arm effort

Megan May Daalder. "Mirrorbox"

An arm effort is the effort we put toward empathy; "our ability to understand or share feelings of another."

This is the kind of effort that reaches out and binds us together as humans. We expend a lot, perhaps most, of our energy interacting with other people. We humans are not marmots and our experience of each other is complex. You have a reaction, however minute, to the people around you. As we get older these feelings become simultaneously more complex and more simple building on how the events of our life affect our perception of the world. We feel very strongly about each other.

*skip to 11:00 there's a lot of introductions

Enter mirror neurons. Some scientists posit that our brain patterns empathy at a very young age, and not necessarily because of some saint of a mother. When we first reach for something we also see ourselves reach for the thing and see our saintly mother reaching for things, thereby developing a connection between sight and action. The same goes for sound and sensation. Research shows that many of the same neurons fire when we see an action or the expression of an emotion, as when we do the action or have the emotion ourselves. This seemingly simple correlation implies that by witnessing something we partially register ourselves doing that same thing aka we empathize.

 An arm effort expresses itself in many ways. John Brown, a white man, reeked havoc over white plantation owners because he empathized so strongly with the slaves. Other people pick up hitchhikers. While closely linked with representation the idea of empathy has been at the root of art making for centuries. In a contemporary sense artists approach empathy creation in a variety of ways. Parts of Miguel Gutierrez "Everyone" does this as directly as possible. In the section of video below performers create a group euphoria which infects the space and anyone in it (I saw it, it worked). Another approach is to create the situation for the viewer to place themselves inside of. The artist thereby creates an invitation for empathy. Such as with Heather Karvas, who in her work “The Green Surround” utilizes mass unison, and repetition to create tableaus with which we viscerally empathize.

Regardless of it's expression arm efforts are woven throughout each and every day that we see another person. We choose to act on them outright or not but regardless they minutely underly much of our cognitive mapping.


Miguel Gutierrez. "Everyone"

Jerome Bel. "Veronique Doisneau"

a bed I emphatically built for Jessica Green

Olafur Elliason. The Weather Project. (2003)

next up: the mighty chest effort. I think the modern world needs a lot more chest effort. This is the kind of work that is inspired by a pure awe of the world around us, be that awe of the vast expanses, light refraction, or the growth of trees. We are fascinated by and should be reverent of that which we don't control. The most astounding occurrences have nothing to do with humans (look at what goes on in the bottom of the ocean). A good chest effort starts from a curiosity to see more of this. Work made in this way harnesses the elements encountered in the search to see, and becomes a hieghtened experience of them. It elevates and opens one to see the minutia and the magnificence in what exists, at the same time it's innately humbling. There is nothing behind it but the subject itself. They are a monument to the unnoticed. To me this type of effort translates to a visceral expansion in the chest, perhaps it's just more air is being taken into the lungs.

James Turrell. Wolfsburg Project. (2009)

Ken Unsworth. Suspended Stone Circle (1974-78)

Guiseppe Penone. Matrice di Linfa. (2008)

Asher Woodworth. Tatsuya Nakatani. (Sept. 4 2011)

bridge to nowhere

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I wanted to start this blog 'effert' off by thinking about the different ways that we exert our effort in this world; how we move within ourselves, communities and beyond. I'm thinking of the 'ways', 'manners', or 'lenses' that we operate in and from. There might be several categories, but one of the first that came to mind we'll call 'hand effort'. 

This is something that doesn't come to me often, but I want to cultivate more of it. Hand effort is the feeling of direct and singular focus. In some ways it's detached, when working in this there are few if any connections of the task to external thoughts, strong emotions, and lofty idea's. It's methodical.

 In the end it often creates moments or spaces of contemplation. You can settle into it because it's not actively trying to scream something at you or you're not trying to actively imbue the creation with meaning, you can kind of settle into it. It's specific, the singularity of the task makes it simply and inherently articulate. Often this involves repetition, think knitting, matching socks, cutting through chicken wire. Task meditations. 

hand effort

I'll leave you with a video of William Forsythe hand effort master.

*Piper Shepard. Pattern Pinning.