Video Tutorial #5 On being part of the frame: Dwelling

In the last Video Tutorial #4, we already dealt with moving through and with the framework – the framework meaning a common way of looking at the world as a territory that human action is placed in. I quoted Bruno Latour in saying that the framework now “participates in that action. […] Space has become an agitated history in which we are participants […].” (“Down to Earth”).

In Video-Tutorial #5, titled “On being part of the frame: Dwelling” we want to explore anew this idea that in the Terrestrial, there is no distinction between the frame and our action. As much as the frame takes part in the action, we are part of the frame. Another word that can be used to describe this perspective is dwelling: to take into account a multiplicity of actors which are co-producing the world rather than categorizing “organisms on the one side and an environment on the other” (“Down to Earth”).

How can we practice this? How to move from looking at the environment as if we would look through a frame to dwelling as part of this frame?

Is it about getting closer? Latour makes clear that “one cannot pass through a series of interlocking scales, as in the illusory impression of zooming that we can get from Google Earth” (“Down to Earth”). How to grasp this parallelism of our own being and the being as part of something, and within this parallelism the co-production of the world?

Let’s practice to dwell by attending to our body and looking at the space around us as if they would be scenes or frames. Let’s play with the idea that we can step in and out of those frames, and notice the changes that manifest in our perception.

With special thanks to Marlon for support in installation and to the