My interests, as an artist, educator and researcher are related to the different possibilities to approach materials through bodily /embodied experiences, as well as students’ shared experience of materials and creative processes.

The starting point of this proposal is a performative approach to wool felting with a group of international students in Norway.

Felt is the oldest form of fabric known to humankind[1]. Felt is a non-woven fabric made primarily out of animal fibres, by turning animal hair, usually wool, into felt. The wool is washed, carded, and pulled to loosen the fibres, which are then arranged and overlaid. Water and soap are applied to open up the fibres. Then, by means of steps including manual compression, rubbing, squeezing, palming, and rolling, the loosened fibres are densely entangled and bound together into a coherent and stable flat form. Wet felting generates collaborative experiences, involves a great deal of physical manipulation and lends itself to group participation.

Experience is a central and crucial moment in the visual arts subject at school (Dewey 1987), and materials can provide a vital impulse to undertake a creative process (Ross, 1978).

Oftedal (2012) writes that art as aesthetic experience can be approached from the texts of the philosophers Jacques Ransières and John Dewey. Both Rancière and Dewey point out that the aesthetic experience is about inner activity that is both creative and critical (Oftedal, 2012).

In English, as well as in French, the word experience means both experience and experiment. Experimentation is to try out new processes, methods, techniques and combinations, 'Without aim or end' (Deleuze & Guattari 1983, p. 371, here in Adrian Parr, 2010, p. 93).

The notion of intra-action introduced by Barad (2003), in contrast with the more usual term interaction which suppose the prior existence of independent entities, emphasizes the relationship emerging within the relationship, not prior and/or independently from it (Barad 2003, p. 815). “In other words, relata do not preexist relations; rather, relata within- phenomena emerge through specific intra-actions” (ibid.). I deem the notion of intra-action relevant here in connection to performance and experience. It underlines the idea of action and experience as unique moments of discovery.

An important aspect of this project is to address the artist-teacher potentials to invite students into a performative approach to the visual arts subject, when experiencing with wool felting. Subsequently I address two research questions related to artistic practices, and didactical practices in the visual arts subject.

1) How can artistic practice be used to create an intra-active teaching practice in the visual arts subject?

2) What experiences and experiments can students get through a performative approach to wool felting in visual arts subject?

[1] Source: http://www.torbandreiner.com/felt-history-general

My methodological approach is rooted in the aim of the project and the two research questions. The aim of the project is to expand a didactical practice through a performative approach focusing on experimentation and intra-action with wool felting in teacher training. The two research questions are: 1) How can artistic practice be used to create an intra-active teaching practice in the visual arts subject? 2) What experiences and experiments can students get through a performative approach to wool felting in visual arts subject? The methodological approach is inspired by arts-based research, as this project is practice leaded. I use a/r/tography approach with autoethnographic narration from the classroom describing a teaching session with international students in a Norwegian University campus. I describe the entangled intra-action between the material, the students and the other components that create the phenomenon of felting wool.

In the context of a performative approach to wool felting, students express a feeling of affective togetherness stimulated by the way they intra-act when engaging bodily with the material, the space and with each other, in an open-ended, creative way. Those students come from different countries and thus form a group of foreigners in a country that is not their homeland. It seems that this group of adult students become even more united as the material they use becomes simultaneously consolidated during the felting process. Working physically with a material that transform itself under the join gestures form each other’s movements and manipulation is almost like a metaphor of the metamorphosis that the group undergoes. The labour needed to transform loosen wool fibres is in this case a non-predetermined product outcome. It is a process that allow a sort of dialogue with the material, which in return affects the participants and give them a feeling of togetherness. This is an interesting way to re-discover a well-known material as wool is, and to re-discover oneself while co-making with others.

Barad, Karen (2003) Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. In Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 801-831. Dewey, John (1987). Art as Experience. Perigee Books. Parr, Adrian (2010) The Deleuze dictionary. Edinburg University Press. Ross, Malcolm (1978). The creative arts. London: Heineman Educational Books. I Norske senter for barneforskning. Barn nr. 3 20013: 25-38. ISNN 0800-1669 Oftedal, Kristin Helene (2012). Den kulturelle skolesekken: Passiv tilstedeværelse eller aktiv danning? Nordic Journal of Art and Research, 1(2). Retrieved on January 2021: http://dx.doi.org/10.7577/information.v1i2.21 Springgay, Stephanie, Irwin Rita, L. and Kind, Sylvia Wilson (2005). A/r/tography as Living Inquiry Through Art and Text. In Sage journals. Volume: 11 issue: 6, page(s): 897-912 Issue published: December 1, 2005.