BAMBOO PAVILION ACT 1 (updatet August 8th 2022)
With a Go-Pro camera attached to my forehead angled towards my body, I enter the Bamboo pavilion. A camera on a tripod is filming the room. In my hands I hold a hammer I have made from bamboo and a plastic fabric. The bamboo handle of the hammer is so thick that I need both hands to maneuver it. I softly hit the bamboo beams and wires supporting the pavilion’s construction, but if feels wrong and I am afraid I will destroy something. I am holding back force and make sounds with my mouth to compensate for not being able to hit hard. This is something I am not aware of in the moment but observe when watching the film afterwards. The film also reveals how I allow my body to use more force and larger movements as I start to hit the floor, which feels safer than hitting the beams and wires. Eventually I just hit the air in the room, and I observe how my movements become even more powerful. It starts to look like some kind of ritual dance.
In this first experiment I had no predefined plan for what I would do once I started moving in front of the camera. Once the setting was prepared and the camera started rolling, I entered an intuitive process and trusted my instincts. As it turned out I got in touch with something wild and uninhibited within myself; something shameless and free that made me curious and that I want to explore further. I also realized that I don’t want to hurt or destroy anything, so I want to focus on hammers that are soft and can be used for non-hurtful hammering.
THE BAMBOO FOREST – ACT 1 (updatet August 9th 2022)
I put my camera on a tripod, tape my phone to a bamboo and straw hammer and attach a GoPro camera to my head and enter the bamboo forest. Unfortunately I found out too late that the head camera was not filming, but the two other cameras capture the situation from different perspectives. The hammer camera catches the rattling sound of dry leaves as I’m making my way through the forest, hammering the bamboo straws with my bamboo hammer. I’m getting hurt by the branches as I’m trying to enter the the densest part of the forest, and eventually have to give up and exit the forest.
The hammer camera gives an intimate perspective, whereas the camera filming from outside the forest offers an overview of the situation. Dressed in black I am almost invisible as I disappear into the darkness of the forest, except for my bright colored shoes. Much of the time you do not see me at all, and although the hammer camera view reveals I am pounding with the hammer inside the forest, this is not visible from the external camera perspective. It is as though the bamboo forest is untouched by my interruption, that my personal struggle is going on without the forest taking any notice.
- Reformulate "I don't know what I'm doing" -> "I do not have a predefined plan for what I will do once I start moving in front of the camera". Important that it does not seem like I do not know what I am doing, because I do have reasons for what I chose to do even though it is an intuitive process. I chose to show respect for things and I change the hammer insted of destroying my surroundings with the hammer.
(Updatet August 5th 2022)
Several of the houses and pavilions at Boisbuchet are built using bamboo, and I make some hammers from leftover materials, curious to unfold what will occur as bamboo hammers meet bamboo architecture. I take pictures and I make films. In what follows I will share my reflections and insights, both from when I was in the midle of the process and reflecting in action (ref. Schön), and revelations that came to me weeks and months after the residency while I was revisiting the material.
BAMBOO PAVILION ACT 2 (updatet August 5th 2022)
In my next experiment I use the same hammer and setting, but this time I make a circle with a rope to limit the area I move within, since I no longer want to hit the construction of the pavilion. I take off my shoes to increase the sensorial contact between my feet and the floor and enhance the uninhibited feeling. The Go-Pro camera is angled more towards my body than in the first experiment to capture more of my facial gestures. I swirl around the room, hitting the air and floor. Footage from the head camera reveals that I am breathing quite heavily, but not like in the first experiment where I made power sounds to compensate for the force I could not not use, but more the hammer is heavy kind of sounds.
(Maybe this is not a separate text and project, but that some of the reflections from this experiment can me integrated somewhere else?)
BAMBOO PAVILION ACT 3 (updatet August 8th 2022)
In this act I remove the rope circle on the floor to allow for larger area of movement. I also move the GoPro camera from head to ankle with the lense turned upwards my body. My head is no longer constrained by the camera which means I can move more freely with my hair flowing in synchrony with my body’s movements. Camera on the ankle also accentuates a feeling of being grounded. I hit the floor a lot in this film and this is echoed in the way I move my body. Watching the film I notice I have become more uninhibited and free than in the previous acts.
