TUTORIALS
TUTORIAL NAYARI CASTILLO 27.11.24
- using systems that are in place that generate change
-thinking of a scale and what is appropriate for that space and project.
-representation is not decolonization
- boundary concept: things that unify
- AR: is a living thing that allows you to have a process.
-whiteness vs the other is not decolonization
- GLISSANT we are all mixed
-Hans der offenen Tore (http://2016.steirischerherbst.at/english/Programme/House-of-Open-Gates) as an example of this ‘we are all mixed’ + Daily Rhythms Collective Nayari was part of.
-AR is to understand the rules and make them usable
- Performance as a means of communication
- tools to allow for your narrative
( more or less similar to putting myself in my own research and art)
- think of the other ecological processes that generate ‘newness’ (in relation to me wondering if I was pushing these eco-metaphors and what else can they be)
TUTORIAL PHYLLIS HOYTE (retired Trinidadian Marine Biologist) 20.11.24
- check Kew Gardens and other botanical gardens in Europe (Cardiff Greenhouse) to start somewhere with the research on ‘eco-metaphors’ (the one place that for sure will have examples of hybrids is in those colonial countries that kept records of fauna and flora in their colonies)
- contact Dr Carol James in Forestry Division
- differences between fauna and flora of Trinidad and that of Tobago
- why the Tobago Main Ridge was one of the oldest reserves in the British Empire (someone, a farmer or local plantation owner, or businessman etc... recognised that all the riverwaters in tobago came from the tropical rainforest in the Main Ridge so it was a way of protecting the sources of all waters)
- marine biologists currently trying to get the lion-fish culturally adapted in Trinidad culture as a way to curb it’s ‘invasiveness’ (much like eating shark is a cultural thing in Trinidad, despite the coming endangered status).
- contact Judy Gobin (retired professor of natural sciences at UWI)
- see if I can get in touch with Ian Lamby who was in the Field Naturalists Club
- artist inspiration: Greer Woodham and her paintings of the flora of trinidad, Sarah Beckett (british/turkish background and how Trinidad has become her home for her and her artworks).
TUTORIAL STIAN 20.11.24
- curating the props (of the tree-ship rituals installation): choices in material textures etc... where it comes form will also influence the art.
- the set is not only a backdrop where people inhabit.
- my æsthetics and the things that I deem necessary: they are also a hybrid, challenge to see if there’s a way to have a bigger awareness of this mix, why do I choose these ‘disturbances’?
- all the selection of the material + where it comes from should be available
- integrated and not = include elements that aren’t usual partners with me.
- if you talk to your carpet why don’t you talk to your printer - Stian
- check: the sociology of a doorknob + we have never been modern (Latour)
- the difference between the artist and scenographer is that the artist writes the script.
- Hierschorn: meticulous of materials he used
- there’s a huge tree at billedhoggerforening!
- check Ima-Abasi Okon.
GROUP CRIT 3- 2.11.24
-finding people/social workers/care intimacy person to help with the care aspect of the workshops (given the sensitivity of it)
- continuation for after workshop
TUTORIAL MIMMI & COLE - 30.10.24 see link for full unedited transcript
- talk to Maga about people at Linderud who can do the workshops with me about letter-writing with ONLY mixed people
- look at the resources at school (there’s lots of mixed people here)
- contact Maritea
TUTORIAL MERETE - 29.10.24
- actively looking out for ecological metaphors of hybridization (birds migration, trees, butterflies)
-ecological metaphors: becoming of the earth as we know it.
