Clay Consciousness is a duet research of spacious listening (listener/maker) allowing for the ‘knowing on the inside’, that is so often tacit and inexpressible, to surface precisely in words, based on Gendlin's process philosophy. 

Clay Consciousness introduces clay as both medium and metaphor.

Clay serves as a somatic anchor—an earthly bridge—that supports the inward journey of Focusing. In handling clay, we engage not just with an artistic material but with a partner in dialogue. It’s a way in to the felt sense.  Clay becomes a responsive other, enabling a unique relational encounter where both the hands and the clay have a “voice.”

​

Clay Consciousness is the title we give to our artistic research. 

What this looks like practically is that we meet on Zoom, with clay in our hands.

 

Helga Arnalds is in Iceland,

Nicola Visser is in Denmark.

 

We each take a turn to focus. The clay takes a form. Ultimately it is like listening to the voice of the clay. There are two elements to the practice we hold dear, that:

1) it occurs together, in a spacious listening ‘conversation’ and

2) the research structure (Focusing) holds the diaphanous space of becoming. It is the vulnerable moment in which creation is seeding itself.

We proceed with this research to learn more about how our hands come to know what they know and thus, how we may help each other to listen to other intricate knowledge inherent in the whole of a situation.

 

​