Conversation rough cut with Satinder Gill

I caught up with Satinder Gill after she'd spent a day at FoAM scouring the archives for images to use in the final chapter of her latest book (to be published by Springer), on “Body Moves” in TGarden. In spite of highlighting yet again the congenital inarticulateness of the interviewer, our ambling conversation nevertheless touched on such interesting topics as the evolution of TGarden in later FoAM projects, the importance of understanding complexity at the most mundane level, and the emergence of more cosmological or spiritual concerns in groups such as FoAM.

As “a traditional researcher working on the edges of disciplines,” Satinder's interest in TGarden was in looking at patterns of body movement for sharing certain kinds of information - a shared understanding carried by certain rhythms. Within her research interests in embodiment, gesture, and tacit knowing she finds it essential to return to the most basic level and understand the richness and complexity there. She was intrigued by the evolution of TGarden in FoAM's later projects, txOom and TRG, where she sees a subtle shift of focus away from the body to “senses in the environment - the body itself doesn't have senses but the environment does.” She finds it interesting that FoAM deals with “grounded issues open to the everyday world,” at the same time as it is increasingly embracing a cosmological viewpoint that questions our notions of being human and our connection with the world.

Comments:

I would like to have been more prepared for this one. This of course will always be more of a concern for these one-off talks than for any potentially ongoing conversations. In an ideal world, it might also have been helpful to have a second person (i.e. Maja or an available Maja replicant) to help focus and direct the conversation through certain still-unfamiliar territories. The worlds, or threads of worlds, that seemed to be most relevant here were Reality Generation, Affordable Mysticism, and Who's Who.