Workshop

Remaking and Reshaping //// Knowing and unknowing

In this exercise we will work with play-doh - shaping and reshaping it to create new forms which are unrecognisable from the original state. In this process as you reshape your material think about the process that is taking place.

Now start to play around with your play-doh.

STAGE ONE.

Squeeze it,
roll it in a ball,
look at it from a distance,

squidge it between your
thumb and finger,

look at its colours and shades.

Smell it.

Do whatever you like with it, but most importantly - Familiarise yourself with this material.

Keep making shaping until you feel familiar with its potential and capacity.

Now make something final and whole.

Step back,
Look at it,
remember it,
and take a picture.

STAGE TWO.

Now defamiliarise yourself with the material,

WHATEVER YOU DID BEFORE DON’T DO NOW

Go against its texture, navigate and manipulate its new potential.

With each new mold, consider this play-do differently,

Can it be molded differently?

Now consider your own body, in this process:

Consider the muscles you are using.

how do they move as the doh to undo the intial mold?

Consider the relationship between your body and play-doh.

How does your body take on these shapes, these motions, textures and feelings.

pick up on how your sculptures were made, unpick the textures

Consider how you feel -
You may feel nothing,
But you may recognise a shift.

Consider the rhythms - linking shape with texture and time.

STAGE 3.

Consider the process between stage one and stage two.

Think about the pressure you applied, the movements of your hands, shoulders, feet, the thoughts in your mind, the smells,
the connects and disconnects and start to embody them.

Refer back to your sculpted play doh. Ask yourself these questions -

What process did the material go through?
How can you relate to that process?

What happened between making and remaking//shaping and reshaping//familiarising and defamiliarizing//knowing and not knowing?

Now reflect on this and create a physical journey of your own.

This journey should be under 1min.

‘Fresh questions can open consciousness by suggesting unexpected fragilities or openings that might be politically near to hand. The point of action is to stretch the familiar in delightful and disturbing ways and thereby unsettle subjectivity if only for a moment’

A moment of true decolonization Ruth Wilson Gilmore - “The Beginning of a Perfect Decolonial Moment”