Fitting a slide - to provide a line of flight.

 I'm 54 in two days and we are moving house so I'm not very focused on my school work.  I am interested in the slide as it is something that isn't part of my PhD and I don't really think its part of my arts practice it is something distinctly different. I am not really going to talk about Derrida now but very simply it may be useful for the PhD work as it presents us with an edge.  For me it is a clear and defined edge and I can probably think of a few reasons for this which I will list.  I can then use this list to help form a category of what can be practice and what can be research and then talk about slippage and lines of flight.

I have just broken off from revisiting a section of my literature review I wrote in September 2020.  It was useful as it felt like someone else had written it and although it wasn't terrible I could see where it needed a tighter focus and where it needed filling out.  Perhaps this will end up as a good way to write?  To get something down, stick it away for 4 months and then revisit it as if I am my own second author, it certainly helped to not be looking at a blank page.

I will have to be careful not to overdo things as I have overdone things and I'm aching all over and we have a big house move coming up.  I also for the record am feeling a little exhausted by the change of scenery coming up and the fact I haven't really had a break for while coupled with the fact that I don't actually feel like I'm doing anything even though I am doing loads.

The writing is probably going OK I am working on three trajectories and I think the potted literature review I came across this morning may become something plus I have the section on research creation.  Kate seems confident I will be able to hybrid this into a PhD document and although it will not be brilliant it will be full of practice. 

It is this I think that is interesting the relationship between thinking and doing that all practitioners have but few academics can actually have as they need to spend their lives becoming academic practitioners so there is not time to actually do anything else at a level that would give it the status of a practice.

That's why the slides important - its a line of flight out of the assemblage of the artists residency as method - I worked this out writing my literature review today.  There is a contradiction however as now I am using it as an example of difference it may re-enter the frame or platform of the work. I will need to work hard to keep it at a distance.

This afternoon I need to drill four holes and put bolts in - then it will be finished and can slide away.

Busy Week doing other stuff

 I have had a bust couple of weeks in the past 14 days I've done 5 projection events.  I've worked 5 days at the adventure playground and I've started to pack up the house.  I tried to do a writing day on Thursday but it got pushed back so I could write an extended plan for some work in a school.  Today I edited a film for the Odd project, this has been on my mind so it was good to get it out of the way. I quite liked it in the end as it drew an practice.  I film I made in Gainsborough that used four screens and a single timeline and attempted to edit collaboratively and a film I made about Venice and Sheffield for our we are not an island project.

Its strange as I will not probably pullout this direct line to practice within the project as this is the works dependence on opacity.   It is the thing that makes the film for the project more than just the film for the project as it flows into a distinct line of practice and a slight obsession with early and later Brian de Palma movies.  If I can actually get my head together and do some thinking this is probably important for my PhD work as the line between my research and my practice is sometimes more obscure than opaque. 

I have also been thinking about the idea of going native.  I don't think you are allowed to say this anymore but historically it holds a specific meaning.  As I'm excluded mainly from my world which I see as a place of conceptual artistic practice then  I have the potential to go native  or perhaps less provocatively adopt two worlds. The community world of the playground where i feel most at home and the strange and exotic world of the university where I feel disjointed.  I'm reminded of an earlier post on here or somewhere else where i quote from the film the fly. "perhaps I am just a community worker who only dreamed he was an artist."  perhaps though dreaming is important and the rusty nails on a bench or the fixing of toilets as an art act, the story of the rat in a pipe and thoughts about building paying attention to dwelling from Heidegger are not really an assemblage or an actor network perhaps i need to go back to feeling them as a practice.

Leaving a Mark

 I found this hand on the underside of the castle.  Somebody clearly left their mark.  It reminded me of hand prints early peoples made in caves and also the marks on first nation Americans horses.  On a personal level it reminded me of how crap I am at painting and how I always seem to get my hands covered in paint.  It is Thursday writing day today and I felt like I had to mark where I am on my blog first.  This is leaving a hand print under the surface of the work to be found and paid attention too at a later point.

I had a supervision yesterday and in many ways it was productive.  Kate was very encouraging and Laura was very practical.  My writing about my connection to the playground was never really supposed to be part of the PhD writing, it was an effort to write through the blockage of expectation.   Like the sewers of London I felt that years of baby wet wipes had combined with the oils of angst to create a giant fatberger in my head that needed moving.  I just did some writing that I could do, the draining thoughts leaking throw a side tunnel or into the water table of my life.   

Now there is something about taking Kate's positive thoughts and working back into the document and getting it to look more like a PhD chapter.  This will be adding some references but also the Narritive makes this possible in a less abstract way.  Within this chapter I will be able to introduce some play theory, some history of the adventure play movement without going into the fine grain.  I think I can pick and choose some of the relevant bits and cover a bit of stuff from play theory where it meets my lived experience.  I won't have to do a potted history of the adventure play movement but i may talk of Colin ward and changing attitudes towards the child and the city.

I can't really face this today though as I'm feeling a bit stressed with everything about the house move and I need to walk the dog and I need a bit of a break.  I still like my idea about analytical and continental philosophy and I think I may be able to expand on this in my writing. Laura asked me to think about data and I suggested we should talk of it as what I would collect - this felt easier, perhaps I need to write about this as well.  Calling it data creates a territory for research and essentially it is this territory I am resisting

Slides and Other Things

 

I had a supervision this morning I think it went OK although the writing I sent in wasn't really supposed to be PhD writing it seemed to go some way in providing a context for the next piece of writing.  It wasn't trying to be very clever but it ended up having some quite clever bits in it.

I did two days at the playground and finished off a big tidy up, helped Patrick sort his office out and started to build a platform for the new up-cycled slide.  None of this is part of my residency or my PhD it is working as a volunteer and it complicates things in what I'm hoping is a good way.  

The supervision went quite well though I left thinking I need to be less opaque and more explicit in my PhD writing.  Instead of presenting something I feel is a poetic speculative proposition I also need to explain in more detail what this is and why I think it.  Just found out our house sale has fallen through which should not be very worrying but somehow is strangely worrying and a reminder that I'm not feeling particularly myself at the moment. 

Kate came up with a good plan for my writing and I ordered a Tausig book to read.  I read a very short introduction to continental philosophy over the weekend and this felt like the kind of reading I used to do for pleasure.  It was similar to the Harmen books I've read about Object Orientated Ontology.   Lots of returns to Kant and references to Hegal and Hursul and the Frankfurt group.  I am not sure why I read it and I'm feeling a bit at sea but i think it is the house move and sale and all the kids coming home - in their words I'm feeling a bit Moach which means emotional.