A statement of intent

Finally, after five years of research I have arrived at a conceptual standpoint from which I feel able to move forwards with making practical work. 

This has been a major stumbling block since college because it is important that your work takes on board factual contemporary thought including science, as opposed to inventing things which are obviously not true to the knowledgable or illustrating theory (unless pointing out implausible logic that is your aim of course). Before starting to seek out evidence about what I thought about embodied perception in 2007,  I hadn't  found a philosophy which I felt made any sense against my own practical experience. My chosen philosophy will now run paralel to my practical work. 

Also having been so drawn to dance as a medium, yet not being able to let go of my identity as a painter-come- sculptor collage artist, I have also had to investigate where I am situated in this respect. The opportunity to carry out primary research and talk to the very people working in this area, rather than reading others opinions in books, was made possible by working at Dance UK. It has been valuable, and the six articles that I have now written, have a life of their own as a thesis on collaboration between art and dance, and practitioners who deal with movement in other disciplines. These I hope to publish more widely.

All of this means that I am in fact now at a point where I have established a personal identity, which everything else can be evaluated against, which I needed. All that out of the way I can turn to my practical work again.

In doing this I have realised that something I have always struggled with, is genuine observation of the world around me as a starting point for the work. In other words what to look at. After a four year period of researching as opposed to making, lots of trains of thought have been dropped, leaving just the essential things that fascinate me, that have always fascinated me, which are as follows: 

• Changing perspectives in movement and parts of visual language that are related to that- scale, color, light, perspective, line, shape and more recently form. 
• Subjects have ranged from journeys, forms that evidence a passage of time/ occurrence of a sequence of events such as rocks/ costal landscapes, and the properties of materials them selves. 
• I have a strong interest in process and materials. 

Up until now, because of the indecision about where I am coming from creating inertia, it has seemed more important to establish a conceptual clarity around why it is that I feel a truthful representation of my, inhearently spatial, experience in the world, has to be one in which embodied perception and a duration of time are both evident. 

It would appear, then, most sensible thing to do next, all things considered, would be to explore some of these things through film amongst other things. 

Taking professional dance training was a worthwhile investment

‎42: 56 in... Anya Gallaccio talking about collaborating with dancers, the difficulties of working collaboratively, and choreographing her audience. A lot of her reservations, for me, stem from not understanding how to communicate with dancers, and possibly not working with dancers who have experience of collaboration outside of dance. Makes me very glad I took the time to do professional training and really understand the job of a dancer and associated thought processes.

Found an affinity with Lucy Skaer

Lucy Skaer talking about her installation for the turner prize. She is interested in the boundary between 2D and 3D and here she describes how she 'orchestrates' her installations and talks about the idea of 'presence' I wonder how much of that came from her collaborative relationship with Gill Clarke (Siobhan Davies Commissions)? I identify with a lot she says here.

Tate Channel shedding some light on things

I have been listening to the Tate Channel today in my studio. It has been such a relief to listen to artists talking about what they do in practical terms. It made me realise that you just do what you do, it doesn't have to be so complicated!

Jeff Koons, Paula Reago and Grayson Perry were my favourites so far, Grayson Perry: 'Everyone has a brand so I am the tranny potter, which isn't too bad'. Brilliant!

http://channel.tate.org.uk/#media:/media/26522806001&list:/channel/playlists/41803706001&context:/channel/playlists

I have rejoined the Axis community

Axis is a great community of artists and curators, I have just signed up again for another year:

http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=12243

I'd like to know about you

I often wonder who all those people who look at this are.... drop me a line zelda_stevens@hotmail.com

: )

Cognitive wholes, embodied cognition

In the studio today listening to this affirming talk about the cognitive whole that mind and body forms and how this affects learning. The educations system's lack of awareness of this is why my mother chose to teach me at home, and thank god she did!

Although this explains why I have never quite felt on the same page as other people until I met contemporary dancers.

The late Gill Clarke, dance artist and Guy Claxton, learning scientist in conversation as part of The Independent Dance Crossing Borders and PAL talks:

http://www.independentdance.co.uk/rsc/MP3s/CB2011/GuyClaxton_11Oct2011.mp3

The bit at 54.35 secs about how we understand perception is enthralling: Guy tells us how the old model of the mind held perception at the fore and action at the back, action as a response to perception with intelligence in the middle. The new model is not linear however, it places doing at the forefront.

He goes onto talk about vision as the prototype for perception, when in fact it is touch.

Visual perception is a visual process of tapping the world. What is more perception is not building up a big composite picture. In fact you only have the detail, which enables you to build up expectations of the world, built by touching it.