BAMBOO PAVILION ACT 4 (updatet August 8th 2022)
I keep the camera attached to my ankle but replace the bamboo hammer with a «hammer» made from a Styrofoam cylinder and a long rope. The rope makes me behave differently from what I did with the other hammer and my movements immediately become more playful and less powerful as this object contradicts the definition of a hammer; a hand tool consisting of a solid head set crosswise on a handle and used for pounding. A hammer usually has a stiff handle that invites you to control it, whereas this one completely fails to meet this expectation and affordance. As I struggle with the disappointing hammer, I become more interested in the rope itself. I try to lift the Styrofoam cylinder (AKA the hammer head) from the floor by moving the rope, but the rope is too long and I try to shorten its length by entangling myself with it. As I try to lift the head of the hammer from the ground it looks more like I am intending to fly a kite than using a hammer. In the end I am literally so tied up with the hammer that it is hard to walk, and the rope around my neck scares me a bit as I have no-one to help me untie. I am trapped by and entangled with this disobedient rope hammer.
(Remember definintion and quotation of affordance and Gibson)
BAMBOO PAVILION ACT 6 (updatet August 8th 2022)
Based on my experiences from act 5 with the too thick and heavy hammer and the music that did not feel right, I replace the bamboo and cork hammer with one that has a longer and thinner bamboo stick and a fabric head, and I change the music from Afro Celt Soundsystem to Susanne Sundfør (which is one of my personal favorites). The beginning of this act is more planned than the previous ones: I want to visualize my sensation of gradually transitioning from culture creature to nature creature through my experiments so far. I start this act with my shoes and glasses on and my hair tied in a tight bun, before letting go of these «cultural» indicators and immersing myself with the hammer and the situation. In addition to the camera in the room and the one attached to my ankle, I tie my phone to the head of the hammer and turn the camera on to catch the hammer’s perspective on the situation. I like the camera angle from the ankle and hammer, but I also miss the camera tied to my fore-head since it is more intimate and catches my facial expressions and sounds I make unintentionally. I would love to have one more camera... (I know, I am getting greedy!) Sometimes the rhythm of the music dominates my movements too much and I end up dancing more than just moving and hammering freely around. At times the hammer is a hammer, other times it is more like a dance prop. Sometimes I try to hold at the extremity of the hammer stick, but this becomes too heavy when I swing the hammer, and I have to move one of my hands closer to the head of the hammer. I make use of the longness of the hammer to stretch up and hit the ceiling. The head of the hammer is soft and I can hit harder than I allowed myself with the hammers with harder heads, but the fact that my phone is attached to it holds me back a bit as I don’t want it to break.
This hammer extends my reach and makes me feel bigger, longer, stronger and more free – a feeling I think is reflected both in the film and the photos. Watching this film brings me right back to the state I was in when I was in France where I felt really free and independent and fully followed my intuition. I believe this experience of how good it felt to be on my own in a new situation has really benefited me on both a personal and professional level. To immerse myself so deeply in my project and my artistic process as I did during my artistic residency in France, is something I am struggling to achieve now that I am back in my usual habitat. This is why I can not watch this film without getting emotional.
(updatet August 9th 2022)
In Boisbuchet there is a tiny bamboo forest next to a traditional Japanese guest house. I think it looks quite absurd and misfit in the French rural surroundings, like it was taken out of its original context and put here. And that is exactly what happened; the house was built in Japan in 1863, and was dismantled and rebuilt in Boisbuchet in 2008, as a gift from a Japanese Research Society. I don’t know the history of the bamboo forest, but just like the Japanese house, it looks strange (and also somehow funny) in this setting.
