I Don't Feel Like It: The Indifference of Objects

Camberwell Space until 25th January 2013

This exhibition and symposium has helped me to look at the way I engage with objects. I learnt that mirror neurons inside the brain are activated by motor activity - those actions done by me and when I watch someone else doing an action - say that of picking up an object. I can look at an art object and imagine what actions were necessary to create it. This is what Langfield called motor imagining.

There was an old tradition within German Romanticism in the C19th where people empathized with objects like trees. Can we project life into an object by our imagination? How does empathic contact with a sculpture affect aesetic appreciation? What does my emotional response tell me about the work? How much do I try to engage with a work of art or a performance by being thoughtful and reflective? And I am now thinking of how attached we can get to objects that we really do not want to let them go.

Most of all at the symposium I enjoyed Sharon Morris' performance of the poem 'Gospel Oak' where she read aloud and showed images. I loved her expression of the 'recess of winter'. It echoes the half dead state I feel myself to be in as I drag myself through these dark days.
I want to see more of her work at Camden Arts Centre.