Moving Mountains: 447 x consciously uncoupled, 2018
Physical and mental challenges of (un)fixing led me to believe it was a failed sculpture that could not support itself. Imagining the structure as an item of clothing that was not being worn, but had been worn and slumped on the floor at the end of the day, the pending sense of failure became the underlying concept, where the work was to wear itself as it could.
In the text Certainty, Contingency, and Improvisation (2012), Gary Peters refers to Heidegger’s use of the term ‘erring’ and defines the ‘working of erring’ as being ‘essential to human endeavour’, which enables us to try things out. Referring to the act of improvisation as the gaining of ‘consistency and intensity’, whereby what we try becomes ‘less and less hit and miss’, Peters defines improvisation as not being driven by certainty but that which ‘errs’ on the side of caution, through ‘a degree of certitude’ and a ‘decisive between-ness’. By factoring-in contingencies during the process of doing, creating situations where we can both ‘fix’ and ‘unfix’, he declares that it is our ability to ‘unfix’ that provides the necessary liberation for improvisation to take place.[1]
Characterising the act of improvisation as taking a necessary ‘…shift from uncertainty to certitude’, where the improviser ‘perform[s]’ through ‘endless rehearsal[s]’, Peters refers back to Heidegger and the term ‘inceptual thinking’ to define ‘thinking and re-thinking the beginning’, where ‘everything starts again, and again’, as staying with feelings, to ‘feel secure’ within ‘inceptual moment[s]’. Peters relates to improvisation as building an ‘intensity’ and ‘dramatiz[ing]…initiatory moment[s]’, where uncertainties, emotional reactions and the nature of judgement can be defused through acts of conviction, by taking a broader perspective, in which, to think outside of uncertain situations that are sensed, with the focus upon the discipline, to remain committed to working through the task in hand.[2]
[1] Gary Peters. ‘Certainty, Contingency, and Improvisation’. Online Source: http://www.criticalimprov.com/article/view/2141/2918. 2012. Source cited: 20th Oct 2016.
[2] Ibid.