Gardner & Gardner introduce their ‘Faculty of Taking Notice’
‘An understanding of neighbourhoods must include observation and curiosity about everyday human life as it unfolds in space.’ 1
While investigating the idea of campus as neighbourhood we came upon the above quote. This led us to look up the dictionary definition of the word observation – ‘noticing or being noticed, perception, faculty of taking notice’. Immediately we knew, that in the last of these definitions, we had found the title and the overarching concept for our residency. The ‘Faculty of Taking Notice’, would observe, explore, research and encourage around the narrative of campus as neighbourhood, to take notice of everyday human life and how it unfolds on campus.
The residency is a wonderful opportunity for us to develop aspects of our art practice. For us, listening is a core value and the ‘Faculty of Taking Notice’ will enable us to develop our attentiveness and explore this within the methodologies of relational art and relational aesthetics. ‘In relational art, rather than the artwork being an encounter between the viewer and an object, relational art produces encounters between people, and through these encounters meaning is elaborated.’2 Over the course of the academic year the Faculty will offer a series of interventions, with the intention of modelling and encouraging the practice of taking notice.
Our work is created through a slow process of consideration and distillation. Each element of an intervention is considered through a number of filters, giving time to fully explore concept, site, medium, engagement and duration. Our site is the campus, in which the landscape, the buildings and the institution give shape to the staff, students and visitors’ everyday experience, creating a multi-layered, polymorphic, polyphonic neighbourhood.
Our year as Artists in Residence began on the 5th of September with the formal launch of the ‘Faculty of Taking Notice’ at our first Faculty Assembly, held in the Crush Hall. It was a pleasure to welcome members of staff and to introduce the concept and intention behind our fictitious, temporary faculty. After the unveiling of the ‘Faculty of Taking Notice’ board, we handed out Faculty badges, and in doing so welcomed our first Faculty members. The Assembly was a great opportunity to start conversations about possible collaborations over the next academic year.
The first creative act of the ‘Faculty of Taking Notice’, was made on the 12th of September and titled ‘From A to B’. Having borrowed two trundle wheels from the University Grounds Department, we carefully cleaned them. They retained traces of paint from their normal use, marking out the University’s sports fields and one still had a loud squeak during each rotation.
At 9.30am we left the Pathfoot Building, Peter wearing the ‘Faculty of Taking Notice’ board on his back. From then until 5pm we walked the campus with the trundle wheels, measuring the distance between places, both exterior and interior routes. At every departure point we set the counters to zero and on arrival at every destination, we recorded the measurement in metres and the compass bearing angle of direction between the two places. We covered as much of the campus as we could and along the way we were able to add more and more members to the Faculty as we handed out Faculty badges.
‘From A to B’ was a way of exploring the neighbourhood, of taking notice of the spaces between destinations. Walking with the trundle wheels meant that we had to walk slowly, weaving carefully between the stacks in the Library and groups of people in crowded areas, like the Atrium in Campus Central. The wheels made us more aware of the ground or floor we were walking on, the texture, colour and the sound the wheels made as they crossed these different terrains.
Wearing the board and walking with the wheels was intentionally performative. It was both slightly comedic and whimsical, which generated curiosity, laughter, questions and conversation with many of the folk we met, as they took notice of the ‘Faculty of Taking Notice’.
- (1) Christian Pagh & Thomas Cook – Mission Neighbourhood (Re)forming Communities 2023, quoted in www.KoozArch.com on 5 April 2024
- (2) Nicolas Bourriaud – Relational Aesthetics 1998
