Its been a week of distractions. I did however do this amazing projection onto Weston Park Museum and someone came up and said they loved me because I made stuff happen which was nice. I got a bit distracted by thinking about my RD1 form and the gradual feeling that I'm moving further and further away from having a clue what I'm doing. I wish I could go back and quote the original "Case for Support" the stick we normally use to measure and beat ourselves with but there isn't one.
I am also getting to be a bit to careful in writing this blog, perhaps trying to be clever and come across as a ""big head" like we used to say at school. So I am going to do a few bullet points to map where I am and fewer metaphors and narratives. It is a day to draw a line of some sort in some place.
1. I am moving away from working in a school. I am currently working in a brilliant school on a project about feeling odd in the worlds of education and I am enjoying it but there seems to be so little space even for a high status research project so I would be worried about making space for a doctorate project.
2. This got me thinking about Anarchy and education so I read Colin Wards a very short history of Anarchy and re-read some bits of Anarchy in Action which I really enjoyed. It was good to do this after Massumi and Manning as they messed with my melon.
3. I started to think about the possibility of working more closely with my adventure playground - it is a place where I feel I can dwell and have respect its also a place of learning and Anarchy.
4. I want to do some work around Residency I have positioned myself to do some work with two studios in Sheffield's school of Architecture in their Studios in residence and I also have small projects with Geoff and Abi Hacket. I can't do these as part of the research as I do not have my RD1 or ethical consent but I think they will inform my initial thinking and allow me to situate these thoughts within a project.
5. From Massumi I take the idea of the event and how it is totalising yet allows space for becoming. I think it will be useful but I'm not sure where it fits in.
6. From Manning I take the idea of Research Creation it is attractive and feels different but has a family resemblance to Practice as Research approaches. I will think about it more.
7. From Geoff I take the idea that all the theory is interesting but it is not clear what it can do - in practice but also in helping to build a better world together.
8. All Laura's reading was new to me and I found it fascinating. It made be a bit cross especially the Springay which for the most part felt really wrong. It reminded me of the precession of the simulacra. I had just been trying to explain it to my daughter Alice who is studying art in Glasgow. I used the story of the Golden calf that Moses destroys when he comes down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. The people had made a graven image that they began to worship and it became their god Moses destroyed it continuing a long history of iconoclasm. Anyway the point of this long metaphorical story is that I'm starting to think that the space of "Art' can be anything people choose to make it and I don't want to melt down any golden calves or as we say in Sheffield 'Piss on anyone's bonfire'. But then I think if I can help refine things a bit more so instead of worshiping the image of art we make the space of art more inclusive and more useful. This I suppose goes back to Geoff's point of what this theory does or enacts in the world.
9. I still want to think about creative partnerships and do some historical unpicking and make sense of that period of work for myself and perhaps encourage other to look at it from a different perspective. It feels like this is not fitting in as well as it was so things may have to shift.
10. I feel better I have learnt to pace myself and have slowed down in the number of new ideas I'm trying to take on.
This is useful and the slowing down is important. I think for the RD1 you have 6 references so take the 6 you describe here and write about them. That's a good start. To me there is a central Gap in the literature which is maybe to do with the way that artists work, that they don't write up what they do but also that the doing is the thing, this is not however practice as research. I am trying to think about this while I am ill and reading another thesis on art practice.
ReplyDelete