Interruption and invention

We have a limited ability to sense or know the total variation of the complex processes between the bodies and forces that comprise the world. There is a certain opaqueness in the way we sense the variation which occurs in these assemblages. It is an unknowability of a whole assemblage that is created through the local relationship of things, and our partial experience of these relationships. Work relating to lived experience in the city, therefore, should be sensitive to the variation that is implicit in the subject matter. The positions we take need to include the possibilities that are opened through and, and but, and although.

I am interested in the moments in assemblages when human and other bodies interrupt one another. Here I use the word interruption in a particular way: a moment of the clashing of forces, which alongside other forces, shape the world. An interruption is related in some way to acting, often beyond language, through a relationship of affect on the somatic. As a relationship between bodies taking positions, the notion of an interruption is involved with the political, and with an ethics.

Artistic production, as a materially-based research-praxis, provides powerful ways in which to work with ideas around uncertainty, but also ways to work with the inherent uncertainty entailed in our relationships as part of assemblages. This is because artistic methods and works of art are sensitive to non-linear ways of working. These methods offer ways to work with ideas and experiences that are social and relational, and are situated and inventive. A work of art relates to the body through affect, can open possibilities for participation in an assemblage, and can make us re-look, and re-think subject matter emerging from a variety of domains of knowledge. Paintings can give access to the lived quality of places by creating opportunities for becoming aware of aspects of the world the viewer may or may not have seen or felt before.