This April, I presented The Gut of A Place: exploring the body of a place through touch-based participatory performance-installations. This was an experimental project in response to an invitation from space illi, a project space in Seoul, Republic of Korea. I developed four art experiences, each focusing on a different methodology exploring touch as a way of connecting us to the ecology of our bodies, the body of a place and the bodies of each other. Each session blended interactive installation, ritual and sensory experience through listening, sound-making, smelling, fragrancing, tasting, collaging, moving and drawing as forms of touch. This was hosted in a multi-roomed house with a courtyard emphasising that possibility of connection with ecology wherever we are. I was interested in exploring artist-led tactile methods to practice a “sensuous geography” (Rodaway and Serres, 2008), where surroundings are transformed into a “sensate archive whose histories, materialities, and vitalities are made legible through touch” calling in Moten & Harney’s tantalising notions of “skin talk, tongue touch, breath speech, hand laugh.” I also wanted an opportunity to study my own workshop practice, distilling my processes and reflecting why I think these particular formats generate knowledge. In the process, we co-created artworks together becoming a collective artist body responding intuitively and responsively to the time and place whilst drawing on our own reservoirs of experiences.
The four sessions were: Gut-Feeling Geographies; The Body of a Drawing; Laughing Materials! and Sketching with Smell.
The sessions
In this playful workshop we explore touching the environment on a molecular scale through our sense of taste. Chewing and swallowing are forms of intimate contact with nature where the outside world meets the inside world. We will experiment with image-making, collaging and projection as a method of externalising our microbial internalised worlds together.
In this dynamic workshop we explore drawing as a form of talking to and animating our surroundings… We will experiment with different forms of mark-making using our bodies and materials to document the body of a place. The act of drawing lines becomes a new language between ourselves, each other and the environment. We will then explore different ways of turning our drawings into three-dimensional objects, giving them a ‘body’.
In this noisy workshop we bring the environment alive and make its voices heard! space illi becomes an instrument as we practice listening as a form of coming into contact with and understanding our surroundings. We will elicit the voices of different materials and create a collective sound piece for the exhibition.
In this final relaxing workshop we will explore our sense of smell, scent-making and breathing as a way of shaping worlds… Our breath is a connector between the inside and outside world. We will pay close attention to smelling as an act of survival, dreaming and world-making. We will take part in meditative activities and create collective, smell-poems together using different fragrant materials..
Sketching with Smell
The Body of a Drawing
