These are notes from the workshop, designed to jog my memories for the contextual study:
Anticipation - the process of anticipation
The sensuality of materials - touch -
Writing - poems
Conflict of academic writing and personal writing practice
Finding a balance between the two
Step 1
Break down what you are doing into 3 questions:
1. What is it?
2. What is it about?
3. Why is it relevant?
What is it? What does it look like? What is the experience of it? What scale am I working? Medium, scale, colour, descriptive terms.
Monochrome, medium scale - handheld, gauzy, transparencies, permeable, cloudy, painting, movement of material, the experience of material, layers of paint - graphite - lines, opaque, transparent, translucent, puddles that are added and removed,
Words that build excitement, desire, anticipation, visceral feelings of making, interacting with materials.
What is it about?
time, movement, weight, presence, the excitement of producing, the expectation of a result, questioning control, the anticipation of, the sensuality of material, interaction, letting go, anxiety, resistance, accumulation, overwhelm, growth, fragility, fragmentation, unexpected, unaccounted for, overthinking, preparation for unfathomable outcomes,
Why is it significant/relevant?
evoking excitement - sensuality, - closed off by health and safety, social etiquette, rules, expectation - encouraged to find ourselves but asked to restrain and restrict, to edit, - the desire to feel, question who decided what is appropriate - challenging social norms.
Step 2
Write a sentence for each of the categories - keywords and phrases:
What is it? - mediums of graphite, plaster, paint, soap, gathered in tiles, in books, on canvas and paper in gauzy layers of lines and puddles.
What is it about? - the sensuality of material interaction questioning control, the anticipation of the event and expectation of result
Why is it significant? - increasingly we are encouraged to restrict and control our output while embodying desires and the self - constantly questioning anticipation of living and expectation - take ownership of sensuality while restricting and controlling output and engagement.
Feedback:
What is it about? - this area needs work - enticing, intriguing - within your practice - doesn’t communicate, describe the language to be teased out - what are the ideas and meaning? Weave a narrative around it.
Is it significant? - Great way to pique peoples interest - its a universal, political and personal. Simplicity, enticing, intriguing.
Politically - own one’s sensuality - what does it mean to own ones sensuality, is it universal (human),( non-binary).
Essay structure - sandwich
3 columns - where you list your ideas, sources, examples of work and narrow them down.
Intro + conclusion is the bread, the filling is how you answer your question.
A tendency to meander - waffle - forget what you are trying to say
Mindmaps are a good thing - get your question to ground practice contextually - then research
My practice look at ideas in contemporary art as ‘what is the thing/ question/ idea you really want to explore in this piece of writing?
Once you know that you can then go about answering it
Why is it significant?
How much would you talk about your won work and/or others - context of production of art, connection with own work and articulation of its connection to ‘world’, the relevant context of ideas rooted in physical production.
Keep the connection - be aware of only talking about your work and draw the links to theory and a theme, a theorist, another artist.
Don’t be afraid to cut it down - save then in another document.
Conclusion
Summarise - give closure, draw it together, what you have ‘learnt’ from the process of the essay.
Edit well, edit for language and eloquence - edit of content, edit for flow - ideas - is it logical, am I signaling that I’m moving to the next section - am I reminding the reader of the ‘why you’re doing it/what your question is?’
Get someone to read it.
monograph?
My revisit the day after the workshop:
What is it? - what does it look like? What is the experience of it? What scale am I working in? Medium, scale, colour, descriptive terms
What is it about? What are the ideas and meanings? Weave a narrative around it.
Why should I care? Why is it significant? Why is it relevant? Political, personal, universal
About - consuming, silence in the process, the noise of sexuality
Haptic - needing to or based on the sense of touch, characterised by a predilection to the sense of touch - a haptic person. Haptic poetry - touching and being touched.
Relevancy - political - #metoo, femininity, toxic masculinity, reclaiming, sexuality, pansexual, neo-genders