The research thematic Performing Process invites attention to the process of our practices.1 This is not so much — or at least not necessarily — the revelation of process as concrete skills, techniques or ways of doing things, but perhaps rather more an attempt to become attuned to those creative processes “enclosed in aesthetic experiences” and “enacted in creative practices” to borrow philosopher and music theorist Henk Borgdorff’s terms.2 This might include bringing attention to the habitually private, perhaps even hidden or undisclosed, processual aspects of our (research) practices. Still, what is at stake in paying attention to this dimension of our process and what different modes of attention might be required? How can we become more attuned to the affective, incipient, fragile, delicate energies and emergences within our research practices? How might we cultivate the capacity to attend?
Certainly, this mode of attention needs to be differentiated from hyper-vigilance — the nervous and exhaustive alertness of fear, uncertainty and doubt, the shallow and agitated attention of the contemporary attention economy. Indeed, the call to attend to and make visible the process of one’s research practice also needs to be differentiated from the imperative of transparency, which seeks to demystify or denude, to ‘strip or divest of all covering, lay bare’. For philosopher Byung-Chul Han, "Transparency, the imperative of dataism, is the source of the compulsion to transform everything into data and information, that is, to make it visible. It is a compulsion of production."3 How then to shift away from a mode of attention that seeks to hold, grasp, keep possession, control; that is tense and overly directed? A more tender attention then: attend — to wait upon, to be present for.
For writer and philosopher Hélène Cixous, “We must save the approach that opens and leaves space for the other.”4 She writes, “To allow a thing to enter in its strangeness,” involves a patience that pays attention, “An attention that is terse, active, discreet, warm, almost imperceptible […]”5 For Cixous, this mode of attention is unhurried, it requires, “Slowness: the slow time that we need to approach, to let everything approach […].”6 This mode of practice necessarily takes time. Dwelling. Tarrying. Residing. Abiding. What practices of attention might be conceived for enabling, heightening, deepening, widening as well as nuancing both our individual and collective sensitivities? To sensitise — to endow with sensation, from the Latin sensus, past participle of sentire: to ‘feel-perceive’. Author and psychoanalyst, Marion Milner differentiates between “two types of attention: the narrow attention shared by both analytic thought and of blind thinking (that “makes a separation of subject from object, me from not-me, seer from seen”; and a wide attention which knows nothing, wants nothing, that “depends on a willingness to forgo the usual sense of self as clear and separate and possessing a boundary.”7 Extension of perception, sensation and awareness: activation of new realms of experience beyond the normative or habitual, wilful expansion of the self beyond pragmatic interests. For philosopher, mystic, and political activist Simone Weil, the critical question is how we might teach the creative faculty of attention, how might we activate the ‘gymnastics of the attention’. For Weil, ‘creative attention’, intuitive attention, involves making “the effort of attention empty of all content”8, being “committed without the use of will-power and highly conscious without being self-conscious”.9 She writes, “In such a work all that I call ‘I’ has to be passive. Attention alone — that attention which is so full that the ‘I’ disappears is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call ‘I’ in the light of my attention and turn it on to that which cannot be conceived.”10 For Weil, “Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.”11
So, how might artistic research play a role in the cultivation of reinvigorated forms of attention, of being attentive; the reformulation of a research culture for gently tending and attending to one another’s research processes and practices, rather than fixating only on the production of more and more knowledge in an already over-saturated ‘knowledge economy’? How can we cultivate collective practices of “with-nessing”12 (a neologism of witnessing and being-with) — by bringing a particular quality of attention towards being-in-relation, commitment to be fully present to what unfolds. Indeed, for psychologist Daniel Stern, the specific ‘vitality affects’ generated through being-in-relation can generate an event of “affective inter-subjectivity” with the potential to irrevocably alter or re-organise our “implicitly felt inter-subjective field.”13 Yves Citton asks: “What can we do collectively about our individual attention, and how can we contribute individually to a redistribution of our collective attention?”14 He explores the potential of ‘joint attention’, collective attention and even individuating attention — where “The co-construction of subjectivities and intellectual proficiency requires the co-presence of attentive bodies sharing the same space over the course of infinitesimal but decisive cognitive and emotional harmonizations”.15 For Citton a mode of joint or even ‘presential co-attention’ emerges in moments where, “several people, conscious of the presence of others, interact in real-time depending on their perception of the attention of the other participants”.16 How might we cultivate the conditions for transformative forms of co-attention? Can we shift the notion of what artistic research does to better consider the ecologies of shared practice that researching artistically — researching aesthetically, researching attentively — enables?
