Fay Nicolson

WORK WITH MATERIAL - a talk

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WORK WITH MATERIAL!
This is an instruction or imperative; a strong call for you and I to develop a manual and non-academic
way of working. One that explores the inherent characteristics of elemental things. We understand the
properties of materials. We push, pull and end them. !ip, tear and puncture them. "omine, switch
and manipulate them. We work with them until they resist our actions, until they crumle, collapse
and corrode. We work with them until they work.
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WORK WITH MATERIAL
This is a succinct description of an o#ect; something that has een made with materials. Taken in a
literal sense, this is an art work made of faric, and therefore references the value and context of
textiles. O#ects to e worn y the ody, O#ects that fit and succum to our movements. O#ects to
adorn the home, to reak up the hard, cold, generic and geometric surfaces of our houses. O#ects to
personalise and decorate. $alleale, invaluale and mass produced.
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WORK WITH MATERIAL
This is the title of a text written y %nni %lers in &'(), the female modern textile designer who trained
at the *auhaus and was married to artist and teacher +osef %lers. ,er text discusses the difficulties
of learning in a world overwhelmed y knowledge. -he states that engaging with materials is the most
immediate form of learning, unmediated y authority figures, such as teachers. This piece of writing
also egins a dialogue etween text and textiles, connecting writing with weaving and notions of
structure and surface. .oes my reference of this text cut across its sentiment and desire/ 0
channelling the possiility of action and first-hand experience ack into academic research, history
and the written word/
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This talk will draw upon the writing and ideas of %nni and +osef %lers, who elieved in the
development of tacit knowledge through first-hand experience with materials. 1sing an approach that
sits etween the experimental and academic I hope to apply the pedagogical and artistic ideas of
%nni and +osef %lers to the material of language and the structure of narrative.
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Materials or a tal!
& x overhead pro#ector
% text on 23 pieces of paper
% collection of handled materials from my studio
"
Words 4 logic 4 materials
5resence
5attern
.ocumentation that shudders and shimmers
that re-enacts 0 knowingly 0 that acts 0 that pretends
+osef %lers stated that6
%ction7 is the noun of the ver 8to act7.
%cting in visual presentation is to change y giving up, y loosing identity.
When we act, we change appearance and ehaviour, we act as someone else.
This is not a lecture 0 re-locating one history or stamping knowledge over narrative
I am not one character 0 instead I am a cipher 4 screen 4 gla9e 4 mesh 4 veil or curtain
% memrane or material to pass information 4 to slow it down 4 oscure it 4 lur the source
To act as a face or focus for vague undercurrents
Or general experiences
Or shared concerns
#
1nfolding within the tensions etween experience and knowledge, image and language
the free gesture or choreographed action
something fresh and always new
and something repeated, repeated
$y work falls into a fissure
etween the first-hand experience of an experiment
and a desire to re-connect, re-trace or re-enact history.
To avoid the crutch of academic style
Or the authority of o#ective tone
%nd treating the past as a material
To work with it as a medium
To push it as far as it will go
Without "racking, crumling or collapsing
$
:anguage as medium
imagining letters as physical elements to e moved around and assemled into o#ects
that conduct information and communicate
whilst resisting the taxonomy of words6
those carefully violent definitions and divisions
that denote a thing of relative or shifting value.
%
% * "
The elements or uilding locks of language
To learn and to uild, the architecture of play and pedagogy
To uild, take apart, repeat, perfect
The fragmented process of mass production or time work
%nd the fragmented process of practice.
5ractice6 doing again and doing it etter.
1&
%nni %lers told me to come down to earth from the clouds where I live in vagueness, and experience
the most real thing there is6 material.
-he states that civili9ation estranges men from materials in their original form. ;or the process of
shaping these is so divided into separate steps that one person is rarely involved in the whole course
of manufacture often knowing only the finished product.
This reminds me of *ritish historian <.5 Thompson7s text 8Time, work-discipline and industrial
capitalism7. In which he descries how industrialisation and mass production changed people7s
perceptions of time, work and the making of o#ects. $ass production fragments the making process,
with a worker making the same element of an o#ect over and over again. There is no knowledge of
the whole process; and in the making of the o#ect there is no room for discovery, evolution, or
mistakes.
