Proposal

To Root The River

A Practice-Led Inquiry into the Nature of Embodied Consciousness and the Pre-Human Perspective

Project Aims

1. This will be a practice-led project, using various artistic methods and materials to explore the sensual continuity and ‘rooted-ness’ of embodied consciousness. I aim to articulate through performance, sculpture, video and sound installations, the issues and implications arising out an inquiry into the aliveness of being, which is experienced present-time and directly through the sensing body.

2. I will be exploring the root as a strong downward force and vertical axis and its direct relationship to the forward motion and horizontal plane of the river. It is the intersection of these forces happening in the body that I am interested in – and how they co-operate to establish a radical re-positioning and re-incarnation of the body in time and space.

3. Both root and river have a ‘source’, a sense of origin, beginning and connectivity – and it is this sense of deep time and ancestral lineage that I will explore through embodied practice and research. I want to make contact with the pre-human perspective and by doing so challenge the hegemonic matrix that holds the concepts and experiences of ‘human’ in a particular dimension.

4. I want to discover the healing potentialities of artistic processes that ‘root the river’ and transmit through performative encounters with material, place and audience aspects and qualities of the deep connectedness of embodied consciousness and the pre-human perspective. I aim to explore the continuum in which the pre-human body belongs, and its relationship to phenomenal reality.

I recognise that to Root the River is an ambiguous statement, and this feels important as it provides a fertile ground for my practice-led research to unfold. My hope is that by allowing embodied consciousness to lead the way the meaning of this statement will reveal itself through the body and the making of art work.

Research Questions

· To what extent can art practice articulate and encourage a sense of deep connectedness - and reveal the embodied and theoretical understanding of the pre-human, and its belonging to a ‘single continuum’?

· To what extent can performance, sculpture, participation, moving image and sound, in the context of art installation, reposition the pre-human body in present time and uncover the relevance and implications of this perspective in the contemporary world?

· How can I, as artist, use artistic processes and methods to ‘root the river’ and embody the pre-human perspective to discover what affect this has on experiences of belonging, perceiving and relationship?

Background Research

There is a play on words as ‘Root’ can refer to the part that is underground (unseen), that acts as a support system to hold secure and nourish. To root also suggests to establish something deeply and firmly. However, it can also mean the cause, source, or origin of something or even to have sexual intercourse with (to penetrate/unite). All of these meanings are relevant to my inquiry, and what these mean in relation to the river: a natural stream of water flowing to other bodies of water. The River is a geological phenomenon, but it also holds great symbolism in many ancient cultures and mythologies, for example: water is a symbol of consciousness. In Herman Hesse’s book, Siddharta (1954), the river is the ultimate teacher of enlightenment – and by listening to it, Siddharta learns that time is a figment of imagination, and that the river is everywhere all at once, existing only in the present moment (Hesse 1998, p.172). So there are ecological, social, political and philosophical inferences to the statement – ‘To Root the River’. My art practice will explore

the actuality of roots meeting the river (i.e. specific locations) and the metaphorical/ symbolic territory they evoke.

In his thesis, The Origin of consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), Julian Jaynes suggests that catastrophic and consistent ecological disasters between the 3rd and 1st millennia BC precipitated the evolution of subjective consciousness in humankind. It was through crisis and the mass displacement of peoples, and the development of new technologies (ie. writing) that the ‘pre-human’[1] body and mind consciousness were ‘ruptured’ from nature. He writes, ‘it is as if all life evolved to a certain point, and then in ourselves turned at a right angle and simply exploded in a different direction’ (Jaynes (1976), p.9). I am interested in this original departure, and how we can potentially ‘re-root’ the ‘pre-human’, so that we may belong again as co-creators in a ‘single continuum’[2] - and remember our existence in and as nature (Gablik 2002, p.55).

Jane Bennett writes in her thesis Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010) – ‘we need to overemphasize the agentic contributions of nonhuman forces to counter the narcissistic reflex of human language and thought’ (Bennett 2010). I will suggest through my art work that embodiment is the doorway into an expanded subjectivity and consciousness, one where humans are in a horizontal and reciprocal relationship to other beings and their environment. I will argue that the pre-human is an embodied position that belongs intrinsically to existence itself and therefore has the potential to reconcile the conflict of dualism and the ‘up-rootedness’ experienced as part of modern alienation felt in a digitalised world (Gablik 2002, p, 56).

Research Methods and Strategies

I will work from an intuitive phenomenological and embodied perspective, placing body, instinct, sensation and materiality at the centre of my work.

