CRITICAL REFLECTION
My Containers Can Perform
By getting deeply involved with this project I realized that these pieces are much more capable of what I thought in the beginning. At the start, my love containers were only containers for my own emotions and were made based on my own first-hand experiences. But the further I went through this project, the more I noticed that I don't need to only depict my own experiences. They can be made based on any human experience.
At one point one of the containers I made for my love for my dad broke while it was drying. I decided to glaze it anyway an experiment to see how it would look like if I paint it and glaze it. This decision became a focal point in my project because it was the beginning of focusing on the motion of the liquid that could be poured into the containers.
I began working on pieces that focused on human relationships in general and many of them would resemble various experiences such as love, loss, connection, betrayal, intimacy and many more. Not all of them necessarily are based on my lived experiences. So, when I glazed the broken container with the word بابا (dad) being carved on it, it was not based on my relationship with my dad, but there are some people who have this kind of relationship with their fathers. They might feel like the container they use for keeping their love for a parent is broken.
The importance of process became more visible to me after experimenting with pouring honey into the containers I had made. It could be quite helpful with sharing the narrative and involving the viewer by adding a new level to the pieces. In the beginning of this project, the vessels I had made were more passive, but the ones that I'm currently working on are definitely more active. What they are containing becomes more important and they can easily be a part of a performance. How honey moves through them and the amount of time it would take for it to get from one spot to another would play a significant role in the way it would be delivered by the viewer. For example, for the piece named “Big spoon and small spoon” It would take about 10 minutes for honey to move to the other part, but in the piece “Generations passing stories” it takes about an hour for honey to get from the first pool to the last part and spill on the surface.
Sketch for an idea for exhibiting the piece Generations Passing Stories
Currently, I have decided to exhibit my objects with honey in them but there are still many questions that I don’t have answers for them. Do I want it to be in a form of a performance at the exhibition? do I want to pour honey into them in front of the viewers? How will time affect the pieces? Do I want them to look different everyday or should I refill the honey every day? So, I'm realizing how important is time in these containers now, and how important is the process of the liquid moving through them? Do I prefer to show this process in a video or real life? How long can the video be? Will viewers wait enough to see watch this slow process?
I went to an exhibition named Weird Sensation Feels Good: The World of ASMR at The Design Museum. ASMR is a term that describes a physical sensation: euphoria or deep calm, sometimes a tingling in the body. In recent years, an online audience of millions has emerged, dedicated to watching the work of designers and content creators who aim to trigger this feeling in their viewers. They do so by whispering or eating. Touching or tapping, and more besides.
Like meditation or yoga, ASMR happens to both your body and to your mind. It is not about speed, but about focus and slowness. ASMRtists do not seek to entertain but to relax; for ‘experiencers’, they offer a degree of insulation from a noisy, wandering world. … works of ASMR make room for close-looking, close-listening, and close-feeling.
Everyone has the capacity to perceive ASMR, yet the experience is highly individual. The response that you have may be very different from the person sitting beside you. If you find a work of ASMR that triggers you, you might feel a tingling sensation appear at the top of your scalp and travel down your neck, spine, and arms. You might feel relaxation or euphoria very intensely or very softly. At the same time, you might feel nothing at all. (The Design Museum, 2022)
“There is a sort of relationship, a mutual trust between the creator and the viewer. The ASMRtist holds your emotional state in their hands, and by clicking on a video, you give them your trust – trust that they’re not going to suddenly scream after 30 minutes of whispering, that they’re only going to say nice things, even after you’ve fallen asleep.”
This form of digital intimacy contributes to a new emotional economy of care. It exists almost exclusively online, offering intimacy in return for trust, empathy in return for vulnerability, and comfort in return for dedication. The notion of proximity between strangers – the ASMRtist and the ASMR experiencer – exists outside of many of the social and material demands of the ‘real world’. (The Design Museum, 2022)
This exhibition had an area filled with soft pillows so the viewers can chill and watch and listen to ASMR videos on screens and through headphones. The videos had various genres. From Bob Ross painting and talking, to dog grooming and an IKEA ad. What I experienced in this exhibition made me realize that I have been trying to impress my viewers in a very similar way as ASMR with the videos I had been recording of the process of pouring honey in the containers. Instead of making my videos shorter or worrying about the time, I could curate a space for them to chill and watch this slow and long process. The main point is making a video that conveys the effect of ASMR needs great quality visually and sound-wise.
I think of care as a form of close attention, an intense form of connection, and as such inherently relational, it exists between bodied and subjects, human or other-than human. (Jagoe, 2020)
After all, earth and soil are things that we can all use for making stuff. Honey is something that many of us might have in our house as something that we eat. And love as something that most of us have experienced through our lives in different forms. So, the whole idea is talking about something that we all deal with, with materials that we all know. So, I’m hoping that when viewers see my pieces, they start asking questions about their own experiences and think about how they can use these metaphors for their own lives, their own relationships and I’m hopeful that it will help them to get a better sense out of it, to give them a new language for processing these emotions, just like how it has helped me.
Perhaps to belong means to belong to grief
And to be present in the now is to be present in grief
With grief
Witnessing death
Time death
Land decay
Erosion
To shape shift is to move through grief
To lose and to shed
In a wordless state (Jagoe, 2020)
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References:
Jagoe, R. (2020). On care. Ma Bibliothèque.
Weird Sensation Feels Good, The World of ASMR. The Design Museum.