Recently, I have shared a reflection on my artist in residency at La Trobe Art Institute in Bendigo, Australia in the context of my PhD. La Trobe Art Institute is La Trobe University’s centre for contemporary art and curatorial practice. During four weeks, I stayed in their beautiful place and took my time to explore the surroundings and participate in the project Minor Movements.
Minor Movements
During the residency, I was participating in the continuous formation of the exhibition: 'Minor Movements: A Rethinking of an Exhibition' as part of the larger project 'Immediations' organized by Canadian Senselab: Laboratory for Thought in Motion. In this exhibition-as-performance, minor movements are explored and presented as the tiny perceptions that are; ‘not ours to make so much as ours to attune to'. Participation in this process, offered me a chance to develop my movement practice and deepen my understanding of the differences between a listening to and listening with the environment.
A Reminder on Attunement
In my work, I understand attunement as a condition of being alive to the world, characterized by a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness in both perception and action to an environment that is always in flux. My means of attunement include, but are not confined to, exercises involving listening, moving and breathing with the environment. By means of attunement one can become cognizant of the way tiny perceptions, the subtle sensations and comprehensions that emerge by virtue of bodies in movement, guide (architectural) experience and action. During the residency I learn that attunement is not about the reinforcing or the renunciation of subject-object relations, but is rather an increased awareness of subject-object reciprocity from which new levels of empathy might arise.
Listening To and With
In reflection to the residency, I wrote a short text 'Cleaning is Not Enough' as part of the pre-publication in Working With/In the Gap:
