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The site, a National Trust property, was one I could revisit, early on photographing as a means of exploring the spaces. This was a speculative approach to gathering through my affect heuristic and making test works, through an iterative praxis developing my methods and understanding. The opportunity of two short residencies in a gallery, informed the progress of approaches to making spaces, through reflection on the first and second iteration could take these further.
There were also talks and papers developed as part of this body of research[1]. Work was ‘halted’ due to Covid, and the planed final exhibition did not take place, but I did revisit the materials, and this is outlined in chapter nine The Dyffryn Book.
[1] I gave a talk about the project, for The Humanities Research Group at Newman University in February 2020, and a presentation to MA Fine Art students at BCU in 2022, I also, co-presented a paper with dramaturgist and academic Kate Katafiasz, for the Sound, Voice and Music Working Group at the 2023 TaPRA conference, themed ‘Encountering (im)materiality and community through sound, voice and music’, my parts of our paper,’ Permeable surfaces, edges, and collective entanglement’ is links to things learned through the research, and the later making of the book. Making papers and presentations helped me clarify my thinking and informed my developing approach to writing/explicating my thinking and new knowledge, this approach of talks, presentations and papers has been an essential part of my ‘scaffolding’ approach/methodology to textual and ‘disseminating’ activities. Parts of those talks etc. developed into the chapters, and my approach to constructing this thesis.
The site:
As a child I had visited the grounds at Dyffryn as a public park[1], the house had been a conference centre[2]. When The National Trust took over the site, the house is very run down, the grade 1 listed gardens, grade 1 listed, the main attraction, with ‘garden rooms’, kitchen gardens, glasshouses, a stumpery, rock gardens, meadows and an arboretum. The house dishevelled, with only two floors that the public could (part) access, many of the corridors bare plaster with plyboard floors and only fragments of former grandeur, some silk wallpaper here, a huge fireplace there.
During preliminary visits I met staff and volunteers; house conservators, gardeners, and archivists, there was much to explore and consider[3]. I realised its historic associations were not what was looking for, that I needed to consider the site through the frame of my research question, its current everyday and commonplace, and in these what affective encounters might occur.
In February 2018, I undertook some initial gathering, setting up sound recorders and leaving them running while photographing details in the house before the public arrived, hoping to be just out of ‘earshot’. On reviewing these, ‘noticing’ concurrent activities in an audio recording from the top floor, a fly (one of the many nonhuman users/inhabitants of the space) buzzing and bouncing off a window that I had attached a pair of transducer/contact microphones to, and visitors outside below picked up through the vibrations of the glass. I additional had a recording with a standard microphone from this room, with the sounds of birds outside and public inside the house. Using parts of these two audio recordings and a photo, I made a short 1min test piece (link to work on RC). The sound has particular qualities due to the transducers; it is sort of blurred, and the fly comes in and out of ‘focus’, with a busy but indistinct hubbub and voices. This first test, made of in/outside and the shifting movements of details and atmospheres, already developing potentials for and new understanding of the creation of affecting active pieces.
[1] I was not interested in its historic or contemporary associations and links, but in it as a building and grounds in a state transformation between disrepair and renovation, it being a ‘visitor attraction’ also of interest, as this meant it had activity and purpose as a site in very particular ways. I had been interested to see how it had changed. Some of the ‘garden rooms’ had been reinstated in the previous decade, and the house and gardens felt like many spaces linked by passageways and corridors. I think my interest in the site as somewhere to gather, was in part because these spaces felt in flux, and as I had previously spent time there, I had an internal memory sense of the outdoor spaces, even
though I could not recall them in detail.
[2] The archives stored much of the site’s historic industrialist family ownership and its use through the later 20th century as a study and conference centre. Materials from when the grounds, through the time of municipal control, had been a park and a site for events, outdoor theatre, and music. The observatory, run by a group of volunteers, was fascinating. There were images and glimpses into things that had taken place, a visit by Gandhi, an eclectic art collection, a plethora of materials and information.
