tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37547602901946817062024-02-20T05:03:11.377-08:00Invisible Atelierista“For quintessential generalists anywhere”Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-39256649449164817452022-12-11T07:13:00.006-08:002022-12-12T03:29:04.758-08:00Kreepingarten Audio Booklet<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Kreepingarten</span></h2><div style="text-align: left;">'Slime mould meets Kindergarten' is now available for your ears in audiobook format by actor and audiobook narrator, Miles Meili (links below). The paper version for your hands to hold and enjoy is still available <a href="https://www.publicationstudio.biz/books/kreepingarten/">here</a> from Publication Studio Guelph.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In lieu of payment for this audiobooklet version, please consider a donation to <a href="https://www.canadahelps.org/en/dn/8446?v1=true">Immigrant Services Guelph Wellington</a>. This will help people tasked with navigating their own labyrinthian journeys.</div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0gc6ppSYVJDIuPfGuJB62o5HUJsW2r-UdbOUqOWaEqLK5asdBnMJH6JIfks7aflHgCX9u6OdEBD7RtKqYZtSKI4t-RuEWHIDqyqk3BpmL5Tg8zJxoGLnaUJarYlGk74Hu5bBL21lc21a73QA6J-lifwHPKU_9r94_i6vdUH9XuzgloaFszI97uBDC5w/s1176/Screen%20Shot%202022-12-11%20at%207.01.21%20AM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="1176" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0gc6ppSYVJDIuPfGuJB62o5HUJsW2r-UdbOUqOWaEqLK5asdBnMJH6JIfks7aflHgCX9u6OdEBD7RtKqYZtSKI4t-RuEWHIDqyqk3BpmL5Tg8zJxoGLnaUJarYlGk74Hu5bBL21lc21a73QA6J-lifwHPKU_9r94_i6vdUH9XuzgloaFszI97uBDC5w/w677-h383/Screen%20Shot%202022-12-11%20at%207.01.21%20AM.png" width="677" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Here is the link to 2 versions, click and play, listen and wonder.<br /><div><a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VQn_SgW5ax8O4H8NFIV9tsmkqKg7AQ0-">
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VQn_SgW5ax8O4H8NFIV9tsmkqKg7AQ0-
</a><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">( For those of you more tech able than I, your feedback on the functionality of this format is welcome)</span></div></div>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-68497243176707999342022-04-02T06:37:00.005-07:002022-08-22T05:52:49.239-07:00Kreepingarten, a modest proposal. <p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In an ongoing effort to thwart and confound, I've consolidated musings about slime mould and kindergarten into a small book; it's an illustrated essay with a lengthy title. See a preview and </span><span style="font-family: arial;">purchase the book directly </span><span style="font-family: arial;">for a modest price <a href="https://publicationstudio.biz/books/kreepingarten/?fbclid=IwAR0lYJoN-vBdaRHOcdnwQY2rpx-bd2F6RDEKG70b17dvsf1IFgrICoYLHdI">at this link</a> from Publication Studio Guelph.</span></p><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXyZyBPaPaNXoxfOGaDxrrcRcGxgy2W0muNCpZAwwGZiCEHphjQf3BsK7K0XLod0bwwFPwuupZvSSjvyHYs4XPuFJSJijbHFfirF9DJ-HQSuhbCPd730LKFQ5Q3utul5cRcYgLYrOCctr-NP6I9x522EoCVTlrFu7HaPPcZrEZ4RhCASsciw4K50cBOQ/s972/Kreepingarten%20Book%20cover.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="972" data-original-width="626" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXyZyBPaPaNXoxfOGaDxrrcRcGxgy2W0muNCpZAwwGZiCEHphjQf3BsK7K0XLod0bwwFPwuupZvSSjvyHYs4XPuFJSJijbHFfirF9DJ-HQSuhbCPd730LKFQ5Q3utul5cRcYgLYrOCctr-NP6I9x522EoCVTlrFu7HaPPcZrEZ4RhCASsciw4K50cBOQ/w412-h640/Kreepingarten%20Book%20cover.png" width="412" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;">As well,<a href="https://bridgingthesocialdistance.substack.com/p/196-aaron-senitt-author-of-kreepingarten?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMjMzMDc5MSwicG9zdF9pZCI6NTA4OTE2NDcsIl8iOiIxVUpJMCIsImlhdCI6MTY0ODkwMzU4NCwiZXhwIjoxNjQ4OTA3MTg0LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzU2NDQiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.AmyvlwXnzix_FOGh6VWwTW-yauOR2R93H63Vg_NaoUU&s=r"> here is a link</a> to my interview </span><span style="font-family: arial;">on Jenny Mitchell's show </span><span style="font-family: arial;">'Bringing the Social Distance'</span><span style="font-family: arial;">, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">on CFRU radio, 93.3 fm Guelph</span><span style="font-family: arial;">. Jenny is really good at keeping the discussion between the ditches. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="page" title="Page 3"><div class="section" style="background-color: white;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div></div></div>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-63064408025631317622021-07-23T13:47:00.003-07:002022-08-22T06:03:37.865-07:00 asenitt asemic, following traces<p> <b style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px;">asenitt asemic, following traces</b></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;">Flipping through a catalogue of art, this exhibition list of galleries, locations and dates was described by Alex, a Grade Four student of mine, as a “poem”. Alex was a boy who at the time had significant difficulties reading; because of this I assumed that he was responding to the visual structure of the text rather than the meaning of the words. I really enjoyed the inadvertent suggestion that this list could be viewed as a poem…it had flow, rhythm and variety: art, location, date, art, location, date…from east to west, back east then west, five galleries, one centre, 23 months. </p>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Ea-vUZCNsWndkMkdZKXRe6xUsnRJBukj49wp_LV5TMoyy5yqjv0VOxGyATlW1D2LkS6gXqbORFQdLoe6unph1jyjuwYlyTt80X5nlCMCajtIjkrTQUAoboRmPHpRgh0hzvzFFgjGbEpm/s4032/IMG_4247.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Ea-vUZCNsWndkMkdZKXRe6xUsnRJBukj49wp_LV5TMoyy5yqjv0VOxGyATlW1D2LkS6gXqbORFQdLoe6unph1jyjuwYlyTt80X5nlCMCajtIjkrTQUAoboRmPHpRgh0hzvzFFgjGbEpm/w300-h400/IMG_4247.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">A Kindergarten child notices a piece of wood with traces of worm trails inscribed upon it; he follows the lines with a finger and notes the resemblance it has to writing. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZpiXpboZadwoquAeY-wKtSzyx9d1Z1A0D9RpMr4Rnebm62hLUnCyI4YiH9f23lEkVmGUZX8TfLMn0QM7Qr0fv9dK7v0nqmklpm6ByGrJ53lbfVZUPc_2nwFIhVVpAP_kRfvJNfslVd-_2/s4032/IMG_5865.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZpiXpboZadwoquAeY-wKtSzyx9d1Z1A0D9RpMr4Rnebm62hLUnCyI4YiH9f23lEkVmGUZX8TfLMn0QM7Qr0fv9dK7v0nqmklpm6ByGrJ53lbfVZUPc_2nwFIhVVpAP_kRfvJNfslVd-_2/w320-h240/IMG_5865.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">He refers to these lines later in the year when he uses a piece of chalk on the hard packed earth to follow the meandering path of an ant.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">We don’t know what these chalk lines mean to the ant, but the boy remembers the worm-eaten lines on the wood and mentions the connection. This happens as he is learning over the course of the year to print letters, form words, and create messages on a page of paper.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE1sW41GCY6OfW_gwXTCrr6IXe4MA-Q0laKuKa_ipq4b1NVabrW3NkQbym5a7RPWf_pZAL4wCmc5gP2Q_Xn-lTOdeRIaiQRqcdcbQRWv92kvNUypjiZnNyrHYoJlKbpCqylZ4lp5O3cywu/s3024/drawing+ants.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE1sW41GCY6OfW_gwXTCrr6IXe4MA-Q0laKuKa_ipq4b1NVabrW3NkQbym5a7RPWf_pZAL4wCmc5gP2Q_Xn-lTOdeRIaiQRqcdcbQRWv92kvNUypjiZnNyrHYoJlKbpCqylZ4lp5O3cywu/w400-h400/drawing+ants.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div><br /><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; min-height: 14px; text-align: left;"><br /></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;">As it moves, slime mould secretes a trail behind it. Like the pheromone markers of ants, this indicates previous behaviour and signals subsequent actions; a reminder for instance to return to, or refrain from visiting a particular place again. The term ‘stimergy’ comes from the Greek stigma (mark or sign) and ergon (work or action). Stimergy is the process by which we project a message of some sort for others to respond to, a gesture of sorts that may be built upon. Ants leave pheromones and dogs leave urine; unsurprisingly, slime mould lays down a trail of slime. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj69Erm8lT8ahyphenhyphen7oNIOzOKL_6L08YLmzWzmKMi0zNTd8F0VX5g6vTPoZ5z84TvpRIyiUtgXRX2JtHQmTAU96e24fMoujS6NSSKE0lXpGW49nuoMO4-yiMCxsMDiz7pcAD5Jil7aizvEkSsM/s4032/IMG_5616.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj69Erm8lT8ahyphenhyphen7oNIOzOKL_6L08YLmzWzmKMi0zNTd8F0VX5g6vTPoZ5z84TvpRIyiUtgXRX2JtHQmTAU96e24fMoujS6NSSKE0lXpGW49nuoMO4-yiMCxsMDiz7pcAD5Jil7aizvEkSsM/s320/IMG_5616.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">Slime Mould processes outside stimuli across the entire structure of its cells…its’ only real knowledge of the world is bodily. As an organism lacking a central nervous system and sophisticated sensory organs, slime mould epitomizes the notion of “embodied knowledge” (Tanaka, 2013). Its’ knowledge of the world occurs entirely through </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">interactions</i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;"> with the world. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtRu3yEukayuKwEed0i_WH4GpTvbBCM_Yvhva9kv7WkIxfHlGSbmQ1tEEzJSTd9cqMteEHdOURf0GG2hk2LwNc6i2Sw7RIc3EM9xR_o8PLNwwkuk9MUyQgEGLnAGAch53QxZpvrDOXWciR/s1104/Screen+Shot+2020-09-27+at+8.49.17+PM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1100" data-original-width="1104" height="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtRu3yEukayuKwEed0i_WH4GpTvbBCM_Yvhva9kv7WkIxfHlGSbmQ1tEEzJSTd9cqMteEHdOURf0GG2hk2LwNc6i2Sw7RIc3EM9xR_o8PLNwwkuk9MUyQgEGLnAGAch53QxZpvrDOXWciR/w400-h399/Screen+Shot+2020-09-27+at+8.49.17+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 7px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVHkucvgmyexFkhdkWfZnYqPYXEvplZKELiKSGVQGqIYjjmD9BP3WZUuevkcX8_Id4teQifIScu9FfMb6hmIEx4PORfB8MF7PV5pJuz4hKkGGj6CyNQwmKUevXJquuMQ3-QQ4-BqzxG3rexJHLJWNlcG2AjETnYxPBSWMcuLXUHSHDKE_78DegxxN27g/s950/asemic%20cover%20saved%20png.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="950" data-original-width="716" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVHkucvgmyexFkhdkWfZnYqPYXEvplZKELiKSGVQGqIYjjmD9BP3WZUuevkcX8_Id4teQifIScu9FfMb6hmIEx4PORfB8MF7PV5pJuz4hKkGGj6CyNQwmKUevXJquuMQ3-QQ4-BqzxG3rexJHLJWNlcG2AjETnYxPBSWMcuLXUHSHDKE_78DegxxN27g/w151-h200/asemic%20cover%20saved%20png.png" width="151" /></a></div><p></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">In this recent book about the physical, concrete sides of language, and writing without words, Walter Benjamin states that “language has a body and the body has a language”. The kind of ‘empty’ writing described in this book (asemic writing), is how we all begin when we are children. </p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">Our marks are outwardly meaningless until we explain them or until others find them and ascribe meaning to them. </p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">Writing requires some-body any-body to make it meaningful.</p><p></p><div><br /></div><br /><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">(notes taken in part from </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">Kreepingarten. A proposal for knowledge transfer from/to/between Physarum Polycephalum and Kindergarten Children. A.Senitt 2021)</i></div><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-36528376840241352302021-07-23T13:03:00.000-07:002021-07-23T13:03:21.609-07:0024 Hour Poetry Service<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7vbaVQojE8Gnpjd_uTE0xVXs9UNuXn7FAHnSLblfNpIQx3sjfoLT64p96jdUyOoivZvv959dIFreaAI8iM3xok-ATpD7ikIE_T9bQOpantZehV8fYne5Sh-eSk7Mhk_O9-2qhyphenhyphenNs2Am93/s2048/IMG_4250.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1192" height="341" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7vbaVQojE8Gnpjd_uTE0xVXs9UNuXn7FAHnSLblfNpIQx3sjfoLT64p96jdUyOoivZvv959dIFreaAI8iM3xok-ATpD7ikIE_T9bQOpantZehV8fYne5Sh-eSk7Mhk_O9-2qhyphenhyphenNs2Am93/w198-h341/IMG_4250.jpg" width="198" /></a></div> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">I was pretty excited when I found this auspicious business</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">card on the the wooden sidewalk on first day I arrived in Dawson City, Yukon in the summer of 1994. It was Found Poetry. The title evoked the ever-up solstice sun, and Robert Service, the Bard of the Yukon. I imagined myself reading in front of an attentive barroom audience…enunciating each word slowly and clearly,</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">emphasizing and breaking down the syllables in order to render the names of these equipment companies abstract.</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><p></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;">koh-<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">MAH</span>-<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">tsu</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">koh-<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">BELLLL</span>-co</p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">deeee…….mag</p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">BO</span>-mag</p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">hy-dro—-<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">MA</span>-tick!!!</p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I’d be like Tristan Tzara or Kurt Schwitters and the crowd would just love it.<br /></p>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-24439022811985047962021-02-07T07:38:00.003-08:002021-02-07T07:38:36.654-08:00The Lost Book...<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Times; font-size: 15px;">I've been making slide shows for our Kindergarteners, and recently I started a chat about mazes and labyrinths by showing this slide, of the brain as though it were a maze. I suggested to them that we could get lost in our brains, wandering about in our own thoughts. One student took the bait, and told us about a book he had made about getting lost...but then he stopped. I thought maybe he was playing a trick, one I often play on students, which is to stop a story abruptly and say "THE END" (always good for a laugh). But no, he went on to explain that the problem with his book, was that he had lost the book itself. I thought this was tremendous..and suggested to him</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Times; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Times; font-size: 15px;">"NOW you can make a book, about losing a book, about getting lost!" He didn't like this idea, and told me that Borges wasn't really his thing.