Thursday writing day

 After a funny week of angst I restarted Thursday writing day.  River has handed his PhD in so the writing group isn't happening. This is sad but it never really picked up momentum and I'm not inclined to keep the stone rolling. It needs to gather moss. I went for a walk to Parkwood Springs as the day was glorious, on my return I've tried to watch Manning and Massumi on You Tube talking about Whitehead but after 7 minutes I switched off after 12 minutes I switched it off. 

I did start my literature review again with a focus on research-creation. I read Manning Against Method chapter 4 of A Minor Gesture.  She tricks you by starting normal and then going off the scale in terms of references and complicated rabbit holes of thought.  I was really hoping it would make more sense this time around but by the middle I was very confused.  It reads like it should be more like analytical philosophy in that it works towards or builds to as simple an explanation as is possible of a complicated issue but it just looses me in the middle, that's probably the point but I don't care enougth. 

At about 2 I came up with this idea about research-creation and ethnographic field notes.

So the proposition is

Research creation affords the potential to write fiieldnotes from the speculative middle with no distance or withdrawal from the field and no transcendental aspiration - yet they still have to be field notes as a heuristic as something that becomes enfolded into the practice.

I liked this sentence because it pulled together my field notes and the idea of immanence in that I was not doing ethnography or trying to become an ethnographer. I was merely drawing on the writing of ethnographic field notes into the milieu of a research creation project.  They emerged as boundary objects in the field, they were not performative or a representation of field notes.  Yet because they came form the middle and emerged in the practice, not planned for or applied they were enfolded. As such they count as research creation and this concept freed them or at least changed their relationship to a tradition. The art making tipped them out of the groove as Whitehead would say. 

If I was asked why am I doing field-notes and critiqued for turning to an ethnographic humanist tradition that necessarily bifurcates the known from the subjective 'I' that knows I am starting to formulate a response.  I can scaffold this in relation to research creation and I can say I don't give a flying fuck what Denzin has to say about it. 

When I was walking the dog I started to think about the actual location of my residency and its complex set of relations.  I always secretly felt that my actual residency was within the university and within the idea of research and arts/artists position or location.  The power of the university to separate itself from the world continues to fascinate me.  This again is to an extent tackled by research-creation with its concern for making- thinking- doing, it can't just work with a fragment it is hungry for an expanse with no edges only folds.

So we come to the real work of the Phd and the only really consistent work I've done in terms of thinking and writing lives within this blog.  It is here where I write the struggle and descend into madness and come back again only to end up in a stasis of frustration.  it is here and only here where I do the writing that I can do, that I'm proud of and that works.  It is here where I am able to talk about the actual residency that sits in the speculative middle between the becoming  of the virtual and the actual in the only real that counts as anything in relation to the event of my PhD journey.  

Art, Disobedience and Ethics

 I worked in Bristol last week. It was a new project with Jennifer and I was nervous about it for all sorts of reasons.  I called it coming out of my Covid coma.  It was the first thing I had done since the start of the pandemic that felt like a new challenge. I was as worried about the drive as I was about the work.  Jennifer goes to bed very early but on Thursday night she spent a couple of hours coaching me which was helpful. She helped me to recognise things I already know about the PhD writing process  and galvanized the idea that PhD writing is a process I  need to fully engage with.  It is no longer any use to dance around the edges and write large amounts of words that are not a PhD.  

I have some nice work to do at the moment. A build project with Tom at Highfied adventure playground, the Shadow-Play project for Sheffield Theaters, the We Are Our Stories project in Bristol and the most excellent Trees project. Along with a few projection events this is possibly about 70 percent of what I was doing before my PhD as a freelancer.  Leaving 30 percent for PhD writing which seems just about doable as the funding has now finished. 

I've been having a strange exchange of ideas with Tim where we send each other short video clips.  He is normally in his cellar and I can only see the top of his head. I am in the cemetery walking the dog. My films are a bit like a first person video game.  He is trying to help me find a way through, his comments mainly focus on the purpose of writing a PhD not so much about creating new knowledge more about what the PhD is for.

