The moment here. The breath, the whisper In the space between The whisper of wind is unseen. A visual artist makes visible the invisible senses? The hidden things in between the spaces. Negative space Dark matter Other world faces Rain spatter. Water floods and fire takes to the sky an elemental maelstrom A sparkle in your eye.
I have been thinking about The Whisper
Whispering is defined as speaking very softly using ones breath instead of ones vocal chords.
This makes sense of the phrase “the whisper of wind”
Which, in turn, explains my sense that a whisper can touch, tickle, and stir movement in your state of being the way that wind can touch the skin.
Tickle
Buffet
Push mightly in gusts
Blow out the cobwebs
Play with your hair
Chill you to the bone
I tense myself against autumnal winds
Go giddy in the summer breeze at dusk
In all these ways the breath can speak to the body
I’m thinking about how being present with the work adds to the art experience when people visit. I’m thinking about what reliance on ‘wall text’ removes from the dynamic in an art gallery. So far, we have no wall text describing the work. This exhibition is one in which people sit on the floor and chat, quite naturally and without being asked. It’s not one where they circle the gallery and read the walls. Every day is different.
Using the space, the art, in process, connecting with collaborators not physically here.
One of the first things I find myself saying when people walk into the laboratory is “feel free to ask us questions!”
And if they look a bit uncertain about what they are looking at, I explain how dialogue is part of this process and we are interested in their impressions and responses too.
Yes, their impressions are more important to me than whether they ‘understand my work’. What I think I’m trying to say can change day by day, such is an artists life – this artist’s life? – I want to know what they see and think and there starts the conversation, there emerges the excitement of a meeting of minds (worlds).
Two students, came together, Sun and Hailee. I told them about Rapunzle when they asked, and the time she shaved her hair off.
“This exhibition makes me feel like I’m in a fairytale.” – Hailee
Sun noticed that I’d left a needle hanging from the bottom of the basket and how it seemed to create a connection with the lilypad underneath.
Kimvi interprets my work through re-arranging it (Tuesday)
He told me about the Chinese legend of the Monkey King, whose mother put him in the middle of a Lotus and floated him down a river and he was adopted by The Goddess of Mercy.
(I think Sun is looking the name up on his phone in the above photograph as he later showed me the Chinese – English translations.)
Right after this picture was taken, our second visitor arrived. Hello, hello! “Am I talking to an exhibition?” he said
Today’s thoughts on why dialogic process is important to me.
A peek at my WhatsApp chat.
‘Digesting‘, Thursday, Whats App Words with Sarah Misselbrook
When the artwork is invisible, happening in the dialogue in ‘the space between’ how do you share it?
By writing about it and talking about it I suppose. But most importantly by demonstrating it. No, by being it.
The lived experience of art in action…
Maybe it remains a private thing, until the seeds of a dialogue spout and take root in our lives. There is the creativity I am most interested in.
Yesterday was demanding and today will demand more of me. (show up, show up anyway?)
I wrote this morning a stream of consciousness, and I find that although it was inspired by an everyday encounter and not this project specifically, I notice the themes I am exploring have weft and wove throughout my perception and provided metaphors with which to express the experience.
Enjoy!
There is a conflict between Inside and Outside, Rapunzle’s tower feels so tempting today: Hunker down Retreat Withdraw. Anger burns up the walls from the furnace of my heart Come close and the flames will lick you yes, Dancing in the fire That’s my idea of a good day today. Alchemy transforming the elements at my borders New crystalline mementos… not gargoyle heads not medusa heads not lion heads not papyrus or paint pots flowers! yes, flowers Blooming like the night lily on the border between sky and pond.
There is a conflict between inside – outside. Do I keep up my walls and perform, stoic as a buttress? Do I dress myself in crocodile’s in a moat bordering my childish upswell with a warning snap to give me time? Time to feel Time to think Time to respond.
Aha, see, there is the conflict Truly I don’t fare well alone with my thoughts Alone with my words Alone with my ideas, Running round and round like stale bread in tin.
There is the conflict: How easy it would be to withdraw from the not me, the not wanted, the not cool, Paying the price in rigid conclusions and stony constructions encrusting my mind with a labyrinthine resolve to protect my ideas of self and other Suspended like a moth in a specimen glass Against my instinct My training My advice.
I need the outside, the other, the input battering my keep with the energy and colour of a summer rain creating rainbows in the autumnal chill To grow To learn To revitalise: The phenomena of intra-action The entanglement of multiple beings Be-ing in this life This ecosystem.
The place between this Inside mood and Outside pull tugging at my skirts like twenty cubs, or a vigorous wind. How many mothers, parents, sisters, brothers feel harassed by the pull of other world desires? Two worlds meet in the space between.
I don’t really desire solitude, just a place to stand where I can be; Be one of many on the lily pads Drinking from the top and bottom of an ecosystem that supports me (too).
This was written two years ago to express an alternative viewpoint which is being pulled in to sharp focus, as we each need to create a structure, a perimeter and a parameter within which to work if we are to achieve anything at all.
There is no line No outline It works as a drawing exercise But to live by it is to lose Spacial awareness in a sea of objects Focus in a mass of information. Abandoning form and boundary lines Constructed by the mind External action is fruitless A leak of energy, unmastered You see everything but also nothing Raw material remains unmanifest.
It helps to know the eye and the active mind are pulling focus Ordering reality, not passive observers. There is no line until you make it Just don’t fight too hard to keep it As the tension between forms is the Agitation sparking creativity Which never can create without grinding, Pounding, exploding forms and edging out on the wake of change that which must die Not because it can’t co exist But because it is food for your task Material for new forms.
By 2017 CAS Artists had been exploring the potential of dissent as a methodology for creative dialogue for some time. They decided to open the conversation to include others. Could their working methods be translated into remote collaboration through the creation of on-line residencies? What alternative voices and interpretations of personal dissent would emerge? Artists were invited to explore dissent during Block_Chain: The Power of Two (2018) and one of the participating artists was Sarah Misselbrook who completed her MA at Winchester School of Art in 2011 and now works from the wilds of Catalonia.
Sarah Misselbrook Between Spaces (2018) #BlockChainDissentArt Film 3.53min
EXCERPT
Out of the darkness I am here responding and observing you… Is this life? Connecting to you Disconnecting from you. Do my actions go unseen if I don’t record them? The chain records me, I surveil myself, and I share this information with you, Happenings, Performances (although this applies an audience) Reacting to you, I am in the space between The void, The far more intriguing negative me.