</span></p><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Times; font-size: 15px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF4wZ0mb-oXWprUhDokCwTluU0VPJWOsEOyv2TqgNwMSh9gQoc6E54OGfDCi_re2SYJHzTj24hlBWvPa1Mn93-HVjhjf5MxruksAiK5BjfQb41h70vvYoj-az7s2Ja9NbEdELNG9RHzgfg/s1062/Screen+Shot+2021-02-05+at+8.36.12+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1062" data-original-width="836" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF4wZ0mb-oXWprUhDokCwTluU0VPJWOsEOyv2TqgNwMSh9gQoc6E54OGfDCi_re2SYJHzTj24hlBWvPa1Mn93-HVjhjf5MxruksAiK5BjfQb41h70vvYoj-az7s2Ja9NbEdELNG9RHzgfg/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-02-05+at+8.36.12+PM.png" /></a></div><br /></div>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-83568122692680413442021-02-06T10:50:00.002-08:002021-02-06T12:08:26.719-08:00Inside Outside Upside Down<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section" style="background-color: white;"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: 700;">Inside Outside Upside Down</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt;">Aaron Senitt, Guelph, Ontario, 2016</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Published in: Ma:</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Materiality in Teaching and Learning. Sameshima, Pauline </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">et al., editors.</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">2019</span></p></div></div></div></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-b8b0b3b9-7fff-5d84-019b-e3bf960ec2c3"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Language as Material</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Any material will do for art; it has only to be given form for there to be a work of art.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-Kurt Schwitters. (1922), </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PPPPPP</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Humans use language as the material and the tool with which we communicate; we use it to reach beyond ourselves, to relate to one and other and to enhance our own sense of agency in the world. The combined perspectives of artists, historians and philosophers who have rooted their work with language in terrain that metaphorically and directly connects it to our physical experiences, provide useful artifacts and methodology for teachers working with early learners. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a teacher I work as bricoleur surveying and assembling diverse artistic and educational perspectives in a “combinatorial” (</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Levi Straus in</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Wiseman, 2007) attempt to look at and grasp the notion of linguistic materialism. This work represents efforts to bring my longstanding interest in the “substance of the signs” (Senitt, 2005) into an exploration of new materialism delineated by the context of Kindergarten. Particular attention is given here to the language work of German artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), who provides examples of early twentieth century de/materialist treatments of language. Conceptualizing language as material is a difficult, hall-of-mirrors sort of problem...though the metaphors we reach toward for clarity are rooted in our bodily experiences and our sense of the physical world, language eludes us all the same as we attempt to “put a finger on it”. Attending to the materialism of language presents a fastidiously pointed connundrum, bound with uncertainty by the “mobius strip” (Deleuze </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in MacLure</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 2004, p. 23) that runs between language and the world. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The alphabet is throughout the classroom and children are learning to identify the symbols as meaningful. They are “perceiving” written language. Two Kindergarteners interact with each other, naming the alphabet as they follow the other’s finger, reaching to touch the space where language sits between them.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> They speak, observe gestures, trace symbols and perhaps, hear one another’s muffled voices. The sheet of plexiglass with hand drawn letters becomes Deleuze’s ‘metaphysical surface’ (2004, p. 278), a demonstrative space upon which language becomes ‘thing’.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJJ2Rk9V3DYWEVcZiKoUYN8v9MO9WC1Iz1r5VVO5w7rVNBSK8DE7yPkPFnDSd3BocHl3WItxJ98YYE2wslIZjZJEPGszjlJmCMKEOb1wO6UT8thwVBxrDoKaCx1ONKjkuyT6tTHIkm4RT/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1530" data-original-width="2048" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJJ2Rk9V3DYWEVcZiKoUYN8v9MO9WC1Iz1r5VVO5w7rVNBSK8DE7yPkPFnDSd3BocHl3WItxJ98YYE2wslIZjZJEPGszjlJmCMKEOb1wO6UT8thwVBxrDoKaCx1ONKjkuyT6tTHIkm4RT/w640-h478/Copy+of+Image+1-touching+language.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We extend ourselves through language while others reach for us. Language is formed in the space between us and can be seen in material terms. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The formal characteristics of this active space are as varied as the players who create it, but an appreciation can be found in the Japanese Zen aesthetic concept of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ma</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which describes an interval in space and time (Ferguson, Kuby. 2015. Pilgrim, 1986). Within our context, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ma </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">space is Language, for it is the space of interaction and positioning. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ma </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is also our orientation relative to others; a favourite vocabulary building children’s book (Berenstain, 1968) brings this to life narrating what it is to be </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">inside, outside</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">upside down. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through examples drawn from my classroom, I demonstrate possibilities for the creation and study of language with kindergarten children, helping them to apprehend language as they see and feel it, as object (as well as subject). I argue for an approach to teaching and learning alphabetic language in a manner that recognizes the crucial value of play, particularly the German notion of ‘bauspiel’, or “building play”. Particular attention is given to the playful alphabetic arrangements of one exceptional kindergarten student named Gary (name changed). By conceptualizing language in material terms, teachers of young children can strengthen engagement and reveal potential wellsprings of meaning.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Language is like red paint. It’s totally dependent upon how it’s used, where it’s used” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-Lawrence Weiner. (1998), </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While we metaphorically consider language as a material with which to build, paint and sculpt meaning, describing language in convincing and approachable terms can be difficult. Language looks and feels like the world it describes, in all of its complexity and contradictions. We pursue something that is at once both formed and formless, body and mind, inside and outside, subject and object, like light both particle and wave. The role of metaphor as a viable bridge between any of these points will be addressed later, but first I want to draw attention to the physical side of language, the aspects that we are able to handle literally (letter-really). Morphology is the general study of forms, structures and shapes and linguistics is the morphological study of language. While linguistics is a scientific study of language and can be approached from a predominantly biological or social perspective, artists and writers extend our understanding of the characteristics of language through modes of explanation that are unique to their respective fields. </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some artists show us the characteristics and structures of language, which are normally hidden from our awareness. They allow us to see language using their own morphology and see the characteristics of alphabetic and oral language as art form. Consider, for instance, conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner’s 2004 installation at the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis of laser cut aluminum typographic text that essentially describes the composition of any number of linguistic components (the alphabet, a word, sentence, paragraph or extended text): </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">BITS & PIECES</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PUT TOGETHER</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TO PRESENT A SEMBLANCE</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">OF A WHOLE</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This text could also be seen as a reference to the brick wall upon which it is installed, or perhaps the entirety of the collection of art that comprises the gallery itself. And then, we are ourselves among the “bits and pieces” that assemble this open-ended statement. As reader/viewer we form a whole.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Language Play, Building Play </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Notions of play are varied and have changed over time (Frost, 2010) and as a subject of study play is broadly defined. Peter Gray (2008) sees play as intrinsically motivated and describes the following characteristics: play is an activity that is self directed, it is process oriented and defined by rules generated by the person or people playing. Play is meaningfully imaginative, and our ability to play depends upon our mental well-being. Within the context of elementary school, it is useful to recall a current curriculum position that “Play and academic work are not distinct categories for young children, and learning and doing are inextricably linked for them” (Ontario, 2010-11, p.13). From a developmental point of view children play toward adulthood; Mudede (Arcade, 2013) points out that “...playing makes evolutionary sense for a child because it’s a great way to learn to do things as an adult”. Ideally, children’s work should be playful. Conversely, that play aids their developmental growth. Recognizing that “art is ‘play with serious problems’” (Reichardt, 2010, p.5), the adult artist Kurt Schwitters played back toward childhood, as his method of assembling found materials most closely resembled children’s building-play, or ”bauspiele” (Mindrup, 2008, p. 45). Schwitters worked fluidly across the disciplines of sculpture, design, painting, collage, poetry, prose and performance, summarizing his activities as “Merz”. This invented term functioned as a </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">personal </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ma </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">space, a </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">flexible, phonemic signifier for his entire artistic practice. He enacted the same fundamentally playful approach toward collecting and configuring bits of found material for collage as he did while composing sound poetry from letters, syllables, word fragments and nonsense mouth sounds (Gooding, 2013, p.30). </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Schwitters demonstrated that as an artist he occupied an important space between letter and listener, stating that “one can perform the alphabet ...in such a way that the result is a work of art” (Rothenberg; Joris. 2002). Schwitters’ play/work with language was highly inspired and purposefully structured. His </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ursonate</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a masterpiece of non-sensical sound poetry that he began working on in 1922, was carefully rendered textually as a four part sonata. Schwitters took letters and phonemes, the constituent parts of his ur-language, as subject for the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ursonate</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. He showed linguistic form to be malleable on the page and physical in performance.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Concurrent with his composition of the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ursonate</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Schwitters attempted to develop the typography to represent a phonetic alphabet that would function in print as a universally consistent language. This was an alphabet in which the segments composing each letter were based upon the position of the mouth, tongue and vocal chords for each sound. Schwitters showed with these projects that language is far from immaterial, and that the constituents of linguistic form are inextricable from the bodies that produce it.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The founder of Kindergarten, Friedrich Fröbel explains in his </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pedagogics of the Kindergarten</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, (1895) that the assembly, dis-assembly, and then reassembly of a whole into its various parts, is a key component of children’s learning. Froebel’s philosophy of parts and the whole was postulated as a natural extension of his early work studying crystalline growth and he used it as an analogy to describe the development of children, people and entire societies. The notion of parts relating to a whole was at the core of his approach to hands-on learning that used manipulable materials, most notably blocks. While there are some direct and literal (letter-all) applications for language instruction using blocks, (such as counting out each letter or syllable in a word using blocks), bauspiele is used in this context as metaphor. Bauspiele in this respect is simultaneous language construction and experimentation, a bridge over the conceptual space between things and representative words. In kindergarten, as children and write, they bring together parts (letters and phonemes) to form a meaningful whole. Or inversely, they look carefully at whole words to discern individual parts. The notion of build-play with language is a metaphor to keep in mind as we assist children’s playful examination of the sounds, structures and interrelationships between the “parts and the whole” of letters and phonemes, and words, sentences and paragraphs.