Detail of: Digital documents of a mixed media installation in flux. 2022.

While exploring Jacques Rancière’s assertion that art might start turning the spectator into a conscious agent for transforming the world (Rancière,2009), I have arranged my thoughts, findings, and reflections and made them visible by creating these vessels of knowledge. They have taken the physical form of zines, objects, and a panel in an installation containing links to my website. I have made an expanded version of what I like to call Memento Vivere. This installation is a snapshot of what I found investigating what we acquire and how we understand knowledge through seeing and making. I have concluded that I remember being alive by creating, and the artwork proves I am here. Mine is a productive, cognitive, and physical practice where I bodily entangle myself in my ideas. I am affirming my attraction to the everyday while engaging with phenomenology and establishing causal connections. This structure enables me to find harmony and balance. I take this praxis, a combination of theory and making, into the classroom, boiler room (art club) and my studio kitchen. I have allowed my curiosity to lead me. The vessels I have created are my talismans; they are my vehicles. These artefacts spark my thought process and give me anchors that enable me to track my ‘thought quest’. In this way, I can engage with my questions. The answers or knowledge I find may be dipped into and released at will, confirming that art makes data come alive and can store more than just a visual moment.

Sarah Chalkie Cloonan. Vessels of Correspondence. September 2022.