http://www.chapelartsstudios.co.uk/blog/notes-for-conversation-visual-essay-nov-2017/

Fragments of Movement

ima's tool in a diffractive action of drawing while spinning

ima's tool in a diffractive action of drawing while spinning 1

ima's tool in a differacting action of drawing and spinning

 I've attached a felt-tip

pen to my 'spool' and

drew as I span. One pen 

for the drawing with number

one attached, two pens for

the drawing with number two 

attached and so on. 

 I've later added some more
to some of the drawings, not
using the 'spool', just holding
the pen in an ordinary way.

 The flowing movement

of spinning threads had

been diffracted, producing many broken

lines as the felt-tip pens

touched the paper at different angles.



 
 

ima's Tool

ima's tool in action

Unravel

Making the bed

ima's Tool

‘Odradek, the protagonist of Franz Kafka’s short story “Cares of a Family Man”. Odradek is a spool of thread who/that can ran and laugh; this animated wood exercises an impersonal form of vitality. De Landa speaks of a “spontaneous structural generation” that happens, for example, when chemical systems at far-from-equilibrium states inexplicably choose one path of development rather than another. Like these systems, the material configuration that is Odradek straddles the line between inert matter and vital life.’ 

(From: Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter, a political ecology of things, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2010.

p. 7).

This quote connects with my paintings. Kafka describes the spool as an object that is in a state between passive and active. The bed-sheet's threads bring their own movement. When I pull them, one by one, I feel an energy that's flowing, as a kind of material expression of the bed-sheet's own memory. Whether I twist them around the marker pen or place them on top and inside each-other, when I select one thread it has its own movement. This movement is revealed when I place the threads on the canvas, each thread separately. The thread and the movement of my hand create one line. This line is never geometrical. I adjust the pressure of my hand and the way I hold the end of the thread according the the movement of the thread. I loosen up my hold just as the thread comes to its end, then placing it gently on the canvas. Or hold it very tightly when I spread the thread over the width of the canvas. Placing the threads are done with utmost sensitivity and care. If I loose focus or make a quick movement the thread rolls over the surface, attaching to another thread, responding to the threads and the canvas' surface. From this point of view, the thread is a thing, an object that has a vital energy.    

ציטוט זה מתקשר לציוריי. קפקא מתאר סליל חוטים בשם 'אודרדק' שנמצא בין מצב פסיבי-אינרטי לבין מצב אקטיבי. חוטי הסדין הפרומים מביאים תנועה ספציפית להם. כשאני מושכת אותם אחד-אחד מתוך בד הסדין הם מזרימים אנרגיה וזורמים איתה, כעין ביטוי חמרי לזכרון הסדין. בין אם אני מסדרת אותם סביב עט הסימון או מערימה אותם זה בתוך ועל גבי זה, כשאני מבודדת חוט אחד יש לו תנועה משלו. התנועה נחשפת כשאני מניחה את החוטים על הקנווס, כל חוט באופן נפרד. החוט ותנועת ידי יוצרים יחד קו. הקו אף פעם לא ישר כקו גאומטרי. תלוי כמה לחץ אני מפעילה בפעולת ההשמה, אני מתאימה את אחיזתי בחוט לתנועה שבאה מהחוט. מרפה כשאני מרגישה שהגעתי לקצה החוט ומניחה בעדינות ורפיון על גבי הקנווס. או אוחזת חזק כשאני פורשת את החוט לכל אורכו מעל רוחב הקנווס. ההנחה נעשית בעדינות ורגישות מיירבית. אם תשומת ליבי לא ממוקדת או אם אני עושה תנועה בפזיזות, החוט מסתלסל על גבי הקנווס, נצמד לחוט אחר, מגיב לחוטים ולמשטח הקנווס. מהבחינה הזאת, החוט הוא דבר שיש בו אנרגיה חיונית, חיוניות.

ima's tool (marker pen and cotton thread)

ima's tool (marker pen and cotton thread)

Thread pulling as a performative action

The moment when I pull the threads off the canvas is performative: it has sound, movement and tension. My whole body participates in this action. It's dramatic, almost like taking the painting apart. The action of pulling threads from an old bed-sheet is echoed in the action of pulling the threads off the canvas as the last stage of the painting. It is a kind of Gestalt. The dialogue between the two fabrics receives voice, visibility and body.   

הרגע בו אני מסירה ומושכת את החוטים מהקנווס הוא ממש רגע מייצגי: יש לו קול, תנועה, מתח. כל הגוף שלי משתתף בפעולת ההסרה. יש לו מראה דרמטי, כמו פירוק הציור כמעט. פרימת החוטים מבד הסדין הישן מוצאת הד בפעולת ההסרה. נחשפת מחדש כמעין גישטעלט. הדו-שיח בין שני הבדים מקבל קול, מראה, גוף. 

'Burka or Tzitzit'

'Burka or Tzitzit' (with painting)

'Burka or Tzitzit' - painting

'Burka or Tzitzit' - in the studio

'Burka or Tzitzit' (with an ear-ring) 

'Burka or Tzitzit' (in Chapel Arts Studios)

'Burka or Tzitzit' ruler

http://www.pirg-research.com/

'Artist-in-residency, May 2017' Installation at PIRG's Sites of Conversation Exhibition

Installation View

Physicist feminist Karen Barad says: "objectivity is a matter of responsibility and not a matter of distancing". 
(From: an interview with Karen Barad in “Meeting Utrecht Halfway” June 6, 2009, the 7th European Feminist Research Conference, hosted by the Graduate Gender Programme of Utrecht University). 

In maternal subjectivity distance matters. Being close to life's beginning, indeed, being enmeshed with the materials and materiality of life at its origins opens up the possibility to knowledge. It is knowledge that emerges and being constructed by a dialogue with materials, bodies, cultures and histories; a dialogue that challenges social conventions. At the 'heart' of this way of knowledge there is responsibility. Knowing how to respond and develop this ability. In Barad's words 'respons-ability'. 

According to Barad: 
'There is not this knowing from a distance. Instead of there being a separation of subject and object, there is an entanglement of subject and object, which is called the “phenomenon.” Objectivity, instead of being about offering an undistorted mirror image of the world, is about accountability to marks on bodies, and responsibility to the entanglements of which we are a part.' 

'A painting's seeing itself', oil on canvas, 2017 (below) is shown as an object hanging on the wall and as moving images, filmed at different stages and from different view points, seen on screen/s. This wide way of looking at a painting creates a space of entanglement where many different issues can be explored as part of thinking about painting: what is it? and what does it signify today?  

   

YNG, 'A painting's seeing itself', Oil on canvas, 2017

YNG, 'A painting's seeing itself' - detail, 2017

Threads from 'A painting's seeing itself', 2017

Physicist feminist Karen Barad says:

'objectivity is a matter of responsibility and not a matter of distancing'

From: “Meeting Utrecht Halfway” June 6, 2009 at the 7th European Feminist Research Conference, hosted by the Graduate Gender Programme of Utrecht University.