In the advent of the machine, when the hand of the worker =and the skill it represents> ecomes
osolete, the art academies come to value the hand. It is summoned and the marks its makes are
celerated as the residues of an almost spiritual instrument.
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+osef %lers often asserted that art cannot e taught? @et he taught for years, at the *auhaus, @ale
and *lack $ountain "ollege. ,e was a renowned teacher that designed exercises and courses to
sharpen visual sensiility through experience6 To open the eyes, to recognise the shifting relativity of
forms and colours, and to master their selection, use and arrangement.
%nni stated that $aterial, that is to say unformed or unshaped matter, is the field where authority
locks independent experimentation less than in many other fields, and for this reason it seems well
fitted to ecome training ground for invention and free speculation.
"an a teacher guide without authority/ .emonstrate and Auestion without eing a master/ I like the
idea of materials locking authority, or slowing down knowledge.
Words are the medium of explicit knowledge, knowledge that can e easily disseminated, understood
and employed through o#ective language.
,owever, $aterials are a medium of tacit knowledge. % knowledge that is difficult to code, to share or
pass on. This is slow knowledge, perhaps a refined skill, like gymnastics or lowing glass. Tacit
knowledge is learned gradually through years of experience, emedded in the mind and ody. It
cannot e coded through language and shared easily.
If materials resist or lock language and authority, is the introduction of materials into education
today, seen as un-economic/
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+osef %lers states that all art starts with a material and therefore we have to investigate what a
material can do. -o, at the eginning we will experiment without aiming to make a product.
We prefer cleverness to eauty... our studies should lead us to constructive thinking.
I want you to respect the material and use it in a way that makes sense and preserves its inherent
characteristics.
!ecognise the manifold use of material, the changing organisation and presentation, unhampered y
either harmony or disharmony, ut lead y respect for oth.
If you can do without tools, all the etter.
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%*"
"ontinuing to think aout the ramifications and legacies of modernist art education, The A Course
was a radical art course taught at -aint $artins "ollege of %rt in :ondon from &'B' to &')(. .uring
part of this course language was anned. -peaking in the studio was not allowed and students would
e locked in one room during working hours; using strict discipline to free students from their former
training and preconceived ideas.
-tudents were often given materials, such as large polystyrene cues, with no instruction as to what
to do with them. Tutors descried this as teaching sculpture through sculpture, not through speaking
aout sculpture, insisting that language is not a suitale medium to teach people how to make art.
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%*"
In &CB( the ;lorentine %ccademia del disegno was founded. Disegno is that which has een
imagined in the intellect and faricated in the idea.
.isengo is a shorthand for intellectual, not manual activity - a very different approach to that of %nni
%lers, in which the idea emerges only in working with the material itself. The academy of .isegno
wanted to distance itself from the skill ased guilds that operated in !enaissance Italy.
% seal design for the %cademy y *envenuto "ellini displays the letters of the roman alphaet in
order, almost as set of o#ective, academic tools. *elow this, is an alphaet of the visual arts made
from sketches of artistic tools laid out in shapes that visually mimic or represent !oman letters. Is this
a Auest to place making and artistic endeavour at the same level as writing and academic learning/
:anguage as o#ect. :etters as things. -peaking as sculpture. ,esitation as space.
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%nni %lers says that materials have inherent laws =rules not set y man> and they introduce
oundaries for a task of free imagination. Within set limits, the imagination can find something to hold
on to. These oundaries may e conceived as the skeleton of a structure.
*ack to the studio 0 what have I done this week/
2 weird days - inspired y %lers I started to think aout weaving as a way to connect surface and
structure 0 as a parallel to a particular kind of image making. % process of organisation in which an
image or surface comes into eing 0 rather than #ust appearing all at the same time, it materiali9es in
parts from many passes of the hand.
