Seeking ambiguous bodies...

Jenny Odell espouses “sensitivity, in contrast [to connectivity], involves a difficult, awkward, ambiguous encounter between two differently shaped bodies that are themselves ambiguous – and in this meeting, this sensing, requires and takes place in time.” Odell argues, in How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, that connectivity as a social experience is more transactionally common to what one might experience in a digital space; one-sided and deceptive as to who benefits the most.

Sensitivity, then, is intrinsically bound to a present, physical experience often inspiring change. Change happens through an exchange that is grounded and owned by the involved bodies. Time is experienced in these seemingly opposing worlds in complex, multi-faceted ways that sometimes distorts, even disrupts, the impact of an experience. To choose sensitivity over connectivity would be to root oneself in gravity, sit within that time, and to still the mind in order to glean all of what that encounter offers.

In the case of much of my work, one of those bodies is consistently mine in different places with an intention to slow my experience of time by isolating around one aspect of that other ambiguous body. In some cases, the body of sound... in others, the body of sustenance.