THE BAMBOO FOREST – ACT 2 (updated August 9th, 2022)
I move the GoPro camera from head position to chest, and this time all cameras work, resulting in three perspectives on the situation: chest view, hammer view and overview. The film from the first act included the whole forest whereas in this next experiment the overview camera presents a cropped version of the forest. You could therefore be tricked into thinking I’m entering a large forest. This time I also exit the forest because I’m getting hurt by the bamboo branches.
- Reflect on the level of quality and hierarchy. F.ex. size of photos (one big photo and/or several smaller ones?) Photo/video with or without text explaining it and guiding the reader/viewer? Short text for each video performance/photo, and longer text for those who want to read more
- My video performances are quite intimate. If I show them as they are now I must explain why I do this. Is it important to invite people into my intimate space for them to be able to understand my process/project? Or is this just part of my personal process and not supposed to be shared? Or could they be shared in another format, f.ex. screen shots from the videos? How much/litle of the material do I show? The video performances show one of my research methods; that I am being physically entangled with my material and the situation. Opression of the body vs. the liberated body (f.ex. the freedom of movement in the bamboo pavilion vs. the limitation of movement in the bamboo forest). Object that melt/merge with the body. Objectification of the body. A body that has its own agenda and/or is out of controll. Reflect and explain.
- Extract the main outcome of the process and find out how I am going to use it. I have revelations in different directions; Decide which of the insights I want to go deeper into and what to leave off. Make hierachy and link my insights/reflections to references.
- One of my revelations is about Design and hammerness: is design a hammer? Designers always want to change something. But what happens when you refuse to use design as a hammer to change something? What if insted of changing your environment with a hammer you change the hammer to correspond with the environment? Hammer in relation to design can be that different design approaches/methods are represented by different hammers. Rubber hammer, xylophone hammer, carpenter's hammer, judge's hammer etc.
F.ex. the six (?) ways of using a hammer
- Link this project to Tim Ingold. Dance of agencies. Method I am using and can develop further: limiting the situation and change variables, like the hammer handle. Ex: soft hammer handle (rope hammer) -> I become entangled in the hammer. Test other extreme handles. The act of changing hammer (or hammer handle) and/or the situation in which I am using is is my method. And I change only one variable at a time. NB:Sound and resonance are dimensions that are still missing in my hammer experiments.
- Giving into the entanglement. (Engagement?) Think about what the word means to me. Is it both a method and also position?
- In my PhD I both invite people in to share with me and make, and I also have my very personal process.
INTRODUCTION (updatet August 5th 2022)
In the Autumn of 2021 I had an artistic residency stay at Domaine de Boisbuchet, which is a cultural centre for design and architecture, including workshops, exhibitions, architectural park, library and a creative community spread across 150 hectares of lush nature in the countryside of South-West France.
I arrived with an open attitude, curious to see how a different setting would bring new perspectives to my research and practice. Working outdoor and in interaction with nature, the pavilions of the architectural park as well as other traces from previous artistic activity, I experienced the boundaries between culture and nature blurring as I got totally entangled in Boisbuchet. I started to create hammers by materials I found on site, and explore what happened when I use the hammers in this same environment. Staging myself with hammers in front of the camera in different locations around Boisbuchet, a series of personas started emerging. Some of them were free and uninhibited, like the one that was brought to life while I was dancing bare-feet in one of the bamboo pavilions with a big hammer made from bamboo and textile. Other personas forced me to reflect upon uncomfortable issues such as colonialism and imperialism; like the one dressed in stripes dancing around with a baguette hammer in the Japanese house to the sound of Edith Piaf (not regretting a thing), and the optimistic explorer paving her way in the dense bamboo forest with a hammer.
With go-pro cameras attached to the hammers and my body, I also experimented with filming one situation from different perspectives; again while interacting with various environments and hammers. This resulted in a series of video performances exploring the interaction between hammer and the hammerer. Several questions appeared in this process: What do I hit with the hammers and why? What happens to my body when I use the hammers and how does the thing that is being hit respond?
Entering the kind and curious atmosphere of Boisbuchet with such a powerful and potentially violent tool as the hammer, made me reflect on my attitude and presence. Could the hammer be a metaphor for design? And is my exploration of different types of hammers and the way I use them in reality a search for what kind of human and designer I want to be?
