Sensing the sensual
Toes (1998) - Lynda Beckett
Etymologically, the word ‘sensual’ connects with the ‘carnal, concerning the body’ (Online Etymology Dictionary) and is associated with the erotic. Nathalie Loveless’ interpretation of erotic speaks of ‘our loves, our intensive and extensive curiosities, attentive to what and whom we are driven to explore’ (2019, p. 27). This could be conceived as a move away from the carnal. Within my practice, affect and relation entangles with the physical and psychological; intensive and extensive curiosities evolve through and with materials, as we, the materials touch within a space.
If the sensual is touching, and a mode of knowing, and embedded within situated knowledges as a part of becoming, ‘what might become thinkable if knowledge weren’t so tied to an account of subject-driven agency?’ (Manning, 2016, p. x). Acknowledging the not knowing and engaging with the unthinkable through touching is to touch on the anarchy of experimentation, which is ‘at the heart of all process’ (ibid., p.38) from Manning's perspective. Experimenting and playing with the knots is integral to my knotting process as I consider, 'What else can artistic practice become when the object is not the goal, but the activator, the conduit toward new modes of existence?’ (Manning, 2006, p. 46).
As I touch and play with the knot, its topology unravels and it morphs before me. Through the process of (k)not knowing, I make, think, and write. My physical knotting process developed from techniques passed down by the women in my family, and the use of similar rudimentary knots remains pivotal within my practice. I cannot read a knitting pattern and therefore am not controlled by a set of instructions. This lack of control and seemingly chaotic method, enables different materials to reveal their flexibility within a form.
Entangling Barad, Haraway, Braidotti and Manning, while writing about knowing and (k)not knowing, draws together different threads from physics, new materialism and the environment to form a zoe/geo/techno assemblage (Braidotti, 2022). A re-defining, reforming, and recreation of the knot as threads of the sensual, conceptual, and socio-political, develops a space where difference matters and materialises and acknowledges the equal agency of materials (Barad, 2007). The nuances of the knot are multifaceted. Before I explore the knot, I must first consider the fold, as my inquiry is building upon Deleuze’s book, The Fold (1993).