Feeelin g like things are temporary

 This is the longest break in my blog record since I started my PHD.  In the last 3 weeks I have packed up the old house moved too the new house, had a week in a school doing the Odd project, delivered a paper at the leaping in to the limanel Pgr Conference, done a lot of gardening and now feel pretty exhausted .  It is clear now that footballs not coming home. I don't seem to be able to switch off, every job seems to generate another job. The PhD work has suffered a little because I have been too busy to think.

I went back to the old house to delver the conference paper, it felt strange to be rattling around in the large empty rooms.  The WiFi switched over to the new house the day after the conference finished and I haven't really been back here  properly since then, I have a new home.  I haven't had much time to write or to take stock. I dodged a supervision last week  as I don't really have much to show.  I quite liked my presentation at the conference though, there was something about picking a line from Deleuze and Guattari and working it into my practice that I quite liked - it is at least the thread of something to follow.  

Yesterday I unpacked all my books, from my PhD shelves. This was interesting as I have them on 3 shelves, the old historical baseline books which are mainly philosophy and British cultural theory.  Then the central shelf which is the literature I really need to take account of - stuff on research creation and lots of Manning and a couple of new materialist classics and then lots of practical stuff on ethnography and writing - this is my pragmatic shelf ( its not quite big enough and runs onto the bottom shelf). The rest of the bottom is taken up with Ruskin and then there are the historic adventure playground books - there are not many of these but I think they will be useful at points.

Even though to reference Walter Benjamin I have unpacked my library  I don't feel like I am ready to start writing again. Something needs to give, there needs to be a pause for breath.  Moving house has not been easy. It has required monumental focus and graft and I don't feel at all settled yet.  I think when I get to the end of July and the playground opens up again  there will be a point to refocus and come up for air.  I remember a quote about been a tunneler and occasionally having to pop your head up out of the ground to see where you are.  Alfred North Whitehead in his flights of the speculative imagination talks of dropping down from the cloud in a plane- to land and take stock a while and find a sense of place and direction.  I feel very much like this, lost in the busy pragmatics of life. I am relatively happy and I want this feeling to carry on for a bit.  It will lead into an intensive period of some kind of fieldwork and then I will do other bits and bobs and spend time writing all this up next year.  At least that is the best laid plan of mice and a man.

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.

Play Principles

 

I mended the castle yesterday along with a few other bits and bobs.  Writing my trajectory I did start to wonder about the practice of play work and how it relates to ethos and if I am not going to engage with it as a trajectory   I at least have  to  explain why and provide a rational.   So I read some Wendy Russel and I thought about how play is quite robust and is a concept that can be applied to other things in the form of  playfulness. I  then tracked down the play principles  thought  how British they are.   I copy them here as a reminder that this is also something to think about .   When I did the talk with Patrick at the national play conference I  realised that one reason it didn't go down well was that people were sick of always trying to re-engage  with first principles  .  To be asked again what is play ? is a mistake because the feeling is that this at least we know.  In art we like to ask ourselves what it is all the time because its actually not good to think you know.   The searching for an ontology is actually part of what art is.  I am not sure how much I need to engage with the play principles but it is where play workers meet practice and to an extent theory . 

 

 

The Playwork Principles

 

 

The Playwork Principles, 8 in total, provide an ethical framework for the playwork sector. They were written by a scrutiny group of experienced practitioners, trainers and educators in 2005, with extensive consultation with the playwork sector. They have been highly influential in the sector as they set out not only what the sector understands by the term play but also what are the key qualities of the staff who are responsible for creating conditions in which children can play. The Playwork Principles have underpinned qualification and training courses and feature heavily in key documents. The principles set out the need for play professionals to advocate for play when faced with other adult agendas and to develop skills in reflection to ensure when working with children and young people that staff provide the right permissions and support to enable children the freedom to play. In essence, the principles set out what is unique about and to be cherished when

working to support children’s play.

  

1. All children and young people need to play. The impulse to play is innate. Play is a biological, psychological and social necessity, and is fundamental to the healthy development and well-being of individuals and communities.

 

 2. Play is a process that is freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated. That is, children and young people determine and control the content and intent of their play, by following their own instincts, ideas and interests, in their own way for their own reasons.  

 

3. The prime focus and essence of playwork is to support and facilitate the play process and this should inform the development of play policy, strategy, training and education. 

 

 4. For playworkers, the play process takes precedence and playworkers act as advocates for play when engaging with adult led agendas.  

 

5. The role of the playworker is to support all children and young people in the creation of a space in which they can play.  

 

6. The playworker's response to children and young people playing is based on a sound up-to-date knowledge of the play process, and reflective practice.

7. Playworkers recognise their own impact on the play space and also the impact of children

and young people’s play on the playworker.

  

8. Playworkers choose an intervention style that enables children and young people to extend their play. All playworker intervention must balance risk with the developmental benefit and well-being of children. 

 

 A video titled The Playwork Principles

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“why we do what we do” can be viewed here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VGq83lPPn8

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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.