1. This framing text is drawn from various sources: Emma Cocker’s keynote presentation, Towards an Attitude of Openness’ at the Society of Artistic Research conference (2021) which can be encountered here; her ‘Practices’ introductions in No Telos! (eds. Cocker and Maier, Beam Editions, 2019) and “Practices of Attention” in Emma Cocker, Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Choreo-graphic Figures – Deviations from the Line (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017). This thematic also extends some of the conversation and discussion from the Summer Lodge symposium, Attention/Detail (2015) – see here. It also extends the interests of Care + Attend, an event curated by Emma Cocker and Joanne Lee as part of the Society of Artistic Research Spring event, Unconditional Love, taking place at Chelsea College of Arts, 30 April – 2 April 2015. See here.
2.Henk Borgdorff, ‘The Production of Knowledge in Artistic Research’ in Michael Biggs and Henrik Karlsson (eds.), Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts, (London and New York, Routledge, 2011).
3.Byung-Chul Han, Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), p. 82. See also Han, The Transparency Society, (Stanford University Press, 2012).
4.Hélène Cixous, Coming into writing and other essays. (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 62.
5.Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, trans. Barnaby Norman, (Cambridge: Polity, 2017), p. 18.
6.Cixous, 1991, p. 62.
7.Marion Milner, On Not being able to paint, (Routledge, 2010) [ First published 1950 ], p.190.
8. Simone Weil, An Anthology, "Foreword" (Penguin 2005), p. xiii.
9. 'Introduction', in Siân Miles, in Simone Weil, An Anthology, (Penguin 2005), p. 52.
10. Simon Weil, in Simone Weil, An Anthology (2005), p. 233.
11. Weil, 2005, p. 232.
12.Conflation of witnessing and being-with the term wit(h)nessing is used within the frame of the Choreo-graphic Figures project for describing a specific mode of attentive relationality. See Emma Cocker, Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Choreo-graphic Figures – Deviations from the Line (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017) pp.162 – 169.
13. Daniel Stern, Forms of Vitality: Exploring Dynamic Experience in Psychology, the Arts, Psychotherapy and Development, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. xvi.
14.Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, (Polity Press, 2017), p. 10.
15. Citton, 2017, p. 84.
Bibliography/links
Julia Bell, Radical Attention, (Peninsula Press, 2020).
Manon De Boer, Trails and Traces (Revolver, 2016).
Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, trans. Barnaby Norman, (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).
Guy Claxton, 'Paying Attention', in Hare Brain Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases When you Think Less, (The Ecco Press, 1997), pp. 164 - 187.
“Practices of Attention” in Emma Cocker, Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Choreo-graphic Figures – Deviations from the Line (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017).
Emma Cocker, “Practices” in No Telos! (Eds.) Emma Cocker and Danica Maier, (Beam Editions, 2019).
Hélène Cixous, Coming into writing and other essays. (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press, 1991).
Nathalie Depraz, Francisco J. Varela and Pierre Vermersch, On Becoming Aware, (John Benjamins Publishing, 2002).
Félix Guattari, The Three Ecologies, (Bloomsbury, 2000).
Byung-Chul Han, Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020).
Marion Milner, On Not being able to paint, (Routledge, 2010), [First Published 1950]
Marion Milner, A life of One’s Own, (London and New York: Routledge, 2011) [First published in 1934].
Iain McGilchrist, Ways of Attending: How our Divided Brain Constructs the World, (Routledge, 2019)
Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening, (Fordham University Press, 2007)
Arne Naess, Ecology of Wisdom, (Penguin 2016). Originally published in 2008.
Jenny Odell, How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, (Melville House Publishing, 2021).
Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice, (iUniverse, 2005).
Georges Perec, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, (Wakefield Press, 2010). Originally published in 1975.
Claire Petitmengin, Micro-phenomenology - see https://www.microphenomenology.com/interview
Claire Petitmengin, Listening from Within, Journal of Consciousness Studies, October 2009, 16(10), pp. 252-284.
Walter Schneider, Susan T. Dumais, and Richard M, Shiffrin, Varieties of Attention, (Academic Press, 1984).
Daniel N, Stern, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life, (W.W. Norton and Company, 2004).
