It feels like a busy week. I have not really thought about Blogging this week but I've just written my field notes from a day at the playground on Monday and thought it might be good to drop in a sample here . It is a bit stream of consciousness but it is a marker of where I am and holds an aspect of flow that felt absent to actually doing the work.
This day was a point of slippage – a
getting down to something physical and manual that felt like real work and a
catching up with the real outputs from my ACE proposal- the making of art or at
least testing out for an experience and the idea that I was in residence- to
make something that felt like art. The line of the PhD
study and the line of practice seems to diverge since Christmas.
At the back of this was a feeling I had
moved on somewhere in understanding Bergson and time – he says that
subjectivity is made of time rather than existing within it. This made me think about how music only exist
in time as it can’t exist in a moment – I had never really applied this way of
thinking to subjectivity but it felt like I had moved somewhere into a life
more examined. I made a film ages ago as part of my blog I suggested theory playing in the background – inspired from a Laural and Hardy way out west a
film a projection
I was to dance in front of. Now I feel that an ontological approach doesn’t
work like that – theory is not located in a territory it is the plane of
consistency. I have what is philosophy -chapter
7 and I have assemblage – I also have an understanding of what the Nomadic War
machine is and I think that perhaps this
is where the PhD sits if I can work these three concepts from D and G into the
work at the playground – with a nod to lines of flight I will have a textual
plane for something interesting to emerge – I may need to wrap it all up in
something else but I can’t be doing with to much vitalism or new materialism that
feels pseudo-spiritual – it is starting to do my head in.
What a lot of stuff to carry into the
playground – as we start to dig out concrete and remove old equipment. The just getting started feels like a really
good move – there is something about just changing a space that opens up all
sorts of potentials. The area for loose
parts has moved under the trees at the back of the building. Stuff is gathering there we are testing stuff
out – the building of a container and a platform down the other end is feeling
less likely. Peter said the kids don’t
really go down there we thought about building an iconic swing. Also Giz had the idea it would be good for a
water slide – the potential opens up as we clear the space.
There was lots of banter – it felt male and
familiar. Digging out the old equipment
was a nightmare it had been fixed with mechanical machinery and was around 1
meter deep it took most of our time to remove one piece of it but somehow this
felt fine – it was a mission. We talked about past missions of digging out
tree stumps. Patrick told us about how
Peter had gone into an old coffin when he was a gravedigger and it had
traumatized him and he had had to have time off work, we all laughed. The time of the day folded and we were a bit
cold. I moved a large pipe and we turned
it into a tunnel, I worried about my back and my wrists – work like this is
almost like an addiction – like smoking- you really fancy a fag but it never
quite does what you want or expect it to do. It does something else.
This work is really part of been in
residence at the playground, it is not about building relationships for the
future or earning respect it is more about been present and connected. The three points of my brain are all
conflicted. The doing the work that I enjoy and would do as a volunteer, the
trying to be an artists to produce or shape what art can be and what art does
and now on top of that the artist philosopher social scientist looking for what
Erin Manning would call “A Way’ within research. The complex sets of flows going on are the
same as go on all the time although I used to be less aware of them. Digging and building are parts of dwelling
and residency is a form of dwelling. My thinking is bitty and fragmented but I
don’t think a new materialist approach will do – the assemblage is the only
thing that can hold most of this together.
We talked about a lot of stuff over the day – going to Eastborne to the
national play conference – I think Giz and Patrick talked about their mums.
Art had nothing to do with the work – we were not making or doing art so
the quick switch as I noticed the failing light was strange.
I went from helping to remove the giant
post that was well stuck in the ground to thinking about making something that
looked like art. On my own I put a
screen up then I flew Aiw Wai Wai Flag for refugees – I had forgotten that
bit. Me Giz and Patrick erected the
screen to look a bit like a sail on the pirate ship. It was all a bit of a rush. I remember in the moment of setting this
up for a projection I felt stupid as somehow the thoughts and things that would
legitimate the effort felt out of reach.
In the 7 years I’ve had the projector I think it was the first time I
had tried something out for my “own” work and even this was to get a photograph
for a n article in Now Then magazine – projecting the past onto the present which is
very Bergson in a literal way. This
moment of conflicting drivers which is actually obviously a fulcrum of the work
was really underpinned by feeling a bit stupid – A lot of effort to achieve .......I’m
not sure what? Its almost like in the
realization of something that is my idea – old photos on the site – captain
flint from Blacksails – meeting my ACE audience figures – helping Anton feel
useful – there is a collision and perhaps this is a word that needs drawing in
more centrally to the notion of assemblage.
Even assengerment with its
primal energy that vibrates feels more organized than the collision of the
assemblage of what takes place. The idea that the nomadic war machine is the
thing that holds this plane together seems so removed from anything I could
explain to anybody except Tim means that it has to be thought of as what is in
and what is out – the line of flight from the assemblage – and this is perhaps
the trick to understand the notion of Deleuzian territory. Anyway we set up I projected old photos of
the playground – took a picture for Now Then article then projected the scene
of captain Flint from Blacksails the whole series moved to this point for me –
the lesson that we are kept in our place because we fear to enter the darkness
– we are frightened by the potential of an alternative way of been in the
world. It is a Marxist reference to
revolution and fits the thread of my work about the fear of things been
different – I am slightly embarrassed that I am doing this work – everyone
liked it and it is part of my arts council work and I am been paid to do it and
the behavior is what is expected of me.
What I think though is that to do this kind of work requires a closeness
to the chaos just before the crest of a wave the build up to the crash and
collapse and that there is a problem with linear knowing that means the sea is
always calm. The intersection between
practice and research is an intersected – it is like a cross fade or a
transition where things blend together that extends in both directions and the
point where it is neither one nor the other is the interesting phase of the
transition. I feel under pressure to be
either one thing or the other because it makes things easier – it steers us
away from the darkness.
A set of messy random thoughts from a messy random day - it feels good to be doing work that feels like work again
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