Habitus.

I've been getting a lot of questions with regards to my final exhibition and what exactly it is I'm working on these days. I'm hoping this post will help explain my current practice and the direction it is headed in...

You may or may not know that the focus of my year has been studying the relationship between place and belonging. As I near the end, and work towards my final show, I came to the conclusion that my final piece should be authentic to my experience this year, and not detract from my final 30 days in this wonderful city. I wanted to spend my last month continuing to explore London and spending time with my friends here.

I have decided to focus on people similar to myself. I have termed them, 'The inbetweeners' as we are neither tourists, nor residents. Last week I hosted an Ice Cream Social with the hopes of creating an experience where knowledge is shared amongst this community of people.

While chowing down on ice cream we discussed some of the things we have learned since our arrival in London, and the things we wished we knew prior to coming. We talked about what we might put in a 'London Survival Kit' if we had to make one, and some of our favourite places to take visitors in the city.

The members then agreed to take me on tours of their Boroughs and neighbourhoods to show me how they have (or have not) achieved a sense of belonging in their particular parts of town.

 I am not sure what turn the project will take from there. I have toyed withe the idea of creating an 'Inbetweeners guide to London', but we shall see.

You can follow the journey of this project by searching #londonwheretheheartis on Instagram, as that is where I will tag the photos of our various excursions.

I visited Wimbledon last week. This week I will be exploring Brockley, New Cross, Greenwhich, Hammersmith, and Hoxton. If you'd like to come along on any of these adventures, or share your neighbourhood with me, please send me a note.

I'll leave you with an explanation of Habitus (a concept I've been reading about as of late), which as I know it is a sense of one's (and other's) place and role in the world and one's lived environment. It is a concept developed by the French philosopher, Pierre Bourdieu (amongst others) and seems to link closely to my area of research.

Wikipedia describes Habitus as:

Lifestyles / values / dispositions of particular social groups acquired through the experiences of everyday life. The structure of the mind is characterised by a set of acquired schemata, sensibilities, dispositions and taste.

And Pierre Bourdieu explains it as:

Habitus is thus the selective perception of a situation which generates a response according to the practical potential of the actor(s) desire(s)

The Hat Show.

Some of you may know, we are off for an adventure in Italy this week, so you can expect tales from our travels upon our return.

I wanted to share a small show I stumbled upon in Kensington last week.

These pieces (Hats) resulted from a collaboration with a Millner, an Art Therapist and some at risk youth from across London.

The children were asked to create a hat depicting a certain feeling, and these are their creations...

I found this a very interesting show, and was left questioning the extent to which the adults involved took part. Each hat was so carefully planned, and it was clear that the elements of design incorporated by the students were chosen intentionally to evoke specific emotions. Impressive results.

The Contested Spaces Show.

Last Saturday we had our Exhibition for our module, 'Critical Pedagogy of Contested Spaces'.

As promised I will show some of the work.

My partner Rose and I were interested in how people navigate space, and protect their personal space in public places. We focused on the unspoken etiquette (Western) of personal space, subtly shedding light on this engrained knowledge using the format of a station poster. We brought the posters into the gallery, and added public seating for people to use. By recreating a public space in the gallery space, we hoped people would question their actions, while giving them the opportunity to physically navigate such a space. The video on the wall shows footage of our posters (being ignored) in Waterloo Station.

My apologies for the quality of the next two photos, but I wanted to show you all four posters.

   

Below are the works of some of our classmates. The pictures will only give you a small idea as to what the work is about. In order to truly understand the pieces, you really needed to see them in person, watch the films, and read the artist statements. As many of the works focus on the process over the product, what you can see in front of you is really not the most important aspect of the work undertaken by the artist.

And here are a few pieces from the Revisiting Practice Module (exhibiting at the same time)...