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I sat at the table frozen with fear, creatively blocked by years of outcome-focussed cookie cutter schooling. Being given a blank piece of paper and told to draw something filled me with anxiety. What do they want from me this time?

The table was covered in paper rubbish that I had tipped out from my recycle bin. I spotted the crossword on the back of the local paper and was pulled by the challenge but resisted. “For goodness sake, Bronwen, you need to do art!” I admonished myself.

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Amongst the rubbish I saw some discarded note paper, shopping lists I think, and I balled them up together in my fist. There was very little resistance and it felt quite good. I’d made a ball. Instinct said to throw it, so I did. It bounced off the wall. “Is this what they mean by experimentation? Is this the sort of thing they’re after?”, I asked myself.  I balled up a few more pieces of paper. “Why am I so bad at this? Now what should I do?”

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I took a sheet from the local newspaper and tried to ball it. This paper was bigger, heavier, tougher and took more effort to scrunch. It left a print residue on my hand that I was uncomfortable with. I threw this bigger ball on the floor and it made a pleasant Pffft sound. I plucked a tissue from the box to wipe off the print. The tissue didn’t crackle. It seemed to stroke my hand and show me it’s softness. I didn’t crumple it or throw it. I felt a little less tense. I noticed the next tissue in the tissue box fluttering seductively under the air con and watched it closely for quite a while. It reminded me of something but I couldn’t name it. For a moment, time stood still.

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Dog and Child suddenly entered the room from outside and the draft from the door lifted a single sheet from the open newspaper. Slowly, it glided down to the floor. Dog responded to the invitation by instinctively pouncing on it and doing what I had been struggling to do; he played with it, giving it his full attention with his whole body. He sniffed it and barked at it and ripped and shredded it with paws and teeth. Four legs skidded and walked on the torn pieces and the bits of paper were scattered all around the room.

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Child became energised by Dog’s play with Paper and instinctively started spinning his own body around and around on top of the scattered pieces, his bare feet twisting around and around, stirring up the pieces even more. Paper, Child and Dog were as one, and I spontaneously laughed out loud. The laugh shocked me out of my passivity but gladdened me too. I began ripping up another sheet of paper at the table into smaller and smaller pieces and blew them off the table and out into the room in one strong deep exhalation. Paper was no longer an inanimate object for me to do something with, it was an event to which I had been invited to join (Sylvia Kind, 2014). It was not just about me any more; I was relieved to have become decentred through my material encounters with Paper and others (Hultman and Taguchi, 2010).

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I scrunched another sheet of notepaper like before but this time I heard it crackle in protest. I then watched it exhale and slowly open itself up again, making soft crackles as it did so. I liked how it did that. I scrunched up another thicker piece of paper and listened to it open up. It made lots of rapid tiny clicks at first and then, as its expansion slowed, the clicks became less frequent. I wanted to know how all the different papers sounded when they were scrunched and allowed to expand again. Which paper will be most successful at reopening itself? I scrunched and released, watched; scrunched, released, watched. A spotty coloured party bag really seemed to breathe out deeply after being scrunched and I enjoyed seeing its colours as it blossomed.  I held my breath to hear it talk to me. I was listening so hard for the clicks that the dog’s breathing seemed loud. My senses had been supercharged! The loudest voice came from a tissue box I had crumpled. It's loud slow clicks resonated  through the wood of the table as it creaked itself back open.

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My explorations with Paper now claimed my undivided attention. I had been ‘invited into thought’ by those expanding paper balls. (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2016)

I watched the paper balls puffing themselves up before me and they seemed like expanding balloons, I think of the balloons from yesterday’s birthday party and I go fetch one. It seems too big and bright next to the paper. I think of covering the balloon in a collage of some of the dog-shredded newspaper – how should I stick the pieces on? Dog saliva? Some of the paper pieces are already coated with that!

First though I put a couple of dry pieces on the balloon to see what they look like and as I do so the balloon moves. It rolls from side to side as if it is shaking off the paper. I keep adding pieces and the balloon seems to give up and allows the paper to stay on! How is that working? Some of the paper pieces spin on the spot when I put them on the balloon. I wonder how many pieces I can put on the balloon. Some hold on and some don’t. Some pieces slide slowly down the balloon.

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I want to bring all my new discoveries about paper together, into an artwork. I imagine paper balloons, that expand and inflate like hot air balloons. I drop paper scrunch balloons into a blue sky. I imagine people being carried up into the sky and add paper cupcake baskets. A party bag provides its paper handles for the balloon strings. More paperballs drift together like clouds. Some brown torn paper for mountains. A piece of torn wrapping paper for a rainbow. The hot air balloons drift over the scene. And multicoloured rain falls down.

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The smaller torn paper pieces were sticking better and so I tore them into smaller and smaller bits. It became hard to use my hands to tear so small and so I used scissors instead. The bright balloon was now convincing me of the benefit of colour and so I took some cheerful cupcake cases from the kitchen bench, also left out from yesterdays party. I snipped tiny pieces from them and tried to collect them in a small bowl but they would dart away from the scissors and sprinkled the kitchen bench. I brought the balloon near and the very small pieces jumped up and stuck  I have gone from scrunching and restricting Paper to allowing it to dance and leap and my smile dances with it. Paper and I have resolved something since the struggle and tussle when we first met. Hultman and Taguchi ( 2010) describe this as the involvement of non-human forces in the ‘becoming’ process.

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10. The resolution of my encounter with Paper

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10. The resolution of my encounter with Paper

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Paper and I have resolved something together since the struggles and tussles of when we first encountered each other. I brought my socio-cultural bindings to the meeting and was unsure how to unravel them. The events, collectives and assemblages that flowed from that first meeting have amazed me and I am genuinely changed, left wondering how different my life might have been had I been given the opportunity to encounter materials this way before. Hultman and Taguchi ( 2010) described this as the involvement of non-human forces in the ‘becoming’ process.