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Language enables us to communicate and store information for future reference. It gives us “symbols and the procedures for using them to construct meaning” (Carey, 2011, p. 113). Language can be described as a capacity that is uniquely human, genetically fixed and universal across our species...something that is born within us. At the same time though, as linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (as cited in Coulmas, 2006) defined it, we also see language as a “social fact”, a shifting ability that varies among cultures and groups, changing over history and governed by conventions. Reconciling these seemingly contra perspectives involves accepting that “...language has both a physical side [brain] and a mental side [mind], and these are not always easily kept apart.” (Coulmas, 2006, p. 9).</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The recursive complexity of defining language (through language itself) is perhaps best encapsulated in Carey’s statement that “...in essence, language provides [both] the content and the structure of thinking”. It is both inborn and socially constructed. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In his philosophy of language Deleuze offers an element of relief from the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">compulsion</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to delineate the physical and mental sides of language. When faced with the the intractable duality of embodied and immaterial language, Deleuze’s notion of something “wild” in language (MacLure 2013) seems acceptable.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a spectrum of notions regarding language and we are perhaps best able to sense materiality at points where distinctions on that spectrum dissolve. The group of experimental writers and mathematicians identifying themselves as Oulipo root their literary activities in a deep preoccupation with constraints that various structures of language present. They produce many works revealing the outer limits of creation possible within those very constraints. For example, in Christian Bök’s poetry book, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eunoia</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (2001), each chapter is confined to the use of only one vowel. This passage from the first chapter adheres to its own rule while describing the severity of this self-imposed challenge: “A law as harsh as a fatwa bans all paragraphs that lack an A as a standard hallmark” (Bök, 2001). While the results of studied and methodical work of Oulipo writers provide fascinating artefacts, even more important is the substantive way these writers focus on relationships between linguistic form and meaning. Bénabou ( in Motte, 1986) explains “One must first admit that language may be treated as an object in itself, considered in its materiality, and thus freed from its subservience to its significatory obligation” (p.40). Schwitters’ use of language within his poetry and collage work is described by Megan Luke (2014) who echoes the idea that “All words, all things, bear a material excess that cannot be exhausted by semantic convention or functionality...” (p.22). In other words, linguistic signs have an inherent substance, both within and without their intended meanings. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our understanding of the alphabet in kindergarten is constrained by its essential characteristics: we are limited to 26 characters representing sounds in specific or combined ways. We learn that the various letters of the alphabet are each configured with sticks and arcs, and collated in a specific order from A to Z. We identify letters in context as we find them within books, signs, charts and labels. We identify and articulate words, and we bring attention to sounds, connecting that awareness to the representative letters ( Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 72) But in Kindergarten we also play, physically, with letters before we fully realize what they mean. We pick them up and we play with them using the various elements that compose each letter to create our own pictures. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We sense meaning in these assembled lines before fully learning the visual conventions that we agree upon in calling them letters.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH1XPU927EVrsUGA6P_3fdB44Q8rz3tJfI-hWOGxmkzBNkkdqkyJfBKIR69mMtK14syT8P6kHQ7NKYaJXEqHfuBHwOrtzvRyJlae77z9N06TFBcWGo3uILl-8WaanqYgpnPIidTePxDGFi/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH1XPU927EVrsUGA6P_3fdB44Q8rz3tJfI-hWOGxmkzBNkkdqkyJfBKIR69mMtK14syT8P6kHQ7NKYaJXEqHfuBHwOrtzvRyJlae77z9N06TFBcWGo3uILl-8WaanqYgpnPIidTePxDGFi/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNPf0y_V4WPceQWNx3BJWtGaahy_LxSMfc5C0aoAnaXCaGUUfQyzvTtMP7ouTV3br8BU9W1I9njktxcGkAkVTHSdHfw4GhQ61UYzsBT1pCoxuQZFXqgtSM_BJKN5LgL35IKJln5HV1CSEb/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1530" data-original-width="2048" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNPf0y_V4WPceQWNx3BJWtGaahy_LxSMfc5C0aoAnaXCaGUUfQyzvTtMP7ouTV3br8BU9W1I9njktxcGkAkVTHSdHfw4GhQ61UYzsBT1pCoxuQZFXqgtSM_BJKN5LgL35IKJln5HV1CSEb/w400-h298/Copy+of+Image+2-abstract+letter+forms.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH1XPU927EVrsUGA6P_3fdB44Q8rz3tJfI-hWOGxmkzBNkkdqkyJfBKIR69mMtK14syT8P6kHQ7NKYaJXEqHfuBHwOrtzvRyJlae77z9N06TFBcWGo3uILl-8WaanqYgpnPIidTePxDGFi/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXcQQZrwYqnt1FGa2nlJyxTI-4xjpkqrmY_wcyuUO-OsgYhB4nhRto7HEkAScUVMVYCkd15IK7kvgNe0_4HrFs234PyRJVgACkyJjs_amf64OyxqEvqRz-Mdo_DsOSBdwiwMFQIJhyphenhyphene9uh/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1530" data-original-width="2048" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXcQQZrwYqnt1FGa2nlJyxTI-4xjpkqrmY_wcyuUO-OsgYhB4nhRto7HEkAScUVMVYCkd15IK7kvgNe0_4HrFs234PyRJVgACkyJjs_amf64OyxqEvqRz-Mdo_DsOSBdwiwMFQIJhyphenhyphene9uh/w400-h299/Copy+of+Image+3-conventional+letter+form.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Something to Explain Something</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Surprise and pleasure are derived from the structure and inventive combination of the </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">parts” -Kurt Schwitters. (in Webster, 1997, p163)</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Echoing the early ideas of Greek atomistic materialists,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Christian Bök (2010) explains that language is composed of “ bits that somehow cooperate to produce the complexity we see around us”, with letters being the smallest units. Kindergarteners invent themselves through their acquisition of (or at times through their resistance towards) literacy. The children come into being through the letters, which are, as Plato asserts, ‘the primeval elements out of which you and I and all things are compounded here.’ (Drucker, 1995, p. 62). From the moment our student Gary begins as a precocious Junior Kindergartener, he makes it clear that the alphabet is a tool for encoding his understanding of the world around him as he asks persistently, “How do you spell that? How do you spell...?”. Wherever Gary sees letters and words in the room he is drawn to them. Walking through the room he leaves trails of writing behind him on bits of paper, with letter tiles, on the chalkboard. He is in what Johanna Drucker calls “the alphabetic labyrinth”. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWExyUjJEjuF146akJZa-kpiyJQusLSfvItkegmlAvmzzenmQhlmG1gmUkrtU7zBw7Z6yEMHe7LXndWmxphvRRY2dpq5jx8N2sMzhIco6d2ra9Px8PYwgTzYV_EIQCgAurIDrWVQcd0DAy/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1530" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWExyUjJEjuF146akJZa-kpiyJQusLSfvItkegmlAvmzzenmQhlmG1gmUkrtU7zBw7Z6yEMHe7LXndWmxphvRRY2dpq5jx8N2sMzhIco6d2ra9Px8PYwgTzYV_EIQCgAurIDrWVQcd0DAy/w477-h640/Copy+of+Image+4-+Gary+in+the+alphabetic+labyrinth.JPG" width="477" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gary rapidly learns the alphabet and shows us that it functions as a “symbolic matrix”, (Drucker). He arranges the alphabet blocks on the playground pavement, in a grid, leaving a void where he stands, close to the beginning and the end. In our classroom we document children's learning for consideration then further documentation, as in a hall of mirrors. An image of Gary’s alphabet is circulated for other children to respond to; following the path of letters now with finger or marker rather than feet. One child presents two iterations of the alphabet on the same page, once with a line wandering through the maze, and again indexing the number of letters and aligning them more conventionally as A to Z. </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7uEqNJLECpYK-gGV50YzcmyIPEx6KCfcvgYEVEOwJvdJIMaxPbIO5Z2gOjJl8tDaOikB1DUB7OfZU0P5IM0lhCRt0H6iXybpknamFvdeeKJCPU9VS9NtCbvPl2ChSOIhUZTsaqGWChx52/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1530" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7uEqNJLECpYK-gGV50YzcmyIPEx6KCfcvgYEVEOwJvdJIMaxPbIO5Z2gOjJl8tDaOikB1DUB7OfZU0P5IM0lhCRt0H6iXybpknamFvdeeKJCPU9VS9NtCbvPl2ChSOIhUZTsaqGWChx52/w477-h640/Copy+of+Image+5-alphabetic+labyrinth+worksheet.JPG" width="477" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our words on the page have not always been aligned according to conventions we agree upon today. The ancient Greek term </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">boustropheden</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, (wikipedia, 2016) which translates as “turning in the manner of the ox”, connects writing directly to a preliterate understanding of embodied space and reveals an intimate connection between lived experience and language. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boustrophedon</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> refers to bidirectional writing that runs as a field might be plowed from one end of the page then turning to return in the opposite direction, back and forth, back and forth. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvQfG21qm2ORNHecWoVufBtX9efrJwrkPxd65wEoZdhhsKLM3ns8dJwRrsrHjF-eZpyW1beCBSSYsSipwwt_G9N70FrZAVI1wlvZ3CBw_-CUFtdB8xEE6C8QUwjGxX3pQ8du0IYVRomkdD/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img alt="" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="352" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvQfG21qm2ORNHecWoVufBtX9efrJwrkPxd65wEoZdhhsKLM3ns8dJwRrsrHjF-eZpyW1beCBSSYsSipwwt_G9N70FrZAVI1wlvZ3CBw_-CUFtdB8xEE6C8QUwjGxX3pQ8du0IYVRomkdD/w499-h640/Copy+of+Image+6-Boustrophedon.JPG" width="499" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We no longer structure our text in this manner, we read left to right, then...make a saccadic jump (Dictionary.com, 2016) with our eyes back to the left and repeat. Let us consider in closing, this “jump”, and contrast the amusing thought of jumping with an ox from one end of the field back to the other, with the actual perceptual shift we make from one end of a line of text to the beginning of the next while reading. What kind of energy must we exert in order to complete that “jump” with our eyes and mind? How do we hold attention in that instant when we are “in the jump”? Clearly our brains need to be fit enough to do so... but the word saccade has another historical meaning, which is to “pull in the reins of the horse”. While this may serve as a curious metaphor, it is one perhaps to be suggested to children learning to calm themselves while learning to read </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and sequentially scan text.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As language is an emergent feature of the mind, we strive to understand how it is used to organize our experiences. But in that effort to comprehend language as a “thing” apart from ourselves we see only the probability that there is a contininually “central unknowableness to existence” (Cudworth, Hobden. 2015). If our “reach” for definitions of language then, will always exceed our “grasp”, perhaps the tool of metaphor might serve us best. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To know the world through metaphor is an experience of understanding one kind of thing in terms of another. Lakoff and Johnson’s </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Metaphors We Live By</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (2003) is a definitive analysis of the core role that metaphor plays in our ability to conceptualize reality. The scope of their study reaches far, far beyond this exploration, but one key axiom, that ”we spatialize linguistic form” helps to explain how the ‘terrain’ in which we create and find language is the same in which we exist. Thus metaphors to describe language, such as a matrix or a labyrinth, become inherently self-reflexive as we lay out our thoughts on the page, get lost in language, and continually return to the point at which we began. These terms describe structures that we can see and walk through, structures that organize and meaningfully situate thought. And these terms illustrate that “...our bodily experiences motivate conceptualization.” (Borkent, 2010). Our attempts to describe language are unavoidably and handily encircled through metaphor, anchored always in some manner with our corporeal experience in space. It has been suggested in fact that the actions of our hands and our corresponding tools have directly influenced the evolution of language over time. A hand holds an object, while a noun contains a thing within its name. The movements of our hands are like verbs, and just as a tool for the hand is used upon material, adverbs and adjectives modify movements and objects, (Armstrong, Stokoe, Wilcox. in Pallasmaa, 2009. p14.). In a way then, language can be said to materialize at our very fingertips. The words we choose stem from our experiences in space, spurring the growth of the language we create and use.