Affect heuristic – sense(ing)observer:
My process of gathering and making, is a being open to my own affective response to the sorts of everyday, general, nondramatic things that make us shift or move, look and be aware, ‘a rustle on the periphery of vision, that draws a gaze towards it’ (Massumi 2009 p4) Things that activate prior commonplace experiences we have had, ‘the ordinary is a thing that has to be imagined and inhabited. It’s also a sensory connection. A jump.’ (Stewart 2007 p.127) These part-known, sensed, felt reaction, almost like déjà vu, a frisson, something that makes the hairs stand up on my arms in recognition. As ‘microelements’ have potential to trigger affective response (outlined in The Cairngorms), through my ‘affect Heuristic’, I was looking for ‘microelements’ of the everyday along with shifts and changes linked with these affecting ‘rustles’ at Dyffryn. Stuff, that when I listened back, make me stop, look over, notice, but in the moment not consciously knowing why or what.
There is a commonality between my approach Vertov’s notion of a kino-eye[1]:
“The machine- eye, (which) moves in a perpetual metamorphosis—a discontinuous movement of bodies—rendering sensible new matter, new affects, and new forces. Thus, in the intensity of the first cinematic images, the world is shaken and seems to lose its solidity and stability. In this becoming of bodies, the kino-eye captures their intensity, their incorporeal element (Lazzarato 2019 p.21)
Working with my affect heuristic, I am trying to gather ‘intensities’, not of human bodied, but of a space/place and their ‘incorporeal elements’, opening myself up to being aware, gathering microelements of situations and places, to render ‘sensible’ (new) affects. With further corelations in the describing of an approach where screenplays are not used as they do not show us the world, instead structures and systems of editing are utilised a montage approach, and that Vertov ‘realises’ that the approach needs to be one of “Life Caught Unawares” (p. 26) and that this ‘requires cineobservers who produce cineobservations and cineanalyses within the framework of a poetic cinema.”(p. 28). I use a speculative/affect heuristic approaches with a ‘scaffolding’, to ‘hold’ a space in which to work, and am in my process, a ‘sense(ing)observer, utilising my bodymind responses to what is around me and the materials I work with.
My approach intrinsically linked to my bodymind and its non-linear way of being, knowing and experiencing, and through this to make spaces “that, as in Bergson, provokes circuits of ideas within memory and opens the possibility of breaking down thoughts directly—without passing through linguistic semiotics—upon the screen in the spectator’s brain. (Lazzarato 2019 p.29) Linking affect, memory and experiencing, as felt sensed things that make us recognise and ‘know’ and occur outside linguistics. Vertov thinks that his work is “beyond the author” (p.32) when I am absolutely in all of what I do[2] through my embodied response, therefore I am absolutely ‘in’ all the ‘doing’. With no notion that mine is an objective documentary approach looking for the ‘truth’ of a situation, this is a gathering up and sharing of my experiencing[3].
The ‘stuff’ of the world around me, all its small and insignificant bits, catches my attention in an encounter of intensities, details, shift and distraction, happening en-masse and rolling into each other. I pay it attention all the time, my hyper-awareness sometimes experienced as pressure from the sounds and visuals constantly experience, not always from choice. But it means I notice the little quotidian things tangled up with the bigger, this ‘stuff’ excites me, makes me feel alive, I am a wholly embodied researcher/gatherer/maker, this is a ‘whole’ body (not only somatic) approach utilising the particularities of this/my bodymind. This links to Lacanian extimacy, through a breaking down of the binary notions of subjectivity. In the process, through the gathering, the working with and the sharing, I am externalising something internal/intimate, I am making the works I do because I am using processes that are ‘of’ me. I open myself up to be a permeable ‘thing’ as well as allowing for the permeability of the materials and spaces I work with.
[1] I had watched ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ (1929, Dziga Vertov) previously and rewatched it while I was reading and thinking.
[2] Sometimes, like in ‘Man with a Movie Camera’, where you see the cameraman, you can hear me, my actions and movements
[3] With an understanding, that when another bodymind sees, hears and experiences my work, and feels something, reacts, has a moment of encounter with it, it is their own moment of encounter – that only that bodymind can have.