- Marie Skeie- how she reserches, places her work, take contact
- Asza Elzén- how the research translates into material (5.12 bergen talk)
-look up ocean space on how they communicate their research
-sletteløkka project- contact Alexander
- STOP READING - START DOING
TUTORIAL BELÈN- 28.10.24 see unedited transcript
Passing on something to your daughter: what is this idea of passing on? It's a type of education, if many of these efforts on decolonization and questioning colonization are taken through education. How this links with ecology: logos, refers to knowledge. If there was a way for us to be an easy prey to knowledge, is through education. What you are actually doing, by workshops, by finding ways of thinking education, how this thinking about this whole temporality relates to your production is a way of questioning how we know. This knowledge is incomplete, it’s collective. The idea of incomplete means it can be built in time. It has a rhythm. Traditional education has this transaction form, your mind is something that is empty and you’re going to be filled, and that’s the sense of education in most of the colonies, that we are going to be reformed through education.
So when you go into making the workshop as an artistic form for research, I think that you are thinking about knowing, about this ecology, this logos in the ecos, about the ecos as something incomplete as something collective. It's important for the whole labour of colonoy tht things are man-made, man is the main character or subject. Even in a small gesture, like having a workshop where people produce collective knowledge, goes against the vertical hierarchy of traditional education, where everything is structured in a way that we can be reformed and we can understand a series of hierarchies and categories that will allow us to function in our places in this world. So the idea that knowledge is collective questions the singular historycal subject (man). Maybe there is a we that can produce knowledge, a form of collectiveness that can emerge from this. And it’s creative.
One thing that is extracted by colonialism is people’s symbolic capacity (to play on words, to make jokes, etc.. Is some sort of symbolic capacity, and it’s something that is extracted from people through a strict hierarchical education system for example, but also not being able to rest, made to speak another language so removal of your voice, etc...) and this symoblic capacity is a creative capacity so through this workshop you also restitute the creative, through your talking, your tone, through this time for creation, time to exercise their symbolic capacity, their creative capacity, and when this is related to knowledge, that is also a form of (from education and art practice) approahcing this whole colonial stuff.
So what you are also doing, in your art perspetive, you are reading this (natural) world, you are restituting to yourself this creative capacity by the ct of reading this world, by the act of having workshops, you are restituting this capacity, re-naming the world.
Also, the use of voice, in educational context, the use of voice is very disciplined, you have to speak in a certai tone, certain rhythm, so the moment you sing there is also an excercie of voice that is not expected to express knowledge. So there is some ritual form in the use of voice. Because you connect all this use of voice to emotion, there was something moving, so even without any of the installation pieces you can connect to different moments of this.
Your practice is something collective, incomplete, creative.
How does decolonizing ecology filter through the workshops? Are the ecological metaphors, the poetic images present in the artworks as a result of the workshops and research? Or do they appear as a response to my storytelling, or through telling many times the think different settings and because workshop and your voice for me are a key aesthetic language of this whole research. And the poetic images will follow.
I’m looking through this lens of decolonization, ecology, relating with a particular knowing body (BIPOC body) so these are the terms of the theoretical framework. So looking at the theoretical framework from a Caribbean perspective looking at these objects (the poetic images) of the london parrots or the trees or the plants, not to know them as a social scientist but to try to question them and find a poetic image. This look through them is going to be done through the storytelling and through the workshops.
The manifesto is a call to action. But is always incomplete because it can keep being built on, being a process, a shipness, a duration.
SIGNE HOLM TUTORIAL -MANIFESTO DRAFT FEEDBACK - 21.10.24
- BUT signe: the ritual, the method will define the goal, what the concrete actions, separate the concrete actions form the agenda
- ‘I want to meet and hear’ passage is the most concrete. this is where it gets personal. (SWITCH THIS LINE and put it at the beginning)
- see how specific I can get with the actions in the definitions: that’s where the agenda is right now. the desire to unpack but how: through stories? folk-tales? how are we going to begin this workshop? define what is my actions that are ritual, discussion, participatory art, what is the starting point of all these actions.
- what does it take for something to become a ritual in the actual workshop? ASK THESE KINDS OF QUESTIONS FOR EACH DEFINITIONS: How is my workshop participatory art? what is the actual process.
- if I’m creating this ritual for myself what do I want to be there, who and what do we do?
