Existential Anxiety

Further notes on Vibrant Matter by Jane Bennet. Bennet suggests ways of approaching our being in order to access, even slightly, the “vibrancy” of matter, this entanglement of things that surrounds and partakes us. In regards to the opposition of this enlightenment, what is the blinding string that gathers us into self? Perhaps it is our fear of death, becoming unwhole into the ground that moves beneath us, that keeps us desperately holding ourselves together. Perhaps the fear of death is not an intention but the intrinsic motive of the body. So life is a fleeting holding on, and the illusory idea of self motivates each step to eat, to love and to breathe!

It reminds me how the existential psychotherapists say that anxiety is inherent to the human condition, or how birds and squirrels look like they’re on amphetamines! Existential anxiety.

In it’s meta version, vibrant materialism is a gentleness, a gap of ease between the everyday harshness of survival.

I’d like to make a future installation that sounds our death. As a reminder that the only certainty in our future is our death. The Buddhas say it is a good thing to know our death. That’s when the shimmering beauty of life reveals itself.

Collapse is fatigue, depression, dysfunctional relationships, transport strikes, the malnourished fox. Collapse envisioned through micropolitical and microsocial events is more real than a story of “the end of the world”. Decay brings growth. Even a speck of algae bloom is a world of it’s own, and so the worlds continue to exist.

TOuch CARE

Another side project that is not part of the curriculum but important to my development as an artist. I have been invited to be part of an event in Dalston this Thursday the 19th of January. The event explores the relevance of care in our communities and artistic practice, imagined as an evening of group learning, discussion, and experiencing of the works of the artists involved. For the first time I’ll be fascilitating a workshop. It is a listening workshop, and develops on my previous research in geographies, place and listening as research practice.

The workshop will consist of a short presentation and discussion on listening practices, tuning in to imperceptibilites and navigation as a form of place making. Then in smaller groups, we will walk outside, following prompts on an activity sheet as a base for listening and noticing. The sheet is below. After this activity we will return to the venue and discuss what came up.

Listening-Outside-Activity-Google-DocsDownload

I am nervous and excited to fascillitate the workshop. I imagined myself learning how to fascillitate group activities in the future sometimes, but this has ended up right in front of me! Like a hot stone in cool water, practice for social change cools me down, so I am very grateful for this opportunity.

To follow how this can relate materially to my preparation for the exhibition, I plan on writing a sound walk activity for the gallery space. It might follow certain prompts as in the one above, depending on how the workshop will go.

Wind chimes in my home town, Tramore

I continue to conceptualise my sculptural piece for the exhibition. I have been gathering objects from my trip to Ireland, on the beaches of Tramore on the East coast and Connemara on the West. Playing and listening with these objects I reflect on their becoming into the temporary forms, or illusory staticity, of a shell, a rock, drift wood. I draw on them and gift them to people, imagining what their future entails.

The windchimes will contain a gathering of objects from our class; I have prescribed to the class that these objects be somehow durable and they won’t be returned, so the piece can have durability and perhaps be installed permanently after the exhibition. I am excited to learn about these objects and what they mean to my classmates, and learning about my classmate’s histories and cultures in the process. I feel glad and confident that my practice is actively constructing meaning from the critical analysis I have been forming. I feel like I can hold that critique of social alienation and ecological crisis through the action of making this object and connecting with people.

In my home town Tramore I went to Boyce’s Yard, a metal scrapyard, with my Dad. We found an abundance of used copper pipe, copper wire and hooks to form the chimes. Below are my notes for the neccessary parts.

The copper pipe is the tonal instrument. We cut it to random lengths, between 4″ and 11″, to find out how it sounds. I am not interested in tuning the sculpture to a certain scale as the choosing of this scale is problematic. After some trials we found a sweet spot between 6″ and 9″ for a 1/2″ diameter copper pipe. We formed it onto a set of chimes using some stones from Connemara, a board from a chest of drawers and a grimey plug. Apart from fishing line to connect the pipes and objects to the board, all materials are recycled. I felt a joy to hear the sound of this new instrument, and imagine the gathering of histories in it’s sounding. I was happy that this project is also a bridge to connect with my father and make memories together.

I left the chimes in Tramore between my mother’s house and my father’s house, so they can both hear the tones on a stormy night.

Vibrant Matter

First notes on “Vibrant Matter” by Jane Bennet

“Vibrant Matter, A Political Ecology of Things” outlines the importance of recognising agency outside of the human. Bennet uses a history of vitalism and object oriented ontologies to deconstruct a fundamental belief of Western thought, the binary between life and matter. Bennet points out by looking beyond this binary we can begin to recognise an assembly or assemblage of agencies that occur with any event or organisation, or a collaboration between different bodies, sometimes human and often not. Bennet claims that by thinking more horizontally about the agency of things, we can step away from the god/man/matter hierarchy that inevitably leads to inequality between humans, and a lack of awareness of our ecosystems that we are within that leads to the environmental destruction of today.

… Can we feel joy, weirdness and love for all the minerals that compose us and those worlds we rub up against?

