The Prosthetic Pedagogy of Art: Embodied Research and Practice

seven Art‑In‑The‑Flesh

SEVEN ART-IN-THE-FLESH The Materiality of Sensation and Embodiment The body is our general medium for having a world. —Maurice Merleau‑Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception Things, perception, and thought are in a reciprocal movement into and out of each other and themselves. —Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual Between the cultural pattern, the body, and the brain, a positive feed‑ back system was created in which each shaped the progress of the other. —Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures There are times in our lives when extraordinary experiences stir our sensate bodies to such an extent that we are jarred out of complacency. To make sense of these strange embodied stirrings, to render them familiar, requires our willingness to extend and expand the parameters of what we already know and understand. On one such an occasion, I witnessed an unusual news report on YouTube that actually affected my breathing and caused some anxiety and slight discomfort throughout my body. The report, which originated in the April 15, 2009, issue of the Rus‑ sian newspaper Komsomolskaya Gazeta was about a man, Artyoum Sidorki, who was rushed to a hospital emergency room after complaining of extreme pain in his chest, difficulty breathing, and coughing up blood. After ordering X‑rays of Sidorki’s lungs and finding what appeared to be a tumor, doctors, concerned that it was cancerous, immediately scheduled him for surgery. However, before removing a large portion of his lungs, a biopsy was con‑ 117 118 THE PROSTHETIC PEDAGOGY OF ART ducted to investigate the area where the tumor was located. It was then that doctors discovered what was actually causing his infirmity: a 5 cm tree, a fir tree had germinated and was growing in Sidorki’s lung, which doctors later deduced was the result of him having unknowingly inhaled a seed, the seed of a fir tree, during the natural course of breathing. After having seen the images and experienced the news of Sidorki’s tree‑implanted lung in my own body, I was reminded of an event that took place in a high school art class that I had taught several years earlier. As I recalled, it was around 2 p.m. when Sara passed the plate of oatmeal cookies for her classmates and me to enjoy. Their freshly baked aroma having whet‑ ted our appetites for a midafternoon snack, each of us grabbed one eagerly and began taking small bites, politely munching, to savor sweet flavor as I asked Sara the whereabouts of her art project. We were in the middle of a critique session where instead of presenting her research and creative work for discussion, she casually offered cookies (Figure 7.1). As Sara calmly listened, and was considering my question about her assignment, the rest of us nibbled, chewed and, while we waited for her response, our salivary glands released their watery contents wetting, mixing, and lubricating morsels Figure 7.1. Plate of cookies, 2011 (Courtesy Charles Garoian). 119 ART-IN-THE-FLESH of cookie in our mouths, to ease swallowing, and for peristalsis to work the resulting kneaded mass effortlessly down our esophagus into our stomach cavities. We were in the process of studying the representation of metamorpho‑ sis and transformation in art for which I had provided each student with a clean, freshly milled 2" x 4" x 12" length of white pine lumber (Figure 7.2). The assignment was to use up the piece of wood, to alter its rectangular composition and transform its physical appearance. I asked that nothing of the white pine was to be wasted; that its material was to be consumed in its entirety for the solution to the research problem that I had posed. What preceded the snack that Sara offered on the day of the cri‑ tique were other students’ compelling solutions to the problem. One student brought a white pine tree stump to class into which he had carved an exact 2" x 4" x 12" hole and buried the 2" x 4" x 12" lumber that I had given him, hence representing the paradox of a successful albeit failed attempt at returning the length of wood to its “natural” context. Another student used a chop saw to cut the lumber into small geometric shapes, which she Figure 7.2. 2" x 4" x 12" pine lumber, 2011 (Courtesy Charles Garoian). 120 THE PROSTHETIC PEDAGOGY OF ART had glued together...