nonclosure
Everyday at my workbench I’m testing a theory. It’s usually one I’m not aware I have. One formed subconsciously.
I don’t know what I’m after. What I’m revealing. Or, what I’m intent on finding, if anything.
I play with the variables. I document the happenings. And, every day I learn something without concretely establishing anything.
Some discoveries revel in, rather than resolve, the mystery.
“Exploration doesn’t need to culminate in bullet-pointed certainty”, Katherine Morgan Schafler says. “It’s okay to hold something for a long time, look at it, turn it over, feel it, look up and say, ‘I don’t know’”.
Sometimes it’s the unknown, the unknowing, and the unknowability, that has the most to teach us.
Sometimes the most important considerations remain in ambiguity.
“It’s okay to not have closure”, Schafler says. And, of all the lessons I learn at my workbench, after I put my tools away, and I prepare to start the day, this is the one I try to take with me.
P.S. ICAD Day 37-39
This is really good stuff here! It made me think about how in my own practice how often the act of making becomes a kind of ritual in uncertainty. I love how you position ambiguity. Not like there’s an absence to fill, but as a presence to sit with.
Im curious though. Do you think the absence of resolution ever starts to feel like its own kind of clarity? Like maybe the not knowing becomes a kind of answer, just in a different language we haven’t fully learned?
Again, really well done. Your work is great and thoughtful. Keep it up!
Strike that. All of it!