A dog in the classroom acts on instinct, emphasising the value of interactions and thought processes which are not linear. Not all teaching and impact can be measured in a structured way. Deleuze and Guattari’s Body Without Organs and Rhizome theories help to contextualise this way of learning and thinking. Language can be binary but Deleuze and Guattari can enable us to think/see in pictures and ‘images of thought’.
In Donna Carlye references an experiment with Dave the dog who put children at ease in the classroom as they patted, twirled and stroked his fur which a regularity which the author likened to playing an instrument. ‘Thus, the children state how Dave makes the classroom ‘feel like home’ and how such material, multisensory memories, evoke and play a part in changing and transforming the atmosphere and structured, authoritarian power of the classroom environment.’
Dave the classroom dog helped ‘making visible the invisible (the transmission of affect), non-conscious, unthought, sensory elements which are grounded in Deleuzian actions and concepts’. – Walking in rhythm with Deleuze and a dog inside the classroom: being and becoming well and happy together, Donna Carlyle
I am trying to rethink the atmosphere and power systems of the studio space. Deleuzes’ theory of the Body Without Organs supports the agency of objects which are not human, e.g animals, plants, jam jars.
Ethno Mimesis
‘Ethno-mimesis is described by O’Neill et al. (2002) as a ‘politics of feeling’ given that the ethno-mimetic research process involves sensuousness and emotion in tension with reason, rationality and objectivity.’– Walking, sensing, belonging: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis Phil Hubbard.
This paper reforms mimesis as a more sensuous understanding/knowing of experiences, memories and associations as a way to better embody narration, this is a transformative concept.
Ethno-Mimesis is particularly pertinent to sculpture students because the nature of the medium is to be actively engaged in the making of their work,,, they are already participating. In my own work I think about performers and audience as participants within a wider piece, the boundaries of object and subject are blurred.
Object Orientated Ontology
Within a sculptural discourse Object Orientated Ontology (OOO) is a theory used to question if things, animals, and other non-human entities experience their existence in a way that lies outside our own species-centric definition of consciousness? By exploring the reality, agency, and “private lives” of nonhuman (and nonliving) entities and rejecting anthropocentric ways of thinking about and acting in the world.
Harman writes, “The world is not the world as manifest to humans; to think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense, but obligatory.”
As sculptors are often interested in the meanings of particular objects. The viewer often reads artworks based on concepts and materials where as OOO cites the agency of the art object as the starting point to understanding it. In relation to Dog Tutorials OOO opens the agency of non human entities, by enabling canine teaching assistants to become part of the learning process belonging, compassion ris built on to better support students on a rhizomic level.
Harman, G. (2018)
Object-Orientated Ontology: A new theory of everything
Pelican Books