BoW 3: synthesise :: reflection

Let me reflect: the challenge to move 4.5 months of work into a 1-hour slot. I feel the distance of this course this time more so than before. I am glad I did have a repeat task from Research 2 at this point and merely need to update.

I feel my work process is productive and generative; I can also narrate and explore this to others by now. I had one session last week where I folded the bannister on top of the staircase into another sketchbook while a meeting finished, people moved past. It remained okay to continue with the folding, only at one point I felt wondering if the work was insignificant. This was a key question for BoW 2, it lies with the subject matter and I have by now found ways to hold that and fold it back into the work.

I am surprised how many insights this process generates and what I am finding about drawing/contact and near space, and what other concepts are relevant to this.

By the time I had Research 2 tutorial I had dealt with my frustrations over the L3 challenges, they haven’t yet resurfaced and it seems fairly clear what lies ahead. I am enjoying the process of making work at this edge of an extended drawing practice, and wonder what my geographer is making of all this (I have ideas for a couple of research papers coming out of this, I find I am generating significant things in this process, but: is it good art?).

The material processes (mouldings) I am engaging in feel significant and exciting but I worry that they are merely basic sculptural techniques and not significant enough for what I am doing (see, significance). I had not expected to use photographic processes to the extent that I do, (both: phone and MF analogue); there are a series of traditional drawing processes and larger scale drawings that I want to produce as part of this too, I keep pushing them forward.

What is exciting in this process is that I begin to become confident with how to conceive and produce a complex and extended body of work: this work is fragmented, disparate, dislocated and to find a form to hold it and make it relate (with gaps, absences) to itself and others is becoming clearer to me — It is like understanding how books I love, e.g. Bhanu Kapil’s Ban en banlieue were actually made, something I begun to investigate for the line (in DI&C) but now have a better grasp.

I was planning on continuing with BoW 4 before turning to Research 3, and analysing all the material post-fact, but I wonder if I should work on Res 3 while doing BoW4 to have time to let them inform each other more fully.