Bring 3 images (on your blog) that are relevant to your emerging project proposal as well as a rough draft of your proposal progress.
- Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay/Spain, 1874 – 1949)
a range of objects and drawings by JTG
2) Constant Nieuwenhuys
3) Ludic design / quality and craft.
Practice Project Aims
Please elaborate on the above describing the area of interest you will be exploring, stating what the project sets out to achieve, and listing your aims
During my final project, I plan to discover the potential ways in which play, and a sense of place, can connect and then how these ideas can be channeled into a physical object. This has been influenced by:
1) my research into Situationist practice, which are inspired by the belief that play has power to dismantle
2) case studies in which psycho-geographic methods have been utilised to enhance a young person’s perception of their sense of place.
I hope to navigate my practice back to a zone of making physical, tactile items, and considering playful thinking. I would like to create an item/s which encourages the audience (currently I am thinking about a younger person audience) to reflect upon, their own sense of place – either with where they are currently situated or to connect to their concept of home. The idea is to find ways to help people connect to play, and I hope to achieve this through ludic processes. This may be through a facilitation – led event, or a more static creation which would be intended for independent use. This larger project will probably also be the focus of my contribution to the ending exhibition, and I hope to make use of workshops to investigation a range of appropriate materials. Additionally, I would like to continue creating short zines to strengthen my writing and visual storytelling, as well as allowing myself a place where continued print and book experimentation on smaller projects which is continual and open to fresh ideas. I have been editing older projects from this master’s as well as creating new mini stories off the back of the Mai 150, as I began to see ways to talk about mytho-geography in an autobiographical context. I hope to continue to be informed by place-based methods and find ways to translate these into written and drawn forms, but this is a much longer project which I hope to progress into the future, and I do not feel it has “final” legs at this point.
Rationale
Please describe your broader reasons for choosing to undertake this inquiry, indicating its context as authorial illustration
I decided to further my illustrative education because I felt I was struggling with conviction and consistency. By leaning into playfulness, which I began to touch upon during my Mai 140 project Lantern Man, I felt more at ease making. Thinking in 3D, in a product–led way, provided me with a comfortable duality between physical making and creative thinking.
My Mai 150 investigation focused on the historical timelines and cultural contexts of what I self-described as “situationally-inspired practice”, (ie: flâneurism, psycho-geography and mytho-geography.) I am particularly interested in how these experimental techniques can provide one with a sense of place. During my presentation’s research, it became apparent that a sense of place can be emboldened through the person’s connection to the landscape: their autonomy is retained with the avoidance of overly-structured guidance. Because of this research, I felt that place-based creative practice has a role in my future as an authorial illustrator, but with the realisation that I feel the need to create larger, more tactile objects – particularly intended for play, or learning.
I have begun to process what it is that repeatedly draws me to concepts such as a ‘sense of place’ and ‘mytho/psycho-geography’ throughout this time on the master’s course. I have come to two main reasons:
*Their combinations provide a space in which to navigate a reflection upon identity and/or culture (either our own or another), in a way that I feel has a tangible, achievable outcome.
*The potential to articulate playfulness and imagination within more grounded or serious concepts (displacement, trauma, repair.)
300 word synopsis for Extended Critical Essay
Indicate the focus of your essay investigation and how it relates to the broader practice investigation. Please include outline indicative bibliography and sources.
My Extended Critical Publication will be closely related to my Practice Project. It will investigate the ways that play can inspire a sense of place for the audience. Currently, I am thinking of the macro and the micro: with the practices of Constant Nieuwenhuys (Netherlands, 1920 – 2005) and Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay/Spain, 1874 – 1949) respectively being my formative examples.
Both are creatives who sought play within their practice. Both are using play to answer questions about the place people sit within their culture. For Constant, play theory was manifested into the needs of his speculative audience, and for Torres-García, it seemed to be more of a self-reflective discovery. Constant’s interaction with travelling communities gave him a unique cultural perspective into which laid the ground for his concept of an idyllic, ludic-led lifestyle. In this way, he is an architect for potential alternative futures.
Torres-García, on the other hand, is an artist heavily influenced by the pasts of his dual-heritage: a reverence to pre-Columbian South America and his contemporary view of Latin American culture. Through both his attempted production of wooden “Juguetes Transformables” (transformable toys) and sculpture pieces, a sense of place and play emanates. The architecture of early 20th century Montevideo is recognisable in Torres-García’s form and colour palette.
Constant’s association with the Situationist International and their seriousness with regards to play’s power to dismantle, is a descendant of the Surrealist movement. Torres-García, on the other hand, has no known affiliation to this line of theory and actively disregarded the process of Surrealism as lacking introspection.
Regarding the differing ways of perceiving a sense of place, I also would like to research into ludic activities from indigenous cultures. Perhaps there is a difference in games from groups of people, which refer to their different understanding of a sense of place, when compared to the mainly Westernised exposure on the above creatives. I intend my research to be mainly informed by Homo Ludens (Johan Huizinga) which is a known influential text about play for the Situationist International. From my current understanding of the text, it is an overarching theory of play within culture, rather than its pedagogic practice. I think it may be useful to also counteract Huizinga with more practically-led play pedagogy such as Montessori, Steiner or Froebel, to see if there is a notion of promoting a sense of place within these structures.