Feeling Space

PhD STAGES:

Initial

EVALUATION STAGES:

Presentation / discussion and Selection

MATERIALS:

Abstract and Poster

DISCIPLINES:

Arts
Investigating Relationships between Self, Body and Environment
Sabine Kussmaul

Files: abstractposter, full paper (=updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

This research is based on my current creative practice of making drawings and installations in response to the particulars of outdoor and indoor environments.

Such practice is based on the performative potential of drawing and situated between Visual Arts, Performance and Dance. Other recent practitioners have researched this field with a focus on the choreographic potential of drawing on flat surfaces (Katrina Brown) or by performing movement patterns in response to site particulars (Burgoyne).

This research asks the question, how does an embodied drawing practice using a mobile working kit on different environments determine the relationships between self and environment?

The project’s methodology assumes an analogy between line movement on paper and body movement in landscape. Indoor and outdoor spaces, and the creative practice itself constitute the material contexts of this research. In the same way as this creative practice faces the challenge of connecting to different material environments, requiring situated and relational approaches and improvisation, its methodological framework is one of interdisciplinarity, questioning the boundaries between Dance, Visual Arts and Performance, built on phenomenological concepts of experience, environment and self. Drawings, installations, experiences and events, either by the author, acting as a human instrument, or by other subjects and things in the environment, provide data within an aesthetic framework where linearity is a structural criterion. The research aims to generate new knowledge in three fields:

Firstly, in the field of Expanded Drawing practices, a new body of work will illustrate how using a mobile working kit can create engagement between landscape, place, creative practice and notions of self. I will use elastic bands, rolls of paper, wooden sticks and drawing utensils to produce temporary features in the countryside and permanent drawings, documenting the making processes with videos, photographs and texts.

Secondly, it will produce new knowledge for the field of Critical Art Studies about how my particular interdisciplinary practice approach can impact on our understanding of indoor and outdoor environments and of who we are as embodied selves.

And thirdly, with regard to interdisciplinarity in the arts, and concerning the role of embodiment therein, the research will provide new knowledge about how a network between selected dance practitioners and visual artists can be used to communicate about their creative processes. /../

Keywords.

drawing, environment, movement, embodiment, dance