With a background from furniture and product design, I feel at home when drawing and making things in the workshop. My plan for the two and a half week long artist residency was to move outside the comfort zone and explore the more performative aspects of my research. My experiments at Boisbuchet led me to realize that rather than hitting and demonstrating dominance and power, I want to dance around with hammers and feel the entanglement between myself, the hammer and the environment. Because even though the hammer is a striking tool typically used to forcefully join or break things, it can also be a tool that creates resonance.
This is an invitation into the reflections and insights I gained through this process of entanglement and artistic freedom during my French residency, which I hope can create some resonance.
ENTANGLEMENT AND FRICTION (updatet August 5th 2022)
Spider webs catching the morning mist. Ivy climbing up trees, bushes and fences, entangling and blending in; looking messy, wild and beautiful at the same time. Lizards trying to become invisible on the stone facade of the castle. A tree that appears dead but has a branch that is thriving and almost becomes a tree of its own. A river and a fake lake. Bamboo, cork, plastic, rope, textile, metal and leather; a workshop full of materials. A traditional Japanese house from the 19th century, a timeworn castle and a lodge with the same inclination as its surrounding trees. Bamboo pavilions and a bamboo forest. Sheep, hens and horses. Shabby bikes for faster transport around the property. An abandoned and overgrown train track trough the woods (aka the perfect running path). Kind, curious people interested in creating and sharing in the midst of beautiful rural France. These are some of the characteristics of Boisbuchet that struck me the most as I spent the first few days absorbing the surroundings, trying to figure out how to relate to this, for me, new environment. In my eyes, entanglement of nature and culture is at the core of this place; sometimes nature takes over the show, other times culture dominates. I like these encounters of friction and harmony between the natural and artificial at Boisbuchet. It fits my personality as someone who loves both nature and culture, thinking and feeling, tranquility and movement. (Remember to add photos to this part)
It feels weird and wrong to bring hammers into this situation when all I want to do is to be a quiet observer, but I nevertheless push my self to connect to the hammer concept, as this is, after all, central in my artistic research. The architecture at Boisbuchet is respectful of its environment, which inspires me to think of hammers that somehow echo their surroundings and are non-hurtful. But what do they do? I’m not sure and I will just have to experiment my way into knowing.
BAMBOO PAVILION ACT 5 (updatet August 8th 2022)
In my next experiment I replace the rope hammer with a bamboo and cork hammer. Cork is a material that is somewhere between soft and hard (and as it turns out; surprisingly heavy!), and I am curious to experience how this material property will harmonize with me. I put on music from Afro Celt Soundsystem, witch is a fusion of electronic music with traditional Gaelic and West African music, to explore what happens when I add music to what already has revealed itself through my previous experiments to be some kind of dance. The music turns my movements into even more of a dance and the hammer becomes a prop. I use the hammer as a work-out manual, exploring its property of heaviness. I have to keep the hammer close to my body, or else it is too heavy for me, and I have to use two hands to maneuver it; one close to the head of the hammer and the other at the bottom. I am trying to move my body and hit with the hammer to the rhythm of the music, but it feels silly and purposeless, and the rhythm is a bit too fast and does not suit the slow pace the heavy hammer is inviting. As with the other hammers, I am holding back force as I hit the floor, careful not to destroy the pavilion. I move triumphantly around the room with the hammer above my head. I am trying hard to use the hammer as a hammer is supposed to be used (to hit), but the handle is too thick and heavy which makes it difficult (disobedience). I use the hammer as a pendulum swinging from side to side. In the last part of the film it feels like I become one with the hammer as I keep it close to my body and hammer with both my body and the hammer through forceful movements.
