Name: Deborah Harty, Adriana Ionascu & Laura Wild,
University of Loughborough
Title of Paper: ‘Transformative Becoming: the embodiment of repetitive
                           actions’.
Stream: Repetition and Difference

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This collaborative paper aims to reflect on the psychological and physical effects of repetitive actions, whether referred to as ‘altered states of consciousness’, embodiment/disembodiment’ or ‘transformative becoming’. The paper will use examples from each of the author’s research to discuss and compare these effects.

Ionascu’s text analyses the significance of domestic rituals by looking at how functional objects are ‘consumed’ in everyday repetitive activities. Everyday useful objects are embedded in our daily rituals and embodied in our repetitive acts, giving pleasure to the mundane aspects of human existence. They become ways of extending the actual activities of our bodies into the performance of daily life: as Bourriaud[1] observed, gestures disappear into objects and objects disappear into gestures (embodiment/disembodiment). In this sense, De Certeau’s theory[2] on the art of ‘making do’ emphasises embodiments and practices of use on the part of the ‘consumers’. Domestic objects thus represent a material evidence for the manner in which we make use of things, bearing the significance of an enactment that cannot be ‘consumed’, probably becoming the ‘left-over’[3] of an activity that contributes to our experience and  to our system of meanings in everyday life.
In close comparison, in Wild’s research an allotment provides the site for an investigation between the repetitive process and human interaction, seen as resistance and liberation through everyday mundane action. Wild defines this state as transformative (through or dramatic change) subjective (belonging to the individual consciousness or perception) becoming (coming to be something or passing into a state). This process in viewed within a framework of Gilles Deleuze and Elizabeth Grosz alongside that of artists who engage in repetitive experiments. (Susan Hiller, Bruce Nauman, Fischli/Weiss, Allan Kaprow). By contrast, Harty’s research is an investigation, through drawing, into the effect of a repetitive process on the state of consciousness of the artist and its subsequent relationship with the experience of viewing. Discussing repetition, in relation to the production of drawn artworks, Deanna Petherbridge notes that the process of repetition, ‘delays decision making’ but that the hypnotic state created by this systematic approach to drawing is capable of producing, ‘creativity as a premium’[4]. This section of the paper aims to reflect on and discuss the fluctuating state of consciousness induced by the repetitive process and the relationship of that occurrence to the  experience of the viewer. As a point of departure consideration will be given to De Zegher’s description of the work of Agnes Martin, ‘….leading the viewer into contemplative spaces where the processes of making and viewing have become fused.’[5] The paper will explore how repetition causes alternate states of embodiment and disembodiment, what happens in this gap, and what is the potential for this to be communicated to a third party?

1 Bourriaud, N. 2002. Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Press du Reel

2 Certeau, de M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. London: University of California Press.

3 Theodor Adorno’s analysis of artefacts drew attention to the movements they demand of their users and that the subordination of things to pure functionality is withering their experience.

4 Petherbridge, D. 2006. Obsessive Drawing. in National Gallery. Wednesday Lecture Series. National Gallery 8th March 2006.

5 De Zegher, C. 2005. Abstract. in De Zegher, C. ed. The Stage of Drawing :Gesture and Act, Selected from the Tate Collection. London. New York. Tate Publishing & The Drawing Center, 67-173, 165-173, 231-237.