Daniel Stern, Forms of Vitality: Exploring Dynamic Experience in Psychology, the Arts, Psychotherapy and Development, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)
Francisco Varela, Ethical Know-how: Action, Wisdom and Cognition, (Stanford University Press, 1999).
Alan Wallace, The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind, (Wisdom Publications, 2006).
Simone Weil, An Anthology, (Penguin Modern Classics, 2005) Originally published by Virago Press 1986.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, (Routledge, 2002). Originally published in 1947.
Wayne Wu, Attention, (Routledge, 2014)
Reading Group
Modes of Attention (05 May 2022)
During this reading group we engaged with two texts for exploring different modes of attention and of attentiveness, alongside considering how the cultivation of creative attention might operate in resistance to the narrow, instrumentalised ‘attention-seeking’ of the contemporary attention economy.
The first text was the ‘Introduction’ from Yves Citton’s The Ecology of Attention, (Polity Press, 2016, pp. 1 -23). In The Ecology of Attention Citton argues that contemporary life is marked by a gross overabundance or excess in terms of production, whilst there is simultaneously a critical deficit in or exhaustion of our collective and individual attention. Citton traces the emergence of the ‘attention economy’ through various historical precedents, an economy whose “principle scarcity is attention rather than the traditional elements of production”. Citton seeks to reconceptualise the vocabulary through which contemporary attention has been inscribed, moving away from the language of ‘attention economy, economics of attention, economy of attention’ towards the notion of an ecology or even (drawing on the work of both Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess and Félix Guattari) an ecosophy of attention.
The second text was the chapter called ‘Two Ways of Looking’ from Marion Milner’s A life of One’s Own, (London and New York: Routledge, 2011) pp. 76 – 82. [First published in 1934]. I (EC) first came across the writing of British psychoanalyst Marion Milner through the work of artist-filmmaker Manon de Boer, whose film-work, An Experiment in Leisure (2016), I encountered at its premiere at the Secession, Vienna in 2016 (Manon de Boer, Giving Time to Time, 2016). Manon de Boer’s An Experiment in Leisure is conceived as “an attempt to translate the idea of aimless and open-ended time into film”1, “not least by addressing the temporal process leading up to moments of creation.”2 Within de Boer’s film, “Excerpts of texts by psychoanalyst Marion Milner (1900-1998) on concentration, the body, repetition, daydreaming and open-ended time as conditions for creation are read and reflected upon by different artists. These voices and the silences between them, images of a seascape in Norway and of the artists’ workspaces, as well as sounds from the Norwegian coast create parallel spaces, each following their own rhythm. The resulting experience of time resonates with Milner’s idea of leisure: not a moment opposed to work, but a time allowing us to perceive and think freely without an immediate objective.”3
1 See press release https://artmap.com/secession/exhibition/manon-de-boer-2016
2 See press release https://kunsthalaarhus.dk/en/Exhibitions/Manon-De-Boer-Down-Time
3 See https://lux.org.uk/work/an-experiment-in-leisure
Reading Group Attendees
Lesley Beale
Jennifer Bell
Emma Cocker
David Eckersley
Tom Fisher
Danica Maier
Sarah Tutt
Gathering of questions arising through discussion
How do we hold in relation the personal, subjective experience of attention with diagnosis and analysis of the wider phenomenon of the ‘attention economy’?
How do these two registers of experience or even of sense-making connect?
How do we negotiate between the experiences of doing and being – between attending to the potentially competing imperatives of “What can we do?” and “How can we be?”. How do these two modes interrelate or differ? How might there be a political imperative within both modalities?
Through what different perspectives might the phenomenon of attention be engaged? How do these different perspectives resonate with our own experiences and practices?
How might the diagnosis and analysis of the wider phenomenon of the ‘attention economy’ become translated into actual practices of attention and transformation? How might we shift from a diagnosis of the ‘problem’ towards the activation of alternatives, antidotes, and ways for operating otherwise? How is the relation of practices for affirming (otherwise) and practices for resisting (what is)?
Is the “attention economy” to be attended to or acted against?
How is “attendion” a political or politicised practice? Can there be a political dimension to individual attention practices? How might individual activity contribute to collective change?
How might we shift from ‘paying attention’ (based on an economic model) towards ‘doing attention’ or even ‘being attentive’?
How does perception figure within this debate, and how can we explore this further in practice?
How can we activate and amplify a sense of choice – the agency to choose how and when to attend or to focus? Through what practices might this capacity be further nurtured?
How might practices of attention relate to the practices of ‘slow looking’?