THE JAPANESE GUEST HOUSE – ACT 1
I entered the Japanese house in the afternoon. It was before it got dark, but I managed to scare myself because I was alone and imagining ghosts lurking in the dark corners of the house. I am sure the house is haunted. My idea was to enter into this very calm, minimalistic, sober place with a contrast; with a messy, colorful, vibrant and uninhibited presence – as an act of disobedience. I put my camera on a tripod and took a sequence of photos of myself where I dance and jump around with a selfmade hammer and a pink fabric wrapped around me. Different from most of my experiments at Boisbuchet where I am wearing black clothes, I am now wearing striped clothes. I am disobeying the Japanese guest house’s invitation to behave peaceful and quiet in the sober interior. I did not film this situation, so the result is a series of photos. In the first photo series, orange and yellow rope and the head of the braided plastic hammer are present as messy props in the room. But why am I rolling around on the floor entangled in colorful ropes and fabric? And what am I using the bamboo and straw hammer for? Looking at the images, it is hard to make sense of what I am doing and why I am there.
THE JAPANESE GUEST HOUSE – ACT 2
In the second photo series in the Japanese guest house the shutter speed of the camera is slower, capturing more of my movements. The photos from this experiment scare me a bit as I almost turn into a ghost. Again I get the feeling that something outside my control is brought into play. The house is old and fragile and abrupt movements with a long hammer might result in making a hole in the thin paper walls. It seems rude and irresponsible to behave like I do. But the photos are lying, they make me appear disobedient while in fact I was respectful to the interior, careful not to accidentally hurt or destroy anything.
THE WOODS – ACT 1
I pack my shiny white rental car full of cameras, hammers, fabric, rope and other props that might come in handy, and drive alongside the the woods of Boisbuchet. When I have found a good spot I park the car and walk into the woods. I put up my camera on the tripod, the go-pro camera on my knee facing upwards my body and grab the pink braided plastic hammer with green stick. As it turned out, the lense of the camera I put inside the head of the hammer was obfuscated and footage from this perspective could therefore unfortunately not be used.
I almost blend into the woods with my green outfit, whereas the pink hammer represents a contrast. I hit the tree trunks softly with the hammer, careful to not destroy the delicate hammer. In contrast to my experiments in the bamboo pavilion where I was careful not to hurt the architecture, I am now more worried about the hammer. The ground beneath me is full of potential traps, and I have to watch my steps so I don’t trip and fall. Much of the time I hold the hammer up high above me, it looks almost like an umbrella. At some point I bend my upper body backwards while holding the trunk of a tree, slowly moving as I hold the extremity of the hammer stick. The hammer is very light weight which allows for this. In this part of the performance it is like I am imitating hammering. The hitting makes no impact on the trees; nothing seems to move and no sound can be heard in this film. It feels pointless and I have no idea what I am doing in this act.
THE WOODS – ACT 2
In my next act I move the GoPro camera from my knee to my ankle. I am wrapped in an orange rope that has some of the same qualities as the floor of the forest; it becomes an entanglement and obstacle, hindering free movement of my body.
THE WOODS – ACT 3
I replace the selfmade braided hammer with a classic carpenter’s hammer and wrap myself in a pink fabric that makes me more visible inside all the green of the forest. I hammer quite hard on tree trunks covered in moss. The moss provides a protective layer making my action quite harmless. Some of the trees I am hitting have already fallen and therefore I am not afraid to destroy or hurt them. I have no idea what I am doing but I watching the films and photos from this experiment I think I look like some kind of strange forest creature.
THE WOODS – ACT 4
With some difficulties I manage to tape two carpenter’s hammers to my hands, transforming myself into Siv Hammerhands. I start moving around, swinging my hammer arms and hammering on a fallen tree. As the tree seems to be already dead, I dear to hit hard, making knocking sounds with the hammers. I entangle myself in the rope. I get the feeling that I am some kind of discoverer or explorer, like I did in the bamboo forest. And again I become very aware of my whiteness. The photos from this act are quite uncanny and uncomfortable. Who is this persona and what is she up to? I look like a nazi and I do not like it.
The two las experiments are the only times during my residency that I interact with existing hammers; in all the other experiments I make hammers for the specific situation.
