Final Work and Concept Statement
Reflecting on my previous experiments and how they explore the collaboration of discussion, layers, complexity, colours and textuality⌠I wanted to further explore ways in which could stimulate this conversation and understanding of sexuality and identity.
In relation to my work i was also inspired by Rirkrit Tiravanijiaâs work in 1992 at the 303 Gallery of New York, Untitled (Free). Whereby she turned her space into a kitchen and cooked up a rice, Thai curry, free of charge in exchange for interaction and communication with contemporary art.
With this in mind, I began thinking of how I could do create conversation in a casual environment, to get rid of the formalisation and fear of asking certain questions that have genuine intentions of better understanding. I thought of how in schools and even within human resources a technique that is used, is to pass on an object that allows the individual to speak and have the attention focused upon them before passing on the object to allow the next person to have their say. I thought this was significant as when many people speak, confusion tends to be the end result and no understanding may be reached. This same technique can also be used when passing on the question to an individual who could provide an answer. This small interactivity could be underestimated. Teachers use it with children but this icebreaker can also be seen to be used with adults.
In the flexibility experiment I can be seen to be playing with a colourful pipe cleaner. The textures, flexibility and colours intrigued me and I discovered that this would be the main attraction in my final work. As a foundational layer underneath I used a foam ball.
I began taking these pipe cleaners and interweaving them. I made two weaves and then the unwoven pipes I twisted together, to continue the idea of weaving.
This in turn, developed layers, interesting textures, a range of colours and gave a childlike craft edge to it, which I found helped support the contextual background of this idea.
I glued the weaves onto the ball and then held it until it was dry.
My aim for this final work is for the class to interact with it, discover the characteristics with the ball as well as trial the icebreaker game, in order to devise conversation, dialogue and discussion. The interactivity is the final work. Note: You are able to âpassâ the interaction on if a question may be too private or hard to answer, however the more open we are, the more depth of understanding we are able to uncover.
After I made the piece I began to throw it around and then discovered that the ends of the pipes were a bit pointy and edgy. I didnât think this would hurt anyone, however it would have some degree of discomfort when throwing it around to person to person. Then I thought how this could actually be of help in encouragement to pass on the ball to the next individual and not hesitate. It would produce more flow of discussion and more variety of answers within the time frame given of the interaction.I felt like it also reflected how the pointy edge could be in relation to what we fear in asking these questions, we fear we would hurt others and think we could humiliate ourselves from asking questions that could be seen as âdumbâ or not ask-able. We all have different levels of understanding and hence all discussion should be encouraged.
I felt like I was also inspired by an ABC show âYou canât ask thatâ, by exploring the different episodes that showcased a wide variety of people that experience prejudice or challenging situations, I think it would pass on a major insight to the wide public in getting rid of the binaries and constraints and realising that there is a lot more layers and complexity than meets the eye. These are people and should be treated as people.
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