- the decolonising from for example: ecofeminism, can have many layers, the decolonising can come through the writings, through the method, in the artworks.
- use the ‘basic’/routine of ‘consciousness raising’ as a template to figure out the method.
- collaborative writing where collective discussion is the basis for the story-writing: this will make a different outcome of writing.
MERETE TUTORIAL #2 -
- Sasha Huber: as a mixed person of colour it’s not our responsibility to share to the world the past atrocities, traumas inflicted on our ancestors, expose the racism, etc.. but it is if you choose to do it. This made me start writing
- UKS writing/discussion workshop with uncivilized collective: made me comfortable to share with people with similar contexts and usually I’m not (it helped that almost everyone was mixed), made me more aware of the mini-traumas of my teenage years growing up in trinidad and made me want to write more. made me long for more discussion with mixed people.
- Nikhil tutorial: spoke about Jemma Desai and her ‘yearning as method’, made me think of this yearning to belong and not belong has been a very strong constant in my life, made me think of what my ‘method’ was (in hindsight: exploring ritual as method)
-the UKS writing workshop made me think of my own collaborative workshops and made me aware of the importance of small groups but also that it should be the same people, and people who share my context. I want to do the ‘social discourse’ with them before even considering taking it ‘out there’ (which also resonates with how I work through collaborations and care, as in the ‘tree witches’ or the ‘relearning tree-time’ group, everyone’s perspectives makes the general discourse more rich and deep)
- decolonial ecology: deconstructing the traumas related to being a person of colour, like me, in parrallel to deconstructing colonial traumas of the ecological planet.
- Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor (RAI podcast session launch together with Atelier kunstnerforbundet) : emphasized the context of mother, artist, black woman. her words inspired me to put words on this link between ecology and my identity.
‘my relationship to ecology can also be described as a spirituality (if that is defined as a way of being in relation to our surroundings), i’ve pursued and explored this side of me, almost furiously so to hold on to some part of me because I couldn’t deal with the complex identity issues I had since I was a teenager. This process has shed some of that fear but it’s also why I want to surround myself with others like me, for care in light of that vulnerability’.
-pathway with people that specializes with some aspect similar to my practice to help contextualisation, create rituals with other people?
- map out who’s here: artists + scholars + meet individually with them
- a way to open this up as an artist in public space, they become a bit like a resource group
- is it people who work with this? who have thought about it? to give me confidence before holding my own?
- to do: write out a little manifesto for myself, what is the tree library addressing.
- side note of who: almost like a map of people that could be in such a group.
-Maritea (?)
- different ways of looking at ecology, beware of getting boxed in
- important to define the different terms in the manifesto
- forest library - future library: might be too similar?
- 100 artists manifestos
- first manifesto then mapping of people
- what’s the core of my context I want to explore. Decide that first, make constellations of the different groups within my context. what are the constellations I already have
- what is my way of looking at ecology? what does my forest look like? it’s not random that people interact with the forest.)
- imagine what your constellation is for your master project?
TUTORIAL NIKHIL - 10.10.24
- how do you connect outside shows with inside shows?
- check Tekstlab and also Schous plass library
- Jemma Desai curator ‘yearning as method’
GROUP CRITIQUE #2 - 01.10.24
- Ting (as in Storting, the place where people discuss ‘things’, etc...) is from Viking age
- what modernity does to lack of rituals and put myself in it
-rotary/lions club/husfliden/meeting activity with different set of rules than ‘normal’
- library of the interactions, don’t underestimate yourself, embodied practice
-check Rosanna Paulo
6/09/24- LINE WRITING TUTORIAL
- ‘conversations with my brain and body’ : placing ‘who’ the brain is, ‘who’ the body is in the context, in the story. as characters. it gets in the way of understanding of the text,
- either build it out in a more obvious way or do it differently. one must concentrate on what is said (quoting and referencing in the conversation) but at the same time the dialogue is very ‘spoken’. can be a bit confusing. and too dense, one is looking for a way in to the text.
- SCENOGRAPHY MED TEKST!!! how to scenographize the text?
- if this dialogue had been a play or film, what else can be part of making the atmosphere of the dialogue?
- tunge referanser innimellom, mange lag opp på hverandre.
- THIS THESIS IS TO MAKE PEOPLE KNOW WHAT I WORK WITH AND HOW: anledning til å styre vårt oppmerksomhet.
- all the questions (own questioning) slow down the understanding of the text.
- when referring to authors in the text, explain a bit about who they are, it sounds like I think the people reading will know who they are already.
- rituals, social discourse, what is to be prioritized?
- ‘forskjellige perspektiver’ make that more important in the text (’from every party involved).
- ‘sculpture’ what practice is about with the text.
- ‘scenographise’ the text: må skje gjennom ordene, det skal også ha en logikk.
- some things are a bit repeated, what is repeated in the words will also be picked up in the artworks I present.
- look up Rosanna Vibe MA thesis (tekstil) : example of hvordan hun brukte teori som så tydelig spiller en rolle med veveri.
- guiseppe penone- ritualisert kunstpraksis
- ulike livsformer, det med bibliotek og skog, det med kunnskapbanken. says about how to open for ulike systemer for å tydeliggjøre (synliggjøre too?) verden, et rom for språk, ritualer, tilnærming til verden = description of the Seilduken exhibition as part of the story within the thesis. what questions can come out of this room? litterær, teoretisk, ulike elementer, temporality, sammspill. tilrettelegging har noe scenografisk?
-tydeliggjøre this ‘imagining sustainable futures’, what it says about alternative positions for å si noe i verden.
- find out what happens in my work, ALWAYS START FROM MY PERSPECTIVE! description of the seilduken room (or others), show how I work, hva ligger i sjølvannet av arbeidet som gjøre at man blir nysjerrige.
- reflect on what type of offentlighet is interesting for me, what opportunities does it give me, det handler om å være presis ift sted. bibliotek og et skog, how does these overlap in relation to public space?
- to me public space in my work is : å snakke med folk in whatever space (park (Losæter), bibliotek (Seilduken), forest (MA project?), etc...), the ability to have (constructive/meaningful) discussions with others. WHAT DOES ‘SNAKKE MED FOLK IN WHATEVER SPACE’ MEAN? is seen inthe dialog format but show how, det kommer ikke frem ennå, show that this came about as a result of the link to workshops.
- VANDRING GJENNOM ULIKE ROM MED DISKUSJONER? So the collective/sosiale is more obvious?
- hvordan gjøre teksten til et rom som man kan gå inn og ut av?
4/09/24- LINE
- what materials am I using and how do they relate to each other? what happens when they meet, when they appeal to the senses? ‘it’s very bodily, how you place youself in these systems you have made, smells, movement, shadows, reflections’
- these are my ecosystems within my practice, and all the connections they generate through physical senses but otherwise too, those senses that come as a result of the physical senses doing their work.
3/09/24 - MERETE
- write out the stages of my practice (storytelling inspiration from books + participatory + back to story)
- explore different ways to share to someone else (diagram, visualization?): what am I doing, how am I doing it, why am I doing it.
- this can then be adapted or expanded, work on that bite-sized way of talking about it.
ON DOCUMENTING
-ways that it could be presented, in a way that I want to
- who you read in connecting to what they are representing
- different vocab/ way of saying things (instead of using the word ritual they might have a different word)
- when theatre works in public space it’s like a stage, despite the interdisciplinary work with other artists. (on ritual and performance)
-how have artists done this type of reading - see Tanya Brugera.
- what do I want people to get out of this?
- reading group: carrier bag theory of fiction?
- in relation to asking Mari for her insights on her ritual project: not all is art, the person has to define it. BUT art practice is of course informed by other fields.