The art of entanglement


PLEASEtouch


When considering how to use words to express about work, how to talk about it and write about it, I find that the word entanglement is extremely helpful in communicating how I experience it all - and, make sense of it all.

I could use the word connected, but it doesn't quite fit.  It's too rigid, too static.  Not fluid enough. I could use the word layered, which gets closer, but again, doesn't quite grasp the experience of the complete process of making.  It has a sense of stacking to it, one thing upon another.  

I have been looking for a term that is more expanding than stacking.  That respirates.  That unfolds and enfolds, as the physicist Dr. David Bohm describes it - in terms of our universe, not art, but it fits because all that exists on a macro level to a micro level is entangled.  All things inform and assist in describing / identifying other things.  All life is involved with other life (involvement being the best sister word to entanglement).  None of it stands alone, separate, except when forced to - allowing for study via the scientific method. 

The word entanglement suggests that the lines of connection are fluid and flexible, which is a more true reflection of our lives and how we experience them.

Entanglement.

And infinite potential.                                                                                                                             

Two concepts, found in conversations happening in quantum physics, that help me to grasp both what I am doing and why I am making - helping me to clarify it for myself and thus, describe it to and clarify it for others.

PLEASEtouch  was created to interact with the space it was created in - involving the space as a part of the experience, not just occupying it.  The space, and images, objects, surfaces, sounds, are involved with each other.  Entangled -  as are their energies.  They vibrate with each other.  They respirate.

When a visitor walks into PLEASEtouch , or looks at pics, or watches a video of what's in the installation, it may seem that the objects are so varied that they have no continuity, especially of subject.  For example, how does the object on the left (Disc Pilot), the center object (a Mud Fish) or the objects on the right (copies of petroglyphs from The Three Rivers site in New Mexico and salt crystals from a salt mine under Lake Erie) relate to each other?

      

At first glance they don't. And with no hints posted in the installation in the form of titles or an artist statement, or even easy access offered with the title of the installation, hopefully it soon becomes clear that PLEASEtouch  is attempting to offer something else - to move outside of the standard forms of exhibition by asking that visitors simply engage viscerally.  To look, feel, touch, listen...  To entangle with the installation and the space it exists in.  To leave the convention of easier access behind and enter into a more visceral experience with the work. To open up and allow for the infinite potential each experience offers to arise.  Whether I am successful in what I am attempting to do will be as individual as each individual's experience.  

In the next posting for and about PLEASEtouch  I will be talking about energy exchange between the installation and the visitor.  I will be including a piece my friend, fellow artist and educator, Jennie Kiessling, wrote about energy and art. 

And coming up in later postings, discussions about: 

  • Art vs artifact, including a piece written by Jennifer Cousino, Curator of History at the Loveland Museum/Gallery.                                                                                                                                 
  • History, and how it relates to the installation.                                                                                                                                                     
  • A more in-depth focus on individual artifacts, surfaces and sounds in the installation.                                                         
  • And an interview of me by another dear friend Bhanu Kapil, in the form of 5 questions she asked me. 

Lots and lots to see and chat about.

Thanks for engaging with my blog about 


See you soon.



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