- Explore the concept of the resonant hammer (vibrating hammer bouncing back at you. Rubber hammer, gymrod "hammer")
- Sound and maleability: Include sound of the hitting with hammer + trace the impact of the hammer blow.
- Look for what the usefulness for others than myself is with this. And who might it be useful for? What is the context my project can make meaning?
- Connected to feminism/female perspective: rejecting/resisting the forcefullness of the hammer and/or being at the receiving end of the tool
- Intellectual and intuitive dimensions of this project; text and performance. I am in the process of understanding (intellectually) what I did (intuitively) in the performances.
- Control and change in design is one of the things I am critiquing in my project. That designers often have a predefined purpose that we then impose into a context. My contribution is that I offer an alternative way of being a designer in the world. Also connected to politics.
Variables:
Hammer handle
Person/alter ego
Situation
Body cameras
Dissecting each variable/element. How far can I strech each variable? Method: reflecting by reducing elements. How would I describe this as a method?
- Entangled Siv and reflective Siv. Being intuitive and in the midst of my own project, and also step out of it and reflect from a distance.
REFLECTIONS ON MY EXPERIMENTS IN THE BAMBOO PAVILION (updatet August 8th 2022)
As I sit outside the bamboo pavilion reflecting on my hammer experiments, I become aware of a bird in the tree next to me. The bird uses its peak to hit the trunk, as if the peak was an embodied hammer, and the bird itself a food-finding-and-nest-building hammer. At the same time a new house is being built at the Boisbuchet property, and materials are arriving in huge trucks from Germany together with three big and muscular guys. I can hear loud noises from the guys drilling the ground and providing a solid fundament with what looks like oversized screws. (Bilde av meg med skruer) There is an optimistic air surrounding the building site filled by the faith in what is, supposedly, a very eco friendly and innovative material they are using. Despite good intentions, there is, in my eyes, something invasive about the situation that might just perfectly illustrate the contrast between man’s construction activity and the bird’s. If the building activity was to be represented by hammers, there is definitely a difference between the human hammer and the bird hammer: The bird with its embodied hammer (the peak) and man with his external and extra powerful motorized hammers.
(Draw the hammering bird and the hammering men).
So, what kind of hammerer am I? My experiments up til this point indicate that for me the hammer is an object I use, not to destroy, build or hurt, but to help me get into another state of mind and connect with my surroundings. The hammer is an artifact that helps me get out of my head and into my body, reconnecting me with my intuitive and uninhibited self, helping me move from my culture self towards my nature self. Sometimes if feels like I almost merge with the hammer. Could this indicate that I am in the process of becoming more like the bird with an embodied hammer? And if so; what does this mean?
REFLECTIONS ON MY EXPERIMENTS IN THE BAMBOO FOREST (updated August 9th, 2022)
Photos from this situation show much the same as the photos from the bamboo pavilion; that I am using the hammer as a prop to appear more powerful, and at the same time try to blend with the environment in which I am entering by using a hammer made from the same material as the environment. The hammer I made for the bamboo forest experiments was from bamboo and straw, which adds a personal layer as the word straw translates to siv in Norwegian. A big difference from my experiments in the bamboo pavilion is that the pavilion invited a lot of freedom to move and express myself, whereas the forest is very much limiting my movements and becomes a much more active agent in the situation. I feel like an explorer on a quest, like a mock personification of the European colonist or imperialist in a foreign place, and I become very aware of my physical appearance as a white, European woman. I think the word absurd is what most describes this situation of me beating around in a really small bamboo forest in rural France with a bamboo and straw hammer. It occurs to me afterwards that I’m literally beating around the bushes, which means to avoid talking about what is important (Cambridge) or to fail or refuse to come to the point in discourse (Webster). The origin of this idiom is from medieval times, when hunters hired men to beat the area around bushes with sticks in order to flush out game taking cover underneath. They avoided hitting the bushes directly because this could sometimes prove dangerous; whacking a bees nest, for example, would put a swift and unwelcome end to the hunt (https://www.gingersoftware.com/content/phrases/ beat-around-the-bush/)
I am not a hunter, but I do know that sometimes it feels safer to beat around the bushes rather than risking to go head first into something. This is also a good example of how language and etymology often inspire me and that my artistic research vibrates in the spaces between written words and intuitive acts. This was one of many moments during my residency when I felt that there are forces outside myself that are actants in my artistic experiments, and when I respond intuitively to them my project will lead the way into new and unexpected territories. The feeling is good and can be described as flow. I would also like to call it entanglement.
