The Evolution of the Program

Naked Space is the title of a Visual Sociology Exhibition we offer now each semester. The exhibits, which include photography, art, sculpture, performance, dance, music, according to the talents and energies afforded by students, focus on the non-verbal expression of reactions to social, political, philosophical issues addressed over the course of the semester. Theoretically, we focus on answerability and illocutionary understanding of the Other. And we conceptually link each exhibit to that theoretical background through ongoing discussions in the gallery, as well as through brochures that accompany each exhibit. We are evolving our production to the point where this semester we hope to have schedules so visitors can tell which exhibits will be on focus at specific times. Last semester we tried that, but the newness of it all kept us from getting that piece finished.

The title, Naked Space, evolved from the process of establishing the exhibit. A local behavioral science group published a newsletter, displayed aggressively on campus, designed to stimulate some serious discussion on important social and political issues in the community and on the campus. The group chose for its logo the Naked Lady, of mud flap fame. Feminists in our classes responded with outrage, then applied answerability and illocutionary discourse concepts to the situation.

We provoked a noisy confrontation with the sponsoring department when one of our professors informed them that she was offended by the logo and the naked styrofoam model used as a stand to distribute the newsletter in our hallways. She got a non-responsive "We don't believe in censorship," as her only reply, although the decibels rang louder throughout the halls as the message was repeated to all her arguments. She returned, frustrated to her amused and waiting class, only to sputter. But the class had perused the newsletter to discover that the students who produced it were having an open meeting that night. Now that offered the opportunity for discourse, and so we planned to go that night and tackle the issue.

Unfortunately, the sponsoring department told the students we were going to be there. We presume they thought we were going to stampede or picket or do something other than engage in serious substantive conversation. So we weren't permitted to talk by the young president of the group. She said we weren't on the agenda, and that was that.

Undaunted in our determination to engage in serious substantive governance discussion on our campus, we simply pursued discussions in our own classes. See Appendix A. But we have lots of students. One of them was the vice-president of the newsletter group. And one day he needed to leave briefly to talk with the other officers, who were in the newsletter group's office. As he left, we asked him to invite the officers to join us, and they bravely did so, still believing that attack mode was the only means of serious substantive discussion. It helped to share with them. But they were still a tad leery of us, which was OK, because we had resolved to include the issue in our Fall Exhibit.

We had included Jenny Saville's Strategy 1994 in the exhibit. And students were working on display takeoff's from that: one student incorporated words and a body image after Jenny Saville's that covered the entire top of a 5-foot long table. Our curator, Michael Griffin, turned the table up on its end, and voila, a wonderful display that drew every visitor straight across the room to examine it.

Strategy 1994 by Jenny Saville

One of Our Defining Moments

As we added information to our web site, students pondered their ideas for projects, and we continued our discussions and conceptual linking, we stopped to ponder one day the fact that we always draw our chairs into a circle, no matter how many of us there are. Big circles, two or three rows are OK. But we have to have circles. The issue came up one day when an overenthusiastic student, anxious to share a project idea, plopped his chair in the middle of the open space to attract the teacher's attention. No! We banished him immediately to another spot, and laughed at the teacher's obsession with keeping that space clear. Then we turned immediately to conceptual linking of that reality to our theoretical positions.

It turned out that we were all investing that space in the center of the circle (which I guess was actually an ellipse with the teacher in the row at one end) with some special power. Learning theory confirmed that we needed to see each other to establish a face-to-face group, even though our numbers frequently way exceeded the limits for face-to-face interaction. In our discussions, we used each others' names, sometimes laughing at our inability to get them straight, but struggling nevertheless. We came to know each other, albeit only with prompting from those who were fairly quiet. We concluded in our discussions that the space was important because the rules were always enforced, that we know one another, that we respect the Other, that nothing was ever forbidden in discussion, and that we would honor a good faith commitment to try to understand the Other's validity claim, not necessarily agree with it, but try to understand the Other's perspective, to the point of using our own skills of communication to help the Other get her point across. Somehow, we seemed to have collectively vested that central space with an aura of fully supported answerability. As we recognized that, we understood better what we were trying to do: create a safe forum in which to carry on substantive and well-informed discussions of real social and political issues. We managed the well-informed component through texts and material regularly posted and available on our teaching site. We managed the security of a safe forum through the commitment we jointly maintained to honor that central space and the small community that contained it.

