A jump of the Heart

 

                                      object number A127914: John Dee’s Scrying Mirror: Science Museum

Encountering a small, black glass disc in the stores at Blythe House in London during the summer of 2018 after searching through the 1879 entries of the Science Museum Nuclear Holdings listings, was a kind of Holy Grail moment for me. I experienced a physical sensation in the presence of this thing. Though it was deeply gratifying to see this object, I was not permitted to handle the sleek, shiny, dark disc, however much it called out to be held and stroked. To me it was declared untouchable, not because it could do me harm; although it is part of the Science Museum’s Atomic Collection, it is not a source of radioactive contamination. The enforced distancing was due to museum object handling protocol, I was considered a potential source of harm to it. 

 

I have since discovered the word that best describes the sensation of this encounter for me is ‘dokitto’. Dokitto is one of several colloquial words used by members of Mono Ha, a Japanese art movement formed in the 1970’s. It  seeks to describe a feeling arising from “the intimacy of contact with the world through shigusa, which is equally a matter of the world, the maker, and the thing, in which the boundary dividing subject and object as distinct entities dissolves.” 

(Voices of Mono-ha Artists: Contemporary Art in Japan, Circa 1970, December Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Reiko Tomii (Section Editor), 2013,p203).

 

 Dokitto translates into English as heart stopping.