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>References</b> </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alberro, Alexander; Zimmerman, Alice; Buchloch, Benjamin H.D. and Batchelor, David. (1998) </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lawrence Weiner</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. London: Phaidon Press. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Berenstain, J. Berenstain, S. (1968) </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inside, Outside, Upside Down. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New York: Random House</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bök, Christian. (2001) </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eunoia</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Toronto: Coach House Books</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bök, Christian. (June 17, 2010).</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> discusses units in language and art with Astrid Lorange, Danny </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snelson and Kraeger Sparks.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhK1eQO0dVE</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">retrieved November 11, 2015</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Borkent, Mike. (2010). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Illusions of Simplicity: a cognitive approach to visual poetry. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Published in English Text Constuction 3.2 (2010): 145-64 </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boustrophedon. (n.d.). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wikipedia</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Retrieved January 10, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brosterman, Norman. (2002). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inventing Kindergarten</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. New York: Harry N. Abrams</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Carey, Richard. (2011). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Critical Art Pedagogy: Foundations for Art Education. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New York: London. Routledge</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Coulmas, Florian. (2006). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers’ Choices</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Cambridge: University Press </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cudworth, E. Hobden, S. (2015). Liberation for Straw Dogs? Old Materialism, New Materialism, and the Challenge of an Emancipatory Posthumanism</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Globalizations. 12:1, 134-148</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Drucker, Johanna. (1995). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagination.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> London: Thames and Hudson</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ferguson, D. Kuby, C. (2015). Curricular, Relational, and Physical Spaces in the Japanese Hoikuen</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. International Journal of Early Childhood. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">47 (3), 403-421</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Froebel, Friedrich . (1895). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pedagogics of the Kindergarten</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, New York. D. Appleton and Co.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frost, Joe L. (2010). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">History of Children’s Play and Play Environments: Toward a </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Contemporary Child-Saving Movement</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. New York, London. Routledge</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gooding, Mel. (2013) </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kurt Schwitters: Artist Philospher.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> exhibition catalogue, 28 January-30 March 2013 London. Bernard Jacobson Gallery</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gray, Peter, (2008) </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200811/the-value-play-i-the-definition-play-gives-insights</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Retrieved January 7, 2016</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark (2003). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Metaphors We Live By</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. London: University </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of Chicago Press</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Luke, Megan. (2014). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kurt Schwitters: Space, Image, Exile. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chicago: University of Chicago Press</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MacLure, Maggie. (2013) Researching Without Representation? Language and materiality in post-qualitative methodology. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(26). 659-667</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mindrup, Matthew , (2008). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Assembling the Ineffable in Kurt Schwitters’ Architectural </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Models</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Ph. D. diss., University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved January 7, 2016 from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-03252008-191510/</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Motte, Warren, (1986). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oulipo-A Primer of Potential Literature.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mudede, Charles. (August 5, 2013) </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Art Animal</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Arcade, issue 31.3. Retrieved January 7, 2016 from http://arcadenw.org/article/the-art-animal </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ontario Ministry of Education. (2010-11). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Full Day Early Learning Kindergarten Program </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">draft version</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Queen’s Printer for Ontario</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pallasmaa, Juhani. (2009). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Thinking Hand.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> New York: Wiley</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reichardt, Jasia , (2010). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Three Stories: Kurt Schwitters</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. London; Tate Publishing</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rothenberg, Jerome (Ed.). Joris, Pierre (Trans.). 2002.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> PPPPPP: Kurt Schwitters Poems Performance Pieces Proses Plays Poetics</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Cambridge; Exact Change) </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">saccade. (n.d.). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Retrieved January 10, 2016 from Dictionary.com website</span><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/saccade" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://dictionary.reference.com/browsw/saccade</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Webster, Gwendolen. (1997). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kurt Merz Schwitters</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Cardiff: University of Wales Press</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wiseman, Boris. (2007). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lévi-Strauss, Anthropology and Aesthetics.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Cambridge: University Press </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><br /></span>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-37923755689644337142018-05-06T12:00:00.004-07:002019-08-20T11:27:07.555-07:00Reggio in a Box<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.000000pt; font-weight: 700;">Reggio in a Box<br />
Reflections on a visit to The Wonder of Learning; March 2015 </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arialmt"; font-size: 14.000000pt;">I took the MegaBus this March break with my thirteen year
old daughter to New York City; while we were there, we were fortunate
enough to have a tour of The Wonder of Learning exhibit from Reggio
Emilia, located at Williamsburg Northside School in Brooklyn New York. I
assured my daughter that this was important to me, and that she would find
interest in the exhibit, which she did, and a guide obligingly arranged for us
to join a group. During the previous ten years I had immersed myself in Reggio
reading and groups in Ontario, and promoted aspects of the Reggio project
to the best of my ability. Initially as my interest in Reggio surged I felt that I
had found a structure within which to house the priorities that drive me,
complete with concrete examples to look toward. Loris Malaguzzi’s Reggio
philosophy is poetic, carried by robust metaphors and firmly grounded in
contemporary educational theory. I have always been moved by the image
of the first municipal school that he built with others in Reggio Emilia; bricks
pulled by hand from the debris of the second world war to be used to form
a place for children. My sentiments remain intact but I am all the same
having hesitancies about aspects of the widespread Reggio embrace that
seems to be taking place in North America. I primed myself with a
re-reading of Richard Johnson’s essay “Colonialism and Cargo Cults in
Early Childhood Education: Does Reggio Emilia really exist?” Johnson’s
piece is a deep critique of Reggio with ambiguous conclusions but also
frank recognition of the awe that Reggio seems to inspire. And I’ll come
clean, I’ve heard myself describe it as “the closest thing to religion I have
found”. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arialmt"; font-size: 14.000000pt;">Let’s just say that from the outset of the visit, I had an open mind but some
questions all the same. I was curious to see how pedagogy would be
curated; What would the exhibit look like? How would Reggio be
</span><span style="font-family: "arialmt"; font-size: 14.000000pt;">packaged? </span><span style="font-family: "arialmt"; font-size: 14.000000pt;">Who would the audience be? How would this look to the
uninitiated? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arialmt"; font-size: 14.000000pt;"> </span>
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<span style="font-family: "arialmt"; font-size: 14.000000pt;">Our visit began with practicalities; a meeting by the elevator to orient
ourselves and go over basic protocol (Northside School is a functioning
school), then a fire drill! Casual introductions follow, in my small group
there is a woman who started a charter school and another who appeared
to be involved with teacher training. The general discussion revolves
around the work involved with systemic change needed to implement
Reggio ideas into the public school system. Some of the discussion is
positive, (the Mayor of New York had come to the opening and had recently
provided substantial funding for early learning in NYC), and some of the
talk was about challenges (how would they provide training for the teachers
who would now be hired?). My daughter and I wander away to explore on
our own and were able to allow broader impressions while quietly looking at
the panels. The general aesthetic of the exhibit was familiar to anyone who
has visited the Reggio Children website; it was well organized, tidy and
presented information in a way that made sense. There were artifacts from
the first Reggio exhibit “The Hundred Languages of Children” It had the
solid look of a carefully prepared and well financed exhibit and one could
almost see the numbered crates stowed away and ready to ship the exhibit
to its next scheduled appointments; yes, the cargo. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arialmt"; font-size: 14.000000pt;">We let ourselves drift through the exhibit as we pleased, stopping if a panel
held our attention. One of the first projects we spent time with was
animated video documentation of a small group of boys creating clay hands
that they were modelling after their own. They seemed comfortable with the
technology, and skilled with the clay...my daughter commented on how
lucky they were to have access to such a nice camera, and I noticed how
adept they were at proportioning and fashioning the material, they’d had
lots of previous “hand/eye” training I suppose. The Italian circus music was
a lovely touch as well. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arialmt"; font-size: 14.000000pt;">I was pleased to see panels with work by pivotal contributors Gianni Rodari
(author of “The Grammar of Fantasy”), and artist Alberto Burri. Rodari’s
progressive notions of language and writing, and Burri’s materialist work
(“alphabet of gestures”) seem to me to formative pieces of the Reggio
project as we know it today. And here is where I risk (perhaps invite)
rebuke from the Ranks: while Rodari and Burri’s work strikes me as
foundational, some of the writing that now seeks to define Reggio today
strikes me as reiterative...rooted in familiarity, but perhaps more
problematic, striving with great desire for legitimacy. As we exited the Light
and Shadows Atelier, our guide pointed out a list of curricular expectations
that can be met by children who are working in the atelier. This
organization of creative experience is part of the process of assimilation, of
becoming a norm, but what is lost in that process? What of that utopian
ideal? A couple of days after the visit I read of the migration of a group of
experimental writers (Oulipo) from outliers to core curriculum in “Oulipo- A
Primer of Potential Literature” by Warren Motte, and the characterization of
that transformation seems applicable as well to Reggio. Noel Arnaud
writes, “It’s physiognomy is changing as pedagogy installs itself in it’s veins.