We had chosen a name for our Fall Exhibition. None of us remembers now what it was. Together, we recognized that what was important about that central space of which we were so protective was that it was "naked." It was free of people, of objects, of preconceived and absolutist notions. We promptly christened it the "naked space," and named our biannual exhibit: Naked Space - A Visual Sociology Exhibit.

We laughed at this ending to our struggle with Naked Magazine, the student newsletter that had adopted the Naked Lady Mud Flaps. We were touched by memories of what the students had said that night they wouldn't let us talk: "All we wanted to do was to stimulate some real discussion on this campus." Michael, their vice president, became our co-curator for the Fall Exhibit. Naked Magazine brought its naked model and copies of its issue to our exhibition, and held a central place, and many of the club members visited the exhibit.. But now, the mud flaps were more than balanced by Jenny Saville's work and our students' renditions of variations on it. Michael went on to presidency of the club, and is currenty the curator for the Spring 2004 Naked Space Exhibit.

The Contents of the Exhibit

The exhibit filled one third of the Student Grand Hall in our Student Center. It lasted for two days the week before exams, from 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. This time frame permitted us to function like a gallery, so that people could come and go at their convenience, since we are in an urban area, with traffic and time conflicts that make a specific time impractical.

Students came, stayed a while, left, returned later, sometimes with friends, sometimes with family, sometimes with work friends. Parents and children visited, shared the fun of the exhibit, and shared in impromptu discussions of what the exhibits meant to us with regard to the social and political issues. Some students came, saw, disappeared, and returned the next day, having put together something of their own, based on what they had seen.

We had dance performances, drum performances, and chaos that taught us to keep our plans flexible. Michael prepared a wonderful slide show. Students came and took photos of the exhibit, then brought the pictures back the next day. We gave them two days, all day, free in Naked Space, and we all had a wonderful time. We didn't get the schedule done. Our snacks weren't wonderful. But the experience was mind-blowing.

In this Spring's exhibit we'll be showing several different slide shows, including exhibits, some of which just didn't make it into last Fall's show. And we'll have one show of work contributed by an artist in the UK. We didn't create a committee to decide whose work should go into the exhibit. With an exhibit every semester we don't have to. Sometimes we had fine art work from art students. Sometimes we had Katie's reaction to the mud flaps. But as each student took the time, which they insisted upon, to share their work, they accepted each others' differences in performance and art skills.

One student came in to tell us that, thanks to a photo essay another student had done on her work with an assisted living home, she had been able to change her own perspective on her parents, and encourage them more in what they could still do. We used photographs and video and art and music and performance, but mostly we were listening to each other in good faith in naked space.

Appendices

1. Appendix A: Some of our materials and conversations to give you an idea of how the Fall Exhibit developed.

   The Mud Flap Flap that led to Naked Space. Coloring page for sharing discourse with others.

   Mud Flaps and Icons: How the Mud Flaps Came into the Issue

   Censorship and Answerability Some of our responses to the Naked Lady Mud Flaps.

   Naked Space Fall 2003 Exhibit Invitation.

   Katie's response to the mud flaps.

   A student's reply.

   Another student's reply.

2. Appendix B: Focus on Fine Art as a Supplement to Our Traditional Sociological Responses

   Body Imagery

   Jenny Saville's Strategy 1994.

3. Appendix C: Focus on Culture. We had the sculpture of Belly Wisdom in the Fall Exhibit.

   Belly Wisdom Coloring page and link to Belly Wisdom site.

References

• Berndt, Thorsten (2003, Juli). "Auf den Leib gekommen." Fortschritte in der phänomenologisch-soziologisch fundierten Identitätstheorie. Rezensionsaufsatz zu: Robert Gugutzer (2002). Leib, Körper und Identität. Eine phänomenologisch-soziologische Untersuchung zur personalen Identität [21 Absätze]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [On-line Journal], 4(3). Verfügbar über: http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-03/3-03review-berndt-d.htm [Datum des Zugriffs: Tag, Monat, Jahr].

  Neilsen, Greg. Norms of Answerability. Source for answerability (Bakhtin).

  Pia Lara, Maria. Moral Textures. Source for illocutionary discourse.

  Advances in Phenomenological-Sociological Identity Theory: The Body and Identity.

  Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, March 2004.
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