A way of visiting w/ individuals &/or institutions as a means of encouraging all players to adopt roles, resources and reactions
that each is unaccustomed to.
VISITATIONS are enacted on-site,
whereby that site is designated as indistinctly transitional; that it is provisionally in & at play; mutably motive. VISITATIONS are a kind of intervention that draws upon established
practices (ie. writing, reading, building, navigating, conversing, conserving, dispersing) & practical forms for interaction (ie. a seminar, a studio visit, printed
material, an art exhibition, a digital interface) are upended & re-rendered into a something-other less recognizable; could be more slippery, more bendable or portable. Likewise, VISITATIONS are a model for tracking
the transitions that come about when an organization is prompted to act more
like an individual might; freer to take risks, more lithely able to suddenly
pivot, unencumbered by institutional regulations and goals, inclined perhaps to
produce something that impractical, inefficient, illegible even.
Such encounters are actively induced, even as they happen slowly, & happen especially by means that appear unruly and/or undirected, tending more generally toward whatever will generate more means in a given moment. The means is movement // the means are movingness. VISITATION/S signify medialityin this regard: that which is present & attentive to the continuous, to the swerve. Likewise, these works manifest in the traces of interactions fostered, but also in the insistently investigative intention to that material’s own volition.
In VISITATIONS performed as private
rituals in a participant's or participant organization's own territory of familiarity, facilitators stage
elaborate interactions that freely combine programs for engagement–– methods sampled broadly from therapeutic to pedagogic to divinatory–– as a usurpation of product-driven capitalist strategies, sure, but also just to turn them all (any of them) on their ends to empty their contents, to see what phrasal amalgams are in there to see if we can scramble them to spell new things.
In the sounding out of this naming-into-being, let's also please insist to take care to notice the resources, roles & reactions in play at a given
moment. By staying attuned to what possibilities mix or switch w/ impossibilities, we are making way/s.
some RESOURCES:
studio materials, research materials, integrative
pedagogic methodologies, expertise (scholarly / artistic/skill-based),
inventive communications, special occasions (shared time), accessible sites
(shared space), organizing / activism, archiving, art / music / film / writing /
performance presentation, publishing, equipment, architectural / graphic / web /
product design, construction skills, food (shared meals).
some ROLES:
teacher / mentor / expert, student, curator, writer,
trickster, documentarian, librarian / archivist, mediator, artist, designer,
architect, community organizer, counselor, proprietor / foreman, worker,
institution, engineer.
some REACTIONS:
concentration, skepticism, surprise/bewilderment,
emboldened courage, laughter / amusement, bursts of extreme physical energy,
diligence, reasoning (inductive, deductive, abductive), deferral, eagerness / willingness,
generosity, paraperceptive sensing.
Participants pictured, from top to bottom: Marley Freeman, Lukas Geronimas, Organism for Poetic Research, Rebecca Davis & Erin Cella, Blonde Art Books.
Visitations pictured above were conducted by B. Ides, M. Merck, A. Beccone, M. Rafiei & R. Jackson, Sept - Oct, 2013, performed in preparation for & anticipation of Initial Contractions, co-organized w/ Knockdown Center & Reanimation Library, Nov 23, 2013.