Preparing the Ground workshop
Preparing the Ground was an online workshop led by Rubiane Maia exploring diagramming, material practices and intuitive forms of divination. Participants created food and nature based stain diagrams from substances connected to their practice.
“Diagrams have been a visualisation and gesturalization strategy that directs me towards other ontologies. Could it be said that we are rehearsing possibilities for a cosmic thought?” – Rubiane Maia
This workshop invited participants to imagine future possibilities through the intuitive practice of diagram-making, beginning from their own creative work, motivations and desires. Symbolically, it proposed a return to the ground: to look closely, to move the earth, to prepare the conditions for new perspectives to emerge. Preparing the ground is an essential step before any act of planting or construction. It requires attention to the composition and vitality of the soil, while also suggesting the creation of environments in which ideas, plans and visions might take form.
As Félix Guattari writes, “The diagram is conceived as an auto-poetic machine which not only gives it a functional and material consistency but requires it to deploy its diverse registers of alterity, freeing it from an identity locked into simple structural relations.”
In advance of the workshop, participants created three images using stains formed from materials or substances significant to their practice, or those they wished to explore. These were made on paper or fabric and left to evolve over time. Through this process, the workshop explored diagramming as an experimental methodology and a tool for creative, personal divination. Held online in January 2023, the workshop foregrounded process, intuition and material engagement as ways of opening new pathways for thinking and making.
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Credits and Supporters
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. Research for the project was also supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship and by a grant from Monash University Curatorial Practice. Part of FAR Network research programme initiated by Madeleine Collie throughout 2023-24.
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Participant Diagrams
Sheena Maria Piedade diagram, artists image, Preparing the Ground, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist. 
Heather Kaplow, diagram, artists image, Preparing the Ground, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist 
Carla, diagram, artists image, Preparing the Ground, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist 
Selina Bonelli diagram, artists image, Preparing the Ground, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist 
Zoe Scoglio diagram, artists image, Preparing the Ground, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist 
Sara Bor, diagram, artists image, Preparing the Ground, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist