Faded A

 This is the space that was an A from my Utopia sign.  It became a box for kids to play in and then a compost bin and now its nearly rotted away and it is in a pile of rubbish waiting to be picked up by the council.  In a strange way even though I've just been writing about the utopia sign in my history of my relationship to the adventure playground it doesn't feel like as much of a material connection as perhaps it should.  Maybe this is because its at the end of things rather in a point of reuse like the other things that seem to follow me around at the playground.

I have been thinking today about PHD writing and I have read a couple of systematic meta reviews of literature on adventure play and risky play.  It is very interesting to touch against formal research and realize again how far away from it I am.  Walking the dog I had a thought that art has little to do with research.  In research knowledge is built up on a platform of what has gone before.  So you say something and then you reference it and tie it back into the fabric of knowledge This presents an ontological orientation towards knowing which contrasts to a practice based approach  where knowledge is more embodied.  I am sure i have written about this before but today as I walked past my faded A  I realised that there is something that connects arts practice to affect theory that I have perhaps missed .  The idea of what is internal and not so much external in terms of what constitutes knowledge is more fundamental and not something that can be worked around very well.  When i work as an artist within research on a project I can manage it because i assimilate the difference into the practice -I can maintain a flow of practice that I can personally make sense of.

However when I do my "own research" I don't have the position of research to accommodate into my practice so it makes less sense or newsense as I like to say. I wondered about interviewing the staff at the playground today about loose parts play.  I think I might wait until I'm at the playground properly doing my 6 weeks as this would make more sense and contain things within the edges of an experiment. 

Everything feels a bit up in the air just at the minute with the house move and the end of Covid and everyday feels a bit messed up.  I know when I read all these blog post back I'm going to feel a bit sad like it was an upset time and I was a bit messy.  I think though by the time I get to October things will of leveled out a bit again and I will be able to look back and perhaps think I did ok considering