Making

In the exhibition at 21 Cooper Gallery, at Cooper Union, it was very important to me that The Study Center balanced the tropes of a white-walled gallery exhibition with my interest in interaction and study. This meant providing lots of space around objects, while also creating furniture that encouraged people to transition from viewer to participant or library patron. I designed a system of tables and plinths and vitrines to hold the objects that could be touched, upon request. I also designed the exhibition to offer both small, intimate spaces and large, gathering spaces, which were activated in public programs.

The Study Center balanced the tropes of a white-walled gallery exhibition with my interest in interaction and study.

Surrounding the tables in the Study Center were stools which can be stacked together to form a life-size Roman column. This sculptural furniture, called DIY Ruin, takes its shape from smugglers who took ancient columns away in sections. DIY Ruin draws on the North American adoption of classical motifs in the organization of social life and of social space on campus. The columns mimic the Ionic columns used in buildings for education, justice, and government in the United States, particularly the columns of the White House, and invite people to dismantle the column. The Ladder Chairs were stationed around low objects, standing in for a desire to climb, both socially and physically.

I’m really interested in how collectives are able to communicate with each other, how they can heal each other, and often how they learn to listen to one another, rather than focusing mainly on speaking, or taking action. I think of art as a space for reflection and celebration, so not always for productivity.

— Caroline Woolard, 2016

fig. 2-8 Renderings for The Study Center for Group Work, 2015, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

fig. 2-9 Technical drawings for DIY Ruin and Ladder Chairs for The Study Center for Group Work, 2015, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

fig. 2-10 Sketches for Ladder Chairs and exhibition design for The Study Center for Group Work, 2015, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

fig. 2-11 Reference Images, Lucia Moholy, Alma Buscher’s Ladder Chair for Children’s Room, 1923

fig. 2-11 Reference Images, Aleksandr Mikhaĭlovich Rodchenko, Fire Escape, 1925

fig. 2-11 Reference Images, Trisha Brown. Woman Walking Down a Ladder, 1973

fig. 2-11 Reference Images, Lawrence Shustak, Lette Eisenhauer Ascending Ladder in “The Courtyard,” a Happening by Allan Kaprow, New York City, 1962

fig. 2-11 Reference Images, Yoko Ono, CEILING PAINTING, 1966

fig. 2-11 Reference Images, Mel Bochner, Measurement: Shadow, 1969

The artists in the Study Center were selected based upon the following criteria that Stamatina Gregory and I created:

Groups under consideration, 2015

At least 3 of these qualities are present:

• is a practice that has been taught to other groups and that they now use (practice over author)

• is a practice that has been refined for years (rigor/commitment)

• is a practice that is used for conflict resolution, anti-racism, feminism, or queer activism

• is a practice with a beautiful sculptural tool

• is a practice with facilitators locally (in NYC in our case)

• is a practice that could occur over a year

• is a practice that might be “disruptive,” that has perhaps-untested potential for progressive or “radical” social change

• what else?

I continue to work with many of the artists from the show at 21 Cooper Gallery. In the years following the exhibition that Stamatina curated, the artists Adelheid Mers, Judith Leemann, and Project 404 have continued to participate in The Study Center by sharing practices with one another. Recently, we were invited to be part of an exhibition that Alison Burstein curated at Tenthaus in Oslo about artist-run institutions, including The Study Center for Group Work.

- is a practice that has been taught to other groups and that they now use (practice over author) - is a practice that has been refined for years (rigor/commitment) - is a practice that is used for conflict resolution, anti-racism, feminism, or queer activism

The interviews and information that follows comes from the publication that was created for the exhibition in Oslo in 2019.

The Braid / Performative Diagramatics

Adelheid Mers (b. 1960, Düsseldorf, Germany; lives in Chicago, Illinois) has developed a generative, topological method for talking about arts production and collaboration. Mers creates diagrams for workshops with artists, arts managers, and theorists that include fractals, matrices, and braids to guide conversations about art works and art practice. Mers “draws on the performative tools of studio critique. Formally, diagrams are defined by their operativity, engendering action and reflection. Mers’ diagrams are presented as manipulable whiteboards, with occasions for use and response. In addition, they are often distributed freely, online and in poster and flyer format.” As visual arts pedagogy shifts to embrace collaboration and social action, the “tools” of Adelheid Mers are helpful models for dialog.

Online: http://studycollaboration.com/practice/performative-diagrammatics-braid

Caroline: Adelheid, why do you make objects for groups? What got you into this? What is possible with an object in a group, that would not be possible if the object were not there?

Adelheid: The Diagrammatic templates and conversation facilitation objects I have developed serve to promote ways of thinking and perceiving flexibly, reshaping regimes of making sense by admitting unnoticed or undervalued perceptions, and loosening petrified knowledge. These facilitation objects are animated by prompts that a facilitator delivers, or that an accompanying text provides. Facilitated conversations are embedded in a performance that is structured by the object. Think jumping rope while telling a story. In this way, users open themselves to interactions between propositional knowledge (what is readily stated) and embodied knowing (what is readily enacted.)

