'Bring me the Orange' - Maker and Body

Figures

Hands

Lines

Museum

Objects

Palms

Sea

Spaces

Text

Through the maker and body module I was re familiarised with Arters, Actors whom I had grown up admiring. The writings of Leonora Carrington, the etchings of Max Ernst, ironically a couple to name a few. With the incentive 'to draw', I drew, I went through exercises of drawing at different speeds, in different ways and I wanted to draw more. Except what was more pressing, was the material, both mental and physical that I'd collected over the years. When, trying not presume any role of artist, I made little notes and research sketches. The grand work of art was far from me. Throughout the drawing module I experimented in the medium of collage, bringing snippets past and present together. This is what I have often done in my writing. Alas, I glued and pasted. And then, as a breather, hoping to get a drawing out of it, I danced, I moved, in my room, with some curated music I moved my limbs. Having already a mind full of limbs and parts, organs, embodied and disembodied my head was already full of imagery. When I awoke, I sketched. I drew in fuschia waxy oil pastel something that look like an organ, like a heart in the gut, lines and movements. Other colours came into the mix. And what happened next was a suprise in fact. I decided to press record and sing... Looking at my drawing, I sang what I saw at first but then continued to do the body scan in my head, while singing. I moved through the colours and organs with my mind and with my voice. The result a sortof a song. I did another, while looking at one of my collages, I sang. Lavender sea is what came out.... and as I moved away from the image... I moved into the interior. The last song, which came, was related to a little doll I'd made in the sculpture module. Fantom Maria became the 'song'/ poem. During my presentation I laid out all my collages, I took still from my moving meditation (which I'd filmed) and used the legs, the arms, the bum and overlaid them over a photo I'd taken of a Orange on the shore of a Margate beach. The Orange matched coincidentally with a text I'd read my Helene Cixous 'Vivre l' Orange' and the song, and the collage series became . 'Bring me the Orange'.

Going forward…

What has this module brought me?

My work has certainly expanded and grown outwards from this point. Understanding the material at hand and trying to navigate or even construct meaning through alternative means has been a liberating process. I have seen en mass a life lived out artistically, all the connections the words the cutouts gather and the meanings resist a narrative but inevitably create one. I too feel relief at possessing some hold over the material.  Montage has allowed me to create knowledge and look upon it and then take a distance. I wish to pursue many angles of practice and thinking through this perspective. I wish to branch out further and combine methodologies from different bodies of thought (ethnography/ neuroscience to name a few). Creating space rather than story, too leads me forward and back to my film making practices. How can these methods work with the film strip?