Here is where we meet: a sensory investigation into identity and places through matter.
I am interested in how identity is influenced by our subconscious understanding of place through contact with matter; an understanding that is laid down during our infant development, exploring the world through touching, sniffing, licking, etc. This tactile knowledge is absorbed or folded deep within us, enabling us to understand the tactile qualities of the things around us through visual perception. However, this is not simply a translation from one sense to another, but an absorption of things into our very being: a collision of stuff. It is an exploration of body, space and matter; the entanglement of the senses, language and memory. Moreover, it is the in-between, what is neither one nor the other, or maybe both; the nomadic flow and cross-contamination of everything, imperceptibly received or learnt.
Rejecting a binary notion of the senses gives us the opportunity to explore the in-between: in digital terms, what lies between the zeros and ones. We can think of it as the waste product of the thing: the residue or imprint. I think of this residual matter as the seldom noticed or unexpected gesture. This gesture is often an unplanned consequence of the intention, an action that is consciously or subconsciously perceived.
Central to my research is the notion of leaving a mark, a residual aftermath, and its relational impact on place, memory and identity. What happens when matter collides with matter? This is, of course, looked at in a particular way in physics and in metaphysics, but as an artist, I have scope to view this question differently or play with its concepts.
Collaboration and improvisation are fundamental to my practice. I am particularly drawn to working with people from a different cultural view point, engaging in a dialogue that challenges and evolves into an equilibrium of difference.
Improvisation is a manner of speaking that requires listening, a collective conversation that turns great risks into splendid rewards. By definition, it invokes collective interchange that is potentially transformative. Improvisation turns opposites into dialectical syntheses. It balances competing claims and interests. Improvisors need to counterpoise imagination with discipline, ego with empathy, and self-assertion with self-effacement. Improvisation references enduring continuity from the past while calling new collectives into being in the present.
Fischlin et al., (2013)