Over the summer I edited the a/folder padlet and researched how this can exist beyond my student status.
I added the various other forms of communication by which material returned to me, group and organised the different strands.
This is its current state (previous posts are here and here; I reflect on its status as interactive web platform (and not a screenshot documentation in a PDF here):
Crucially, I include the padlet for the three events which each in turn engaged with a different a/folder.
I also include on the far right and bottom the various processes of myself exploring #8 Go to the meadow, inviting others to join me and over a series of months going to the meadows that have featured in my own work over the years. This is in fact the first time that I, myself, test the a/folders in depth to explore where their methodology leads me to (I also did to some extend with #3 Detach and #6 Drawing/Machine before but not in such depth.
Over the summer I also begin to explore physical, offline manifestations of a new a/folder, #13 a circle completed, which involves a mail art post-and-return process with some cyanotype/chemistry to explore latency and exchange. This so far is not included on the padlet but I have included the visual below in the assessment portfolio.
I have for this, like for most other items, continued to write both privately in Evernote, and publicly in Facebook as this blog has fallen out of use. I am transferring my notes on the A/Folder process here to indicate the levels of notetaking and reflection I am engaged in:
The site is, as those before, a padlet, limited as such but also variable and it allowed for text/visual 3rd-party posting.
Most of the zines formed part of group projects/activities and events, it’s these that generated by far the most return. (for the www residency/exhibition project; as part of the three events I ran in early Spring, as part of my existing GSARD crit group). There are also a few individual enquiries that stretch or exist outwith these group settings. For these I am particularly grateful, most came from existing friendship and/or longer working relationships (i.e. the ones I loved going to the pub with to discuss methodology), but also some newer, less familiar ones.
After concluding the course module I took those instructions and investigated them myself: some crossovers like fir hide x drawing machine; like go to the meadow (as in: all the meadows I have ever known and loved); like drawing machine x make a pocket. Many of these involved others: with A on Tempelhofer Feld, with L&A on the urban edgeland by the Clyde; with C on her not/meadow; with J in Crosspark, with L in a meadow that was entirely new to me. I didn’t go to Institutional Green for this so far. And I didn’t go to the meadow that is the meadow for this.
While all the For Cover was singular, individual work with me and some contact media, a transformer station, a lot of tree and field, some birds, some burning birch scented air; this became the interactive, participatory enquiry into drawing/contact that sat first off at the heart of what i wanted to do with this cycle of work. It wasn’t comfortable, sometimes decidedly strained, but also lush, tender, funny, insightful, considered, banal and cosmic. It animated in ways I would not have considered possible. It’s super simple in that, some of that workshop feedback was right, yet, more a strength than a weakness. Oh: brainy and gutsy too. Now: how can that translate into a new form/method?
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Today I am amazed by the richness of the Kaleidoscope explorations: so many contributed. So varied too in modality. I didn’t download all (still need to do that) but many; also a few moving image pieces.
Changing perspective into introspection, what light/distance can do.
I seem to remember some thoughts/questions over what contextual distance would mean; possibly also some confusion over the haptic/erotic argument?
In retrospect I got so distracted by Anna’s struggle of wanting to take part, not taking part. Why was she there? I still don’t quite get it (and may need to revisit notes again).
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I hadn’t done the investigations that I instructed. They all developed out of the methods, the glossary, the PaR, but as such they were also new.
So, taking April-June to explore these myself was really useful.
I was deliberate in varying clarity and obscureness.
I made them often dialogue pieces, well, not often: with Chris, who had taken the make a pocket to make it a drawing machine for some time; with John I hadn’t talked about it; I mentioned it to Liam and Amelia, but didn’t unpack it; with Angela we also talked about it but in almost all cases then it was my own private enquiry in these meetings.
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The crossovers were interesting, very insightful. As if mapping the terrain more fully, as if re-assembling the village edge. An assembly kit? This felt illicit: that early instruction not to mix my series, my work enquiries; and yet: these were of the same site, same project, same enquiry.
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The pieces that aren’t: the more explicit relational pieces, concerning desire, presence, violence. I name them and number them but they then don’t really appear. Which is fine, it’s like a ghost and my work is quite full of ghost. A sense that there is something else here, hovering, given space for those who may want to recognise it.
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I can actually write something much bigger on the #8 Go to the meadow. And I probably should.
How the image with John C. tells of the start of me sitting on that bench in Lockdown 1; of the work that originates from the first pandemic wave.
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I like how generous and generative this simple writing and noting is. Why do I so rarely make time for it?
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27/7
This has lingered. I didn’t go back to it, didn’t draft the blog. And still: it feels resolved and good.
I have spent much time exploring the asemic/vispo/ciphers of the PS course. Did in it turn to the meadow as archive and how enso circles can teach me about the different plants growing on the meadow.
In this I also thought of wanting to send something to GSARD to explore the archive/distance: of making a plant drawn circle with cyanotype; fix it; coat the back, send it unexposed. Perhaps to print on it another A/folder instruction: to send two iterations and a return label to invite them to keep one (fix it? don’t fix it?) and return one (fixed/unfixed?)
I also order Tawnya Renelle’s Prompts — what a lovely way to alter ‘instruction’ ‘score’. I think I can learn much from the poets to be more playful, nuanced with my use of language.
She also told me she was using Fond as way of ordering/disordering an archive.
28/7
I talk about the archive and Susan mentions directory; but also how it needs care and can be a variety of things, it doesn’t need to all fold into the same structure.
(I may have gotten too concerned with finding the master key here).
I have a fruitful exchange on my final submission to the PS course: of the frustrations in the form. I use it to trace where frustrations do lie, as I felt very happy with having made the PDF as closing piece for the course itself.
Research | Body of Work | Sustain Your Practice 