Traces of Communal Touch: Matrixial Encounters With Pre-service Art Educators Across Two States

The matrixial sphere, as put forth by artist and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger, is a shared and transsubjective space that is beneath the conscious, under the touchable and perceptible; it is a space where we encounter ourselves and one another in shared trauma, healing, art making, and the lived experience overall. This co-authored essay explores how a shared matrixial space and the matrixial gaze, which is not always visual, have been experienced through the square boxes of ZOOM as part of a collaborative, long-distance art exchange project. The project, focused on Spontaneous Creation-Making (SCM) sessions, as outlined in Barbara Bickel and R. Michael Fishers recent book Art-care Practices for Restoring the Communal: Education, Co-inquiry, and Healing. These exchanges took place over the span of one semester and consisted of two higher education pre-service art education professors in different North American states. This essay looks generatively at moments where the authors and their students found themselves in a creative space that was not entirely internal or external, not entirely here nor there in terms of location, product, and predictability of the process. Using the lens of the Ettingerian matrixial, the authors question, examine, and pursue an investigation of moments where they, alongside their students, encountered the matrixial space in and through the cross-country SCM project. Applications of this unique art exchange are suggested for other art educators and those pursuing art-care practices in general.