The second iteration:
Building on the first show, I worked with the materials from Florence’s room, deciding to work in the larger space and echo the window images from Dyffryn with the gallery windows, using a scaffold of transposition of the layout from one space to another gave me a simple starting point, and explore the audios spatiality further. The second iteration came together as three (5m) droops of paper, with a window image printed on each, roughly conforming to the position they were from and around 2m from the windows in the space, so that the layers of windows highlighted each other. There were a set of speakers positions on the floor where each piece of paper rolled up.
This work shifted the significance to the audio[1], tracks had no beginning or end points, and were differing lengths, meaning you always meet elements from tracks in different combinations, “whether past or future, inside or outside, transcendent or immanent, sublime or abject, atomized or continuous - is in a way a matter of indifference. It is all these things, differently in every actual case.” (Massumi 2002 P.43). emulating sounds shifting and changing nature. The spatiality of the recordings meaning they met and merged with the audio ecology of the space, people moving below and the piano being played (Dyffryn) mixed with people moving around in this building, the sounds from the grounds (Dyffryn) mingled with the sounds from the street outside.
This unsolid ‘stuff’, which is intrinsically ‘active’, ‘always an event of difference, and so disrupting continuums. As always a parasitic act that diffracts,’ (Goodman 2013 p.6) moves and interacts it constantly affects and is being affected, not only with/by the ‘environment’ but with/by the bodies met, “The transmission of affect means that we are not self-contained in terms of our energies. There is no secure distinction between the ‘individual’ and the ‘environment’” (Brennan 6). This work creating (always different) new space which expanded across the room, through the windows and down the stairs, and in the meeting of bodies is altering and altered, a mingling of elements, environments and experiencing of the here/hear/now everyday, with the there/then everyday.
This piece was a substantial development in my practice, working with and at a seeping edge between the actual and virtual, “Concepts of the virtual in itself are important only to the extent to which they contribute to a pragmatic understanding of emergence, to the extent to which they enable triggerings of change (induce the new). It is the edge of virtual, where it leaks into actual, that counts. For that seeping edge is where potential, actually, is found.” (Massumi 2002 p. 43). This ‘potential’ is for an affective encounter. Working through my affect heuristic, with the promiscuity of sound, the permeability of spaces/time and rematerialised microelements, bringing them together as a seeping virtual/real ‘new’ space which had potential to induce an unfolding of a smooth space to be experienced (and mixed up and altered again) by another bodymind.
[1] Again, there were problems with audio at the opening, the crowd was very noisy, and the work not, I had asked for a ‘quiet’ opening, but this did not happen, I need to consider this, but think it might always be an issue, as I do not want to turn the volume up, make it shout. At earlier, quieter points, it worked well with the sounds of people moving through, speaking, stopping, shifting and you could hear the sounds from outside and down the stairs, and in the week that followed, as people visited a few at a time, it was fine.
Speculative testing and developing methods informed by and informing praxis:
The work at Dyffryn was across a longer timespan than the other sites of gathering, it began with a not knowing what I might find, a speculative open approach, it could be responsive and situation-orientated research. Continuing to develop[1] a subjective, response-driven approach, through the praxis experiencing of the spaces, gathering, reviewing materials, making test works, reflecting and revisiting. A looking for ‘stuff’, ‘microelements’ of the space/place in sound and images, that tickled my affect ‘nose’, with the intention to understand the affective dimensions of the sounds I was experiencing/gathering and how I might work with them to build new spaces/encounters. The early ‘Top Floor’ test ,helping me recognise what I was looking for.
Reviewing early recordings, I noticed sounds of myself moving away from the equipment, and sounds from the terrace below as people began to come onto the site, although similar to the ‘Top Floor’ in/outness, these additionally caught transitionary active points of arrival and occupation. I became very aware of the permeability of the spaces, through windows, corridors, stairways and floors and walls, as well as the with the bodies present – including mine. Reflecting on my own ‘encounter’ with these everyday materials, becoming cognisant that these ‘atmospheres’ of permeability (which might be described as wider unseen ‘views’) are important to my developing methodology and approach as an embodied researcher.
