critical reflection: modality of BoW

Detail of updated concept map for BoW (July 2019): modality/methodology

As material for the dissertation:

The process of shifting back and forth as the process of the Body of Work and how produces itself and links to the dissertation.

• the gap pointed to it: what is opened up
• the photocopier manual, (m)use me, and the parallel project present its practice
• the line as practice to deal with the social subject matter (and so does: office at night; the corridor work and other green: contact, secrets, gossip)

Katrina Palmer’s Loss Adjuster is good for process and shift

Juliana Spahr’s Army of Lovers, Everyone connected, The transformation as container and focus on new materialism and relationality within

• sketchbook: thisconnection as bridge
• sketchbook: Juliana Spahr’s thisconnectionofeveryonewithlungs

Bhanu Kapil as for fragmentation and moving between different materials.

Joan Jonas and Rosemarie Trockel for holding these togethers (perhaps some like Doris Salcedo too?)

Friedrich Kittler opened the door to this and should be at the heart as conceptual/ methodological question

The smallness and the unimportance as guiding question to judge vis-a-vis artistic canon.

How to trace this through the BoW:

Reworking the concept map from February made some of these processes clearer: what is the how and the what: I had discussed as key outcome/ process a series of performance formats (solo; 1:1; and group) but wonder if that is the process really and if the process is not a tracing, following, pursuing of material shifts and registers; and that performance (through the inclusion of others, and a focus on the body) is merely a format that facilitates that.

In June I collated a few thoughts as to material contact:

clay experiments (following the Bleakeley performance)

darkroom and contact printing

screenprinting again

then: in the sketchbook:

• the transferral of marks to the next page,
• the pick up of graphite on previous pages
• see through/ fold
• (it is again processes that have intrigued me for a long time; possibly it is the link to indexicality again here that also concerns the interest in the ‘contact’ concern for the wider project)
• most actual drawings in the sketchbook are 10-15mins pieces while on the bus: layering fleeting views on top of each other, repeating and reworking. I did 12-15 of these over four journeys. They are not about indexicality. Yet, in some sense I feel they are relevant in terms of the drawing marks and in terms of what is connected through the moving through?

I also think the drawing on top of templates/copies is part of this too, and so is much around photocopying; and indeed the work with the typewriter in late March.

As in D2 I find a hesitancy towards material processes, as if they sidetrack me too much. I don’t think that I don’t experiment enough (which was one of the discussions over the material processes in D2), but I think I struggle to explicate or name what I am experimenting with.

As plan for Part 3 I want to focus on the processes themselves and pursue a range of them to explore what kind of register shifts are occurring (and, so my thought: are constitutive of the near space, the contact).

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R1.1 concept maps: initial ideas (part 1)

This is the first set of exercises (from Research, but overlapping with Body of Work) to revisit significant projects, identify a theme of significance, and to begin mapping out a research proposal and workplan. I have done a number of these exercises before arriving at these concept maps, I will see which of them I will add to the blog in what form).

These are a mix between concept and mind map. each takes about an hour and i develop these over a few days. i map my previous projects into these. contact and touch overlap in small sections the issue of communication and technology is new to arise and good to see where it fits (Kittler but also of course the spacetimes of Le Guin).
there is an issue of wanting to move between concept and methodology: to create a hybrid form similar to what i started with parallel praxis, but this seems daring, uncharted, difficult as it again sits right to the edge of subject matter, discipline, definition

to add:

• touch poems
• Abramovic (and perhaps other things from my Techniques lecture)
• intimacy
• Juliana Spahr’s this connection of everyone with lungs

 

Drawing as contact zone as overall theme for body of work?

>> do some more maps; including spacetime but also perhaps to get a bit more concrete? i.e.: the three themes from earlier:

Body in movement (my body as drawing tool) >> which was starting theme for D2

• done 29/12: it becomes a model more like and some movement is part of the mapping:
• audience sits separate
• body as tool becomes fool as body
• this is more limited to the ones before but also more generative: it is open enough to make connections and point forward:
  • a moving body of work
  • mainly missing: site >> I added this to concept map: Spatial praxis
  • there are a series of modalities of works beginning to appear:
    • impro
    • instruction
  • when is the tool the drawing?
  • what role does the shadow play?
• to add:
  • writing as contact?
  • flirt as contact // erotic charge

Interdisciplinarity in Drawing practice >> the wider theme for the CR >> map the CR onto a sheet of paper

• what else has been added/ remained/ left in terms of interest?
• does the focus on interdisciplinarity still hold interest to pursue further? the extended field? what touches and is in contact with whom and what else?
• what would be a lack/ absence of contact? a gap?

Production of space, the idea of reaching, touching a utopian spacetime aside the corridor
i am mapping the corridor and all else. strangely, i can locate an exact spot where i fantasise about it simply opening out to one of Le Guin’s worlds. i will need to test it.this is the fourth map (after touch, contact, and body as movement) — i want to do two more, then i think i can write what it will bei also realise in which types of constructions the photographers i care about cluster; the writers (of sci-fi, new narrative and steamy surrealism); and then the performance/installation work. i hadn’t thought of Office at Night having an open and House (Stories) having a closed door, but it is a very fitting image, and so is the line which is in fact two, one more rigid, the other one increasingly porous; the gap and the greens sit on different planes: the former folds up and allows us to crawl into the dark space between the cabinets, the greens are a quick release lever being pulled and we rattle (unharmed) to ground level

Also: what about the confessional/ obsession… do you want to explore it a bit further at this time?