It’s personality is dissolving”. I understand how we need to structure and
codify information in order to apprehend it and generate practical
strategies; Elliot Eisner provides a handily succinct description of
curriculum as: “ a useful organizing principle”.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arialmt"; font-size: 14.000000pt;">Reggio has a number of
codified precepts, (including Documentation, Relationship, Child as
Collaborator, Environment as Third Teacher; Co-Construction of
Knowledge...), and these are the building blocks of Reggio practice; they
are becoming familiar, we speak of them with increasing ease and use
them to the advantage of children. I think it is important as well to
remember the initial bricks that were picked from the ground in Reggio
Emilia;"they said it was never easy". That struggle is important to
remember, because for many of us, while Reggio should be a “practical
ideal”; it often appears as a glimmering mirage, packed into a box to tour
the world.
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Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-42274079052230027502017-01-19T16:01:00.001-08:002017-01-19T16:01:21.694-08:00Invisible Atelierista intro<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9ff1-92ee-382e-db778c6298aa" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Invisible</span></span> </span></span></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9ff1-92ee-382e-db778c6298aa" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I'm a teacher and I'll try to stay out of the way as much as possible. In his book <i>Inventing Kindergarten</i> Norman Brosterman reminds us about the underpinnings of education...</span></span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9ff1-92ee-382e-db778c6298aa" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Kindergarten was play, and a good Kindergarten teacher made certain her little sprouts never thought otherwise-the theoretical underpinnings of the education were kept from children just as</span></span></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9ff1-92ee-382e-db778c6298aa" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9ff1-92ee-382e-db778c6298aa" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">they are in any classroom situation.”</span></span></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9ff1-92ee-382e-db778c6298aa" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9ff1-92ee-382e-db778c6298aa" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Atelierista</span> </span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f3c6ce03-9fef-4009-ada4-d6dd6c25bc63" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A teaching role at the core of the Italian Reggio Emilia approach, this is a position that extends the art teacher’s activities beyond supplying materials and demonstrating techniques. The Atelierista is a researcher who pays attention to contemporary issues, striving to bring a unique perspective to school, while thoughtfully accompanying children and adults in the creative processes of learning together.</span></div>
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<br />Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-76582220153632037372017-01-12T17:53:00.004-08:002022-08-22T06:05:47.438-07:00One Thing Leads To Another<br id="docs-internal-guid-4bcb51d5-957b-2e65-9fc8-133174a50d8d" />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One Thing Leads To Another- Thoughts on an Embodied Alphabet</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For a time, our eleven year old daughter was coming home from school with the surface of her arms fairly covered with notes that she had written using pen and marker. In terms of body modifications, we didn’t really have concerns but wondered what was going on and she explained that she “didn’t have a notebook”. While she was purposefully nonchalant, I sensed at the time there was more to it and saw the textual decoration as a sort of performance art. Upon reflection, it coincided with a period of deepening commitment and enthusiasm for writing, as though my daughter and language were fusing. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ll use the metaphor of “grip” to help describe my own enduring fascination with language; it’s a literary device that can function on a number of various, immediate levels. I use language to reach for, apprehend, and to hang onto ideas. After nearly a decade and a half of friendship with Grant Collins, I resolve to use writing to investigate the meaning(s) of a tattoo embedded in his skin. It is the entire alphabet A to N on his right arm and O to Z on the left. The recording of our cafe conversation about the tattoo unfolds, beginning with an agreement that any attempt to pin language down is a conundrum, and a sort of feedback loop that never closes or ends. Nevertheless, we start with an origins story of his tattoo (an idea that never went away); then consider the particularities of font (somewhat regrettable) and placement (noting ass cheeks or ankles would have made it a different tattoo entirely). Eventually we allow ourselves to venture further into conceptual and existential territories that only a person with the alphabet tattooed on his body can guide us toward.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: 27pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnIhQpHRGy_HK9TP9WR8V7nKKttQJNdp2sbWWJrf3Dz_EwTGBH_BQPogGwvyecRgkoO3HE6738Z7lTIMjXRDU1TLaGDI5gQj70tad1vCeBXm04vYl7IKim-rKsd-5h8Sfc9jhnaBqlWIFQ/s1936/File_005.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1936" data-original-width="1936" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnIhQpHRGy_HK9TP9WR8V7nKKttQJNdp2sbWWJrf3Dz_EwTGBH_BQPogGwvyecRgkoO3HE6738Z7lTIMjXRDU1TLaGDI5gQj70tad1vCeBXm04vYl7IKim-rKsd-5h8Sfc9jhnaBqlWIFQ/w292-h292/File_005.jpeg" width="292" /></a></div></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: 27pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet are a convention that is shared around the world, the tale of Grant’s tattoo is personal. He commissioned it when he was in his early twenties; in Bernhard Modern (a serif font he feels has not aged well and may not have chosen if given a second chance). The notion of this tattoo had come to him while walking and talking casually with friends, mentioning it almost as a joke. Grant kept it to himself after that though, knowing it was interesting but not fully understanding why. The impulse remained and he was fixated with the idea. A year or so later he carefully planned it out on paper and allowed it to happen, as a way of creating a sort of “constellation” with his father who had recently died. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxdwpJI6FGkDBgi4GIX1hf4JjD_JbcgGQZqJ8LnL90GswgOOB_R1b7lIYDaWjBGT5USNDuV7w4EzAUGMhbqfmklNCWEuYUCT1q6b9Kv74bhon2AN2EFz3xb4VZk2EEYgHywSLe-GgTT-Al/s1936/File_006.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1936" data-original-width="1936" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxdwpJI6FGkDBgi4GIX1hf4JjD_JbcgGQZqJ8LnL90GswgOOB_R1b7lIYDaWjBGT5USNDuV7w4EzAUGMhbqfmklNCWEuYUCT1q6b9Kv74bhon2AN2EFz3xb4VZk2EEYgHywSLe-GgTT-Al/s320/File_006.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>This was to be a sort of universal tattoo. Rather than any one specific image, with those twenty-six letters “you’ve got every tattoo under the sun”...a kind of do-it-yourself, synecdochical tattoo in which the parts provide immediate access to the greater whole. The alphabet is after all, uniquely human. It is a primary matrix of abstract symbols that we use to generate codes of meaning…and all the while, our language is inextricably rooted in our bodily existence. Everything written or spoken is predicated in some way on an experience that your have had in your body. The letters on Grant’s arms extend ever so slightly below a short sleeve on each upper arm, “You’ve got your body, you’ve got your words, and that’s you”, Grant tells me as the cafe sounds surround us. Grant has literally (letter-really) composed himself within the alphabet and he explains that between each half is his “lifeblood...separated in the middle by me, by my heart”. We are enmeshed in the alphabet.<br /><br /> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We perceive and think about the world instantaneously but for some of us, language is not in fact our best way of being. It is not our comfort zone, we might say. Grant explains that his father for instance, was a “man of feeling”, and that “you could tell there was a lot of thought going on in his head”, but eloquence was not his forte. His father didn’t exist “...in words...it was definitely in experience”. Yet we must all reside in language to some degree, however uncomfortably it inhabits us. We use language to organize and express our thoughts and feelings meaningfully, each with slight, or pronounced differences; it is what simply makes us human. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: 27pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: 27pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTUAIRvqmQN1TGK7m-j0GHEue6HgXI0KA4NoYM_DAHqoiQJGUngWY2w2dZ4jDgUp2y9JAcwZNBr-eKUJcMMZztINaJjbDmdEjRFyL3JvAN_VMykuxLDEw9Z0kJaLA5uBSFVqUn9XpLmE7/s1936/File_004.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1936" data-original-width="1936" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTUAIRvqmQN1TGK7m-j0GHEue6HgXI0KA4NoYM_DAHqoiQJGUngWY2w2dZ4jDgUp2y9JAcwZNBr-eKUJcMMZztINaJjbDmdEjRFyL3JvAN_VMykuxLDEw9Z0kJaLA5uBSFVqUn9XpLmE7/s320/File_004.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Our discussion wanders, as cafe conversations do, skipping along through inter-species communication, (how to describe the intelligence of a chicken?), and the limits of our knowledge. I wonder, if, when a bear looks at Grant’s alphabet, will his only reading be to want to eat his arms? But then we return to the very puzzle of language; that it is a thing that both <i>in</i>, and <i>of</i> the human body. “I’m a very corporeal person and I live in my body”, says Grant “... but the mind is this thing that we’ve got that’s always working as well...I don’t understand that relationship with my body”. I’m projecting my own concerns with language now, embodied and evolutionary, and my interest in how humans have evolved, creating tools and language concurrently. Grant’s tattoo is like a tool, one that functions as fulcrum upon which hinges our recursive curiosity. His body bears the weight of this metaphor well; arms cantilevering toward hands that allow him to reach outward and apprehend the world. We finish up, and emerge from time spent deep in talk. My friend speaks happily of an upcoming rock climbing trip he will take. I think of him using his alphabet arms, clinging with both precision and power</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">to the vertical face of the cliff. Language is both physical and mental; in Grant’s case, and for all of us, it is best kept within arms length.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Aaron Senitt, Guelph, January 2017</span></div>
<br />Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-56077134177041890542016-07-13T12:43:00.001-07:002019-08-20T11:25:30.819-07:00What is up with that?This is a phrase (SUP' WID DAT?) that I saw on a bumper sticker. I liked how neatly the letters in the phrase divided into a simple 3x3 matrix. This small construction (7.5x7.5x3) is made from builders foam, wall filler and enamel paint.(1996 ish)<br />
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A friend tells a story about his three year old, whose words were written on a boulder with grease pencil: "gwab dat". </div>
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Imagining this rock with text on it summarizes a dilemma of language for me; we try to get a handle on it and pocket it for our own use, but it's all too often unmanageable. </div>
Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-86546762038173875952016-07-13T12:21:00.001-07:002016-07-13T12:21:21.439-07:00More Echoes. (Second verse, sort of like the first).<div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">I like to listen for turns of phrase, vernacular utterances that hold place while expressing some kind of wisdom about the world. The first line of this piece was mentioned by a man I worked with in a woodshop in Dawson city (1994). He may have been referring to my inablilty to cut wood to consistent lengths, I can't remember, but as he said it, I jotted it down with a marker on a wood scrap (below) let it turn in my mind a couple of times...then once more to make a point.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUeloA745OYCh-d0bZnvUew0qMnwYGK7B9iJ1KeMHdze7H9BRH9NuSccpD0BHnl17DpiRr9HiHBCjFWhCxyZfRlwxMpQhdyBbwm0dM44avJgSjDKsSX6KGA8uxE3vdBA_shamlTyCqENZi/s640/blogger-image--1326058787.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUeloA745OYCh-d0bZnvUew0qMnwYGK7B9iJ1KeMHdze7H9BRH9NuSccpD0BHnl17DpiRr9HiHBCjFWhCxyZfRlwxMpQhdyBbwm0dM44avJgSjDKsSX6KGA8uxE3vdBA_shamlTyCqENZi/s640/blogger-image--1326058787.jpg"></a></div><div><br></div>It seems it occupied a place in mind for my friend Ian as well...here, years later the phrase echoes as title story in his recent collection of short stories. It really isn't the same, ever.<br><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxOyrG2BtMio_10KF93LFjVy8TAbyTggsgfKcbojwP4gnykVopOxTIeqmpo9MKpgPiZAIK6IBxyfvQYZr3zxF40wvrKYmZ6R-Md1nNgI2bN2jgC_BxlHV5vmHScdPQ_fVyrO2Y3zlM2aFH/s640/blogger-image--1700399796.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxOyrG2BtMio_10KF93LFjVy8TAbyTggsgfKcbojwP4gnykVopOxTIeqmpo9MKpgPiZAIK6IBxyfvQYZr3zxF40wvrKYmZ6R-Md1nNgI2bN2jgC_BxlHV5vmHScdPQ_fVyrO2Y3zlM2aFH/s640/blogger-image--1700399796.jpg"></a></div><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiw7JDNvVL2dFI77NA4K3KZvpJ2YjcPLIwOkiJTU0JZ_atwX-5vKk8NyMJ3zzbhQLqVSbHdyEAKY9a3oqCJhgOINpdXgxkTLM-bPlZgajC2UO0SFZM-o2JczOe2vJuRnS2k-nKtJO9xCk9/s640/blogger-image-1526307535.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiw7JDNvVL2dFI77NA4K3KZvpJ2YjcPLIwOkiJTU0JZ_atwX-5vKk8NyMJ3zzbhQLqVSbHdyEAKY9a3oqCJhgOINpdXgxkTLM-bPlZgajC2UO0SFZM-o2JczOe2vJuRnS2k-nKtJO9xCk9/s640/blogger-image-1526307535.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This poster (below) was in that woodshop as well. I recreated as a piece of art and it initiated a minor interest in symmetrical phrases; I keep finding and losing the name of this literary format. The structure of language has a meaning that is both connected to, and above and <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">beyond the meaning of the words that are used. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ-CLp29zv1x4IqdIl9ta137GVnYaY1RV_r47lqV4a6Y6eoxYtqaX5XgKlfAA-Xxj7dLg0nPLRp6JnOic3DKOBsln0aWT92MhjT8L5XeNdd2PTcH-itBsNKk4y-8xnoaGOcJ10k0QBRA0_/s640/blogger-image--1472914977.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ-CLp29zv1x4IqdIl9ta137GVnYaY1RV_r47lqV4a6Y6eoxYtqaX5XgKlfAA-Xxj7dLg0nPLRp6JnOic3DKOBsln0aWT92MhjT8L5XeNdd2PTcH-itBsNKk4y-8xnoaGOcJ10k0QBRA0_/s640/blogger-image--1472914977.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-30936199034360761862016-07-13T10:53:00.001-07:002016-07-13T10:53:02.594-07:00Echo of an ImageThis is an image that has been following me for over 15 years...I use it as a sort of trademark in the classroom and it continues to find new forms. It a has been variously a rubber stamp, drawing and painting. Sometimes I quickly draw a version to use on correspondence. <div>It has become an ageless, shorthand self-portrait.<div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJF5ny1w83VQXH4Gw8Huhl7MAgGCEvoEuomRBuL1JkEtMG4tsh5j9zlRZYn5i8yviGQ8Hgfng8UVKdgWWXEXxJvtXV1iYrIdae-dgaaQl4ADRWU-T_kcVuKCH6XdRjMgl9Qwrdg9VpXTRI/s640/blogger-image-169929049.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJF5ny1w83VQXH4Gw8Huhl7MAgGCEvoEuomRBuL1JkEtMG4tsh5j9zlRZYn5i8yviGQ8Hgfng8UVKdgWWXEXxJvtXV1iYrIdae-dgaaQl4ADRWU-T_kcVuKCH6XdRjMgl9Qwrdg9VpXTRI/s640/blogger-image-169929049.jpg"></a></div><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidfZTvY8TGkDkqgTks5z2GlJ8AeETNAvFZksP7qmgTrEVFBnwhrJHxNAR_c9KwO2gxuIfEt_7BfmVYTFzBAP1mENAgeU5ILsN_mbWM7s17DSeYjs92jTunQbgGLqsYv_R9m7E78CfdyvLd/s640/blogger-image--705942106.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidfZTvY8TGkDkqgTks5z2GlJ8AeETNAvFZksP7qmgTrEVFBnwhrJHxNAR_c9KwO2gxuIfEt_7BfmVYTFzBAP1mENAgeU5ILsN_mbWM7s17DSeYjs92jTunQbgGLqsYv_R9m7E78CfdyvLd/s640/blogger-image--705942106.jpg"></a></div></div></div></div>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-70241935071810979712016-03-11T16:28:00.001-08:002016-03-11T16:30:45.243-08:00LanguageI have been thinking, in a worried way, what it would (will eventually) be like to lose language. Here are two example of lost language; the first I have previously shared is a <i>Large Carved R </i>that has returned to the earth. The second, a book found, ironically in the middle of College Ave., titled <i>What Words Mean. </i>What are we left with?<div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHLWhzVu3DcbRPrWGh2jJV-x7YWy5kWu71cXCrxca6cJDfeA_e49bDuZmAus7_eExy7IV_a7D5E70-BMEHrGCDgLgL7ionisbb-MdjuiuZDaoDhPd2u3PmtKpA0nFeZ9iLozeiW87ndZXL/s640/blogger-image--1324469239.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHLWhzVu3DcbRPrWGh2jJV-x7YWy5kWu71cXCrxca6cJDfeA_e49bDuZmAus7_eExy7IV_a7D5E70-BMEHrGCDgLgL7ionisbb-MdjuiuZDaoDhPd2u3PmtKpA0nFeZ9iLozeiW87ndZXL/s640/blogger-image--1324469239.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8rubBCl2QZIZp9grEJ2pS4RSrlls3kPJx_Md2XAVckc5nQq5zb4tRSKRhyi9Wxr1ibvx7pPXaz8QVH56Z-pSs9byuy0-5x2fd-YVf1qxRnlAkdH33hQOWACIJOTfsCJ8tyDXf56WFVJvc/s640/blogger-image-182143763.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8rubBCl2QZIZp9grEJ2pS4RSrlls3kPJx_Md2XAVckc5nQq5zb4tRSKRhyi9Wxr1ibvx7pPXaz8QVH56Z-pSs9byuy0-5x2fd-YVf1qxRnlAkdH33hQOWACIJOTfsCJ8tyDXf56WFVJvc/s640/blogger-image-182143763.jpg"></a></div><br></div>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-1344258487767224962016-03-03T16:37:00.000-08:002016-03-03T16:37:06.009-08:00Data Base Links Here are a few links to art that would be (or has been) considered on the foward edge of inquiry.<br />
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<a href="http://radicalart.info/">http://radicalart.info/</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ubu.com/">http://www.ubu.com/</a><br />
<a href="http://we-make-money-not-art.com/">http://we-make-money-not-art.com/</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisAXtSXwNwGekdGyOB2A3TcFSHdCct6XUs45Kz2rShqXeqnE534j283kRfhfFZZZhqj_gWKcvKzr_xXoruHaDBHolUTOoIV42g9kxKZTxgSmJaSFp6CRs6zBon0bx8nE5e7W1y-SzxqPIO/s1600/IMG_8157.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisAXtSXwNwGekdGyOB2A3TcFSHdCct6XUs45Kz2rShqXeqnE534j283kRfhfFZZZhqj_gWKcvKzr_xXoruHaDBHolUTOoIV42g9kxKZTxgSmJaSFp6CRs6zBon0bx8nE5e7W1y-SzxqPIO/s320/IMG_8157.JPG" width="239" /></a></div>
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<br />Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-56682324828318889212016-03-03T16:18:00.001-08:002019-08-20T11:25:21.796-07:00Schwitters is my Atelierista<span style="font-size: small;">-from a couple of years ago. Still in Kindergarten, still looking to Schwitters.</span>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 200%;">By Aaron Senitt, 2014</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">The Original Merzbau</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC800zk9mX-7L9MBaEpj3mJYgCtwrt43-oFMHwPqzU3ftmQUaCLNb468kpNVzwMJd6BZc2iDzzRR2bgk7TexNrqcIe4S8dg-iwuBXQqvzAFW56hfQWO7gQ-KkOJEUseeXTXQjtyweXe84I/s1600/IMG_7957.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC800zk9mX-7L9MBaEpj3mJYgCtwrt43-oFMHwPqzU3ftmQUaCLNb468kpNVzwMJd6BZc2iDzzRR2bgk7TexNrqcIe4S8dg-iwuBXQqvzAFW56hfQWO7gQ-KkOJEUseeXTXQjtyweXe84I/s200/IMG_7957.JPG" width="149" /></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">In one popular account describing the activities of </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">artist<span style="color: #4f81bd;"> </span><span style="color: black;">Kurt Schwitters working in Hannover, Germany during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, he </span><span style="color: black;">used</span><span style="color: black;"> lines of string to connect the initial sculptural assemblages, grottoes and totems that </span><span style="color: black;">would</span><span style="color: black;"> become his first “Merzbau”. The story continues as Schwitters </span><span style="color: black;">replaced</span><span style="color: black;"> the string with wire, and then further </span><span style="color: black;">built</span><span style="color: black;"> upon the wire using plaster and wood to create a solid, organic, inhabitable form located within the house </span><span style="color: black;">he lived in</span><span style="color: black;">. From these initial forms grew his first Merzbau<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_edn1" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[i]</span></span></a>, a highly personal, sculptural space that was a central preoccupation for most of Schwitters’ career. </span>This story of artistic formation serves as an analogy as I draw my own<span style="color: black;"> strings between the work of Kurt Schwitters and work experienced in my Kindergarten classroom</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_edn2" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[ii]</span></span></span></a><span style="color: black;">. </span><span style="color: black;">Looking through the lens of artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), and in no small measure, the work of forebear Friedrich Froebel </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">(1782-1852)</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">, our Kindergarten classroom becomes a sort of Merzbau; a site for multiple modes of creation and a place for</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">those of us willing to see</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;"> the plasticity of boundaries between disciplines. The materials and activities in our classroom illustrate underlying concerns and priorities; the large cardboard structure that evolved around a sensory table in our classroom last year represents a concrete example of my enduring interests; it was provisional architecture for children playing and emerging as creative individuals. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Schwitters is viewed here as the absent pedagogue who shines light onto the artistic concerns of our classrooms; an “invisible atelierista”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_edn3" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[iii]</span></span></a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Mr. Merz </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt8_d4vQFCfi9Q_e6rI4B0B6cZ3ESQtHs99r-s7AYLv9j1y-_C4brGZnqNIusp9RdhrL7yRIbTNigC4R6Uq9eMYN5zK9tzY5kIvnWfdGOXBIP5TOcW7ifc192X1cepgr_tiRIijMYEatrO/s1600/Mr+Merz.PNG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt8_d4vQFCfi9Q_e6rI4B0B6cZ3ESQtHs99r-s7AYLv9j1y-_C4brGZnqNIusp9RdhrL7yRIbTNigC4R6Uq9eMYN5zK9tzY5kIvnWfdGOXBIP5TOcW7ifc192X1cepgr_tiRIijMYEatrO/s1600/Mr+Merz.PNG" /></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Kurt Schwitters</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;"> worked fluidly across the disciplines of sculpture, design, painting, collage, poetry, prose and performance. Schwitters named the sum total of his activities “Merz”, this invented term functioning as a flexible, phonemic signifier<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_edn4" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[iv]</span></span></a> for an artistic practice that was definitively open ended. In Schwitters’ own words, “Merz is consistency. Merz means creating relationships, preferably between all things in the world” (Luke, 2014. p.21). The Merzbau grew from Schwitters’ activities as a collage artist; he collected bits and pieces from the street and from his friends. He assembled these pieces within the picture frame, composing various bits of paper and wood as a whole into abstract compositions. His collage work was a direct forum to pursue his aesthetic preoccupations related to materials as well as pictorial space…how does the frame contain an image? Schwitters’ collage work evolved far beyond the picture frame into real space when he began working within his house on small totemic assemblages, covering them with plaster and expanding them across many rooms to form “a big sculpture, in which you could walk as in a cubist picture”. (Luke. p. 93 ). </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The Merzbau in Hannover was destroyed during Allied bombing in 1943 and v</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">arious descriptions of this lost treasure overlap to defy a precise account. How many rooms did it occupy exactly? Did Schwitters actually cut holes in the floors and ceilings to allow the sculpture to interpenetrate his house? Setting aside precise floor plans, there is enough documentation of the original Merzbau<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_edn5" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[v]</span></span></a> existing that we are able to sense the embodied vision of space that Schwitters created. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyXo9rioQUNr17058q5ewliMOBOZW1PXGfRC7a08iEoWJe4XPB3gXpeI-4aXt2Gm7mz_hgNqm-NuwHw4AwEcRylc0sFiFwhC8lilJScBbVLVa_kn8nlpO_-bMxw3988TnGR1xbXZbFgbce/s1600/IMG_8488.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyXo9rioQUNr17058q5ewliMOBOZW1PXGfRC7a08iEoWJe4XPB3gXpeI-4aXt2Gm7mz_hgNqm-NuwHw4AwEcRylc0sFiFwhC8lilJScBbVLVa_kn8nlpO_-bMxw3988TnGR1xbXZbFgbce/s200/IMG_8488.JPG" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Through the Merzbau, Schwitters sought to explore various relationships. He constructed architectural space bringing dynamic interplay between light, space, and materials, and between the artist and select visitors viewing it. Our approach to space in our classroom is fluid and constantly changing. We rearrange furniture and build provisional play spaces, limited only by the monthly visitations of the Health and Safety inspector, and our imagination. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Ernst Schwitters (Webster, 2007) describes how his father initiated his Merzbau with “…free-standing works [that] suddenly ‘grew’ together...” (p.9). In the past I have seen classrooms and hallways that I considered accidental “Merzbau”. Inadvertent detritus filled unused corners of school, taking over spaces with piles and shards of cardboard as evidence of creative ventures. But our Kindergarten Merzbau seemed different, it was central to our room and intentional, it evolved and grew, it was an activated and dynamic space. As the children’s activities grew more and more concentrated within and around the sensory table construction, alterations and additions were made in direct response to the observations made of children’s response to the space…”I think we need a wall here”, ”what will happen if we add a pipe to pour into here?” The sides were clad in cardboard to create small rooms and some decisions were made based upon safety (we’ll need a window here for visibility, another door at the end for flow).</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">A few children suggested alterations (“bigger, make it bigger!”). After two students rose to the challenge of drawing diagrams for an apparatus used for pouring wood pellets into, I reproduced their drawings of additions as faithfully as possible with plastic pipes and tape. As the children played within and around the growing construction, a true Kindergarten Merzbau<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_edn6" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[vi]</span></span></a> was formed. It was a space that was simultaneously interior and exterior; a building inside a building. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPNxpOHU3NPl5oLFBphqKdm7IpgQ4g6RsQs8SXn4V8jW7fludlVBQCc5ICe9noknpdqzNdBtR4-sgjOO8qrycD8fuJS49H1AbPyyVHglQ150jEyR1VrtwT-4p8RHy9ynNwRRG55SibGVnz/s1600/one+lays+pencil+and+paper+aside.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPNxpOHU3NPl5oLFBphqKdm7IpgQ4g6RsQs8SXn4V8jW7fludlVBQCc5ICe9noknpdqzNdBtR4-sgjOO8qrycD8fuJS49H1AbPyyVHglQ150jEyR1VrtwT-4p8RHy9ynNwRRG55SibGVnz/s200/one+lays+pencil+and+paper+aside.JPG" width="149" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Our classroom functions as a workshop. To accommodate as wide a range of interests as possible we stock standard Kindergarten art tools and materials such as paper, pipe cleaners, paint and paper but in addition we have tools such as hand drills, saws and hammers. We also stock materials less familiar to the Kindergarten room such as off-cuts of plumbing pipe, scraps of lumber, large sheets of cardboard and various cast away items. For connecting various pieces we make sure that we have effective materials such as plastic cable ties, construction grade tape, as well as nails and screws. Through our tools and materials it becomes “a place of trial building and development and thus of growth and change” (Malet, 1981, p.67). We work to maintain the essential balance necessary in Early Childhood Education between the expected routines and “…the anarchy of the workshop…” (Malet, p. 69). Wassili Luckhardt, a contemporary of Mies van der Rohe, encouraged architects of the day to put down their typical tools of the trade in order to find inspiration in the “accidental forms” that resulted from</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;"> more malleable hands-on materials such as clay. (Mindrup, 2008, p.35). </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Though it is a cliché to recall the Proustian<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_edn7" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[vii]</span></span></a> smell of a box freshly open crayons, there is truth to the notion that our deepest understanding of the world </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">is </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">sensual. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Schwitters initially used materials such as scraps of wood and paper as a specific rebuff to the orthodox materials of the day (such as oil paint, canvas and brush), materials that he saw to be freighted with cultural baggage. He eventually realized however that <u>all</u> materials hold certain values and the materials he had found and gathered like a magpie had rich sensual and associative qualities such as texture and smell. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">The Look and Feel of Kindergarten </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwW8q-OC0NX9QbmgJCgOegk6Qp7yIV9wwcCjnN1r8i_4B41YZ_mz5Myc8E8TS0MoBR4ElXiWQi7I0nfXhBCDf5-7bHTx8Y1K1ejhodGAb1wjsA2Q6cWuIN0_bC5D_fZa9gMp4WD-NcOE8H/s1600/the+look+and+feel+of+Kindergartene.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwW8q-OC0NX9QbmgJCgOegk6Qp7yIV9wwcCjnN1r8i_4B41YZ_mz5Myc8E8TS0MoBR4ElXiWQi7I0nfXhBCDf5-7bHTx8Y1K1ejhodGAb1wjsA2Q6cWuIN0_bC5D_fZa9gMp4WD-NcOE8H/s200/the+look+and+feel+of+Kindergartene.JPG" width="200" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Elementary schools have had a unique and enduring appearance; from the “school art” (Efland, 1976) that lines the walls to the colourful borders that frame the bulletin boards, our common notions of what elementary schools look like are still largely confirmed<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_edn8" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[viii]</span></span></a>. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Our kindergarten Merzbau was an accretion of spaces to play in, underneath and around (climbing on top was sadly discouraged). It was a sensory space, and a social space. Perplexing, but immediately engaging to visitors who entered our classroom; it did not follow the arrangements and appearances that configure many contemporary Kindergarten rooms.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;"> We built collaboratively, g</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">uided by Tom Bedard’s “dimensions for building in and around the sensory table” and “axioms for sensorimotor play”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_edn9" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[ix]</span></span></a>, our construction was quickly established as an ongoing centre for children in the classroom (it stood for approximately 2 months), layered and overlapped with various additions, alterations and eventually, children’s drawings. Our Merzbau’s strength of purpose and appropriateness was apparent in the interactions between students and the space, and amongst one another; social, emotional and physical needs of the children were met through playing and working in the room. While inadvertently a challenge to the prevailing aesthetic codes of primary school, it gave them a place to feel safe, negotiate with one another, and be </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">industrious - important values to foster in any classroom. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Schwitters’ Merzbau is largely seen as his “Gesamkunstwerk”, or total work of art; o</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">ur Merzbau was simultaneously an installation, performance and activity centre, a canvas for drawing, a provocation and a monument to remind us of the possibilities of the classroom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgiCJxxhYRYrADODUX7ZSjvBLE4hyFU8gMLfS8oeL0BVeNspvIyMeNSRNeXOyWG6Zcn6E1NSEUU70hw2UPOvuO2SGoCZUEaP82Sd88IPnF5lb3Wtpww0GOxK78EB5yfhuRQs_1FcKyWwAE/s1600/models+of+the+world.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgiCJxxhYRYrADODUX7ZSjvBLE4hyFU8gMLfS8oeL0BVeNspvIyMeNSRNeXOyWG6Zcn6E1NSEUU70hw2UPOvuO2SGoCZUEaP82Sd88IPnF5lb3Wtpww0GOxK78EB5yfhuRQs_1FcKyWwAE/s200/models+of+the+world.JPG" width="149" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Architects produce models for various purposes, models to instruct us, generative models that our imagination may inhabit, and models to replicate existing forms<span style="color: black;">. During this project we looked at a series of reproduced images of building models, primarily early Modernist architecture based on modular construction (Mindrup, 2008). These images encouraged rich discussion with students, and as they imagined themselves inhabiting the various structures it also clearly influenced some of their own exquisite creations. </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Schwitte</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">rs also made small sculptures, some of which have been</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;"> studied as though they were architectural models (Mindrup, 2008). But what was his intention? Clearly these constructions were not created as working models to be copied directly, nor were they precise models of buildings that already existed. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Schwitters indicated that the creation of these smaller constructions was a kind of childlike play, a “bauspiel” or building play</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">These smaller constructions suggest ways of work</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">ing and looking, and </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">I imagine Schwitters’ own experience in a Froebelian Kindergarten is revealed in some way through his work.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">As Kindergarten teachers, we model behaviour, we model language use, and we model skills to be developed. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Children create their own models of the world as <u>they</u> understand it, using the various modes of expression that are available to them. In the same way that children’s drawings and constructions are attractive for the economy of means that they use; (a handful of pencils becomes a castle, two circles eyes, and so on), models represent concepts that are larger both conceptually and physically. In effect the “model is a bridge from the imagination to the materially grown up form” (Mindrup, p. 48), and in this case, perhaps back again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinlDiOhYBBHtu4kC7D0V9fmUvFNcNi7nCtbfGfphs4BGPfBiW-y4ObE7dWkemlNjquPLTaf_xuXSpgmZ6UlTtgDY19XWAQLZqGf6t6tSsIddlFM_mlrviaMMmHtt3niQPLFozIWmSOYNJL/s1600/past+present.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinlDiOhYBBHtu4kC7D0V9fmUvFNcNi7nCtbfGfphs4BGPfBiW-y4ObE7dWkemlNjquPLTaf_xuXSpgmZ6UlTtgDY19XWAQLZqGf6t6tSsIddlFM_mlrviaMMmHtt3niQPLFozIWmSOYNJL/s200/past+present.JPG" width="149" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Norman Brosterman (1997) has notably outlined a revelatory connection between Kindergarten experiences of early 20th </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">century<span style="color: #4f81bd;"> </span><span style="color: black;">artists and architects, and the formation of modernist abstract practice. </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Gwendolen Webster (2007) reminds us that the work Schwitters was engaged with over the course of his life has remained pertinent for artists and historians. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">While our Merzbau was never conceived of as an exercise in teaching art history, it became a lesson that was implicit and embodied in experience. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">In retrospect, it would have been superb to ask our ever receptive three, four and five year olds to articulate words such as “Schwitters”, “Froebel” and “Merzbau”, and undoubtedly, the words would have acquired unforeseen meanings as they were filtered through those unique brains, however in this event I allowed the ideas that I found so captivating to remain as conceptual and material scaffold for Kindergarten play. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">I called it our</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;"> “setup”, and did not in fact bring the term Merzbau” to the children. Brosterman (1997) reminds us that “Kindergarten was play, and a good Kindergartener [teacher] made certain her little sprouts never thought otherwise-the theoretical underpinnings of the education were kept from children just as they are in any classroom situation.”. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">It is my feeling that a deeply reciprocal connection between contemporary Kindergarten practice and key examples of </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">visual art, language, sculpture and architecture</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;"> remains largely untapped (or perhaps undocumented). </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">I am working to redirect the luminosity of </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Schwitters’ </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">creative approaches forward into the visual and language arts of my Kindergarten classroom, while at the same time, hoping to extrapolate from that process a set of my own axioms that may be extended and applied toward the work of other artists. This work begins as always with questions: </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">What does it mean to “invite” Schwitters to our classroom as an “invisible atelierista”?</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">How exactly does the work of historical artistic predecessors (and contemporary artists alike) find footing in our classrooms? </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">The seed planted long ago in the first Kindergartens may provide a guiding example.