… The cosmic flow is a vibrating intensity of matter in which we generally reduce to patterns or tendencies in order to act and survive.

… Can we imagine practices and mediums that attune to this flow as political and constructive?

This research inspires my installation piece for our Gallery 46 exhibition. I want my piece to inspire independent thought on the value of objects and materials that surround us. Beside my sculpture of a wind-chimes, containing objects from the class, I will have a textual list of those objects and their origins. I imagine that stating the personal histories of these objects could stimulate a recognition of their value and activeness, as they move between a personal life or landscape, the gallery and the auditory perception of the listener waking through.

Ear Pilots

Final draft of my first listening activity, Ear Pilots. At the beginning of writing these activities, I had so many different issues and ideas I wanted to bring up. I was interested in stimulating thought about the histories of a place: what has been removed, transformed, and silenced. Also thinking about engagement with the non-human, and engagement with our own intuition, that of navigation. I ended up with a more simple piece that is very self-reflective. The self is a great place to begin! I also kept it curious and open to interpretation. Any reflections that arise will directly some from the listener’s engagement with the place.

Ear-PilotsDownload

New Radicals

A sketch; what is a new radical movement we need for the future?

Perhaps it’s not only wealthy capitalists and big polluters we need to chat with or delete but also those who are designing future technologies that further our immersion in digital space. Do we live in the cusp of the metaverse? I believe in alternatives. We cannot reject technological development, but we can continue embracing and exploring our physical world to remind ourselves and the nerds the importance of intimacy and physical relations. What practices would encourage this exploration and intimacy?

I made a friend recently who is a financial historian. They research global trade networks, material sourcing and working conditions. They work with international companies in making important decisions. I found it fascinating to learn about the current developments that they are involved in: making sure the transition to “renewable” energies is possible with the right intersection of interests, companies and resources. This intersection carries a lot of suffering too. My friend remains hopeful while also prospecting dark futures: the likely continuity of power differentials and mass exploitation for building infastructures of reneweable energy.

They don’t believe in the possibility of rejecting technological development. For them the ugliness and harm is softened by what they believe to be true: that as a whole, today is still more equal and fair than the past. This helps them survive and be hopeful. I feel inspired.

Does the metaverse intersect with the transition to renewable energy? Maybe all the windmills will be less attractive than artificial landscapes. The snake eats itself!

I want to imagine alternative aesthetics and practices to the developement of metaverse/nerd lab cities and digital cultures. I will still be dependent on digital technologies to inject these aesthetics and practices into society, like the Situationists used mass media to criticise itself.

Not a total revolution, just to play my part ^o^ heehee follow my heart. ~ The cultures of the future will be a result of conflicting interests and tensions. So to manifest any visions we have into reality, we have to work with other people, find common goals and explore our differences. I will continue to organise with friends, and develop practices for listening and navigation that reflect these visions. My first group practice will be recorded for the audio paper; it is an experiment and an opportunity to learn and get feedback from other people.

A little history of network culture, and how some radicals believed in the libratory potentials of new technologies. (Notes from The Digital Condition by Felix Stalder.

Imagining history and development as a stream, where each event was dependent on others to exist, to stick, to proliferate…

AM Kaangieser

AM Kaangieser is a geographer and sound artist. I find her practice very inspiring. Her ideas about translation and indigenous knowledge led me to some further research about these complexities.

~ Suspend the will to know, and allow the ambiguity of what is being heard flow through ~ Kaangieser also points out that knowing fully is impossible, and translating into certain knowledge systems or languages is reductive. I appreciate this and want to explain this in my listening activities.

From “To Tend For, To Care With: Listening as Method.” On being unwanted:“If Anglo-Europeans can undo our conception of nature, of environment, and conceive of our relations to/with places as dynamic and interdependent, then attuning to a ‘no’ becomes much more imaginable. That environments hold histories within them is incontestable. The world is filled with stories of places haunted by spirits and memories, by the energetic and atomic residues of traumatic events. There are many places that are not to be entered, or even spoken of, by certain people. Sacred sites for ceremony or important transitions are not to be encroached on, and it is not possible to always know what places hold what significance. The acknowledgement of such places through conservation and heritage designations map awkwardly over spiritual perimeters. I can feel, even when human permission is given, that there are places that are not appropriate for me to be in. The moment in the rainforest showed me that even where clear protocols of asking and granting permission are undertaken with villagers, this does not mean that such negotiations can be translated onto the specific place itself. Permission needs to be sought again and again, each and every time, from everyone and everywhere. What I carry with me in listening is that I cannot assume consent based on prior interaction. Listening as taking-leave is about acknowledging that my presence is doing something to where I am. I have learnt to attend to what I sense, even when I might not understand why. I-Kiribati and African-American scholar Teresia Teaiwa writes that “Indigenous knowledge is not always transparent or accessible to all, nor is it meant to be” (2005: 16). Knowledge of environments, knowledge of places are not always mine to ask for or to hear, and to meet the world with this as a reminder is very important. To be able to listen to, and appreciate, what is not for us as Anglo-European scholars and artists is one of the most imperative things I have been taught to accept and practice.”

