These portraits of each other, drawn in pairs during as our first session, took as their inspiration the dictum from Paul Klee: ‘A line is a dot that that went for a walk; a drawing is a line that went for walk.’ We put our pen on the paper and, once we had started, we could not go backwards, only forwards. In so doing, we reflected on what it means to begin to create: to gather the courage to begin to do something where there is no going back. And, in sharing our portraits with their subjects, we explored what it means to make a statement about the world and to submit ourselves to the judgement of others.
Deep Listening
In our second session, we investigated what it means to pay attention through an exercise in listening. Lying on the floor of the cavernous atrium of Marshgate, we stretched our bodies like resonating chambers, listening to the sounds of our bodies, listening to the sounds around us, listening to the sounds of the entire earth, revolving on its axis. Hearing, listening, making ourselves receptive to sounds that otherwise go unnoticed and unremarked upon. Listening to what Georg Eliot calls ‘the roar on the other side of silence’.