An Inventory of Shimmers explores affective space. Affect is described as arising ‘in the midst of in-between-ness’[1], and understandings of affective experiences move variously, beyond known and marked emotions, entering difficult to describe and atmospheric bodies of feeling. Affect is ‘something both animated and inhabitable’ [2]; that is, it is vital, lively and encompassing. It works ‘not through “meanings” per se, but rather through bodies, dreams, dramas and social worlding of all kinds.’ The significance of affects lie ‘in the intensities they build and in what thoughts and feelings they make possible.’ [3]

Thinking with affect as interactive, emergent, social and situational, draws me to examine the immaterial, as well as the material, dimensions of my theoretical and photographic practices as they intertwine to make new atmospheric spaces possible. An Inventory of Shimmers marks the emergence of an in-between-ness wherein my ongoing interest in the non-representational and affective qualities of the photographic form, coincide with a methodological turn in my research that focuses on decolonisation and unlearning, and that utilises the fold as a mode for problematising the often-prioritised, flat, fixed, surface value of the representational photographic image. The fold is a practical technique then, which is an experimental model for decolonising and unlearning the photographic document, as well as singular ways of seeing and knowing.

Visually, the project explores dreams, dramas and everyday worlds: the surfaces of paintings, floors, lightbulbs, sweet wrappers, vases, caravans, bedding, dust, and through their photographic and conceptual  manipulation, become a study of affective space; a collection of virtual moments, movements and memories. I cut, fold, move and unfix images, I make images of images, I develop ways to think otherwise about the possibility of the photograph. Simultaneously, An Inventory of Shimmers is generative and destructive; shifting, moving, unflattening and complicating how we might know minute and personal social worlds as well as the ways in which photography can represent them.

1. Gregg, M and Seigworth, G. (2010) The Affect Theory Reader. DUKE.
2. Berlant, L. and Stewart, K. (2019). The Hundreds. Duke University Press.
3. Stewart, K. (2007) Ordinary Affects. DUKE.