REFLECTIONS ON MY EXPERIMENTS IN THE JAPANESE GUEST HOUSE
In the heat of the moment it felt like the hammer had no function other than being an object to interact with as I performed my kind of dance ritual. Reflecting on this afterwards I realized there might be another connection; I turned into a ghost with a hammer in a house that was originally built without nails. Poltergeist comes from German and literally means beating/knocking spirit. A poltergeist is a noisy, usually mischievous ghost held to be responsible for unexplained noises such as rappings. (Webster.com) Am I a poltergeist? In case I am, I am not sure what this would entail. But I do like the word mischievous . I use the word disobedient a lot in my project, but mischievous might be better for my context. In Norwegian it translates to rampete; a word that has a poise and attitude I like, and when I look up the meaning of the word mischievous I read that it means causing or showing a fondness for causing trouble in a playful way. Disobedient is more passive as it means someone/something not obeying, whereas mischievous refers to someone/something doing something cheeky or naughty and is therefore more active. Maybe it is more in line with the playful attitude I want for my project?
ENDNOTES: REFLECTIONS AND INSIGHTS
A large part of the process and insights I gained during the residency and after, was to have the courage to stay in the uncertain, not knowing what I was doing, feeling the uncomfortable of not being able to explain or understand. My plan in Boisbuchet was to challenge myself, to explore the not making-part of my project, the more explorative, performative, the not-knowing, the process, the being entangled with the environment right here. It has been fun and challenging and uncomfortable, as I am asking myself: what am I doing?! My plan was to work on three things in combination: the hammer, entanglement and disobedience. The entanglement is good; I am entangled in this place. But the disobedience has been harder. I disobeyed in the Japanese house, as I brought in element of chaos, mess, colors, stripes, movement in an environment that feels tamed, quiet, harmonious, calm, rigid. I come in as a messy persona/ alter ego.
Is this something that I am doing: taking on the role of different personas/ alter egos? The anthropologist, the biologist, the designer, the explorer?
One of my first days at Boisbuchet I went down to the river with the go-pro camera. I put the camera on my head and walked around, collecting things, trying to discover the essence and character of this specific site through the things that are here. . Topics such as selection and the act of taking something out of its original context arise. I take pictures of the collection of things. It was fun and interesting, but not exactly what I am working on, is it? The plan was to work with HAMMER and ENTANGLEMENT and DISOBEDIENCE at Boisbuchet. So how can a frame a methodology, a way of approaching my project in his specific environment? How to work? I really liked the idea for using go-pro camera attached to my body, and I would like to use several cameras attached to body and hammer to get the different perspectives.
Another thing I enjoy and that I understand is an important way of who I am and my artistic design methodology, is that I arrive in a context - a place with people, nature, culture - and I try to be aware of what is here. Instead of imposing my pre-fabricated ideas, I listen to my surroundings. What is this place; the atmosphere, the smells, the materials, the people, the nature, the animals? How do I relate to this and what do I bring into the context? And in what ways does the context influence me and my project?
IDEAS TO FOLLOW UP: Make a new video performance based on the experiences. Borrow several go-pro-cameras: head camera (maybe mounted like in the band Imagine Dragons ’Shots’ video to get a full facial view of me moving around), foot camera, hammer camera. In addition: still camera filming the whole situation. Consider what situation I want to create; is it inside or outside? What kind of room/environment? And what am I hitting and why? Also: mount a camera to the object/thing/creature I am hitting. Is it something alive? What and how can I hit something alive without hurting? Or is it something bead that enables me to hit really hard? Or is it something dead? Dead meat/nature?
