Found objects: Laboratory slabs [2007]
Glass (x7)
Patterned by preparing specimens for study
50 X 77 X 18 mm
Unsigned and undated
exhibitions: Sur Polar, Buenos Aires, 2008
Provenance: unknown science laboratory -
The Bower recycling centre, Sydney -
LR collection, Sydney

Workshop

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

The planned theme for today's workshop

is transitions between extreme states,

in anticipation of exploring Antarctic landscape change
through drawing through movement.

I have with me some small glass slabs

that look like ice blocks.
Their crystalline patterns suggest ideas for moving and drawing.

The fellow at The Bower Recycling Centre

where I found the blocks,

told me they were used for cutting and crushing material

for study in a scientific laboratory.
The idea of furthering their role in research appealed.
They could be used in some of my own experiments.

Their random cracks, sharply formed amidst otherwise pristine glass,

suggest sudden, unpredictable shaping, punctuating through clear fluid.
They could be ice forming in water,

or perhaps clear ice fracturing.

A resident scientist, Dr Mark Taylor,

had suggested the blocks are metaphors for human lives,

their cracks tracing past experiences that shape us.

In anticipation of working with the glass,

I begin the workshop with the idea of neutralising

the positive or negative values we often place

on shapes and or movements that we make.

Rising is often experienced as more positive than lowering.

Opening upwards is often felt as positive.

Closing downwards can feel negative.

We can bring our residual feelings into our body shapes and moves.

Standing and feeling the spine drawn upwards

by an imaginary thread,

we bend our knees to lower the whole body.

The downwards vertical motion is imaginatively neutralised

by the upward image of the line drawn upwards.

At the extent of the knee bend,

we push our weight downwards through the floor,

with a downwards pressure to rise.

The rising motion is neutralised by the downwards push.

A sensation of balance can be experienced.

Other movements explored are opening the chest,

and then opening the shoulder blades.

The latter move is stereotypically experienced as the chest closing,

rather than shoulders opening.

There are two ways of describing, and experiencing, the same move.

The idea is to experience familiar movements

in unexpected ways

- to banish feeling expectations.

In response to the glass blocks,

we move between extremes of sudden, unexpected shapes

and fluid motion,

holding the different energies until change suggested itself.

Using our movement as the score,

we brush and smear lines with ink and water

on long paper scrolls along the floor.

Pairs take turns to dance

and be observed and drawn.

Dancing while watched and drawn

changes how we move -

towards clearer body shaping and phrasing.

Metaphoric play with objects

can help us make connections

between what we know and what we seek to know.

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