An Inventory of Shimmers

An Inventory of Shimmers explores affective space. Described by Gregg & Siegworth as arising ‘in the midst of in-between-ness’ [1], understandings of affect variously move beyond known and marked emotions, entering difficult to describe, atmospheric bodies of feeling for which there is inadequate language. Kathleen Stewart and Lauren Berlant explore everyday affect ‘as something both animated and inhabitable’ [2] and Stewart describes Ordinary Affects as working ‘not through “meanings” per se, but rather through bodies, dreams, dramas and social worlding of all kinds.’ The significance of affects, for Stewart, lie ‘in the intensities they build and in what thoughts and feelings they make possible.’ [3]. Affect occupies, it contains, it is both an inside and outside. Thinking with affect as interactive, emergent, social and situational, draws me to examine the immaterial, as well as the material, dimensions of photographic practices in the making of new atmospheric spaces to try to find the visual language of feeling. This work explores the possibilities of an in-between-ness wherein my ongoing interest in the non-representational and affective qualities of the photographic form, coincide with a decolonial methodology that utilises the fold as a mode for problematising the often-prioritised, flat, fixed, surface value of the representational photographic image. The fold as a practical technique becomes an experimental mode for decolonising the photographic document, as well as a non-linguistic way to question singular ways of seeing and knowing. This innovation problematises photographic technology, returning to and questioning the surface of the image, appearing on the edge of what can be visually understood. The project explores ordinary worlds: the surfaces of paintings, floors, lightbulbs, sweet wrappers, vases, caravans, bedding, dust. Through their photographic, conceptual and curatorial manipulation, the images 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, without resolution. 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.