Enabling play with paper

Activities took place in our studios, PS2 had been re-booked for L5 assessment - Alice has new information on room/date/time for next week which she will upload shortly. - Becky

How to enable play

As the Artist, Dale instructed us with five activities:

• "What can we achieve with an overly long sheet of paper?"
• Communicate through the material (no verbal conversation)
• Repeat the activity using as many tools as desired - 15 minutes
• Accumulate used material into a ball
• Create a game

We each had been given an excessive amount of material, as the paper hadn't been cut, the decision to equally share was for us to control. To begin, I used myself as a tool, wrapping my body in the proportion of the given material until I reached Lucy. It felt impossible to connect and define meaning to what we had been set out to achieve. As we focused less on what we already understood of paper, our task took on board exciting possibilities.The notion of creating sound became more important than the material.

(photograph/video of Alice, Lucy, Me, Dale lifting paper)

Communicating through an excessive amount of material was overwhelming. The uncertainty of the task, at first, distracted me from my full engagement as I became too focused on what Alice and Lucy were discovering. With this activity communication proved difficult, it was only once we had established a conversation between ourselves and a foreign material that we were able, as a group, to enable play. Through doing so, the only conversation we had was through the material and understanding of each others facial expressions.

For 15 minutes myself, Alice, Lucy and Angela were instructed to make sense of the material. The opportunity of tools had become available to us. Through reflection, the necessity use of tools was something we didn't take advantage of. Not for the reason we didn't want to but because we didn't need to.The Occupying of paper had become so overpowering that finding new methods of attaching/assembling would have been extremely overlooked. For this reason we made use of the space by searching for a structure in a way that challenged the papers ability. 

The accumulation of the paper ball tested our communication skills as a group. At first we struggled to understand how to address the problem. The introducing of string was dominant towards our play, once we had established a conversation between the string and paper, as a group we worked on the creation until we felt it was "complete." Again, the control was left to us to understand and work together on. 

Left with an interesting object, in desperation to make it alive again we used the ball to enable play. Taking it in turns to throw to each other, the definition of what it once was had been transformed into something, fun and exciting.

This enabling of play defined our chosen theme, the expression of fragility was sensed through the act of destroying and re-assembling.

Yesterdays progress was vital to the development of our curation. We can now start to understand our theme, discuss possible ideas and plan the structure of our show.

Ideas for curation

- Use of film, recording process, enabling play. 

- Created piece situated central of exhibition

What does everyone else think?

Artist to look at: 

-Amikam Toren

Involved in activites - Becky, Alice, Lucy, Angela

Documentation - Jurgis

- Becky