Bennett, J (2010) Vibrant Matter. USA: Duke University Press.
‘Lockdown’
26th March 2020
We started ‘Lockdown’ a couple of days ago. There is a strange eeriness about it all. Everything looks the same on the outside. The garden is still there. Spiders and ants are still walking about. But outside the ‘people element’ of the neighbourhood, seemed to be missing, or maybe it is just ‘less’ because I feel it should be less, and today I am looking. But I think I can hear fewer cars. I can see fewer people walking their dogs. And yet I know people are still there, somewhere.
I have been reading ‘Vibrant Matter’ by Jane Bennett (Bennett, 2010), about materiality and how things on this planet aren’t always about the human first and centre. She says, ‘...the materialist points out that culture is not of our own making, infused as it is by biological, geological, and climatic forces’, (Bennett, 2010:115). It seems truer more than ever now we are tucked away in our flats and houses; the world simply carries on. Layers of life are still moving, and operating as before, perhaps even more freely.
We have been given a project to focus on. ‘Under(cover)’ is its title. We are asked to respond to our current environments and consider how this may affect our work. Specifically, ‘how it might provoke our art practice outside usual habitual, ritualistic working methodologies’. I normally work large scale and rarely within my ‘home’ because I simply don’t have the space. But I was up for the challenge.
I started with a mind-map (several actually), plotting the various steps and stages that were now affecting us. It was a relief somehow to recognize them and then move on. I kept within the same area of my recent study namely ‘control, chance and process.’
I worked with the materials I found around me. My workbench and easels were elsewhere, so I improvised. I had paint and I had other strips and strands of material. It was going to be alright.
References:
Bennett, J (2010) Vibrant Matter. USA: Duke University Press.