These facilitation objects are animated by prompts that a facilitator delivers, or that an accompanying text provides.

—Adelheid Mers

fig. 2-12 Adelheid Mers, The Braid, V3, 2019, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

The Braid diagram is a tool that is designed to aid users in discussing and comparing how they recognize and work within the forcefields they inhabit. It is aimed at artists and other cultural producers. The diagram contains verbal prompts that emerged from individual conversations with artists, who derive agency from more or less intentionally integrating epistemic, critical and administrative needs and capacities into an idiosyncratic practice. Prompts are associated with a path wound around a continuum. The path is represented by a trefoil, the continuum by a torus. These mathematical shapes evoke topology as a metaphor through which to inclusively model and by that also brace the practices of cultural practitioners.

The key prompts are marked by an alliteration:

MAKING includes forms of attention, epistemic and material work processes, in the studio or equivalent.

MEDIATING contains forms of reflection on all aspect of cultural practice, and verbal articulation of narratives among stakeholders.

MANAGING broadly frames generative and normative institutional exposures.These areas may expand or contract at different times of practice. There is no specified point of entry.

Seemingly simple conversation/performances of this kind can bring embodied knowing into play, or alternatively dislodge hardened ideas. Performative actions promoted by The Braid template, for example, may consist of walking across and placing oneself within areas outlined by a rope designated as “artist studio,” “public discourse zone,” or “exhibition opportunity”; shifting the gaze to the ground and lowering one’s center of gravity while feeling a site’s presence anew; or refashioning the rope into an expanded shape to accommodate a story. Similarly, observing others perform can reframe perceptions.

This yoking of conversation to physical situation resonates with recent research in cognitive science that addresses the connection of space- and text-based practices. John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard I. Moser received a Nobel prize in 2014 for showing that “grid cells” in the brain are used both for mapping space and for the processing of abstract thought. Facilitating user experiences through diagram-based objects also interlinks with theory that presents diagrams as inherently implying an invitation to act. The invitation to act, also known as operativity, further confirms the character of diagrams as performative objects.

By presenting facilitation situations as art, I claim an ethico-aesthetic surplus that emerges from the public performance of diverse, cognitive ecologies. A focus on users shows my approach to thinking and being with others. It is centered on the recognition of cognitive diversity, or cognitive preference, which I understand as situated on a continuum, similar to how gender and sexual preference are now understood. This perception was shaped in large part through the formal and informal studio conversations that are part of arts pedagogy, leading me to intentionally map artists ways of knowing or making sense: artistic epistemic engines, accessed in conversations about art making. To mobilize such resources as diagrammatic tools puts me in line with Félix Guattari’s project of metamodeling. Metamodeling draws on existing frameworks across multiple areas of life to develop a personal mode of sensemaking and acting that works. Beautifully, Guattari embodies an ethics of a “New Gentleness” in this conception. My diagrammatic templates and facilitation objects function in that spirit. I believe that the cognitive and affective implications of play within a formalized game can, gently, promote skills towards discourse that is needed to keep peace.

Object Lessons

Judith Leemann (b. 1971, Walnut Creek, California; lives in Boston, Massachusetts) is an artist, educator, and writer, whose hybrid practice plays the boundaries between distinct areas of professional practice. Her performative and collaborative work includes what she calls object lessons: attempts to develop form languages for rendering relation. In her words, “since 2007 I’ve been experimenting with crafting wordless explanations, in which hands manipulating objects on a small stage are asked to take on the work of explanation that usually rests with language. Over time, I’ve come to be most curious about the way in which language permits certain kinds of sense to come forward while actively preventing other kinds of sense from being made. Can this play of hands and objects do the work of foregrounding relations such that the relation itself becomes the subject?”

Online: http://studycollaboration.com/practice/object-lessons

Caroline: Judith, why do you make objects for groups? What got you into this? What is possible with an object in a group, that would not be possible if the object were not there?

Judith: Initially the objects were simply tools for me, extensions or externalizations of objects of thought. The fact that they were located in the realm of the physical and not in the realm of the imaginary meant that their constraints and affordances (a brick can’t roll, an object with an axis can and must point) led to new insights into things already fairly well thought through.

I invited others to model something that occupied their thoughts, asking them to explain that thing to me using only hands moving objects, without any words. I began to see how productive it was to block the grooves cut by repeated verbal telling. Watching the objects being moved, without knowing what they stood for, I could see spatial and temporal patterns inside the telling that the use of words would have masked.

I invited others to model something that occupied their thoughts, asking them to explain that thing to me using only hands moving objects, without any words.

