thinking/making: catching thought in process

10 March 2017: Sedimentation: art, archaeology and subjective plurality

Elaine Fisher and Lucy Gresley ‘Buddo’  (2017) part

what seemed appropriate (successful?) in a collaborative approach was that it was subjective, yes, but there was also a plurality to that subjectivity that wouldn’t quite let ‘Buddo’ settle.  Yes we brought ourselves to the process but we also left ourselves. Rather than finding common ground we encountered a kind of sediment, the settlement that occurs as thoughts and feelings aired gently find their own temporary resting place together.  A suspension of text over image allowed a view through, between and beyond.  The view could have been other and both elements could have been different. This was a muddy response to a muddy assignment.

The very nature of the collaborative process meant that we captured a moment in time, time spent (with the concept of ‘Buddo’) in relation.   In this way we encountered ‘Buddo’ as many different people have before us, at a particular point in the trajectory of our understanding of the world.  A temptation to edit, to tweak and improve our assignment response, was removed. Hindsight is not an option in this way of working and Hindsights would have retuned ‘Buddo’ to a new suspension, equally but differently uncertain.

a response to ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY: ASSIGNMENT 1   a visual essay, outlining and critically assessing the entanglement of visual culture, in the processes of collection, curation and display