$aterials 4 paper spread out on the floor
% series of paints and media
-mearing this on that on this in a mindless naive unthinking un-thunk way.
Then got tired and disillusioned and went home.
1"
When teaching aout the properties of colour +osef %lers states that6
;irst, it is hard, if not impossile, to rememer distinct colours. This underscores the important fact
that the visual memory is very poor in comparison with our auditory memory. Often the latter is ale
to repeat a melody heard only once or twice.
-econd, the nomenclature of colour is most inadeAuate. Though there are innumerale colours
shades and tones, ut in daily vocaulary, there are only aout (3 colour names.
We are ale to hear a single tone. *ut we almost never see a single colour unconnected and
unrelated to other colours.
This instaility of value is extremely characteristic of colour.
1nlike +ohannes Itten, and others efore him, %lers did not conceive of colour as a wheel, or any
other ultimate and complete system. "olour is thought of as a shifting value dependant on context. It
is fluid and relational, it must e negotiated.
1#
The grid is a construct 0 an enlightenment structure, a series of eAual oxes to compartmentalise,
organise and keep divergent samples, to gather empirical evidence, from the wunderkammer to the
museum. %s a modernist construct in art and architecture the grid proposes o#ective order 0 the
promise of a neutral context disconnected to the real and its representation. The grid is not figurative,
it does not communicate depth or distance, narrative or history.
In the preliminary course taught y %lers, samples of materials would e arranged on grids in order
to compare their formal Aualities. Within a matrix, materials are divorced from their sources or uses in
the world eyond.
The grid is a hori9ontal plane 0 operating in space rather than time. It is a desk or a playing field.
O#ects or information are spread out and sit, waiting, to e selected or moved. The collection is
present in its entirety. It is modular and can e rearranged. It is a map or guide allowing information to
e translated and transformed onto other matrixes. It is %-historical and %-political, until you step
outside of it, and treat it as an o#ect in its own right.
1$
%nni %lers studied within the Weaving workshop, like many women at the *auhaus. Writing in &''D,
"arl Eoldstein identified some important issues concerning gender and the division of activities at this
institution.
Eropius often directed women towards the Weaving workshop 0 with textiles not only seen as the
traditional craft of women, ut also implicitly regarded as inferior to the fine arts or design. This
division etween the hand and the mind echoed !enaissance values, contradicting the *auhuas7
claims to move eyond such traditional divisions of workshop and studio 4 skill and concept 4 craft and
art.
The :aour intensive nature of weaving ties it to the everyday world of manual laour, reAuiring many
hours of repetitive action efore an o#ect surfaces. This contrasts the instantaneous #uxtapositions
and discoveries found in painting, collage and sculpture.
.oes gender matter today in terms of art o#ects and work/ %nd, in historical terms what does it
mean to e a partner, a complement or support6 To stand eside the work of another, whilst eing
asored into it7s sphere/
1%
;orms, colours and gestures repeat and re-emerge within the limitations of real or conceptual
constraints. The images that remain exist as plans, o#ects, records and re-enactments. % hand
appears6 that of the artist and the archivist.
-trategies of displacement, operating in the then, now, and could-e future. -urface, image, o#ect
and information #ostle for visiility and value.
,ow to span a complex set of associations around educational structures, material understanding
and documentation/
-ummoning modernist and other pedagogical models.
<xploring 8the exercise7 8curriculum7 and 8series7 as generative propositions.
Thinking aout 8play sense7 and the loaded environment of the artist7s studio.
2&
When thinking aout knowledge, %lers7 text Search Verses Research privileges presence,
experience and material understanding over the written or spoken word. I try to think aout these
approaches in today7s context of educational homogeni9ation and accountaility, of constant
communication and immaterial laour. I look at the work and teaching of %lers as a reference point;
re-evaluating connections etween 8modern7 ideas and the contemporary whilst examining the
retrospective gesture of research itself.
To '(ote
To re#ect mechanical or haitual application is to promote inductive studies recognising practice
efore theory, trial and error efore insight. In short, we elieve in learning y experience, which
naturally lasts longer than anything learned y reading or hearing only.