Standing in front of the long, thin table that houses Unearthed, I am at a threshold, a frontier. I can feel my body connecting, tentatively reaching out, trying to find a similar frequency, trying to make contact. Even in my looking, I am touching the surface of these objects with my eyes. This heightened haptic sense signals a crossover. I'm changing gears: from my thinking, visual default-setting, I'm shifting.

We tend to break things down that are already in their simplest, most complete form, especially when it comes to talking about the mind and the body. Part of our problem is the talking itself. The binary, categorising structures we inadvertently employ for thought spontaneously generate their own forms, the residue of which is enshrined in words. We've known this for a long time now, yet it is still exciting to acknowledge something beyond this kind of structure, that – in the words of Michael Taussig referring to Nietzsche – 'we think all the time without language but do not "know" it and as such we are connected, as thinking bodies, to the play of the world.'[1]

The forms Kate Just presents us with deal with this duality but they do so in a way that offers to both the 'structure' and the 'beyond'. They oscillate between a Western notion of consciousness and a corporeal knowledge. On the one hand they are a system of signs or a socio-historical document, on the other, they are a portal, a doorway. Through each of these objects we are invited to feel the world. They place an expanded sense – a beyond – within reach.

If I sit for long enough, one of these forms will call to me. It will resonate with my body, and I will reach out and take hold of it. There is always one we seek out, one with which we form an alliance. I think of Jen in The Dark Crystal playing his flute to choose the shard. It is the outer most edge of Brian Massumi's thinking-perceiving body.[2] 'A phenomenon of bordering', it is the anomalous for Deleuze.[3] It is an entry point – the experience of totality via a single constituent part.

If the objects of Unearthed are 'tools', our bodies are their material. Each form reorganises us on a physical level, the way an electrical current realigns electrons or the way certain atmospheric conditions trigger the swarm-state in locusts. In the presence of these objects, my body behaves differently; it adjusts to another's rhythm. Each object plays a particular note through me. They are instruments in a musical sense. I am reminded of the Umwelt – the lifeworld – of Jakob von Uexküll and the vibratory coevolution of the wasp and the orchid; each form is a musical counterpoint and we are its response.[4]

A kind of prosthetic discovery occurs with Unearthed: I experience an enlargement of myself out beyond the reach of my limbs, a dissolution of the edges of my body; I feel part of myself in otherness as otherness is internalised. In this open, diffused space, ideas like 'myself' and 'otherness' are momentarily suspended. There is a mutual transfer, a connection, no separation.

Watching the way different people engage with Unearthed, I realise that in a daily, catching-the-tram, Melbourne-town sense, this altered sense of self can be uncomfortable.  In our shackles, an all-encompassing connectivity is not ok.  It is a lapse in border control, a temporary glitch to be rectified.  And we fix it by breaking things apart.   We hastily separate ourselves from the objects of Unearthed, from those attributes that brought on this awkward internal struggle.  We inscribe our fear on their curves or sharpened edges and not our own: 'they are brutal, sensuous, aggressive, alluring, violent'.  But in talking about them, we talk about ourselves.

If I sit for long enough, one of these forms will call to me.  Like an antidote.  I've always known it was there – we've evolved together.  A fine thread connects us like a song.

[1] Taussig, Michael, What Colour is the Sacred? Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. pp.14, 15

[2] Massumi, Brian, A User's Guide of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. p.36

[3] Deleuze, Gilles, A Thousand Plateaus, London and New York: Contiuum, 2004 (originally published 1980). p.269

[4] Uexküll, Jacob von, The Concept of Umwelt: A Link Between Science and the Humanities, Semiotica 134 (1/4): pp. 111-123 in Grosz, Elizabeth, Chaos Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, New York: Colombia University Press, 2008. pp.40, 41