discomfort (again and onwards)

I have an extended set of notes (perhaps even a personal archive?) around the notion of discomfort, concern, wariness, and perhaps even repulsion, towards the work, my work, and the processes, my processes.

I have also still an open blog post item to write, for Learning Outcome 5:

Confidently engage a public audience with your work and analyse, review and evaluate information relevant to your practice, identifying opportunities for professional and creative development

At this point, the work around discomfort does not coalesce sufficiently to form a text contribution, and for assessment it also doesn’t need to. Instead, I want to turn to a closing discussion from the last tutorial in early April that raised precisely this and how it situates within the core and concept of the work. I then turn briefly, underneath to a short feedback sequence in response to the Research practice video that Rachel and I recorded for coursework and published in August on the #weareoca blog, which points, this time anonymously, towards similar affective responses (perhaps even atmospheres) around my work. (I will return to this).

Here a short review segment from the tutorial:

Tutorial report 5, 6/4/21

The college blog published a piece written by myself and Rachel, following Rachel’s request to interview me for a case study in one of the new CA Stage 3 course materials. We then excerpted and framed the video. Despite a few hickups with viewing permissions, it got a series of circulations and yielded a fair bit of private and public responses. I find a snippet of a short conversation beneath it, from people I do not know. I am startled (feel misunderstood) at first and then delight, I respond but don’t receive anything further. Both responses capture well the discomfort that I have frequently encountered in far more related contexts.

screengrab from comments of the blog post referenced above

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SYP tutor reports 3-5 reviewed and added

A few weeks ago I made a point to list the blog posts I still wanted to add and explore. I remain slow with these, as often I question the role of the blog (it no longer has much audience, my own writing sits elsewhere, the submission documents contains most that is important).

Today is my last day of working on the documents for submission, all is ticked off except for the larger conceptual items – discomfort, an expectant archive, and a toolbox/forward look. They are in process, referenced, and perhaps taken to the point of conclusion they will be for the actual module.

I have spent (as always) a fair bit of work on the assessment, again more than necessary, and yet this, as before has been useful: to shape the material in a way that it will facilitate a next for me beyond what the assessors read. The practice as research is held within it, notably it functions as an expectant archive in how it contains and organises the work that is SYP in text and visual. It is documentation in the sense that I want to use documentation as work, as performance, as institutional engagement and as contemporary practice that holds in relation to its respective audiences.

I read through the final three tutor reports, all from the last eight weeks of module (late January to early April). I marvel, as before, as them as record of sustained and engaged conversations, tutorials, and what they hold of that conversation but also how they each point forward and summarise – logistics, concepts, methods, outlook and practice.

Each is rich with both the unfolding material – the works around the fir hide in particular, the shaping of the materials that will become part of the Wander Wide Web exhibition a few months later, and exploring, examining and evaluating carefully, the different forms of engagement, messages, publicness in which I circulate the A/Folders, the visual works, the see (through) events.

Let me insert a couple of short sections here from across the three in which we discuss the engagement modalities and what they yield and how they can be shaped and understood:

On testing the a/folder zines:

Tutorial report 3, 26/1/2021

Planning the see (through) events after a test run with my crit group:

Tutorial report 3, 26/1/2021

Direct messages as part of the circulation of work:

Tutor report 4, 23/3/21

Overall feedback and summary after the event series:

Tutor report 4, 23/3/21

Reviewing the events and feedback/critique

Tutor report 5, 6/4/21

Please find below the three tutor reports (3-5) uploaded.

gesa_helms_sypa3Download

gesa_helms_sypa4Download

gesa_helms_sypa5Download

#12 a Kaleidoscope through 2 zoom cameras

Two screenshots from see (through) 3: moving-with (21/March 2022)

See (through): practice conversations documentation

For the three see (through): practice conversations I had set up a simple padlet space to serve as context, prompt and holding container for the respective sessions but also to advise on format and preparation (of making use of the respective a/folder zines for each event; of exploring the use of the video camera to facilitate and decentre view and making process).

The padlet is referenced elsewhere (such as images inserted to the a/folder platform) and included here.

For advertising of the events see here, for a reflection and feedback see here.

A/Folder update at the end of SYP

I created and circulated further A/Folder since I tested them first at the end of 2021. The most recent edition is #12 a Kaleidoscope, there exist a couple more drafts.

This is the expanding platform for the series:

I tried and tested a series of engagements, the losest being a general tweet, the closest printed out zines posted to colleagues or as this part of the tutorial discussion shows, being attached DM conversations with friends.

Tutorial report SYP A5, 25/3/2022

There is much more in this project as to engagement, contact, instructions and obligation. I have begun to draw out a number of these issues since inception and they have been discussed throughout the tutorials 3 and 4.

At this point I am intending to let this project continue to run, I have created a section in the Portfolio for SYP and will update accordingly for the assessment (Autumn 2022).

I recorded the changes to the padlet (however only since I moved from blocks to canvas, I had initially set it up as a post wall but found that didn’t work when I begun to receive longer text submissions). Today, 2 April, I have removed the need to approve posts, none of the submissions have been spam and I want to give those who submit posts more choice over placement, sizing and engagement with the site.

I also received a whole series of post for #8 Go to the meadow, as response to one of my three DM inputs discussed above.

Here a gallery with the existing screenshots:

see (through): practice conversations | 3 events in March

Three online events in March invite you to explore jointly sites, methods and themes of For Cover, my practice-as-research based body of work.

As practice-as-research For Cover articulates across four covers, four blankets, at the forest edge (and just beyond it) in drawing and contact: haptic and tactile media such as frottage and cyanotype trace wind, rain, sound and care in site-specific installations. It circulates already as an expandable PDF to zine library/archive: A/Folder: an instructive glossary, and a series of objects, b-hold: circulatory objects to touch. see (through): practice conversations is the third aspect of exploring its publicness.

Two making workshops invite you to join me and explore some of the methods and tools of my enquiry: drawing machines, mobiles, and viewing devices to engage senses across the visual and the tactile.

1: Moving-with is interested in how our embodied movements, feet, bodies, hands, produce tactile objects and enquiries.

3: Contextual distance enquires into where is the site, work and audience between the visual and the haptic.

Inviting individual explorations ahead of the sessions, the zoom-based workshops seek to utilise the digital space our meeting to navigate across contact, distance and closeness between desk and camera.

2: participation (in) archiving invites two fellow artists, Susan Farrelly and John Umney, to join me to open our ongoing practice conversations across archiving and participation –who where when and what of our practice; their temporalities and spaces; their discipline and subversions.

For the making workshops, there is a little preparation ahead of them (and limited spaces). You don’t need to bring any making skills, merely an inquisitive mind, and a few simple tools (paper, drawing implements in monochrome or colour).

Sign up via Eventbrite for further details.

The events will take place via zoom with links provided ahead of the events.

All events in this programme:

1: moving-with (a making workshop): Monday 14/3 6.30-8.30pm UK 

2: participation (in) archiving (a conversation with Susan Farrelly and John Umney): Wednesday 16/3 6.30-8.30pm 

3: contextual distance (a making workshop): Monday 21/3 6.30-8.30pm UK