How might we reacquaint ourselves with different practices of attention?
What role might idleness play in creating conditions of wide attention?
Is there a rhythm of attention that can become lost or broken? How is this rhythm instilled?
How is the relation of effort and expectation to attention – the more one tries the higher the likelihood is of failing?
What obstacles to the kind of open and wider attention (that Milner describes) do we observe from our own practices? What conditions are conducive to the experience of wide attention? When do we experience our attention narrow or contract?
How might we resist the commodification of our attention and attentiveness?
How can we shift the languages we use for describing qualities of attention away from the economic model (of paying attention etc)?
How is the how-ness of attention – through what kinds of practices might we cultivate more affirmative forms of attention?
How might a hierarchy of the senses operate within the language of attention? Does the rhetoric of attention privilege the ‘seen’ – what of the other senses? How might we activate the attentional capacity of all the senses?
How might we reactivate the capacity we may have experienced as a child for “wide attention”?
What emerges in the transition between immersive states and their sharing with others? How do we negotiate this liminal zone between two experiential states?
How is thinking understood as an attentional practice?
Can algorithms become decoupled from the economic model, inviting different kinds of attention?
How are algorithmic structures of attention coded (through the prism of which privileges)? How might they be coded otherwise? How might different expressions of attention open up new collective ways of attending? What possibilities of reprogramming could be explored?
How does the context of reading impact on one’s attentional capacity?
How does the relation of the individual and the collective operate in relation to modes of attention?
How might a focus on attention enable better forms of individuation? How is the ethical dimension of such a practice?
How can attention operate in the key of dissensus, as a way of disrupting the banality of everyday flows?
How might we restructure our patterns of attention?
How might a focus on attention invite reflection on the philosophical-ethical question of “How to live?” or “How ought one to live?”
Do attention practices contribute to the production of subjectivity, are they ‘practices of life’ (perhaps echoing Foucault’s writing on the ‘arts of existence’ or the techne of 'care of the self' in Ancient Greek culture)?
How is the political dimension of “to want nothing”?
What models of aesthetics need to be further differentiated – how might we differentiated a mode of aesthetics predicated on disinterestedness and detachment from a sensorially involved sense of ethico-aesthetic practice?
How are the ethical, aesthetic and poetic dimensions of such practices, and how might they collectively comprise a specific political disposition?
How might we shift from withdrawal from the world (the ‘as is’) towards active world-building or world-fashioning of alternatives?
How does our attentional capacity shape the nature of the world in which we inhabit, in turn producing worlds for others?
How is the transformative capacity of attention activated – for transforming boredom or weariness into contentment (in Milner’s terms)?
Why/how does the ‘lulling of one’s purpose’ open up the potential of wide attention?
How is the relational dimension of attention, and how is attention co-produced?
How can it become refashioned?
How can we activate a sense of attentional agency even within a wider directional flow of the ‘attention economy’?
How is attention a ‘doing’?
How might we navigate different modes of attention, for example between the ‘deep attention’ and ‘hyper attention’ described by Katherine Hayles? Is there scope for experimenting between different registers of attention?
How can we better practise choice in the ways that our attention is activated?
What role might ritual play in the reinvigoration of attention?
How can decouple ritual from the power paradigms of religion and capital?
How might we experiment with new ritual forms for cultivating attention?
What new communities might become inaugurated through shared rituals of attention?
Could such rituals of attention create the potential of digital communities, where digital technologies might become liberated from their negative association within attention-deficiencies and instead become mobilised as devices for activating affirmative forms of attention?
How do these discussions on attention segue with debates on AI?
How is attention activated through material engagement, through an embodied, sensuous approach?
How might we conceive of attention for attention’s sake – is attention autotelic?
How is the effect of small acts of attention? What kinds of transformation can become activated by these small acts and micro-gestures?
How is our attention filtered – through which lens?
How might attention practices contribute to a reimagining of the future? What new worlds can be imagined?
What role might poetry have therein?
How might the withdrawal of attention operate as a political critical act? What modes of withdrawal – by whom, from what, how?
What might be at stake in saying “no”?
Does the restructuring of attention have emancipatory potential? How? For whom? Who is the ‘we’? Who gets rewarded for their attention? Who remains ignored?
How might a restructuring of attention enable the “redistribution of the sensible”? How does the ‘distribution of the sensible” structure our patterns and habits of attention, mean that certain things are attended to and others ignored?