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[Whisper Test] responding to the presence of ‘Mermaids’ & ‘Pirates’

Posted on 9th October 2019by Maija Liepins
Responding to: Group (1) Name: Mermaids and Pirates

COMMENT

Hello @laurence,

I wanted to reply to your post but I can’t put audio in the comments. I almost posted on your Group 1 Blog but that felt too risky – like disrupting an order that has not yet been established. So here we are.

An inner monologue

Can you hear me if I whisper

Is recording whispers practical?

And

This is just mind chatter

Not what I would choose to focus on

I have completely omitted mention of my favourite part

The sentences of yours which provoked inspiration

and shifted the waters beneath my mind

Yours in sillyness*
Maija

* (It seems more silly and absurd than I expected!?)

Image: A Mermaid made of petals who can swim through the air (www.thedreamforest.maija.co.uk)

Published by Maija Liepins

Australian born, mixed-media artist, Maija Liepins focuses on the sensory and emotional experience in her visual dreamscapes. Repetitive actions such as dream journals or collecting visual impressions with her mobile phone generates material with which to reveal the subtle, ‘underneath’. Maija’s drawings and films allude to a symbolic mythology as if the intangible substance of dream is a material as real as ink and clay. Her practice is driven by a pursuit of freedom - to express, to create, and to collaborate without inculturated inhibition.

3 comments on “[Whisper Test] responding to the presence of ‘Mermaids’ & ‘Pirates’”

  1. Oooooohhhhhh!!!! Love the whispered critique!!! I want ALL critique to be whispered….. it’s so much gentler! …. but with so much to say.
    And on the point of the title of the group – I dont even know where it came from as I arrived in the group with the name already given. Hadn’t thought to challenge it though. Although I certainly didn’t consider myself a mermaid within it. – even though they swim better and are more fluid ….
    Could it be a metaphor for personality types? Rather than the sexes?
    Could it refer to ways of being?
    To social roles and mythological roles?
    To the roles that our children often still see of face in shops/adverts and other adults and To the challenging that some of us do to counter that…
    What if I love mermaids? Does that make me a bad feminist?
    Perhaps anyone with a challenging view could be a pirate? Are they stealing our views? Or simply challenging them? Do mermaids always agree? Or are they also part of the dissensus? Women in stories and myths…. that’s gets me pissed off usually. With aims of love or beauty being the top priority.. .

    Thanks Maija for the whispered challenge. Maybe I will whisper one back at some point 😉 xx

    1. Whisper, whisper, whisp…..her
      Well, wasn’t the all point of this group name to challenge a highly charged and long established gender binary narrative?
      I personally see myself as both pirate and mermaid as I can operate at times inside water and others above/outside, and can fluidly travel from one state to the other with no warning (or maybe sometimes just a costume or a material, if one may remember, the French artist is gender neutral). I currently swim against currents with all sorts of sharks and other fish, in all sorts of water (or institutions?). But ‘pirate me’ navigates through the storm stilling the best of both worlds(or rather gathering, as I am no thief but rather a spy). My question; Can I keep my head above water or should I train myself to breathe under?
      In the context of education, can I create a safe space which is defined by constant change (action/time) and motion(action/place)? Can I evidence the combination of viscosity, measuring the resistance of a material to deformation(resilience) at a given rate, and velocity, defining the change in position against time?

      Please whisper, whisper, whisp…her!

      1. Whisps of thread
        of thought
        Of weaving
        Whispers of sound
        Of sense of sensing
        Whisp of a girl
        And whisp of a sprite
        Will o the Whisp
        Will of the night
        Deep in the dark
        Where the thread is
        Pulled taught
        And spooled up
        For threading
        A web of new life

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