I decided to actively look for points of permeability and details in the makeup of a space; a fly, drips and creaks etc. ‘stuff’ not necessarily in view (in the frame) in an image, but ‘from around’ what is. These inform an experiencing of shifts and changes in atmospheres, and ‘being aware but not seeing’, moments of things non-consciously (but affectively) sensed, and as such elements that I can utilise in the construction of my art works as spaces of potential bodily encounter for others.
I outlined a ‘structure’ for research visits; four days each season, across multiple spaces and times of day. A simple ‘plan’, for working; arrive early with the staff and before the public, have an area in mind, spend time to ‘see’ what seemed of potential interest in the space. Then, set up recording equipment, gathering audio with a range of microphones, and still and moving images, making notes and diagrams. The grounds opened at 11am and the house at noon, I gathered the space and activity before, across people coming on site, and the spaces being busy. Looking for the elements outlined above. Illustrated in the short test ‘Pool Room’[2], there is moving image (a locked off shot) and audio from above and below the surface of the water. The test piece is sparse and gentle, sounds from under the water, the breeze in a hedge and birds. Ending abruptly at 1min long, again leading me from this very short form towards making longer pieces). There is a permeability between the contained image and the ‘wider view’ of the audio, and in this case also between the above and below of the pool surface.
I made further tests, ‘summer’ (1min20secs) still shortform, and to explore the potential of something longer ‘grasslands’ (7mins). Both audio with a still image and made with materials gathered on the same day and location. There are many similarities, a close view image, close recordings of insects, more distant birdsong, people and activity on the site. ‘Grasslands’ having ‘more in it’, an aeroplane, people talking, and laughter, gives a broader sense of the atmosphere of the place, its activities, how they constantly shift and change, opening a potential for ‘stepping’ into the space of the work, wanting to hear more, explore what is happening.
I began developing longer pieces, including ‘Wood’(10mins) , made with materials gathered at the edge of the arboretum. This again has a close image, a ‘locked off’ video shot, with light and insects slowly moving and shifting. The audio is sparser and more spatial, I tried to work into it a sense of people exploring the stumpery, moving around the paths. This is the most successful of these test pieces, constructed between the materials from and of the space and the experiencing through this bodymind.
Working through embodied praxis becoming aware of significant developments to my approach and understanding. Firstly, that the longer duration allowed for a space to open in the works I constructed, through details and permeable ‘atmospheres’, for a (felt)sensing of nonconscious and affective experiencing of moments, secondly recognising as an artist, the importance of the images in making a way in for another to experience their own embodied encounter with my works.
[1] I was beginning to develop a description of my approach, thinking of it as overlapping and intersecting methods coming together. A speculative, crip/neurodivergent, feminist, new materialist, praxis - utilising mutable structures to support the developing/development of thought and hold open space for working with and through affect.
[2] From a November visit, gathered in one of the garden rooms, which has a shallow rectangular pool and hedges around, the day was mild and dry, with a light breeze. I set up microphones in a hedge, a camera looking and some allium seed heads, a camera looking at the surface of the pool, and a sound recorder with hydrophones under the water. Sound travels very well through water, so in shallow water, you can hear sounds from above the surface as well as below.
Elements #I & #II, STRYX Gallery Birmingham, May & June 2019:
In May and June 2019, I developed exhibitions at STRYX Gallery in Digbeth, Birmingham[1]. Over a two-week residency in the space an exhibition developed and was open to the public for a week, this then repeated. Working speculatively, with and in the space of the gallery to explor bringing together (micro)elements gathered at Dyffryn to make affecting atmospheres and spaces. I was considering the permeability between the sites of gathering and showing, thinking through the doing, the iterative shows allowing for testing, reflecting and further developments.
The space is a 1st-floor ex-industrial unit, The white painted main area has windows along one side looking onto a road, with a doorway opposite leading to stairs, and an additional darker alcove area painted grey, away from the windows. I had a range of projectors, speakers and screens, and tables, supports and surfaces on which to put equipment, project or print. In the shows I titled the ‘elements’ individually according to location and date of gathering.
Diagram of the space below.
