Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective (original) (raw)
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Relating to Clay: Tuning in to the Workings of the Aesthetic Dimension in Ceramic Practice
Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL THESES, 2022
Through sustained practice, creative practitioners begin to develop a relationship with the material with which they work. This kind of relating to the material accompanies aesthetic qualities that are not only perceived as belonging to the material but also recognised within the body, creating a connection between the practitioner and the material. This research emphasises the role of aesthetic qualities in creating these connections and concentrates on this level of ceramic practice, where the body's role is central in feeling, sensing and extending towards the material world. This research has developed in two phases; the research material was firstly gathered through practice-led research focusing on the subjective experience in ceramic practice, and then, secondly, the research has continued to develop from the topics identified during the first phase within a collaborative approach to conducting research. The first phase of the research included studio work, an artist residency period and a workshop. The second research phase discussed and developed the identified research topics within and through workshops in collaboration with other professional practitioners. The particular interest is in the subtle body that implies understanding a more nuanced level in material work. Here, the bodily perspective in creative practice is examined, and the discussed practice is focused on attuning to feeling and experiencing the material bringing our body's sensuous understanding to the forefront. The aim is to understand how creative practitioners begin to tune in with the aesthetics of materials and their processes within making. The research focus is framed through three directions on the body: the experiencing body, the sentient body and the performing body. The common perception of creative practice is through its outcomes; however, a practitioner's creativity that sustains a material practice is built through experiences understood in the body. What is opened up through this research is the experiential and performative dimension of creative acts in the context of ceramics. One of the main outcomes of this research is the Subtle Ground method that offers an aesthetic-driven direction in making whereby the creative practitioner's attention is directed towards the subtle body and the experiential dimension in making.This research argues that focusing on aesthetic qualities and giving attention to embodied connections can create the basis for a meaningful material relationship in the context of creative practices. Relating to material is a process that engages the body to perform and experience the felt material qualities. These felt and performed qualities in creative material work can also have therapeutic possibilities and thus widen the implications of the research results.
Dialogue In the Making: Emotional Engagement with Materials
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2020
Taking a psychological and philosophical outlook, we approach making as an embodied and embedded skill via the skilled artisan’s experience of having a corporeal, nonlinguistic dialogue with the material while working with it. We investigate the dynamic relation between maker and material through the lens of pottery as illustrated by wheel throwing, claiming that the experience of dialogue signals an emotional involvement with clay. The examination of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of habit, the skilled intentionality framework, and material engagement theory show that while these theories explain complementary aspects of skilful engagement with the material world, they do not consider the dialogic dimension. By way of explanation, we submit that the artisan’s emotional engagement with the material world is based in openness and recognition and involves dialogue with the material. Drawing on the intimate relationship between movement and emotion, it promotes an open-ended manner of working and permits experiencing with the material, acting into its inherent possibilities. In conclusion, we suggest that dialogue, whether verbal or nonverbal, constitutes a primary means for making sense of the world at large, animate and inanimate.
Ethos, 2015
How Things Shape the Mind is a rich, thought-provoking and ambitious book. Leading on from and interacting with the work of pioneer of cognitive archaeology, Colin Renfrew, archaeologist Lambros Malafouris has worked on developing 'Material Engagement Theory' for more than a decade. With this book, for the first time, Malafouris lays out the full grounding, argumentation and implications of this theory. According to Malafouris (p. 13), we are at a historical juncture where archaeology has an overall responsibility and role to play in spearheading current efforts to integrate the studies of material culture and of mind. Malafouris' book is a bold and serious attempt to take on that task and its theme is one that should be of great interest to psychological anthropologists.
Something Along These Lines: Philosophies of Agency as Artistic Material
MA Dissertation | Central Saint Martins, 2018
This paper takes its departure from philosophies of subjectivity and agency that have emerged from poststructural discourses, and meditates on how their theories might reimagine the identities of artist and artwork alike, and the relationship between them. It begins by considering philosophy as, not only background context, but an artistic material, that can be pliable and instrumental to an artist. Introducing performative accounts of identity formation, from Michel Foucault through to Jacques Derrida, I reimagine my own subjectivity as interpellated by a network of sensitive relations, and begin to visualise my agency as ‘disturbances in the causal milieu’ (Gell, 1998). I then argue that these theories of agency are applicable to artworks, or fictional agencies, and not only human subjects. An expanded concept of the line (in a drawing, a sound, a gesture) is introduced to explore an artwork’s capacity to inhabit and exhibit ‘character’, which is contagious and transferable between agents, whether ‘artificial’ or ‘organic’. From there the paper becomes a platform to consider an experimental art practice, taking a novel I am writing as a proposition for such an art experiment, where the distinctions between the agencies of real maker and artificial character are blurred and challenged. This leads me to conclude in asking questions I may previously not have thought askable, such as: to what extent is something as close to home as the human mind, written; inscribed by ancient grooves of genetic memory, articulated by chains of DNA text and ventriloquisedby a culture of stories? And, is it possible to write a person? My research addresses how art, narrative and fiction might contribute to and extend contemporary studies of subjectivity and self-representation.
