Meeting Water

I start by making

I make in my conservatory. The rain has been thrashing down for three weeks, I have had the same washing on the line for two, I look at it getting dragged further towards the ground everyday. The sound is relentless. When I go outside I notice that its not as bad as it sounds - its not that heavy or brittle. It seems to me that the rain just wants to soak things, the ground my clothes.

So it wants to soak, and drive itself down, I want to make, so my first thought is perhaps I am not making in collaboration with water -  but just collaborating with water.

I could make a surface that lets water sound how it is, that doesn't misrepresent it. Would this be a good honest start? Collaboration needs honesty.

Perhaps I could also meet water half way with the soaking thing, perhaps make something that wants the soak. Would this be a way of merging our intentions? 

Perhaps I need to make things that enhance Waters ability to do its thing  - that's another sign of a good collaboration. I don't think I should just make for it  - that's not really the point, but instead something that furthers both of our intentions. 

This is a 'soaker', made out of lambswool and nettle fibres. The flowery looking bit soaks up all he rain, it travels down the stem and you squeeze the ball at the bottom to get water out. The fabric seems to keep the water really cool. Imagine it 2 m's high with the flowery bit poking out the top of a tent roof and the squeeze ball sitting on the floor. 

This is also a 'soaker'. I need to draw a picture to fully explain. 

Same material as above but the top of it laid out almost horizontally, it catches the rain,

which flows down to the bottom, which you can squeeze as above.

Imagine it 2m's high, like an upside down curtain. 

                                      

These are the beginnings of a roof that diffracts the sound of rain. This is made of an old waterproof mattress protector. I intend that this will somehow distribute water more 'naturally' as it falls from a roof. Imagine it as a 5m square canopy.

Collaborating with Water

So I am trying to make in collaboration with Water. By this I do not intend to anthropomorphise it. I have done lots of human to human collaborating, what I am interested in is not a an equality of sameness, but an equality of difference. I want to bring the openness, the possibility of the unexpected, the 'getting to know you through what you do' of collaboration, the intrigue of another's way, and see what it means to collaborate with something, possibly alive, but not human. I want to level out the playing field between the human and the non-human.

Out of 3 years of studying psychology at degree level, what I remember most of all was a lecture towards the end about the rocky philosophical foundations of science - the impossibility of objectivity. Twenty years years later, all the feminist theory around material agency, embodied knowledge, post humanist intra-activity etc. (Haraway/Barad) describes an alternative to objectivity that is so compelling to me. It articulates a way of knowing that I thought could only be felt - a possibility of communicating something about belief, about our way of being in the world, about what we are doing to the world, that is not ideological or conceptual, but bright, knowing and possible. It grounds  the physical and ideas together. The premise that every substance has agency and is a congealing of the agency of other substances, processes and ideas is so exciting. Most importantly it nudges humanity off the centre - stage.

Saying this it is easy to be captivated by a theory - even if its purpose is partly to question the theoretical. What you do matters infinitely more than what you say. So my 'collaboartion' is an attempt to test the theory out in practise. I need to make, I have found a niche for myself in the desire to make tent-ish temporary architecture rooted in a desire to have a non-vicarious relationship with the world. As the vicar mediates ones knowledge of God, from the moment we enter primary school, science mediates our knowledge of the world. I want to undo this - not as way to return to innocence, but as a way to intelligently proceed. 

For this endeavour the possibility of objectivity is mooted. But the desire to know is everything, even though 'know' is not the right word.


The Trope of Collaboration

I am starting to think already that it could be dangerous to get hung up on the word 'collaboration'. Is this too contrived ? I think it's a good starting block. I have to be careful not to do really blatantly obvious things under the trope of collaboration - like those people from 'Perfect Curve' (on the Twenty Twelve TV show) who think they've invented the pun. I need to make things not already made ( I have to admit I made many versions of the funnel in the warm up to this exercise) I have to make things, and not know if they will work, not know if my collaborator will run with them. I want to make things that are more because we have done it together.

I feel awkward also that I am getting water involved in something I want to do - would it be better to think that I am involving myself in what it has done forever? Suddenly I am aware of how massive water is, and I am not concerned about my default instinct to control it , but instead about the impossibility of being an equal with something so immense.  Does that make me subservient? I may be the minion, but if this is a collaboration I also need to be sure of  my own equality. I should think of myself as a representative of humanity.

Already looking back over this blog, it seems to me it is easy to see the balance of power any way you want to. Perhaps it depends on scale : humanity and water both work on the meta and the micro, whose in charge might depend on the location on this scale. Its good when balance has the potential to swing either way in a collaboration.