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RIVERSDALE, BUNDANON, TUESDAY, BLISS
Can aspects of Awareness through Movement® be applied in the creation of interactive artworks to broaden the scope of the artwork and expand the individual participant’s experience of the work?
In our initial discussions about TTTB, fellow Feldenkrais practitioner Maggie Slattery and I decided that engaging with attention to sensation was something we valued.
As practitioners and participants we’re being asked to feel something and then articulate it. We’re not necessarily interested in the outcome, more in how and why the participant in an interactive artwork engages with the process. However, we do feel there needs to be an acknowledgment of Quantum Physics here – that any phenomenon being observed is changed by the observation.
As practitioners of the Feldenkrais Method we normally remove as many external agents that will interfere with one’s engagement/relationship with oneself. The student becomes both the external and external agent and the boundaries in between.
I’m now at Riversdale. Such a breath-taking view from here. Breath-taking. I’m wrestling with my desire to just stare down the length of the Shoalhaven River as I sit here now and blog….
Today I began experimenting with a workshop I’ve developed over a number of years called “the Distinct Body”. The TTTB project allows me the luxurious opportunity of stretching it further, turning it upside down and inside out with the other participants.
Specifically the experiment of the Distinct Body is aimed at an exploration of felt experience and perceived notions of the familiar and unfamiliar body through themes of internal structure, volume and outline. I’m curious to extend the relationship between Feldenkrais and self-definition.
And so on day one of this two-day Distinct Body workshop the participants of TTTB are sharing in this experiment with me. The level of attention each participant contributed today was so fruitful. Rich.
How clearly can we define and express the nature of our own bodies to ourselves and others?
Clear distinctions were injected into the language during this first part of the workshop: Draw an outline of a body and fill it with a skeleton .
Participants’ drawings were highly individual, yet similar at this stage.
Then they were led through a Feldenkrais-based session focussed on specific aspects of their own bodies- in stillness, in movement, in balance. Bones in relation to outlines, form and volumes.
Again they were asked to draw and this time the scale was more specific- 1:1.
However it was stressed that they now draw their own bodies- their own outline and skeleton.
During this drawing session I asked them many questions focussed upon translation of the direct experiences from the lesson as opposed to the drive for anatomical accuracy and the role of self-judgement. Participants were encouraged to stop regularly and stand on a chair, placed in different positions to view their drawings.
Following this they worked in pairs – one lying directly on top of their drawing whilst the other traced around their actual outline.
In most cases the traced outline was very close in scale and proportion to the outline drawn freehand.
Was it the Feldenkrais, the guided attention, the growth of awareness?
Tomorrow we’ll experiment more with volume, with making bodies in three dimensions.
More to follow….
About Catherine Truman
Catherine Truman is co-founder of Gray Street Workshop in Adelaide. Established in 1985, it is one of Australia's longest running artists' co-operatives.
She has traveled and exhibited widely nationally and internationally and is represented in a number of major national and international collections including the Pinakothek Moderne Munich, Museum of Auckland, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Powerhouse Museum Sydney, Art Gallery of South Australia and Artbank. She has completed a number of major public sculptural commissions including Slate Pool Walkway at the Art Gallery of South Australia and A Way of Seeing for David Jones, Adelaide.
Truman qualified as a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method in 1999 and uses the body as a starting point in her work. Her work has always been informed by a strong political consciousness. Earlier work has dealt with social issues ranging from aging, housing and shelter through to more personal themes dealing with human intimacy. Later work is centred upon investigations into the authenticity of the images we carry about our personal anatomy. The resulting objects characteristically carved from wood or wax are not exact anatomical replicas but rather evoke sensory responses of physical recognition and resemblance.
Currently she is a PhD research candidate at Monash University and her topic is The crafting of human anatomy - a personal inquiry.
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