I’m a teacher foremost and an artist second. Teaching is the primary craft to which I dedicate my time. My practice and commitment to education and mentorship stem from my experience with mental health, investigation of identity, fascination with posthumanist theory, and love for water. Mirroring my classroom’s playful processes, my studio practice attempts to locate space, objects, and time for toying with and maneuvering within governance systems through video, sound, spatial installations, and collage.
Website: https://www.catierogers.work/
Project:
Água mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que fura (Soft water on hard stone hits until it bores a hole), a Brazilian proverb, versions of which are found across cultures and are deeply influential to my pedagogical and studio practice. I've always had a strong love for water, the ways in which I examined its properties, and my changing relationship to this element. To some degree, I find that, perhaps, this proverb is parallel to human love. Like water—constantly flowing and transient— love is capable of eventually dissolving stone. In this instance, the highlighted poetic and energetic interconnections that water allows us to imagine, between living and nonliving matter, is what I find most fascinating about the substance of tiny particles that collapse under pressure. Additionally, within the site of this particular interconnection, there is a critique: where if water dissolves stone then it must also contribute to the body’s decomposition, and, ultimately, the liquefaction of flesh, therefore blurring the line where living matter begins and ends. In away, this speculation infers that water’s properties are similar to what Rosi Braidotti calls Zoe, a relentless force.
Through video, installation, collage, and various collection processes I plan to investigate underneath, above and within the site of interconnectedness between living and nonliving matter. By toying with the living and nonliving perspectives of bodies of water, water and bodies, field recordings from specific locations around the North East of the United States, videos, and found objects will accumulate and be analyzed. I predict that my findings from this investigation will result in the creation of a modeled landscape of the particular sites and moments of interconnection.
Ultimately, I hope my playful efforts will create a visual description of interconnectedness and lead to a wider perspective of the current geological moment and display likeness between the living and nonliving. In addition, this project will contribute to my expanding library of underwater videos and water-related sounds.