The Recurring Desire To Experience By Zakriya Rabani A non-thesis project in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts School of Art and Art History College of the Arts University of South Florida Major Professor: Cesar Cornejo, PHD Committee Member: Wendy Babcox, MFA Committee Member: Gregory Green, MFA Date of Approval: 04/11/2018 Keywords: installation, skateboards, mediated motion, soul, essence, used materials, imagination, potential, experience ⓒ Copyright 2018, Zakriya Rabani This paper reflects my worldview. I am not an expert on theory, people, life, sport, or even art, I can however speak about the concept of experience in my own life. Experience teaches us how to live, how to fail and succeed, but most importantly how to be what it is we ​ ​ desire. From a young age, my desire was to be great at everything, I felt I could achieve anything if I tried hard enough. I believe that this sense of desire is a recurring feeling throughout our lives, no matter the task, sport or occupancy. What is seen, felt and can be interpreted is shaped by experience, this is something I have realized through my upbringing and education. It is our participation with objects, environments and people that allow us to retain information. How we participate is unique to ​ ​ each individual, causing different actions and ideas to occur. Through “ ‘seeing yourself sensing’, a moment of perception, when the viewer pauses to consider what they are experiencing” and mediated motion1 where “viewers become more conscious of the act of movement through space.” I want participants to see what I see in the world. I am drawn to signs, connections and communication. I feel compelled to identify signs throughout the world. The eternal return of the sense is a pattern, a system that can be deciphered to some degree. This is another way of saying, history repeats itself, as George Santayana2 writes,“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Our senses travel and move through time with us. Our senses help decipher our history. There is a connection I feel between myself and the patterns that I experience. 1 Olafur Eliasson, Experiencing The Work http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/unilever-series/unilever-series-olafur-eliasson-weather -project-0-0 2 George Santayana, CHAPTER XII—FLUX AND CONSTANCY IN HUMAN NATURE 3 You know that feeling you get when you’ve been in a place many times but have never looked up? And then one day you finally look up and you see something so unfamiliar yet you are standing in a place so very familiar? That is what it is like to skate, there is a constant feeling of familiarity because of the repetition of kicking and pushing your feet but also an uncertainty of not knowing what it will feel like to skate a ramp, a street, a sidewalk, a guard-rail, to jump a curb, to catch air, etc. As a skater I was attempting to use strategy and imagination to fulfill a desire to place myself in situations that require impromptu decisions concerning coordination and gravity. What I found crucial to skating is comprehending the possibility of failure and 4 injury. Much like in Bas Jan Ader’s work , he knows he is going to fall, there is even a curiosity to fall, yet he still chooses to risk his body. 3 Zakriya Rabani, language, writings in my sketchbook, 2017 ​ ​ ​ 4 Bas Jan Ader, Gravity Art https://frieze.com/article/bas-jan-ader My friends and I enjoyed taking risks, hurling our bodies in the air and onto the ground we would use objects to help us. Those objects come in many forms, for example: skateboards, bandaid shaped pieces of wood with four wheels. Skateboards experience every moment and feeling that its owner does and I believe that those memories are retained in the wood, the trucks and wheels. There is an essence that is left behind from the owner and environment. ​ ​ It is the idea of human essence and its ability to travel through time and objects that I am attracted to in my work. Even more so, I am interested in gift giving and how it relates to the “gift of skateboarding”. This is a mantra for the Boards for Bros. organization whom I have been working closely with, their goal is to reach out to skaters in hopes that they will donate their used skateboards. Sometimes the boards donated have been found to be defective, dead, no longer containing “pop”. However they are still objects that have been given as a gift, there is still a hope that the skateboards can live on. Through my research I have come across the Maori tribe in Polynesia, this tribe believes 6 that when a gift is given, the spirit of the hau5 is carried with it. According to the Maori Law , ​ ​ when an object is given away, especially in the form of a gift, that object then becomes active; it now carries a piece of the previous owner’s soul. Although the question remains, if and when the object isn’t passed on or becomes broken or forgotten, does the soul of that individual(s) die with it? There have been many cases in my life where I thought there was some sort of spirit contained in an object I owned. For instance, have you ever loved a pencil or pen? They are simple utensils used on a daily basis around the world, they fit inside our hands and can be used 5 The gift of the giver 6 Marcel Mauss, The Gift to write or draw whatever we desire. But we all know that at some point the pencil is going to run out of lead or that the pen will go dry and at that point the utensil will become useless. Yet, we still keep it. Maybe in our pocket or our desk, we keep it somewhere safe, but for what reason? That utensil was used as a tool to exercise our ideas and feelings, this is what it always feels like for me when I interact with objects, especially ones that function within sport or school. Objects have a presence physically in the world and mentally in our minds. I think that once I start to create a connection with an object that we have then shared an experience together and from that point, myself and the object, will forever be linked. Similar to the hau, I ​ ​ have given away a piece of myself, some kind of essence, a part of the soul. But what happens when the object and I become separated? 7 I believe that a soul, a spiritual energy can become dormant and die if not properly tended to. Throughout my life as a student, athlete, teacher and coach, I’ve had an obsession to want to help others, (as well as myself) and harness what I see as potential. I strive to unleash the unseen aptitude of people through the use of a formalist aesthetic. For me, this helps shed the light onto the importance and impact that realized potential can have. This stems from me ​ ​ having an issue with hierarchical structures(government), systems(school) and patterns of 7 Zakriya Rabani, Untitled, used pens, pencils, markers, 2016 ​ ​ society(repetition of desire) that we have allowed to be solidified in such position that they tend to diminish the power of the people. This generates a frustration in me that derives from the constant occurrence of individuals lives being devalued. I found this to be true quite often as a skater. All throughout my life and schooling I have been attached to some form of “skating”. Whether it be rollerblades, a scooter, skateboard, or my favorite, a longboard, I was always considered a hooligan8 because of my willingness to be adventurous and skate. I was once pulled over by the University of Florida Police Department for speeding on my longboard, I was given an actual citation. When I asked the officer how he knew I was speeding he replied, “ You are not supposed to skate that thing in the bike lane and you were passing the bikers so I know you are going too fast.” This is just one of many occasions where I was either stopped by a civilian or an authority figure for simply minding my own business and trying to skate from one location to another in an efficient manner. Outside of skating I have felt like I was being watched and judged for simply expressing my imagination, for example in high school I was constantly reprimanded for drawing or ​ ​ doodling on my desktop. I would be punished because I was doing something other than what I was supposed to be doing. I loved the marks my pencil would make on the wood grained ​ ​ desktop, I would develop narratives daily. My friends and I would add to each others desks, creating massive drawings that could tell fantastic stories. David Émile Durkheim9 examines ​ sociology in education and reveals that among other things, there needs to be a better understanding of pedagogical models in schooling. He insists that teachers need to know how 8 a violent young troublemaker, typically one of a gang. ​ 9 French sociologist. to grasp that a “child is innately neither selfish nor altruistic but ‘naturally enters into ​ communication with others’.”10 11 This type of communication is explored by Tony Tasset in his work, Cup Face (2014). ​ Tasset states “This work proceeds from a similar premise of taking the idle activity of playing ​ with an everyday object—in this case, one that is often encountered in a business meeting, seminar, or other situation characterized by boredom or distraction—and memorializing and elevating it as a serious artistic expression..