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Kosstrin QCQ

Hannah Kosstrin, Kinestetic Seeing

Q:
“…kinesthetic seeing similarly reveals historical practitioners’ subjectivities and implicates researchers’ bodies in corporeal assumptions during the interpretive processes of archival research. PiR’s embodied research-writing practices enable scholars to reproduce movements’ sensuality when analyzing choreography.”

C:
This process reminds me of carefully looking at painting. Through my own knowledge of the material properties, I am able to decipher which marks were made first. Often along with their speed, brush type, and sometimes even specific mediums.

Q?:
How much is “lost in translation” when it comes to Labanotation? Can this codified language deliver emotion or are other sources also necessary to recreate a dance’s true impact?

Fieldnotes from my yard in the suburbs – a place I’m stuck.

May 16, 2021, 9om

The chair I’m on is covered in paint and my head leans against the door to the garage which is really the door to the studio. I close my eyes and really listen. The only sounds I hear for a long time are rain sounds.

The rain sounds great and makes me content. The white noise of the drops on the grass and hitting the trees, making leaves wiggle. The car tires on the wet road make a whooshing sound that’s loud but not unpleasant. It gets louder and then quieter as the cars pass.

Bigger drops fall from the gutter and make more of a thunk. If the wind picks up, the sound of everything gets louder. The drops are more forcefully hitting each surface. I get sprayed with the temporarily diagonal rain. Sometimes there is a moment of more rain, then there is less space between each rain sound. The static gets denser. There’s long, rolling thunder but no lightning bright enough to flash through my closed eyelids.

There are windchimes but they aren’t chiming. I know there are animals, but I can’t hear them. One plane flies overhead. An engine revs. Mostly the sound of rain is close to my ears. There is a smell, but I couldn’t describe it. My mouth feels dry and I think about tilting my head up and letting drops plop in. They would taste clean and not salty like a tear.

I feel sick but not bad. I feel stuck but not trapped. There were no rain sounds in California so at least I have those and a place to listen to them. Alone in my dad’s backyard with goosebumps and listening.

May 17, 2021, 9am
The suburbs are a space I am stuck. I am grateful for this place to be but the doors to the house beep for 10 seconds every time you open them, and someone always knows where I am.
This weekend I’m alone here, and I can move around this space a little differently. I’m sitting on a beige vinyl chair underneath the overhang connecting the house to the garage. It’s May 16, 2021 and after 5pm but I am still in my pajamas because no one has to know.
It’s raining the right amount. Heavy enough that it blew away the heat. The humidity is stuck in the raindrops. I get goosebumps every few minutes. I close my eyes and then open them. I listen carefully and think about my skin.
The suburbs feel like an indoor space. The backyard is a place. There are six chairs out here even though there are only three of us in the house and very few visitors. My dad’s houseplants have taken over the small table for eating which Nan, his partner, hates. My dad and I eat out here anyway but prefer to have our legs up and our backs bent as we chew. I am surrounded by the scraggly but thriving assortment of my dad’s potted plants. He cares for them and tells me about new blooms and stalks. He cares for me too and that is why I’m here. You can tell they like this rain like I do but for different reasons. Their leaves bounce around with the raindrops and glisten, greenly.
There are three trees but one of them I don’t have a name for. In the winter it drops round leaves by the bucketful, but now is full and green. The other two are magnolias. They are past peak bloom, but there are still a handful of huge, white flowers. The thickness of their petals always impressive and their smell reminds me of being a kid. (I can’t smell them in the rain, though.)
The cars are all in the driveway because my dad and I use the garage as a studio. Nan loves that we are artists but does not like not being able to park in the garage. From my desk in the studio I can see one of the magnolia trees. My head is leaning on the studio door as I look at the backyard. In front of me is a headless Bacchus statue on top of carefully stacked cement blocks. I know my dad bought him already headless. He is also sheltered from the rain.

Week 1 Reading

Tim Ingold: Anthropology Between Art and Science: and Essay on the Meaning of Research
Q:
“I Speak the heart’s discourse because the heart is never far from what matters. Without the heart pumping its words, we are nothing but an outdated dictionary, untouched.” Ronald Pelias
“The aim of these approaches is resonance, understanding, multiple meanings, dimensionality, and collaboration. Pelias suggests that all research offers first-person narratives.”

C:
The connection between art and science’s goal to further understand aspects of our existence reminds me of the book Art and Physics by Leonard Shlain. In the introduction he proposes that one of art’s purposes is to prepare people for that which hasn’t happened yet or that we don’t yet grasp. For example, he compares cubism to space-time.

Q?:
As a society, why are we so focused on removing the emotional when it can be so effective towards “true” understanding? Why do people outside of the arts not see art making as research when its goal is exploration and knowledge? “Meaning-making.”

Mark Anthony Arceño: Walking, Talking, and Tasting
Q:
“There thus exists an incoherence between scientifically-grounded forecasts and on-the-ground localized knowledge.”

C:
The author highlights small descriptions, giving importance to the minutia in understanding any larger whole. The article feels like a call to “take note”, which leads to learning.

Q?:
How is this article connected to narratology? How does the way winegrowers position themselves in relation to climate change differ from the author’s ideas? When does experience trump language?

Roger Sanjek: Fieldnotes
Q:
“Yet fieldnotes are written, usually, for an audience of one.”

C:
This essay made me think about the note’s inherent connection to memory and remembering. The “real” interpretation and thought is saved for later, where the note is the immediate, raw material. Both can be wonderful. Consider an artist’s sketch of his model versus a finished painting. (Like Bonnard)

Q?:
Do scratch notes get “cold” in art making the same way they do in scientific research? When making art, can the removal from initial motive create equally valid outcomes?