Souvenirs of the senses

Purpose
Our collaborative team proposes to use the idea of suturing—of materials, spaces, words, objects and environments to memories, dreams, associations, sensations and impulses—in order to arrive at the synapse or juncture of new formations. These new formations will be inspired by the souvenirs or found objects sourced in diverse international places (Qatar and the Volcanic Plains of Western Victoria, Australia), from deserts, cities, towns, crossroads, volcanic landscapes and water sites. We aim to activate “made in Qatar” as international sensorium.

Background
Places are woven into the fabric of other places through the inward and outward flows of the senses in travellers in the dispositions and practices of their “foreign-travelling” and “home-again” bodies. We bring souvenirs home to retain something of what our senses created in a foreign place so souvenirs may exist anywhere along a spectrum between saintly relics and kitsch. Historically, souvenirs have also included stolen or forcibly obtained items (like ancestral skulls), or objects made at seminal dates and places (like pieces of the fallen Berlin Wall).

Description
Drawing upon the many cultural and creative connotations of the term “souvenir”, we intend to create a series of 3D written-upon products (hybrid-composite objects of “dimensionalised” writing), chosen for their connections to persons and place, in order to investigate how international places can be made, un-made or re-made through the complex activities of the bodily senses. Through academic and exegetical writing, we will also reflect upon these “makings” in the context of “made in Qatar”. The workshop is intended to focus active production, either by individuals informed by the ideas and processes of the workshop or by collaborative groups within the workshop. Each workshop will conclude with one or more collaboratively produced “makings” for dissemination during the Tasmeem conference. To make our work truly international in dissemination, we also propose to transmit simultaneously, via video link, into the arts hub at Deakin University’s main Melbourne campus, the Phoenix Gallery, as a further experiment in the travelling senses.

Comments
Different places create different presentations of the senses, from which hybrid composites may emerge. Travellers are prompted by fresh capacities of their sensory being wherever they disembark, which may surprise other persons with practices of the senses souvenired, re-membered or imprinted from elsewhere. Like words, souvenirs suture times and places: “made in Qatar” comes alive as a sensorium woven from international modes of place-making.