Reading sound together

I brought some texts to our biweekly reading group, brainworms! The texts were an introduction to deep listening by Pauline Oliveros and Geopolitics and the Anthropocene by AM Kaangieser. These texts are part of my research to develop outdoor listening, navigation and exploration activities. I will record one this weekend for my audio paper!

I was really interested in people’s interpretation and feedback of these texts. In Sound Studies we tend to be isolated in a community that takes subjective truths for granted. Bringing people outside of this field to interact with these ideas can reveal subjectivites.

People immeditately found Pauline’s call for quietness and centeredness exclusive: what about neurodivergent people who have different abilities when it comes to sensory information processing? People also felt uncomfortable by Pauline’s call for Deep Listeners to be involved in urban planning. While most people agreed that the city is loud, some people find this consoling while others find this exhausting. Women in the group said that the noise can be a sign of life and presence which helps them feel safe at night. One woman mentioned that she has to tune out the harassment of beeping cars and yelling men. How do these realities meet Oliveros’ practice of Deep Listening? People were generally excited to think about sound in this way and said that it stimulated new ideas.

In the reading of Kaangieser’s text there was mixed opinions. People liked their politics and the recognition of subtle inequality. Kaangieser claims that activism is blindly driven by activity, and urges for more reflectivion and “passivity”. Some people found this to be reductive of the scope of activism and also priviledged. It is clear that many social movements in history have been highly active and effective, but also well planned and reflective. This tension between thinking/acting or rest/rebellion is a common discussion in contemporary activist circles and it was interesting to hear it play out. I believe everyone has their own place in what they find comfortable or meaningful.

People felt uncomfortable with the poetic aesthetics of Kaangieser’s text, which they thought aligns with the call for passivity. Who really has the agency to rest, or be reflective and even passive? Are these the only people who should be leading social movements? Listening to people’s ideas has been fascinating and reminds me to remain in discussion when I am doing my own research. Finding commonality and difference in opinion is clearly a way to keep making sense.

I noticed again that my own language and ways of communicating are becoming more niche and intellectual, making it harder for people to understand what I am talking about. I want to actively be clear and accessible, especially if I want to fascillate activities or group excercises. This must be an active process in choosing simpler ways of saying things.

I am also realising that themes of environmental destruction and social alienation are heavy and subjective. After my last presentation in uni, a classmate said my discussion of my project felt “condescending.” They didn’t mean to say I was cruel, but that these ways of looking at the world are complicated and need to be brought up lightly to not feel confrontational. It made me realise that lot’s of people are probably aware to a certain extent of these issues but also need their own way of coping with them. At the same time, confrontation is not always negative. I thought afterwards that when spreading certain ideas there could be a softness and something fun in it too. It has made me think differently about my listening activities. I imagine them to be fun and open to the magic around us too, along with those painful and neccessary truths.

Collective Chime

Idea for next wind-chime project, possibly in gallery 46:

Collective Chime

-//..//.//\..//-

  • For the students of LCC, or the people who inhabit a place
  • Bring an object from your past or culture
  • Make sure that it is strong enough to make a sound when it hits a bell, and can bear wind and rain
  • Bring objects from the history of the place: rocks in the soil, rubble from a building, the bones of an animal
  • Use the objects to construct wind-chimes, using second-hand copper pipe as the tubes that sound a tone
  • Create a weatherproof sign, with a small sentence on each object, and title it “We Are Here” in English or other languages
  • Install the chimes in LCC or in the specific place

I’m thinking of positive messages, rather than a condescending message of blame or guilt that says “Look what we have done”. This collaborative piece is a subtle reminder of our histories sounding in the space. It also puts our histories along side the other histories in the place.

Commons and post-democracy

Sidenotes, some research into technological development. My audio paper will consist of documenting outdoor navigation practices and listenting in the city, without mobile phones. It contains a critique of dominant technology; specifially GPS and services like Google Maps. I want to do some research into digital behaviours to try give structure to my mixed feelings around our devices. Notes on “The Digital Condition” by Felix Stalder.

Stalder begines the book with a fascinating analysis of cultural growth. His beginning points are that technological development is not made of leaps, but is a fluid stream of ideas, cultural shifts, social movements, tensions and demands that make the popularisation of a new technology possible. This makes me question my negative view of certain technologies, when they cannot be isolated by wider changes in culture. Crises that promt questions and ideas will stimulate the research and development of new technologies. It seems that this process is indefinite. The shortening of resources on our planet affects the ability for this kind of development, but rather than stopping or slowing down certain developments, resource scarcity can increase violence and tensions between global powers. How can my practices and lifestyle be in contradiction to mass movement, a river? Perhaps we are not in contradiction when we have new ideas, we are together in new ideas. Rather than my scripts for urban wandering being a “rejection” or a “return” to a past, they could be felt as a different approach to the new unfolding realities/technologies. Different perspectives.