Reading journal 9/20/22

SLOW PRACTICES IN ART AND RESEARCH: WAITING, OBSERVING, REFLECTING

 ELENA MARCHEVSKA & RACHEL EPP BULLER

Ernesto Pujol, including spending (several hours, half a day, a day) in silence as Pujol requests, and then introduce yourself to the group by describing what you noticed / how you experienced that time of silence?

Michelle Boulous Walker, Slow Philosophy: Reading Against the Institution. London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017,  p.8-32

The author poses the question what it is to read?

Walker lifts the argument of how we approach reading and respond to text. She distinguishes between the reading we are guilty of which is institutional, and that of slow reading which is given to much thought. The book makes the point that to read slowly which allows us possible to explore more preliminary thoughts concerning the way that theorist and philosopher’s read attains text. Walker cites her position on how slow reading re-engages the reader of philosophy with a love of wisdom and a way of life, rather than simply as a desire (or a need) to know. And that it is an alternative, more contemplative and ethical way of doing philosophy in an age of speed and haste. One of many problems pointed out in the book is our need to consider the way we approach and respond to a text. These problems were addressed by Walker citing many researchers and theorist. inclusive of Virginia Wolf. In my summation, the support from her research findings concluded that slow reading is developed by re-reading slowly, and reading the text many times over which will cultivate theorist or philosophy students’ passion for philosophy and wisdom.

    

 

 

 

Ellen Samuels, “Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time”

Ellen Samuels responds to her personal life complication’s in a narrative that gives voice to her multiple perspective of living with her disabilities which causes her feelings of release and isolation.

The author addresses the problem of time during her disability as Crip time which moves gradually in normal life stages. She voices that it cast’s her into a pit moving her backward and forth in an unstable way that often abruptly ends. She speaks for herself and the disabled community stating that this time has offered her a rocky course in life..

Samuels also adresses her personal grief with various grief scholar's inclusive of Freud. She states that grief is a time that allows us to feel the pain of crip time, with its its melancholy, and brokenness.

The way the authour responds and deals with her multiple Crip views is thru reading, writing, and identifying it as her time. She creatively embraces these modes of expression which is reflected in her writing of this article. She accepts and affirms herself as a Crip.

I also walk in this realm of belief.

Cristina Müller’s Nine Letters, a 20-minute film

Nine letters highlight a variety of personal letters being read by the sender to friends, family.

The voice over of written letters read to family, intimate and close friend sometimes in various languages is aesthetically visualized implementing video background that could possible give meaning to the state of mind of the writer of the letter as they communicate deeply personal thoughts to the receiver of the letter. The background video’s images and sounds depict a feeling of slow, quiet contemplation and interrelationship in communicating person to person. The effect of this video visual and sound quickens my desire to return to and cherish personal one on one communication thru personal which I have stopped doing since 2019. The nine letters video reveals the human factor that has been lost in interrelating and communicating. Letter writing is becoming a lost art which embraces intimacy. Human to human interaction have been replaced by human to machine interaction which shows how technology systems have altered human behavior and interaction.

The answer to this problem is clearly revealed in how we will return to intimacy in personal communication, by  writing our heart in letter form. We realize technology has hampered human behavior and interactions. Nine letters film clearly depicts the answer to this problem

 

 Renewing the World podcast episode -Alicia Harris

In this podcast Dr. Alicia Harris highlights how time, objects, and kinship draw on a generational connection. Harris refers to the artwork of the indigenous Native American artist by Giving an index of knowledge and ancestral relationship to kin taught thru time. Harris frames her studies thru a visual lens that leads to an indigenous methodology toward a cosmetology and ontological system. Harris views material history as a record of kinship lifting the idea that that inanimate material matter’s and human families and individuals are connected in relation to each other in that material. Harris sees native artmaking as an effective means to embody her perspective. She gives voice to her perspective in highlighting the art work of Pueblo artist Rose Kite. Kites work thinks thru material objects and ancestral kinship. Kite accomplishes this view by her use of material objects like clay stones which is connected to her kinship which comes from her long family genealogy of clay making. In her art installation the use of inanimate material objects place is used in relation to kinship.Harris points out Seneca Indian artist Mae Watts who connects to her ancestor kinship which extends to a material use of steel and blankets representing that which connects to her Watts ancestor kinship, which thinks back across time as to who they were and how they are connected. Problems that her research unearth are ,how western structure and Native American kinship structures differ, how inanimate objects are living with spirit and intention, which is opposed in western thought. And a need for indigenous people to be redirected back to the spiritual land not natural land development She attempts to address these need for indigenous people to return to their spiritual land by reflecting on her interest in the work of native digital artist Marlina Miles virtual reality stories of the Dakotas. This points out Harris’s openness to possible technological advances that will provoke a mindfulness of the indigenous homeland thru visual markers, and reach technically inclined future generations.