Angela Rogers
December 2008
Drawing the Spaces Between Us: Visual Encounters with Strangers
What might we discover by drawing the spaces between us? I want to address this question by exploring the potential of dialogic drawing through the Drawing Encounter (an encounter using drawing rather than speech). In a procedure similar to casual conversation i.e. a familiar one-to-one, face-to-face, turn-taking experience, the Drawing Encounter uses collaborative drawing as a means to facilitate a connection between two strangers and elicit tacit aspects of one-to-one social interaction.
I have been surprised at how willing strangers have been to draw with me and curious about the variety of descriptions they have used to describe the experience. These include a struggle, sparring, cheeky banter, a playful attempt to communicate and meditation. It seems that this method of collaborative drawing creates a novel space for play and exploration where the improvisation of the rules of engagement and the negotiation of shared territory are made visible. To put it another way, the drawing becomes an arena for mutual reflection and collaborative creation. In the presentation I will relate particular Drawing Encounters and participant commentaries to Bohm’s idea of impersonal fellowship, a sense of warmth and connection without any personal details or history and Buber’s notion of the between as a place where anything new in the world is created. My experience of drawing with strangers suggests that using visual analogy to show what we can do in the spaces between us, could help us address topical issues about the nature of communities, by helping us imagine ways to remain individuals yet still feel connected.
CV
As an artist, educator and researcher Angela Rogers uses drawing to ask questions, make sense of experiences and understand the connections between things. This means that sometimes drawings are exhibited, sometimes they play a role in developing research proposals, sometimes they trigger a dialogue in public and sometimes they generate a learning experience. Her recent drawing activities include, ‘Works on Paper’, Gallery Fifty Three, London (2008) and ‘Picturing Knowledge’, Hartley Library, Southampton (2006), artist in residence at the Computers and Learning conference in Brighton (2009) and at the Art of Management and Organisation conference in Krakow (2006) and researcher in residence at the Centre for Drawing at Wimbledon College of Art (2006). She will be presenting new collaborative digital work at the Creativity and Cognition conference in Berkley, California in October 2009. Angela has recently finished her PhD, developing the Drawing Encounter, at the London College of Communication (formerly Printing), University of the Arts London. She is currently a research fellow at the Creativity Centre, University of Brighton and teaches there on the BSc in Product Design.
Drawing the Spaces Between Us: Visual Encounters with Strangers
What might we discover by drawing the spaces between us? I want to address this question by exploring the potential of dialogic drawing through the Drawing Encounter (an encounter using drawing rather than speech). In a procedure similar to casual conversation i.e. a familiar one-to-one, face-to-face, turn-taking experience, the Drawing Encounter uses collaborative drawing as a means to facilitate a connection between two strangers and elicit tacit aspects of one-to-one social interaction.
I have been surprised at how willing strangers have been to draw with me and curious about the variety of descriptions they have used to describe the experience. These include a struggle, sparring, cheeky banter, a playful attempt to communicate and meditation. It seems that this method of collaborative drawing creates a novel space for play and exploration where the improvisation of the rules of engagement and the negotiation of shared territory are made visible. To put it another way, the drawing becomes an arena for mutual reflection and collaborative creation. In the presentation I will relate particular Drawing Encounters and participant commentaries to Bohm’s idea of impersonal fellowship, a sense of warmth and connection without any personal details or history and Buber’s notion of the between as a place where anything new in the world is created. My experience of drawing with strangers suggests that using visual analogy to show what we can do in the spaces between us, could help us address topical issues about the nature of communities, by helping us imagine ways to remain individuals yet still feel connected.
CV
As an artist, educator and researcher Angela Rogers uses drawing to ask questions, make sense of experiences and understand the connections between things. This means that sometimes drawings are exhibited, sometimes they play a role in developing research proposals, sometimes they trigger a dialogue in public and sometimes they generate a learning experience. Her recent drawing activities include, ‘Works on Paper’, Gallery Fifty Three, London (2008) and ‘Picturing Knowledge’, Hartley Library, Southampton (2006), artist in residence at the Computers and Learning conference in Brighton (2009) and at the Art of Management and Organisation conference in Krakow (2006) and researcher in residence at the Centre for Drawing at Wimbledon College of Art (2006). She will be presenting new collaborative digital work at the Creativity and Cognition conference in Berkley, California in October 2009. Angela has recently finished her PhD, developing the Drawing Encounter, at the London College of Communication (formerly Printing), University of the Arts London. She is currently a research fellow at the Creativity Centre, University of Brighton and teaches there on the BSc in Product Design.
