Self and Other I

The French theorist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva writes:

‘Cells fuse, split, and proliferate; volumes grow, tissues stretch, and body fluids change rhythm, speeding up or slowing down. Within the body […] there is an other. And no one is present, within that simultaneously dual and alien space, to signify what is going on. ‘It happens, but I’m not there’. ‘I cannot realize it, but it goes on’’.[1]

For Kristeva the subject, in the experience of pregnancy, had been positioned as an outsider of its own body. In terms of psychoanalysis, Kristeva explains:

‘Pregnancy seems to be experienced as the radical ordeal of the splitting of the subject: redoubling up of the body, separation and coexistence of the self and of an other, of nature and consciousness, of physiology and speech. This fundamental challenge to identity is then accompanied by a fantasy of totality – narcissistic completeness – a sort of instituted, socialized, natural psychosis.’[2]

If the subject is outside of her own body it is because, in the experience of pregnancy, there seems to be a split between nature and consciousness, physiology and speech, ‘separation and coexistence of the self and of an other’.[3] In other words, there seems to be a challenge to the unity of the subject’s sense as one coherent self.

A different account of pregnancy, by artist Susan Hiller, suggests a position of observer/participant. Referring to her work 10 Month (1977 – 1979) Susan Hiller writes:

‘In the first half, the texts that I chose to use were subsidiary to the physical. I was dwelling on the physical changes, […]. But in the second half of my pregnancy I was quite tormented and perplexed by a number of things, for example, by observing myself, being a participant and an observer, […] and I began theorizing, reading a lot, trying to understand what I was going through.’[4]

This is not a psychoanalytical position per se, however, it is a comment on the artist’s own feelings and psychic state. Hiller’s reflection may be informed by anthropology, her profession prior to becoming an artist. The position of observer/participant, outside and inside spaces put together, inspired me and thus formed an important part of the methodology. The research looks at the situation and dynamic of occupying both spaces, with the aim of developing tools with which to understand and utilize this new position.

One such a tool was writing as a performative act in ima’s 5 minute writing in the stream of consciousness diaries. This technique enables an engagement with ‘material’, which comes from within, such as dreams and fantasies. Descriptive writing has been used in order to document an observed action, as well as to analyse ideas. Writing created a space and a place, in which a meeting between outside and inside spaces occurred. One becomes one’s own observer as one documents one’s self.

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[1] Kristeva, ‘Motherhood According to Giovanni Bellini’ in Desire in Language, 1980, p. 237.

[2] Julia Kristeva, ‘Women’s Time’ in Toril Moi (ed.), The Kristeva Reader, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986, p. 206.

[3] Ibid, p. 206.

[4] Susan Hiller, ‘Dedicated to The Unknown Artist, an interview with Rozsika Parker, pp. 26 – 30. From: Barbara Einzig (ed.), Thinking About Art, Conversations with Susan Hiller, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2000, p. 50.

A mother’s love

Is a time axis

In my inout

Ticking

Tic-toc and

Chop-chop

I asked my mum what is the distance between kibbutz Ashdot Yaacov (Meuchad), where both her and I were born, and Samakh, the Palestinian town which got destroyed in 1948. She said about 6 km.

I want to measure that distance geographically, historically and culturally with the help of a ruler made out of wool, as well as stories about other people and their connection with geography, wool and grandmothers.

Bunia (Blatt) Shmueli was born in Ukraine in 1908 to Pearl and Ze'ev Blatt. She joined Zionist youth movements, Hashomer first, then Hachalutz. After the Russian Revolution (1917) the government forbade the teaching of Hebrew in schools or otherwise. Bunia's parents took a private tutor to teach their two children, Bunia and Isaac, at home. With time, more people joined these meetings, where Hebrew was taught and other related matters were discussed. The police was informed and in 1926 Bunia and other friends were arrested (her brother was a year younger, therefore under the legal age; he was arrested a year later). She and her friends were sentenced to three years exile in Middle Asia and Siberia. At the end of the three years Bunia was allowed to move to the city of Samarkand. For 5 years she kept applaying for a permission from the Red Cross to go to Palestine. She finally recieved the permission, on condition never to return to Russia. Bunia arrived at Palestine in 1931.


Bunia helped to build kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov (Meuchad) in the Jordan Valley, one of the hottest places in Palestine/Israel. Her work was to knit woollen sweaters to all the kibbutz members and children. As a child I used to visit my grandmother in the Tzim-ri-ya. I remember playing with the colourful wool, making knots, helping her by untying old sweaters and rolling the threads to small balls.

With another visit (to Israel)

coming up sooooon, ima

is sharpening knitting

needles, both

as noun

anddd

verb.  

