Monday, March 28, 2022

The last Blog Post


 

Its time for the clocks to leap forward so I have just been in the cellar preparing the old sundial.  I've started to swap them over every six months again as we have moved and our new house is closer to Abbeyfield park.  I  have decided that this is going to be my last blog post on MYPHD the accidentally clever title, it has to end somewhere.  I spoke to Kate about it and she seemed to think it was a good idea, a transition from function to meaning or data to evidence or at the very least a publishing, the creation of an object with edges. This seems appropriate. 

This drawing of the line of completion is very significant in that the whole of my PhD inquiry has evolved into an exploration of territory.  This is close to the original concept of residency as method in that it expands on what a residency can be within its interactions with the world.  At points I have thought of residency as assemblage but this pins it too closely to the Deleuzian flag pole. I need a more practical and empirical set of concepts to produce something relevant.  The idea of territory has been present from the start and this Blog has afforded a line of flight across the assemblage of  residency.  The shift in thinking over the three years is a movement towards understanding process and flow better in relation  to arts practice.  It is a making sense of things that were on the edges of thought, not really moving them centrally but allowing them to fizz.  Like Berocca tablet bubbling in the glass to help with the hangover sometime effervescence is the only thing that affords a cure, however temporary. 

I had a text exchange with Kate who is keen to get me done and dusted she is been very helpful.  She says 

Start writing an introduction that explains 

1) why did you want to do this thesis 

2) who are you 

3) what the playground means and 

4) the problem in hand- how residency as method is both a proposition and a question.

These all seem like big questions and I am tempted to start to answer them here but as this is my last post I am required to sign off and open a new folder on my desktop called the final push and create a new word document. I am a reluctant academic and will attempt to finish what I have started. 



Monday, March 21, 2022

The Way Things Wear




I used to be interested in how peoples hands would wear things.  The shiny big toe on the crude elfin figure of Pan in the botanical gardens. The patina polished  away by the acid coated sweaty fingertips of stroking of hands.  There was a wooden handle on an old style across the path on the way to my school, the edges warn smooth now fitting perfectly in the palm of my child self hand.  Form following function warn into its becoming through persistent use.  I made a series of works called the way things wear. The cast of the space missing in an old stone step at Bolsover castle. The absent end of my Nana's Yorkshire pudding spoon given to her as a wedding present warn away in half a centuries batter and now nestled in our cutlery draw.  The visualized record of entropy, the fact everything is gradually been warn away and re-dispersed across the world.   The wood in the image above was salvaged from a piece of play equipment. It has warn quickly due to the presence of sand and the fact it was needed as a grip when climbing through a hatch.  This wood is a jump, a hyperlink back to a line of practice that is always present yet currently behaves like a well behaved cancer and lives in remission.  Culture is ordinary - this is a fact.  Where does this thing, the writing of a PhD sit within this line of undefined practice? this is a question for my abstract because if the PhD can not accommodate the practice within its event it is irrelevant.  I may need to follow the advice of my good friend a bongwater and find something more useful to occupy my last few years of my creative production. The piece that is warn away is also present, the space it once occupied resonates with its absense.


 I have come back to my desk after what seems like a long time.  The writing above is from one of my first sole authored book chapters, it resonates now.  Titorelli bemoaning his inability to make great art as he has spent too much time with the lawyers has always stuck in my mind. This along with K's long walk up twisted staircases to visit him in his studio. A life as an artist is specific and requires practice. It is not better than another life yet it is different, the things that make it different are things that make an artist.

The fear of becoming an academic has receded a little now as it becomes clear that there is little chance of that.  I am a starter finisher though and although the writing feels daunting in oh so many ways the task has a certain urgency due to approaching deadlines. I spoke to Kate this morning and she is going to set me a daily writing task, this will be good for me.  I copied and pasted everything I have written into a single document - it was only 35000 words which is a bit worrying- there must be over 60000 on this blog which isn't a PhD but I am rather proud of it.

Culture is ordinary this is where it starts.  I have done the work the reading and the thinking I just have the writing to do now and although this is daunting I think I have an idea of what I need to do.   Ben Shannon PhD has a big section where he writes about the affordances of research-creation in  relation to his PhD study.  He doesn't make a distinction between research-creation and PaR this coupled with attending a workshop about working on research projects with artists reveals a gap in knowledge even if it is present within the literature.  I need to write about the affordance of research-creation in relation to my journey through the academy.  When I first started working with Kate Pahl we set off to do a conference in Boston she told me that the university should be a station that the train of my life passes through.  A warning not to get stuck in  the thick mud of it, good advice and something I took on board. My train has stopped but I'm not getting off just splitting my ticket to save money with an eye on a destination of choice.

Friday, March 11, 2022

Busy Times


 I am currently working on.

1. Building a climbing wall at Highfields adventure playground.

2. Shadow Play at both Adventure playgrounds working towards an event early April

3. We are our Stories project in Bristol with Jennifer

4. Treescapes project with Kate.

5. Festival of the Mind project with Clare.

6. Potential Calligari project.

7. I am writing a paper on Multi-modality and research-creation.  

I have finished all the projection jobs we had booked in and will finish the climbing wall next week but I haven't had any time to work on my PhD for a month.  When I return to it I am hoping that I will have a focus on preparing something to submit.  It isn't the first time I have hoped for this but it is as I said on here a couple of months ago- crunch time.  I am aiming for the October 3 rd deadline for submission. I am not sure how practical this is but if I kick the can forward again at this point I'm sure I will not be able to get the focus and the time I will need to finish things off.

In the short term though I have enjoyed been busy and doing project work - I've pushed myself past the COVID barrier.  I've justified a lot of this by telling myself I need to earn money as my bursary has ended; there is some truth in this.  After Christmas I did feel worried about my mental health, part of my subjective ecology was starting to vanish up my own anus.  I know I should of stitched it up with fishing line if I was going to actually make a Body without Organs. I am a victim of my own neglect.  I have had four breaks from writing over the past three years, this is the longest and I am hoping the return will be more productive.

Working on the shadow -puppet project has reminded me of the things that happen when you are not doing research.  The fantastic and miriad relations, stories and connections that are always meant too be blown away by the wind.  The edge of the platform, the frame for this work is grown and flows from relationships, the ethics are located and persoanl.  Calling work 'research' seems to be the problem.  I liked creating living knowledge as a concept and I like the Manifesto nature of Kerrys book yet there is still an element of capture. Like the wild animals that roam the countryside an enclosure, however expansive takes something away from what it is to be alive, as Deleuze would say the pure  immanence of a life. 

There is a scene in the fellowship of the ring where the Dwarves have built a giant underground city - Gandalf does not want to go there as they dug too greedily and to  deep and awakened something that should of been left sleeping.  This is the way of a proper PhD study, to dig too deep into the foundations of thought.  It is good for the hastily built dwellings to have their foundations questioned and shored up, it can be good for some of the buildings to fall down and make way for something new.  however like  the Dwarves of Khazad-dum it is important to recognise the dangers that can be unearthed when we dig below the surface. 

Again the fear of banality enters the equation, to return to been measured against a standard I hold in low regard yet the desire remains not to be found wanting.