Being through Painting and Weaving: A Brief Commentary on Intuition
Transtechnology Research Reader 2013: Deep History, Contingency and the Sublime, 2013
"This paper represents the most recent attempt in an on-going project to formulate an account of artistic creation (in relation to the visual ar- tefact) that leaves behind the prevailing notion that the human practitioner works upon, and is separate from, an inert material world. This idea is seen, in particular, in some of the con- temporary approaches of psychology (Hodg- kinson et al., 2008), where creative processes such as intuition and inspiration are under- stood as ‘impulses’ or ‘feelings from within’; they are classed as somatic and affective hy- potheses about the world that occur prior to rational thought, encased within the experien- tial dimension of the human body. Such ac- counts presuppose a clear boundary between the body in which the intuition or inspiration is ‘encased’ and the external world out of which it forms its hypotheses. This model of creativity is embedded within particular ‘matter-form’ models of creation, such as that of ‘hylomorphism’ (Simondon, 1992), which have become axiomatic across much of Western art and media theory,1 histo- ry and philosophy.2 This theory maintains that an artefact (a statue, for example, or a basket) is created by the imposition of a pre-defined form (morphe) by the practitioner upon an external inert material (hyle). Its creation is understood in terms of a design specification applied to a material, which can be traced back to a pre-designed form in the mind of the hu- man agent. This paper, in contrast, proceeds from the claim that the mind cannot be confined to the brain or body of the practitioner, as accounts of the ‘extended mind’ reveal,3 but extends into the wider components and processes of the environment, which include that of an en- ergised matter. As such, what can be termed as the ‘inspiration’, ‘impulse’ or indeed ‘intuition’ underlying the human creative process cannot be fully accounted for by human agency, but requires a framework that can encompass a more distributed account of human creativity."
Making and perceiving - Exploring the degrees of engagement with the aesthetic process
Artistic practice and education build on a long tradition of aesthetic critique and problem solving. This tradition has later on influenced also practice-led and practice-based research approaches centering on the artistic process. Although these research approaches depend on the processes and objects that essentially have not only cognitive but aesthetic qualities, the role of the aesthetics in these research processes still lacks an analytical discussion in this context. In this article we explore the process aesthetics in the context of artistic, practice-led research. Namely, we examine the potential of the concept of aesthetic engagement as a framework for understanding and analyzing the involvement with the artistic process. The results of this investigation are the two complimenting degrees of involvement with the artistic process through making and perceiving, and the relations that activate these different ways of engagement. To illustrate and concretize the subject, we employ an example of video material capturing moments of experimentation with ceramic art.
Phenomenology as a Reference Horizon for Reading Artistic Works in Process-Oriented Clay Art Therapy
2024
The article explores the integration of phenomenology as a foundational framework for understanding the artistic process within process-oriented clay art therapy. It delves into the profound philosophical roots of phenomenology, emphasizing its focus on individual experiences and perceptions. Through the lens of Goethean science, which prioritizes observation and form as indicators of deeper truths, the article elucidates how phenomenology enriches the therapeutic modelling process. The article emphasizes the compatibility between process- oriented art therapy and phenomenology, highlighting their shared commitment to understanding subjective experiences. Furthermore, it underscores the importance of the therapist-client relationship and the nuanced reading of artistic expressions within a phenomenological context. By exploring the transformative qualities of clay therapy and its alignment with phenomenological principles, the article provides insights into the profound therapeutic potential of artistic creation within the context of art therapy
2019
This exegesis proposes art as an in/hospitable space for female embodiment, drawing on manifestations of the uncanny, the shadow, and the ghostly, for which theoretical support is found in new feminist, posthumanist, and new materialist discourses. Research for this exegesis has aimed to archive and reimagine two decades of ceramic figurative sculpture practice as well as establish a new language for my practice through an expanded field of material enquiry. Attention to the sensorial field of clay is an intuitive, as well as logical step in praxis. It recasts the perception of what the 'traditional medium' of ceramics may have to offer, in an era in which the system of art is becoming increasingly virtual. These investigations merge an intuitive understanding of clay with medical scanning technologies, video making, studio logic, and spatial investigations. The additional use of performance, collaboration, and interdisciplinary processes has destabilised and blurred the dis...