I will investigate the term ‘To Root the River’, using direct experience perceived and sensed through my body as the raw material to create art work, whereby my body becomes the

anthropological and phenomenological site of inquiry.

Ingold suggests that the skill of artists or anthropologists is anchored in ‘how they come to know a ‘site’; that is, in the ways that they move through and actively engage in an environment’ (Ingold cited by Grimshaw and Ravetz, (2009), p.158). I believe that through embodiment ‘deeper remembrances’ (Ingold 2009) are uncovered, and therefore the body can be placed in a wider historical context.

The nature of practice-led research is that the work reveals itself through the making – materiality will be a launch pad to investigate theoretical ideas and the concepts of feminist new materialism will underpin the development of my art work. And so will a continual process of self-reflection, audience feedback, interaction and personal response. Deeper levels of understanding and a more refined articulation will hopefully evolve alongside my explorations. The critical framework for my practice will include feminism, animism, post-colonialism, psychoanalytics, phenomenology and the politics of nature and matter.

Methods

Using the methodologies stated above, I will set up various different performative encounters between body, material, site and audience/participants, to explore the concept of rooting the river, with the aim of articulating through art making and art work the live-ness and direct experience of embodied consciousness. The innate intelligence, sensuality, conscious/unconscious aspects of body and the encouragement of open listening, participation, immediacy and not knowing are all fundament qualities of rooting the river.

The performative encounters are a process of making and they may include elements of ritual, re-enactment, re-location (changing site), social participation and some translation /

mediation through film and sound. I may record some or all of the encounters and gather other recorded material to further question, unpick and embellish certain threads of social and political discourse.

The materials I intend to explore are: Clay, water, blood (menstrual), earth, roots and other natural materials. I am also interested in the use of digital media to express embodiment, and the conversation between low-technology processes (such as working hands on with clay) and high-technology processes (such as digital camera and film editing software).

Statement of Ethical Research

I will be filming my dog Ludo and perhaps inviting him into performative spaces with me.

The use of menstrual blood in public places.

I will probably ask participants into performative spaces – they will be informed of what the parameters of the performances are, what is required, if they will be recorded by video or sound.

Bibliography/ List of Sources

Bennett, J (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press: Durham, U.S.

Folie, S, and Franke, A (2012) Animism: Modernity Through the Looking Glass, Generali Foundation: Wien, Austria.

Folie, S (2012) A Conversation by Angela Melitopoulous and Maurizo Lazzarto with Elisabeth von Samsonow (Folie, S, and Franke, A (2012) Animism: Modernity Through the Looking Glass, Generali Foundation: Wien, Australia)

Gablik, S (2002) The Re-enchantment of Art, Thames and Hudson: New York and London.

Klien, N

Ingold, T (2008) “Anthropology is Not Ethnography” Proceedings of the British Academy I154:69-92 in Grimshaw, A and Ravetz, A, 2009. Observational Cinema, Anthropology, Film and Exploration of Social Life, Indiana University Press, Bloomington

Hesse, H (1998) Siddharta, Picador: London.

Jaynes, J (1976) The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Mariner Books: New York)

Kester, G, (2004) Conversation Pieces, Community and Communication in Modern Art, University of California Press, Los Angeles

[1] In Elisabeth Samsonow’s critical analysis of Greek Myth and the Athenian Paradigm, discussed in her book Anti-Elektra (2007), Samsonov takes on the position of the ‘girl’, which is an animistic-feminist position rooted in the ‘cosmos of a totemic society’ (Folie 2012, p.199). The girl is described as waiting underground, for she was left outside of the ‘project of humanity’ in which the Greek philosophers colonised, and this is to her advantage as she has the capacity to undermine the whole Athenian Paradigm, whose foundations our culture still secures itself. She is called ‘animal-human’, ‘pre-human’, a way of ‘being-in-the-world’ that hasn’t severed its ties with the logic of nature and who sits in a larger historical and mythical context of humanity (Folie 2012, p.199-207).

[2] Gablik’s concept of a ‘single continuum’ is a nondual perspective where fundamental unity lies at the core of reality – as she describes: ‘everything in the universe is understood as dancing energy patterns interweaving a single continuum’ (Gablik 2002, p.55). If we reposition ourselves in the ‘single continuum’ we experience the world directly, as our own body, and a deep connection between the human, animal and plant worlds. The illusion of duality dissolves and with them the assumptions about a distinct and separate ego-self codified by our culture (Gablik 2002).