What’s so funny about tearing?

After I’ve practically spent three months in a “kindergarten” (as we in Norway call any early childhood education setting) where I was observing young students and interacting with them in visual arts contexts, I am just about to start analyzing the video material. For the start I was watching the films to get a feeling of “distance” - since I was myself both a teacher and a researcher: an A/R/Tographer (form Rita Irwin’s A/R/Tography – where roles of Artist, Researcher and Teacher merge).

Another reason for jumping through the videos was to look for the parts I could show my colleagues. Professor Liora Bresler suggested once that my colleagues could help me to see the video material in new ways – each of them, with her unique personality and competence, would see other things that I would be able to see. I invited my dear colleagues, teachers of language, pedagogy, social science and drama, to help, and was happy to get 11 (out of 12) positive responses!

Professor Gunvor Løkken suggested that I should make a selection of videos I wanted to share, and here I am: seeing the video material in different way just by knowing that someone else will watch it. Struggling not to choose only the most interesting and less embarrassing parts to show my colleagues, I feel how important trust is for successful collaboration.

I have chosen to show them the part where two three-year-old girls were experimenting with different textiles, trying to find out which of them could be torn. And for some strange reason tearing was so funny! Was it the sound, or the strange tickling in the fingers that held the fabric? Or something completely else? I am not allowed to show you the video – but here is another young person who finds tearing at least as enjoyable. I’ve seen it on a friend’s blog sometimes in October (see it on YouTube)– little did I know by then that just a week later “my children” would laugh too! What’s so funny about tearing?

Irwin, R. L. (2004). A/r/tography: A Metonymic Métissage. In R. L. Irwin & A. de Cosson (Eds.), a/r/tography. Rendering Self Through Arts-Based Living Inquiry (pp. 27-38). Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press.

White, white – with all its shades

These days everything seems white around me. Cold and white. When there is no wind the glazed trees are still as frozen, the time also stops and I can use all the time I need to absorb the silence and harmony, and pay attention to details.

Then I then see is that White is not the only child ms. cold and mr. winter, but has many brothers an sisters. Some of them are dressed up in fluffy textures. Others have tiny shades of blue, pink or violet – dependent on the temporary mood of the sun or the moon.

It is the apparent absence of contrasts that makes me curious. When some things seem the same at first sight, I get surprised when I discover the diversity of qualities between them. Differences are often so small that I can not match them with such small words, but have to describe them with long sentences – IF I had to describe them to someone I would probably have to sharpen both my language and attention.

This is why I love playing with harmony and contrasts when I choose visual art materials (or inspiration material) for my students, whichever age they are (3 or 43). Here is the collection of 11 balls in approximately same size, made of yarn in different qualities and origin. How different where they actually? Two 5-year-old boys found out that some of the balls ripped off the floor when they let them fall – others didn’t. Some of yarn would make a nice ice bear - others wouldn’t. The yarn balls were not so same after all.

How the boys made meaning of the yarn balls, and what they chose to knit of the yarn, is still to be analysed form the empirical material form my Sculpturing Words study. Wait and see which meaning I will make out of the boys meaning making…