My aim was to explore the making of spaces of embodied encounter utilising the developments in my approaches through the previous tests and works, having been able to gather a greater range of materials at Dyffryn than at other sites, The gathered sound reflecting the sites permeable ‘boundaries’, the seepage present, the promiscuity of sound, relating to the shifting and moving described by Massumi and linking with the nonconscious ‘knowing’ of something – that is an affecting encounter.
I construct through accretions of materials, working with the close and the heard-through, as well as the audio ecology of the ‘gallery’, making longer pieces with multiple elements creating possibilities for moments and situations to mingle and merge, utilising images as a way into a (always) new ‘space’ of encounter for the viewer. I made notes as I went along, as I had on visits to the site, commonplace thoughts and discussions in the space, to consider later in the putting together of texts,
[1] Each show, opened for a week, following a two-week development residency in the space. I was sharing the space with another artist, Kirsten Adkins We were making separate but to be shown together. . I will only describe my work in this text. Titled. Elements as we were both exploring bringing elements together in a space.
The first iteration:
Thinking about the permeability of the edges, seasons, rooms, buildings and imagery, I had been gathering in the materials and employed in the tests pieces made. As a starting point, I put some of these tests into the space, considering the everyday differences in how sounds move depending on season, the amount of foliage on trees, different buzzings of insects, changes in the activities on the site, you can hear these differences between the ’grassland/summer’ and the ‘wood’ piece from autumn.
I had gathered materials in Florence’s room over several visits[1], seasons, times of day, the recordings from this space gave me seepage from the house filling with visitors, things happening on the floor below, people moving around and playing the piano, and through the windows, sounds from the gardens and terrace below[2]. Exploring putting elements of these together, they were full of shifting, moving sounds, meeting and merging “atoms” (maybe my microelements?): “They are autonomous not through closure but through a singular openness. As unbounded "regions" in an equally unbounded affective field, they are in contact with the whole universe of affective potential, as by action at a distance.” (Massumi 2002 p.43). Sounds acting as affect might be described, and echoing my experiencing of Florence’s room, an accretion of affecting moments, layers of sounds that would build an atmosphere of the space within the exhibitions, that might catch a visitor in a moment, make them linger.
The works coalesced into areas of outside and inside. Materials from Florence’s room in the more contained and darker grey area, audio gathered across different days with two projections of windows from the room. These made a ‘space’, with audio that mingled at the border with the sounds wider space, and further. The bright projections enhanced the windows being full of light, but the space felt dark, too theatrical and ‘dramatic’ for the much ‘quieter’ sounds and images. As both the gallery and Florence’s room were on the first floor, when you heard the sounds through the house, it felt like they could be coming from the floor below. Opposite the gallery windows materials from the gardens, a projection of ‘grasslands’, a screen showing ‘wood’, printed images and audio from spring and summer visits, these were smaller in scale and the sounds quiet by nature.
The opening night was noisy, the sound elements did not hold up well, drowned in the hubbub of the activity, making me very aware that my work ‘works better’ in a quieter space. Visitors in the following week engaging with the works quietness, painter and academic Yvonne Hindle visited, commenting on ‘Florence’s Room’, that its details, shifts and movements took you from thinking of it as from other place, to “being in this place, making me feel very present and in the moment”; echoing my thinking about noticing drawing you to memory while at the same time as making you more aware of where you are ‘now’. Another successful outcome, that you could hear parts of the audio on the stairs to the gallery space, encountering it before you were fully in the space, this with the feeling of a ‘space’ and the permeability of sounds between that and the exhibition space are things I developed further in the next iteration and subsequently utilised in Coventry and aim to in my VIVA show.
[1] Florence, the daughter and sister of the more well-known Cory father and son, was the member of the family who lived in the house for the longest and ran it as a single woman, at a time when this was ‘unusual’. Florence’s bedroom on the first has a corner position and dual aspect windows, from one side looking out over the terrace at the back of the house and across the lawns, the other a view to the side of the house overlooking the grand rockery. It also has doorways in the other 2 walls, one to a dressing room which leads to the landing and the other to a corridor that joins the landing
[2] The ceiling below the room was too delicate to allow visitors to enter, but I was allowed to go in and set up sound recorders and cameras, these actions of mine appearing in the gathered materials, and in ‘Florence’s room’) but no other sounds generated in the space.