שיר בתהליך

מאת יונת ניצן-גרין

25.3.2012

אהבת אם היא

ציר זמן

מתקתק בתוחוצי

תיק-תק

וצ'יק-צ'ק.

**

Most mornings ima writes poems. They are written mostly in Hebrew. I will have a go at translating them to other languages.

The method of a persona has led me to develop a method of performative acts. Judith Butler’s ‘Performative acts and Gender Constitution’[1] informs this method. According to Butler:

‘The formulation of the body as a mode of dramatizing or enacting possibilities offers a way to understand how a cultural convention is embodied and enacted.’[2]

This research aims at revealing cultural conventions and the way the identity of the mother is constructed through them. The idea of embodiment has led me to consider the body as a tool of investigation. If the maternal body embodies cultural conventions, than it can be turned into a tool that investigates itself and the conventions which are imposed on this body. Motherhood can be understood as a social action in which already established meanings are re-enacted and re-experienced. I take, for example, the act of dish washing. By simultaneously doing this act and reflecting on it, a cultural convention has been revealed. I became aware that I occupy two roles at the same time: the nurse (me-ta-pe-let) who looked after the children at the kibbutz (during my childhood) and the mother (at present). A documenting tool, such as a pen and paper, was added to the body as an extension of this investigating tool. In employing the method of performative act, ima enables both knowing-in-action and a reflection-in-action. Performative act enables also a reflection on action, which takes place subsequent to the action. In Diary of washing dishes (2001), the reflection-on-action has led to a second action in which some pages of the diary were translated to Hebrew and Arabic. This has ‘opened’ a space to consider the role of the mother as a social agent.   

[1] J. Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ in Michael Huxley and Noel Witts (ed.), The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, Routledge, London and New York, 2005, pp. 120 - 134.

[2] Ibid, p. 126.

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Lawn of Displacement is a participatory performative act which was done in respond to the Palestinian poet and author Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah. In his book Barghouti remembers a time when he was a student of literature at a university in Cairo In 1967. When he heard that a war had broken out between Israel and other Arab countries Barghouti writes:

 ‘‘Until this day I do not know why with my arm I drew a wide arc in the air and, aiming at the trunk of that palm tree, hurled the bottle of ink with all my strength so in that midnight-blue collision it burst into fragments of glass that settled on the lawn.’

Mourid Barghouti, I Saw Ramallah, Bloomsbury, 2004, p. 2.

In interpreting his action through this performative act I wanted to get closer to the narrator’s feelings, as well as other people who have been displaced from their homeland.

Vigil – ‘(noun) 1. Night watch. A period spent in doing something through the night, e.g. watching, guarding, or praying.’ From: Encarta Dictionary (on-line).

Lawn of Displacement was part of Space for Peace, a vigil organised by Winchester University’s Professor June Boyce-Tillman at Winchester Cathedral on 26th January 2012.

Donald Schön termed knowing-in-action, reflection-in-action, reflection-on-action and practicum. ‘Knowing-in-action’ is ‘the implicit knowledge that underpins and accompanies action, the characteristic mode of ordinary practical knowledge.’[1] This methodology includes Schön’s conception of the practicum, as a place which enables a synthesis between theory and practice. Referring to Schön’s definition of practicum, ima asks: ‘what is this place? Is it located in a building, as a studio or laboratory? Or is it a group of locations?’ ima’s practicum is in plural, not confined to one place but in fact open to many places, spaces and times.

Data collection, as well as processing was done both at the studio and in the real world: home, friends’ houses, Tesco car-park, during visits to Israel, family holidays at various other places, exhibitions etc, in short, at every place or time that the everyday provides.

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[1] Bairbre Redmond, Reflection in Action, Developing Reflective Practice in Health and Social Services, Ashgate Publishing Company, Aldershot, Hampshire, 2006, p. 36.

Research in Action methodology has been used in order to find answers to the research question and the questions which followed as the research evolved. A systematic approach has been implemented from the outset of the research. This included a daily studio practice, development of methods of inquiry, data collection, analysis and processing. Tacit knowledge has been re-visited through a variety of methods, primarily performative acts performed by a persona called ima.

ima is derived from invisible mother-artist and the word mother in Hebrew, my language of origin. This method was used in order to deconstruct the cultural constructs Motherhood and artist, as well as Kibbutz childhood. Invisibility refers to a sense of disappearance that prevailed in my experience, both in the Kibbutz childhood and the maternal. ima is informed by the writings of Clarisa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves, 1998, which explores and analyses women’s psyche, supported by a Jungian psychoanalysis. A method of writing diaries in the stream of consciousness has been deployed as a strategy to enable a way into my own unconscious.