One of Tim's suggestions was to think critically about my work with the academy.  To look at how I work on research and how I bring my practice to research projects.  In itself this is not very useful as I tried to explain that this is where I am and the type of critique I would probably like to make would need to come from the outside of where I am.  Perhaps from the world and work of artists and musicians trying to find a place for their disciplines to thrive or at least find value within the world of research. I am on the inside now, I feel like I am on  the inside trying to make new-sense.  Working freelance again especially on research projects has allowed me to feel a position again, a position where I feel I am of value. The difference between my PhD and these arenas is that on the projects I can bring a practice, bring arts methods and know enough about how theory works and how the academy work to have the confidence to contribute. Feeling out of my depth is always part of this but I rarely feel like I am drowning.  Picking up on projects like Treescapes and the Stories project in Bristol have reminded me how I work but also made me think about how my PhD project at the playground is very different to this way of working.

My initial work with Abi was actually a perfect  example of how research can work between disciplines, bring something distinct and different and looking back it really helped me to think in new ways about fractures and interventions and collaboration.  At the playground I'm actually on my own, there are no other disciplines or projects to intervene in so there is no middle space.  What has evolved over the 2 years of my residency is an interplay with theory - the theory has become the thing that intervenes, the middle place.  I say theory as distinct from the literature.  It is as if I am working in a cross disciplinary way with Delueze, I have accidentally invented this relationship for the project to try and make an in-between. 

It feels quite clear now that in developing my own project as an empirical study I was unable to actually explore what I had been doing for years which was to be in residence within a research project.  As I was constructing and building the project myself there was nothing (no event) intrinsic or transcendental to intervene with. I produced the  research myself so there was a different possibility of interaction.  I also identify as a visual artist and not a researcher so there is an element of performing research that never sat comfortably. 

I am working through Dennis Atkinsons book on art disobedience and ethics.  Laura suggested it was a book very much about art education and since she pointed this out I have read with this in-mind which has made it easier to understand.  I would say it is a book that places art and the creation of something new within the context of school pedagogies  or perhaps schooling.  The book points out how art is disobedient and will not settle - art is like a dog with a bone.  I haven't taken notes,  I don't take notes when I read books I find difficult as the interesting thoughts, if they are good are held within the difficulties.  I also find that when I take detailed notes they can often miss the point, find the easier routes to understanding which for me often removes feeling the books affect.  

There is a lot that resonates for me and connects to my experience.  Immanence is introduced really well - the not-yet, the enunciation on the verge of becoming. The speculative possibilities of art to engender difference to be more-than - to over-code to be in excess to capture.  With my theory head on and given that I haven't quite finished the book there is a worry for me that art is been tasked with doing or having the potential to do more than it perhaps can.  I read the book in bed at Jenifer's as I thought about our next day in school.  A big part of me was in complete agreement with thoughts from Rancierre and Spinoza and Whitehead and Deleuze and Guattari and I was laying these thoughts and agreements on the lesson plan for school.  What I realized is that to have any type of freedom you had to first be let in.  To be let in you had to be trusted and that it was too much to expect art to be disobedient without building a context for this disobedience.  It also felt like a weight of expectations almost like art was a panacea or a magic corrective wand. Dennis's book does not aspire to be  practical guide and it is brilliant in many ways, it does bring the key thinkers that come up again and again together in a way that makes sense, it does explain through example and creates connections and it does challenge some foundational bedrocks within schooling that have a massive impact on schools at every level.  The perception of good learning and teaching and quantifying it is an oppression. I welcome any well thought through challenge. 

Reading the book and then going into school and dealing with the practicalities, personalities, research project, expectations and pure logistics did make me wonder where it fitted.  I felt I aligned with the core ideas about learning and it was good to see them clearly laid out and beautifully referenced.  The book is like an external justification of a practice and an approach I passionately believe. Yet the mechanisms that come into play to hold onto and work with this ethos seem more complex and nuanced in the world.  It feels like the trick is not to know when to stick to your guns but to be able to compromise without  loosing site of an ethos, an idea, a practice, a way an art.

Forgetting even the blog

My black thumbnail is moving gradually towards the end of things.  I was using it as a body clock to mark the passing of time and hoping that I would of got somewhere by the time it had grown out.  Alas I am not where I thought I should be and have recognised the real possibility that I will never be where I thought I should be.  After a genuine push before Christmas on producing a literature review I have hit a wall of inertia.  I have had to pull back from writing as my anxiety levels actually got quite bad.  It is good to admit this to myself and to admit that being anxious is something I have to live with and take care of. I over think things and find it hard to be in the moment of something without worrying about something else.

