happy state - even in the rain. No anxiety there. I loved that. Here there was a different set of questions in terms of the project. These seemed to do with accommodating others that might join us - so we started to talk about simple ideas based around people's pleasure and own directions (and responsibilities) - "we expect you to do what you want".
The discussion around video was useful - we don't make faithful narratives of experience - it's impossible - but then this is a state of lens based artworks - especially in relation to a lived or real experience. I think the emphasis should be on thinking and accepting the limitations of this technology - rather than somehow believing they can capture and represent the whole. So the video offers a fragment shaped by the means, techniques or mode of its making. So then how to embody the viewer? - or share, committ them to an experience that carries them somehow beyond the visual? This is not a question purely for video art - all audience, spectator based art models i guess have this issue to differing degrees. i think installed video can do something, as can the editing in terms of visual stimulus. How can you transfer something non visual through the visual? empathy? tapping into others lived experience? hypnotics? power of aesthetics? Poetics?... I like to keep it simple and accept the idea of something either works for me or it doesn't......I can't predict that confidently.
But it's got to be funky.
for now,
dan
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