Titley - Crociani-Windland

Abstract

The act of creation for Titley is a similar or even the same process as the process of relational engagement. Boundaries are blurred. The male carers create, the artist cares. They are all careful and caring and creating together. Unspoken dilemmas can relocate into new spaces that lead to Deleuzian ‘becomings’, intensities of affect, of invisible lives becoming-visible. This life made visible and validated through a recognition of its actual experienced existence connects us to Lita Crociani-Windland’s piece Deleuze, art and social work. Through the process of making, the maker becomes the material, becomes the patterns of an artwork, as Crociani-Windland demonstrates through her own personal experience: the nervous system becomes the twists of the crochet work; the tension is turned into material. Through a Deleuzian ontological approach to the potential of making art to redefine what it means to celebrate process and experience, Crociani-Windland expresses a desire for a social work practice that tends towards a celebration of creativity that makes a life one of hope for the future rather than depressed by any past trajectory. Social work viewed in this way and experienced as such can be transformed from problem solving to ways of living creatively with others, a celebration of difference instead of sameness. The importance of the artwork is not in the outcome-object but in the experience and intensity of the sensation it imbues or transmits; similarly, Crociani-Windland urges us to consider that social work should aspire to and mirror the process of creation. It is art and the making and experiencing of art that can teach us to be positive with uncertainty. From this Deleuzian perspective ‘solutions’ are not solutions; process is all; artworks are sensation and intensities. Through the arts and crafts, a process of what Crociani-Windland calls ‘foregrounding’ and ‘backgrounding’ is activated and becomes a process of difference in repetition. Each creative act – for example the weaving of a thread – becomes a repeated act which is nevertheless different to the previous one. Through the relationship between the creator and the created, the affective connections that form the tapestry of a person’s life can be mirrored in the artistic act of creation. Through the intensities of this act of creation an indirect route to personal and relational affect is created from the Deleuzian ‘virtual’ which is invisible and unspoken to something more visible while still unspoken. This, then is another way of engaging in a living process, in acceptance of the difficult invisible that can be positively encountered and re-assessed in and for the benefit of social work practice.