Event overview
Goldsmiths Literature Seminar
Carlos Sapochnik
While observational drawing is traditionally considered an art form and therefore an aesthetic practice, this presentation foregrounds drawing as visual research towards making sense of observed organizational situations where the observer is (inevitably) a participant. Drawing refers both to the artefact (noun) and to the act of representation (verb). Drawings are immediate and, once made, tend to be left uncorrected. If made from memory, they have further potential to be spontaneous and therefore connected with the capacity to play, circumventing self-censorship in the description of a situation.
Ethnography is both a science of the particular and a source for defining universal, human phenomena, connecting sequences of observations by relating them (through writing) to the cultural whole. However, an other cannot be made transparent because of the limitations imposed by language as an arbitrary system of signs based on differences – just like words do not derive their meaning by standing in for things in the world, connecting an object with a sign for the object. All texts may be fruitfully explored for the data derived from their connotations rather than just as denotations, paying attention to the poetics of language, as well as to the prose of narratives.
Might such visual representations function as a ‘co-constructed dream’, which can then be explored to disclose tacit knowledge about the group? Dreaming is considered as a metaphor of the conscious and unconscious collaboration between observer and observed in fashioning the perceptions of the observer. Meaning is therefore co-constructed, and will not be explicit until explored – hence dreaming as ‘thinking through’.
Every metaphor-oriented activity is an attempt at some form of integration, whether organized or chaotic in content and appearance. The intention is to place drawing alongside the hermeneutics of dreaming, writing, interpreting and knowing. Like an aspect of dreams, this project may also be an attempt at wish-fulfilment in the midst of an, alas, inevitably fragmented experience.
For more info, contact Tanguy Harma
tharm009@gold.ac.uk
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 29 Jan 2015 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm |
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