CADENCES, ATTENTIONAL MOVES IN THE ARTS AND EVERYDAY LIFE

The arts and artistic practices create specific modes and mediations that involve variations in attention. They perform a “tuning [of] the attention” if we are to use Lisa Nelson’s formulation in Tuning Scores (2003), which generates cadences, movements and intensities between different types of focus of fluctuating, and varyingly disinterested or distracted attention. Attention is always in movement, and according to Paul Ricoeur, it is always more or less at the service of a desire, an intention, a task, a need or a volition.

The study of variations in attention in the arts, notably performance and cinema, is also linked to how we see the world and choose what we want to show. Sensitivity is refined to give visibility to something confused with the landscape, highlighting it or co-composing with it.

When we choose a cutout, a framework for what we are going to share, we create a surplus—everything we choose not to show—and a margin—which is within the cutout of what is shown but is not reinforced as “the most relevant.”

These choices also reveal some common ground between art and politics—the choice between what is considered relevant to be seen and made visible and what is left out of the attention with resulting implications.

What we do not see (or hear, or smell) of the figure/background, such as context and focus, movement, drag, or blur, is very broad and requires a great deal of “attention training” to play, describe, and live in the arts, sciences, and ordinary everyday life.

On the other hand, the word “cadence” has a procedural and dynamic dimension that relates not only to modulations and rhythms but also to falls. “Cadere,” the word behind “cadence,” contains the idea of falling.

Falling in or out of a specific type of attention, a curiosity, a passion, or floating in attention through falls, as happens in surfing or Contact Improvisation, perfectly describes the way we live in constant “improvisation.”

For the conference Cadences: Attentional Moves in the Arts and Everyday Life, we invite talks with and about modes and “echologies” of attention—thinking of the “echo” of sound resonance—and the ecology of relationships as an intricate web of inter-affections. We invite reflections on framings, postures, positions and positionalities. We invite reflections on affection and care, craftsmanship and hospitality.

What words, tools, movements, and cadences do we use to practice attention?

What subjectivities and communities are generated from certain practices of attention? What is left out of focus?

When we say “focus,” do we put ourselves in the place of a lens that focuses, as in the case of photography and cinema?