What are you Playing At ? Three Trajectories

 I have just paid £100 to have a book of this blog made.  I did this as I needed something substantial to hold onto as although I have done a lot of work and thinking I consistently feel I haven't got very far.  I know I have moaned a lot on here and when I read through the whole thing it's going to make me pull my socks up and get stuck in and move on.  It does follow a timeline though and it does map out the last 2 and a half years of work that will eventually add up to my doctorate.

In Pat Thomson's book about supervising PhD students which I read early last year she talks  about writing your scholar identity.  She also writes about how you think things through writing rather than think them and then write them down. This process orientated way of working is a bit like artists who have a conversation with materials, the words speak back and the meaning grows on the page. 

This process can't happen if you are not writing. So I made a decision to write even if it feels a little pointless.  The idea is to write three trajectories or personal journeys that interconnect but eventually end up at the start of building and eventually on the platform  at the playground.  As the platform will be the focus of the fieldwork I think these journeys are probably about context. I keep thinking of the subtitle of the Hobbit There and Back Again or in the film An unexpected Journey.  The last 16 months have felt like this yet at least this morning i have woken in a better mood and decided I have done reasonably well in navigating them.  I am writing my trajectories as personal biography and I have decided to produce some words without paying too much attention to the form of a PhD. I am starting as if I am writing something which is not considered to be part of a PhD then I should at least not be overly constrained by the dominant form of academic writing which is blocking my paths.  

Trajectory one 

 The journey of the visual artist.  How ideas from art flow into research and how they clash and mix.  This relates to making in the material and the stuffness of things.  The place of art is in the sideways look, the complexity of aesthetics the construction of the social.  Art follows its own trajectory and I journey in its flow but usually I am away from the main current or even swimming against it.  The river however does not care.  This trajectory touches on theory and philosophy in as much as it recognizes it and sees it as present. Art must to an extent be aware of its ontology for it to exist as anything distinct from anything else even a trajectory.

Trajectory two 

The journey through adventure play from making equipment to helping to sustain and maintain our playground in Pitsmoor.  Here too there is an encounter with theory and and encounter with history ethos and identity.   I have never seen myself as a play worker though i do see myself as a builder or fabricator. Aesthetics are still present but they are not foregrounded there is a desire to make something authentic and in this sense I avoid artifice or art object.  In some ways the role is something i need to accept as this is what I am if we think of it in terms of the self that is constructed.  I am not seen as artist or researcher at the playground i am a person that makes things and fixes things and I am happy with this. 

 

Trajectory three 

The journey through research. This is the line which is the newest but is not really new.  The line is a crooked one and it is central to my PhD but not as central to my life or my identity.  My journey through research proper feels very much within reading and writing and it does not cross the other trajectories as much as I would hope.  It too contains theory and ontology and it is a big part of the last 3 years.  I am not sure where it fits in relation to my identity. 

 

These three trajectories cross and meet in many places but for the purposes of this PhD I hope to write them so they meet on the Platform I have built in the world at the playground and in this writing something interesting may happen which hopefully will get me a PhD even if it doesn't really look or read like one.