— Judith Leemann

fig. 2-13 Judith Leemann, object lessons, 2013-present, found and made objects, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist. Leemann’s performative and collaborative work includes what she calls object lessons, or “attempts to develop form languages for behaviors.”

Nouns and proper names disappeared from the telling, I couldn’t see who or what, just that a something approached another something with a pace that caused a sudden retreat. And the role of pace, which had no place in the verbal telling, now becomes legible as a potential point of shift. Analog aspects of communicational interaction lifted into ready recognition, while digital aspects necessarily took a back seat. Organizing metaphors became apparent, shareable, testable, in other words, workable. (I recently made myself a personal reminder: choose workable metaphors. In other words, let the image you use to describe a condition to yourself be one that has articulations, perforations, ways in and out. Don’t accidentally describe corners that you then find cornering you. Or do. But know that you are).

I wanted a way to thicken the possibilities for encounter with something new inside the well rehearsed telling of knowing.

— Judith Leemann

In some ways this is utterly ordinary, continuous with reaching for the salt shaker to move it around the water glass to show a dinner companion just how the thing happened. By making sets of objects for particular telling contexts (turned wooden forms to talk about artists’ conceptions of time, found and manipulated objects each with a painted blue to work through experiences of the liminal) I wanted a way to thicken the possibilities for encounter with something new inside the well rehearsed telling of knowing. I root my embodied understanding of the challenge of meeting habit and cultivating space for ‘the new’ in years of somatic learning via Alexander Technique and Contact Improvisation, as well as in the pedagogies of the Goat Island performance group.

I could see spatial and temporal patterns inside the telling that the use of words would have masked.

Summoning a habitual response and running it into an obstacle breaks open space for the emergent in ways that no amount of deciding to do something new will ever allow. The anthropologist Gregory Bateson famously proposed that noise was the only source of the new—noise introduced or arriving in a system around which that system would now need to reorganize itself. Bateson’s frequent co-conspirator Paul Watzlawick suggested that if you wanted to understand what was keeping a problem in place, look at what is being done to solve the problem, that solution very likely being where the cycle turns and begins again.

Watzlawick’s pithy “description embeds prescription” is a touchstone for me. How we describe, and with what languages we describe, prescribes what is seeable, touchable, actionable. The play of these object based choreographies is my contribution to multiplying the languages we have at hand for casting relation anew.

Project 404

Project 404 (founded 2014, New York) teaches practices of attention using the very devices that threaten to distract us. This protocol asks participants to focus on one image for twelve minutes of silence with the phone or device in airplane mode. The ambition of the project, as the name indicates, is to reverse the “not found” message often seen when looking for a website, and to send it back— briefly— to who or whatever else wants attention.

Protocol of Attention and Adaptation

15 minute silent phase, 60–75 minute colloquy.

↓

Download the image to your smart phone. Turn your phone on airplane mode. Look in silence at the image provided, following these prompts.

↓

1. What do you notice? What do you notice now? 5 minutes: bell

2. Use your phone to modify or change the image (do whatever you like, while staying in airplane mode). What do you see? 5 minutes: bell

3. What is your relationship to this image? Have you become crucial to what you see? 5 minutes: bell

↓

(Take a few minutes to jot down some notes about your experience of each of the three phases of the protocol. When we are finished we will begin colloquy.)

Online: http://studycollaboration.com/practice/protocol-of- attention-and-adaptation

"The [404] practice empowers you to be imaginative in your relationship with your technology. The phone demands certain types of attention: texts pop up, we scroll through images, but with 404 you permit yourself to spend time with a single image.” — Anna Riley, Project 404 facilitator, 2019

"The [404] practice empowers you to be imaginative in your relationship with your technology. The phone demands certain types of attention: texts pop up, we scroll through images, but with 404 you permit yourself to spend time with a single image.”

— Anna Riley, Project 404 facilitator, 2019

Caroline: Project 404, why do you make protocols for groups? What got you into this? What is possible with a protocol in a group, that would not be possible if the protocol were not there?

Project404: Project 404 began as a practice of sustained looking at works of art with the kinds of students I teach: digital natives, mostly first generation college students from immigrant families. The protocol of attention and adaptation asks participants to use attention as a medium for creativity; the objects we look at are digital images, either made by the participants or found online. Doing practices of attention in a group requires generosity, both toward the image that is the object of the practice and toward each other as participants. Doing practices of attention together, and using the devices that usually divide us from others, enables us to connect through our powers of creativity, and offers us unexpected glimpses of ourselves.

“The [404] practice isn’t academic—we are not looking at an image to be right and know things about it; the practice is creative. We use attention as a creative medium, and the tenet of generosity extends to the image itself, of course; to the other people participating, whom we are going to listen to with generosity; and to the practice itself, which we want to treat with a certain amount of generosity."

— Len Nalencz, Project 404 facilitator, 2019

fig. 2-14 Image of Seph Rodney facilitating a practice of Project 404 in 2015. Photo by Filip Wolak.