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November 14, 2005
Maarit Mäkelä in Visual data research methods seminar Pori 11.11.
Sorry to be a bit late - connections were scarce in Pori. I will be completing my report along the week.
DA, ceramics artist Maarit Mäkelä's lecture on the artistic research process
Maarit's artistic research method consists of, first, the artistic work she does, then turning her curious gaze on it and reading theory and texts around it. For Maarit, Michael Polanyi's notion of tacit knowledge is important. The heart of the process for her is in the making, the body and brain working together. Theoretical knowing is something different. This is how she worked already in her MA work on representations of femininity, which is a topic she continues to work on today.
Here is Maarit's idea of a practice-based research process. In brackets, my notes.
1 Question (in the form of)
2 Intuition
3 Working process (Maarit's point of interest)
4 Artefact (driving force)
5 Interpretation or analysis (for example, the reason for this seminar)
6 Words (tool for interpretation)
7 Practice + theory (how to combine them? Combining artefacts with words, for example.)
Current work
At the moment, Maarit is working on turning two-dimensional photos of women, imprinted on her ceramics, into three-dimensional. On femininity, she asked in her dissertation, what is stereotypical femininity? Now, she asks: What is my relationship to it? She starts from elements that constitute stereotypical femininity such as colours (reds, pinks) and decorative forms, which she studies both in professional ways as well as on the everyday level of trying to wear the colours and shapes.
The feminine is closely linked to ceramics: its origin is in women making food, and its shapes are considered as feminine. Recently, Maarit has studied and made decorative shapes, and she referred to in comparison to the tradition of 'pure' shapes in Finnish design, which in ceramics, too, has traditionally rtejected decorative, ornament shapes.
As a part of her study of stereotypical femininity, Maarit showed us some recent material: a photo documentation of a performance style photo therapy session where she poses as Marilyn Monroe. To these photos, she associated the theoretical discussion of scopophilia (Charcot's hysterics and Freud, Lacan's mirror phase, Mulvey.)
Observations and comments from the audience:
Our visual culture is very quick, but ceramics is slow both as a process of making and to change as a visual form. Therefore, e.g. Hannah Wilke's nude photos, when imprinted on Maarit's ceramic work, get associated to ancient imagery, get a different time frame, and consequently, we see different things in them. Like that the representation of femininity has changed very little over time.
Posted by hrantavu at November 14, 2005 04:57 PM