I have therefore taken my foot off the pedal and allowed the black dead blood under my nail to gradually grow out in the background.  This decision or what could better be described as a lack of decision started just after my last supervision.   The problem from my end is quite straightforward in that I cannot write in a way that holds the central problematic contradiction at the core of my work and thinking.  The reason for this is twofold, firstly I am not a good enough writer and secondly the form of writing that is required for a successful PhD submission doesn't hold the level of ambiguity I feel I need. Not knowing and the problem with arts practice align with immanence in the space of the work for me but I seem unable to work this through my PhD writing.  I was always hoping that I would be able to do this through art, stories and material things and it was this tripartite combination that gave me optimism hope and direction. To move forward it is these three things I may have to abandon.

A ladybird is making its way across a book on Art-based methods on my desk. It has been woken up too early,  either by the mild weather or our central heating. It is orange rather than red and has around 16 black spots.  I want to write a PhD that pays attention to the ladybird, allows for it to enter into the writing and the thinking and to make new-sense.  As everyone is so keen to tell me this would not really be a PhD but critically for today this is where I am. The ladybird has crept into my blog post in order to help me finish it off with a little flare of colour.
 

Thinking through Practise

 I've just listened to a talk from 2016 about Utopia and adventure play. In many ways it was a helpful reminder of how long we have been thinking through some of the key concepts that have emerged across the 3 years of my PhD study. In my very first blog post I talked about how practice would be my safety net and I confidently self identified as a practitioner. This seems like a long time ago

As the funding for my study has now finished I am officially a freelance practitioner again.  From memory I think this part of early January is always hard and things are slow to get going.  In many ways this slowness is a good reminder that it's not good to not be busy.  When I am not busy the small things grow in size and fill the foreground of a life.  Not being busy is a necessary part of practice, it defines the space of it by carving out the negative form.

Everyday when Kim gets home form work I tell her that I have struggled. Luckily it has only been 3 days so far, she is very busy and carries a lot of responsibility,. She is also not that tolerant of my needy version.  I am not busy and carry very little responsibility for others yet I still seem to be carrying a weight on my shoulders. 

Today when I woke up  I felt like I didn't know anything. Like I didn't have a practice. Like I don't have a raveling of potentials that I keep going on about.  It is difficult to work or contemplate doing work as I am  no longer sure what doing work would actually look like.  I have had a few false starts and I am slogging through Dennis Atkinsons book about Art and Disobedience. It brings together Spinoza, Whitehead and Deleuze into the arena of artistic learning.  The book feels like it should fit and it works through some of the concepts I have been struggling through in a way that is systematic yet pays attention to the complexity. I can't work out if it is bringing me closer to something or moving me father away.

From a professional perspective in the moment of inactivity, within this pause in things I feel like I am on the brink of a crises.  The Christmas break has not taken me to a place where I can get stuck in it has put me in a place where I feel stuck. I feel like the character in the Billy Brag song who is waiting for the great leap forward. ( never to come)

I cannot help but think that part of what I'm working through is a move away from practice and feeling like I have/had one. Not having a workshop is part of this and probably not having a project that is very clearly visual art is part of this.  The writing I seem capable of, the writing  that works is always slightly angry and always raveled in with making thinking and doing. It is a journey through the hyper chaos as Johan would say.  The concept of raveling is about working with practice within an event which includes research.  This is the part of my PhD that I often point towards but have not really started to write. Perhaps I have without realising it. This then is the thing, to develop an identity as an artist scholar which I seem to be harping on about I need to develop a practice as an artist/scholar which may involve giving something up in terms of my identity as an artist. 

So we have the catch 22 situation which is closely linked to the catch 22 situation in the book.  To write about a subjective arts practice in the arena I have entered I need to become an artist/scholar and to do this I need to develop a practice that enables this becoming.  The catch 22 is that in becoming an artist scholar practitioner a part of practice needs to be abandoned.  This opaque and felt part of practice what I like to think of as new-sense that needs to be abandoned is never really there. It is always on the edge of being there, it is not manifested within an art object , its becoming is not a coming to matter or words or ideas it remains on its own plane.  

