Group activities

The idea of mapping the threshold doorway together with the Fellows emerges as a project.

These steps begin by sharing a quote by Octavia Butler: 

“All that you touch

You Change

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.”

This is followed by an introduction to the symbolic sculptural representation of the Hindu deity Shiva shown as the Nataraja or Lord of the [Cosmic] Dance. In the well-known bronze casting the dance that brings all things into being (creating), preserves them for a time (preserving) and then takes them out of being (destroying) as part of an endless cycle of movement or dance. That this dance takes place on the back of another figure, known as Apasmara or the active representation of unknowing, is not so familiar. Apasmara is that which the entire cosmic dance emerges from, and as such is the vehicle, the mover beneath the dancing feet of Shiva. We see the face of Apasmara turned toward the foot of Shiva temporarily landing of its back, but there is no knowing, no ability to know what is taking place there. In symbolic visual language the viewer comes to grips with the representation of a vital, generative and yet fully incomprehensible opposite or compliment to all that is known or knowable.

This is the context in which the mapping of the doorway is introduced. The Butler quote and the images of Shiva and Apasmara are on a table with the paper and some examples of ‘knowable’ objects.

The doorway and the stone walls, which mark the KLI’s older-darker and newer-brighter architectures, then becomes more symbolically evident.  The symbolic act of mapping the stone walls with sheets paper to know and retain their rough contours and the boundary plane (threshold) between knowing and unknowing becomes more apparent with the slow and patient process required. Working alongside each participant, we hold the wet dripping paper against the vertical surface and gradually pleat and tuck the paper around the erratically mortared rocks, the sharper edges often tearing the softened paper fibers. The absurdity of this act of mapping 1:1 is not lost on the empirically-trained researchers and thinkers, not least because the map is very effectively obscuring the subject of study. But it raises questions at the same time of not just how we are knowing but under whose eyes and hands or with whose ears or taste buds are such subjects being known and the ways in which our minds, hearts and humanity is at the center of the questions being asked and conclusions being drawn.

KB: continue with description of prelim stone-paper 

Also follow up the tactile implications of the Butler quote next week. This quote is an implicit affirmation of how we are all touching this ‘place’ and each other, without saying so  directly.

Also: this is a big turning point. Weeks of testing and drawing, interviewing, lunches and chance conversations have resolved into a project that will require many more weeks to complete and during that time all the participants will come and go through this doorway and the atrium, witnessing the disruption and change to the ordered, stable conditions that existed prior to this artist-residency period.

Find with spotlight:  Threshold Project in Notes- lots of anecdotes

Some conversations: 

Corey and measurement- embryo folding

Questions:

xxxx

Experiments:

watercolors

Corey