I realise I’m missing an opportunity after the MA sessions we have - I need to reflect on the sessions after each one, that I’m missing out on the thoughts and ideas that arise from each Thursday. Sounds obvious now I say it but I’ve been so focussed on my own practice that it didn’t occur to me. Plus I should just pretty much document anything - especially if everything is research.
Thursday’s photographic session was an interesting one as I didn’t have time to think, but just throw stuff together without too much consideration, the speed with which I wanted to work meant that it was very intuitive and unconscious. Normally I would have liked tie to think about what I would do and prepare materials. But coming straight from work and not quiet being sure of what was going to be asked, meant I had to work on the fly.
(((I find an interesting tension between working intentionally and intuitively, I see value in them both, but struggle to reconcile a way to work using both - although I wonder if this is the value to making the ‘little nothings’ that Ursula von Rydingsvard creates.)))
Taking the direnct transfer images I was still working true to my practice taking layered paper and collaging. It’s quiet close to my practice already. Accumulating images and working them back and forth. It’s a part of my visual language t he photographic image. I note how often I use photography as a means to thinking a nd documenting ideas.
What became more interesting was when I collated the images together and place. them as one long block on the Miro board. Putting all the images together made sense of them, the colours and movement through form, with elements being lost and captured.
How the images are captured on the paper has a ‘spectral’ quality (Derrida - Specters Of Marx) , it’s evidence of history, present and future across the same site. Unfixed the image won’t remain, and the image viewed is not how it will be in the future, or how it was. There is a ghostly presence on the paper which cannot be entreated to stay or name itself.
Currently I’m reading - Spectres of Marx by Derrida. I’ve moved onto this text following a conversation with someone more versed in Derrida and other associated writers. There are a number fo terms that Derrida uses in Literary critical analysis, Hymen, Trace, Differance, Spectural. Thera are all similar but different, and I need to get a little more familiar with them for the sake of my research and my sanity.
I’m especially liking the notion of the spectre it’s connects easily to what I am investigating with my research paper and own art practice. More time with it is needed, as there are nuanced motifs in what I am reading that play out in my own work - especially the choice of materials. In discussion with Jonathan during a turutorail we discussed how the history of a material (a fence panel) has a key role for me in the nature and language of the art work I am making. That it becomes woven into the heart of the artwork and it’s integrity, even though it may not be clear to the viewer.