For most of this PhD I have maintained the throughline of a practice. Think of it as one of the ends of the raveling, a place to start to unpick the ball of emotions and actions that constitute the ever expanding event. Since I've sat back at this desk post Christmas I have lost the dangley end of things that however complex the knot would always give you a place to start.  A raveling is not a tangle and perhaps the tangle is something that needs to be avoided.  When you go fishing there is a point when you get in a tangle that you just need to cut out the mess and start again.  Perhaps spool on some new line and push the mess of mono filament deep into the bottom of your bag partly so you can forget about it and partly to avoid causing damage to wildlife.  My knowledge feels narrow and not expansive, the shape of a practice is slipping away and I'm not sure where to bolster it.  

Tim was helpful yesterday he again said that my literature review was not really a literature review which I knew already.  The form of a literature review is robust and there seems no real point in trying to subvert it, the subversion would do nothing except undermine what comes after. We talked about the body without organs and he gave me two pieces of advice. The first was to stitch up my Anus which is Delueze and Guattaris advice on making yourself into one.  They also suggest stitching up every other orifice that presents an opening onto the world. We both acknowledged how ridiculous it is that in a world so grotesque it still jars when someone in polite society demands that you stitch up your arse.   He then more usefully proposed that I spend some time defining my terms - the words I will use and how I will use them.  I wondered if this was perhaps a lexicon?  this word crops up a lot in my projects at the moment. I think I know what it means but it seems to be a word that is asked to carry more than its everyday usage. I think Tim is encouraging me to write a lexicon for my PhD as a way of presenting or working through a literature review  more appropriately demonstrating a route through some specific literature in a way that does what a literature review needs to do.   I am grasping at straws now but feel like I need something to grasp firmly in both hands.  500 words about each concept that frames its use within the PhD writing - the raveling through a practice.  It would mean nearly starting from scratch although everything I have written will find a place I'm sure.  What words will form my lexicon of practice, what words would afford a structure that would scaffold a journey through the literature? what words are important?

1. Residency

2. Practice

3. Nomad

4.Assemblage

5. Concept

6. Research

7. Enchantment

8. Aesthetics

9. Body

10. Event

11. Ravelling

12. Platform

13. Play

14. New

15. Dream

16. Speculate

17. Proposition

18. Art

19. minor

20. creation.

 

removing the obstruction

 I managed to remove the tree stump with Tom at some point over the Christmas break. It happened between the hangover and the winter vomiting virus.  We ended up snapping it using two long levers; it's last gasp of splitting timber was very satisfying.  It was so big that after getting out of the ground we could hardly move the bloody thing.

The new year has started and I have spent my first day back at work, pause, whatever that may mean. I have done some emails and some readings and gathered myself. I have picked up the ends of the raveling I've created.

It is good when you get somewhere to remind yourself that you have got there.   I did remove the stump and as with any good metaphor I need to layer this into my PhD process.  

Picking up a thread of a thought from the end of last year when I decided the purpose of doing as opposed to writing a PhD for a person like me is to endeavor to make something new. To bring something into the world, to create something.  Whatever is created and the potential for it is to a degree irrelevant. It does not have to be great or special, it can be poorly explained, derivative and  ugly.  What it can't do, at least  for me, is to be a representation of something that was always there.

At the back of much of my reading lies the lure of creation. Like a secret thread that gets swallowed and  eventually becomes an entwined part of a body.  The tree stump removal and the realization of the need to create something new are two events that span the end of last year and the start of this year.

The justification is for struggle. The moment when all that will do is muscle and sweat. The moment to find a groove, a refrain, a vibrancy, a purpose and to hold it dear.  I will plant the lawn and level out the place where the stump grew.  Many people might come in to the garden and not know the stump had ever grown there yet I will remember the struggle of removing it. Digging down deep with my mattock my spade and my hands and looking for any object, close to hand to help lever the obstruction out of the way. 

So this is the start of the new year where writing however bad finds its purpose.  I'm not sure why I started to dig up the stump but once I began the process the task took on its own requirement for completion.