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Froebel, Schwitters, Crystalline Metaphors</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">As a young scholar, Friedrich Froebel spent an extended period of time studying crystals, and found through his analysis of geometric forms an apt metaphor and model for growth in general. He was able to confirm that the minute inner structures within crystals are mirrored by the outside appearance of the same mineral forms that we see and hold. Froebel extended this concept of inner and outer unity to all living things, and his description of a unified relationship between “the parts and the whole” was instrumental as he developed the philosophies that became the first Kindergarten (Brosterman, 1997). I see wide implications for this notion of the “parts and the whole” applied within Kindergarten today ranging from art, language, mathematics and social relationships; the impressively broad artistic oeuvre of Kurt Schwitters offers a wellspring of material that I will continue to explore in future work. Schwitters’ Merzbau was a kind of crystal, an initial form that grew larger yet retained that original kernel of form as it acquired more and more faceted parts. Our own Merzbau followed the same trajectory as well, the sensory tables remaining the core form and function of our growing construction. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">I have found a viable model for thought and growth within the work of Schwitters; my own metaphor for a unified approach to Kindergarten.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_ednref" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Endnotes</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[i]</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;"> In all, there were three successive Merzbauten (pl) built over the course of Schwitters’ life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_ednref" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[ii]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> The “Kindergarten Merzbau” project is a project that I initiated, and then created collaboratively. It is important to note that my classroom is a working space with Junior and Senior Kindergarten children that I share with Cyndy Washington, an Early Childhood Educator I teach with, we are joined as well as throughout the year, by numerous others such as Educational Assistants, and high school and university students.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_ednref" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[iii]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> Atelierista. A teaching role at the core of the Italian Reggio Emilia approach, this is a position that extends the art teacher’s activities beyond supplying materials and demonstrating techniques. The Atelierista is a researcher with “sensitive antennae for contemporary issues” (Edwards, Gandini, & Foreman, 2012), bringing a unique perspective to school, while thoughtfully accompanying children and adults in the creative processes of learning together.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_ednref" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[iv]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Merzbau</i>: Merz “house” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Merzbauten</i>: plural of Merzbau; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Merzbild</i>: mixed media collage; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Merzarchitektur</i>: sculptural models for architecture; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Merzbühne</i>: Merz theatre; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Merzgebiete</i>: Merz “territories”; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Merz-Säule</i>: Merz column (see Luke 2014, index)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_ednref" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[v]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> While Schwitters created a successive Merzbau each time he was driven into exile first in Sweden, then in England, his original Merzbau is arguably the most significant not only on account of the degree of documentation that exists of it, but for its level of complexity and accomplishment. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_ednref" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[vi]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> I sometimes referred (tongue in cheek) to the construction as our “sensory overload” table.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_ednref" name="_edn7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[vii]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> The term, a “Proustian” recollection refers to author Marcel Proust (1871-1922) who described the childhood recollections brought on by the exquisite taste and smell of a small cake, a Madeleine. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_ednref" name="_edn8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[viii]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> Patricia Tarr (2001) aptly describes our vision of a typical elementary school classroom. To be fair, teachers who integrate a Reggio Emilia approach into their work, and those hoping to encourage an element of self regulation in children, have also made efforts to challenge prevalent notions of what a Kindergarten classroom might look like by reducing visual distractions and providing only what is seen as essential materials. I embrace this in principle fully, and in practice as much as I can bear though I still resist what I may unfairly refer to as “the yoga studio” aesthetic. Thus, we have “Kindergarten Merzbau”!</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.0pt;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3754760290194681706#_ednref" name="_edn9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[ix]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> Tom Bedard is an Early Childhood Educator who maintains a blog that is rich with observant documentation of children at play titled “Sand and Water Tables”, </span><a href="http://tomsensori.blogspot.ca/"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">http://tomsensori.blogspot.ca/</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">References</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;">Bedard, Tom. (2014). </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Dimensions for building in and around the sensory table”,“Axioms for</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">sensorimotor play”</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> Retrieved from </span><a href="http://tomsensori.blogspot.ca/"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">http://tomsensori.blogspot.ca/</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Brosterman, Norman. (1997). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inventing Kindergarten</i>. New York: Harry N. Abrams.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><span class="author" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">Edwards, Carolyn</span></span><span class="a-color-secondary" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">,</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;"> </span></span><span class="author" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">Gandini</span></span><span class="a-color-secondary" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">,</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;"> </span></span><span class="author" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">Lella, & Forman</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">,</span></span><span class="author" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;"> George </span></span><span class="a-color-secondary" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">(Eds.). (2012). </span></span><span class="a-size-large" style="font-size: x-small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">The Hundred Languages of <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation</span></i></span><span class="a-size-large" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Efland<span style="color: black;">, Arthur. (1976). “The School Art Style: A Functional Analysis,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Studies in Art</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Education</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">v</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">17</i>, n 2, 37-44.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small; line-height: 200%;">Gamard, Elizabeth Burns. (2000). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></i>New York: Princeton Architectural Press.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">Luke, Megan. (2014). </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kurt Schwitters: Space, I</span>mage, Exile. </i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Chicago<span style="color: black;">: University of Chicago <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Press.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Malet, Marian (1981). Hans Arp and the Aesthetics of the Workshop. In R. Sheppard (Ed.),<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Studies in Dada: Essays and </i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Documents </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">(pp.67-74). Driffield<span style="color: black;">: Hutton Press.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Mindrup, Matthew<span style="color: red;">.</span> (2008). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Assembling the Ineffable in Kurt Schwitters’ Architectural Models</i>.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></i>(Doctoral dissertation).<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>03252008-191510/ </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Richter, Hans. (1965). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dada: Art and Anti-Art. </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">New York: Harry N. Abrams.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Tarr, Patricia. (2001). “Aesthetic Codes in Early Childhood: What Art Educators Can Learn from<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Reggio Emilia,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Art Education, v 54</i>, n 3, 33-39.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">Webster, Gwendolen. (2007). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kurt Schwitters Merzbau. </i>(Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>http://www.academia.edu/2518110/Kurt_Schwitters_Merzbau </span></div>
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Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-51734853549635387032016-02-17T16:12:00.001-08:002016-02-17T16:56:31.153-08:00Math and ArtThese are our panels from today...a series of comic style panels go home almost everyday; they are quick and cumulative. This is a collaborative drawing based on a chapter from Gianni Rodari's tremendous book "The Grammar of Fantasy". In his chapter "The Mathematics of Stories", he talks about the relations between big and small, short and tall, thin and fat etc. It's a book that has been feeding me for years, and I'm very grateful storyteller Bob Barton for passing it along in a class I took with him.<div><br></div><div>Here is a big house and on the top floor is a little ghost with big hair, in his hair are little bugs and there is a little bird whispering in his ear. On the second floor there is a little person making a big noise. And on the bottom floor is a big table with a little person eating a big meal.<br><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz0PrMqciPL4FT-1jRpUkleS1XvozJ6RJYzfTrGkTwodoDghQQiQeMwAuxnnPxjYUm454WFdGgktvcr-TR40Hak9uTYS5yi8QLX-NPoSz_gdRc0nlwB5vmu80uswtBFPwHLrGybUhckFRv/s640/blogger-image-887782142.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz0PrMqciPL4FT-1jRpUkleS1XvozJ6RJYzfTrGkTwodoDghQQiQeMwAuxnnPxjYUm454WFdGgktvcr-TR40Hak9uTYS5yi8QLX-NPoSz_gdRc0nlwB5vmu80uswtBFPwHLrGybUhckFRv/s640/blogger-image-887782142.jpg"></a></div></div>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3754760290194681706.post-42430420594267973852016-02-15T13:39:00.001-08:002016-02-15T13:39:02.189-08:00Beginning a blog.<div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj70UpPMEz2jj1AYD0bLXQPnuYMpfnMCvDrSqFCt5-rMbEZ2vwiS5rHr0WJCVD2djfbMZkkKly87OTKHn57tduPvSYflgR4W9f1WlU23S8JaS3u0zJIlXi7qPq28NyMI0XWjUMvkyTVi7q8/s640/blogger-image--1096104090.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj70UpPMEz2jj1AYD0bLXQPnuYMpfnMCvDrSqFCt5-rMbEZ2vwiS5rHr0WJCVD2djfbMZkkKly87OTKHn57tduPvSYflgR4W9f1WlU23S8JaS3u0zJIlXi7qPq28NyMI0XWjUMvkyTVi7q8/s640/blogger-image--1096104090.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I begin with this image of the blog itself, the blog askew. It's not what I expected when I asked E.S.G., an apt friend to assist me with this blog...with wit he tweaked the image I had been working with, and at first I didn't like it. It didn't make sense because it lacked a presentation that was square to the viewer; the "window" was wrong. I've saved it though, as a preface for a blog, a reminder of perspectives from above, below and side. </div>Invisible Atelieristahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11726416920158040750noreply@blogger.com0