Thesis

I Want You to Climb With Me explores parallels between the physical, mental and human processes of art making and climbing by drawing on personal experience and references from various fields in society, science, literature and art. The text aims at opening up both art making and climbing to the reader as something that is to be shared and yet not communicated without detours and failure: embodied knowledge and the very action of making sense are complex, site-bound and contextual and hence require an active and continuous positioning.

I Want You to Climb With Me first introduces the author’s psychic and sensual understanding, handling of and relationship to matter as a daily endeavour, bridging climbing and art making as a mode for learning. It discusses how the very act of moving and touching can turn into a meaningful experience for oneself and others.

The notion of movement in regard to questions of performativity and relativity is then explored by presenting a personal encounter with Dóra Maurer’s work at Tate London in 2020. Miwon Kwon’s discourse of site-specificity finally opens up the author’s own art practice to an active engagement with ‘site’, considering it as a place of encounter and interaction. Distinct ‘traits’ form the specific personality of a space, they shape and are shaped by those who engage with it. The conclusions found by investigating ‘site-specificity’ are used in the text to deconstruct male and dialectic metaphors and clichés drawn from mountaineering. This opens up the author's perspective on making art to a broader field of daily life and visual art.


MA Sculpture, RCA. London, 2021 


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Franziska Windolf