APD Week 1: Cutting up items as ASMR

Because of of technical issues, I am unable to embed the video. The Performance is available at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCEN-RY__2A

WEEK 1 

Theme: Play and the Self

Context:

I struggled to find inspiration for Play and the Self this week, so I followed my loose and aggressive artistic instincts and then did the majority of my research about that experience retrospectively, reflecting on where those instincts led me.

I frequently have desires to perfectly cut/break objects apart in specific ways, especially if they're something I find myself looking at for long stretches of time. I think this is something many of us have a tendency towards. I'm not the only child who owned a cheap rubber bouncing ball with a visible seam and wanted the satisfaction of biting it perfectly in half along the line, or tore a strand of grass or Aloe plant perfectly in half along its fibers, then tore another and another when I didn't get it right.  This week, for the first time, I decided to intentionally follow that destructive instinct and see where it took me.

The works and movements that I found best reflected my instincts in this experiment were: 

-Raoul Hausmann's Dadaist sculpture and collage. Specifically his photocollage L'Enigme, which spoke to me about the joy of specific intentional disassembling. I also feel a connection to Dadaist principles such as spontaneity, repurposing ready made items and the creation of a new item from parts, or even as parts. I specify though that this work, the performance of making (by cutting), and not the resulting remains was my focus and what I consider to be the actual work. 

I also felt a connection to Pilvi Porkola's New Materialist performance art and her writing in the "agency of stuff". This work speaks to the relationship between myself and these items. It is ragingly and brashly "anthrocentric" under the New Materialist lense and I think that speaks volumes about me as an artist and a person.

As I thought the work would be a relaxing and satisfying experience, I turned it into a sort of ASMR video, and thus was also inspired by ASMRtists I frequent on youtube such as Dr. T ASMR, Gibi ASMR and FrivilousFox ASMR. 

Method:

Purchased a bunch of cheap items from a dollar store and brought them home. Set them on my bedside table and stared at them for 2 nights while trying to sleep, allowing my brain to passively fantasize about how I would take them apart. I set up a ring light and camera stand, layed out my items on the carpet and created an ASMR style video where I showed each item off, gave a sense of each item's makeup and texture, and then sliced each item apart via the method I had fantasised I would. I then took notes on the experience and read up on appropriate context. 

Response: 

I struggled at first to define myself and what play means to me, and this made the task of combining the two daunting. In the end I used the task instead, as a tool to teach myself what play is and, in part, who I am, hence why I followed my base instincts as my catalyst. Here is what I learned and myself and about play: 

 "People play to experience the pleasure that comes from imposing their own behavioral strategies on the world" (Hendricks 191, summarizing Piaget) was a definition of play that leapt out at me as similar to the type of play I enacted. I think using imagined behaviours on an object, especially behaviors I've already enacted in my head to be very satisfying. 

Escentially, I found myself inventing a problem from nothing: "If I had to take that object apart, how would I?", then releasing that tension mentally by solving that supposed problem. Another example of this mental reflex, was watching a youtube video with a woman with a heavy face of makeup and jewelry, sitting in the bath, and all I could focus on was how I would take off each piece of jewelry and eyelashes and wash my face so that my imaginary makeup didn't get smudged by the bath water. In instinctively imagining disassembling, I'm anticipating something, and preemptively acting out a scenario. Why, I'm not sure. It resembles Hendricks's description of play as an "exploration of powers and predicaments" (204), predicaments especially. Perhaps it's simply a safe way to stimulate my mind while bored. Perhaps it is unused artistic energy or scientific curiosity. 

Did acting out the fantasy help? Yes and no. It was extremely engaging to do while I was doing it, setting myself micro tasks and then completing them. But nothing comes apart the way it does in my mind, and once the act is done, there's simply mess everywhere. Next time I act on these fantasies, I think I'll use 3D software and see how that feels, though I think it will lack the tactical engagement of this experiment. 

I learned about play as wish fulfillment, I learned about play as acting on imagination and about play as mental occupation. I would even say this experience was meditative in nature. I wonder how I would have felt playing with a group of people or playing as a single performer in front of a crowd. I would say that the absurdity of this experiment felt safer and less confronting in the private space of my apartment.