Category: 4: a working draft

The Research module consists of several elements. This post is a first attempt to orientate these towards resolution and assessment.

a. Research outline from A1

b. The dissertation, consisting of:

• main body of text
• different voices articulating alongside the main body of text, notably: research practice and notes sitting aside
• Appendices to the main body: key points to the research practice and clarifications over key works and positions

c. Research padlets

d. Other padlets transecting across BoW and Research

e. Art works originating within the research process

f. Research folder on blog

It is this latter, the research folder on the blog that I need to organise and orientate. I have the blog so far mainly used to provide a number of things

1. assignments, reflections and tutorial notes
2. critical reflections across BoW and Research
3. practice pieces and enquiries, many of these are part of BoW, some are part of Research; these often have a performative nature, are often not contextualised nor annotated but instead use the blog as performance/presentation platform
4. some reflections on works and processes that do not directly relate to the intersection between BoW and Research, some of these are for Research

I have not so far used the blog to provide contextual studies or reviews or reflections (like artists, works, exhibitions, etc.), I did this in the past but for these modules much less so, and little that is writing for such purpose for Research.

Research tutorial 4 made clear that the current organisation of excess, appendix or satellite objects does not provide enough space to explore key debates, artists, works nor indeed conceptual considerations for my own practice within the 5k word limit of the dissertation.

Here, the Research folder on the blog will take this role, and it will hold a series of reflective and contextual pieces along with more theoretical and conceptual discussions.

Currently there are four key posts to write:

1. Theoretical significance of nomadism and transversalism (and possibly some new materialism also) which underpins the dissertation but is not covered in depth. (The dissertation will discuss in turn Marks and Springgay/Truman in more detail)
2. Key writers and artists: Spahr, Kapil and Krauss are alluded too, so are Calle, Goudal and Matta Clark; these need more discussion (and possibly just a list of relevant context as appendix in the dissertation); there are also: Bethan Huw’s Lake Piece, Gillian Wearing’s Dancing in Peckham and Georgina Starr’s Eddy & Whistle whose works keep returning to my mind. (Jonas and Palmer will in turn feature in more detail in the dissertation).
3. Different voices in the dissertation
4. Managing excess in Research

I will then also reorganise the categories and tags to account for this new section.

I have the tutorial for Res 4 soon after submission and today post my notes to Rachel. We pick up fairly effortlessly after that 13 months break between 3 and 4; we cover initially some of the discussions around immersiveness and audience engagement that arose in BoW 4 and then cover the following:

• Audience relationship and notions of immersion
• Voices in the document
• Unpacking and strengthening academic voice
• Priorities and what to unpack: the role of the blog
• Using the conclusion to go back to aims
• Managing excess

The two key items to take are around the various voices within the document and how to organise these successfully.

The other one concerns one of the rules that I declared (initially in the introduction, for word count then as appendix: that the document, the Research project, manages excess). Rachel poses this as question and I include this section:

Managing excess

The Appendix with Rules: Can this come earlier, these rules are significant. As foreword or prelude? I also suggest to have it as opening quote to start with. Rachel asks: so does this essay manage excess (does it succeed?)? I describe how it manages excess through the various satellite objects and a designation of different voices. I then wonder if excess is already being managed by me naming it, by planting that idea in a relational context, in a dialogue and that the other then wonders if there is more, if there is more beyond the parameter of the project. So that it effectively introduces in dialogue a fantasy object that leads the other to seek around and beyond, and to go away with a fantasy (57mins: transcribe in toto).

Will Self: Digital essay on Kafka’s Wound, a hyperlinked essay.

Arno Schmidt’s Bottom’s Dream

[While listening again, I hear that Rachel also asks whether the project is successful, I didn’t hear that in the first conversation. I will come back to this: of what is success in this, what failure? Perhaps questions of control are always both: tight boundaries provide safety but exclude and simplify massively; and vice versa. Does it depend on the actual relational contact in which this is approached and negotiated every single time to give a sense of whether it works?]

A series of key points for what is next arise from the discussion, I will unpack these further in a next post but they will principally concern

• clarification of voices across the document
• strengthening and tightening of academic voice
• use of Research folder on blog to take all excess and allow me to unpack key issues without worry about the word count

These are relatively modest in scope, I hope the first two won’t take more than a week, the second one requires some reorganisation of the blog which I so far have not really used as a Research notebook, the notebook only every functioned explicitly for the practical work; how extensive this work is going to be is after an initial set of 3-5 posts pretty much up to me though.

The full report is attached here:

I submit a word document with embedded audio and ten appendices to my Research tutor.

There are a few notes to accompany this submission:

• Case studies, a/v materials and word count. The dissertation word limit is 5000 words. The Research handbook suggests a study with primary research, which I took serious and present the work primarily as Practice as Research (PaR), it features also forms of narration that fall between theory/fiction and creative writing. The word count even for a simple primary research study is severely limited. My desire to trace divergence with different formats runs up against that limitation even more.
• My solution to this are several strategies:
  • A series of appendices was early on discussed, as satellite objects, I take Kate Zambreno’s (2018) Appendix Project as inspiration.
  • I move some of my theory discussion into a video narration
  • I present three case studies (verge/weed, Dreaming the staircase and Stromverteilen), they each relate to large work series with BoW, the latter, Stromverteilen, effectively becoming an overall container. Each of these series have an attendant padlet space which operates as object for the Research. I currently present the written narrations for each case in the dissertation but also include an audio file narrating these. I would like to consider these quotes rather than part of the word count.
  • To a lesser degree this also applies to a few sections from my research folder where I quote my own notes.

• The above gives some space to explore the research findings relating to the questions, this still feels cursory (I offer a series of routes through enquiries along with two longer discussions of reach/resonance and near space as key findings). I include a list of resources and materials in which I provide more insight into the research processes and the BoW.

Of course the above restrictions budge up against my existing writing practice across these registers: research articles of around 8000 words or in fact a PhD thesis where a 5000 words dissertation will always feel superficial and limited. And yet, I feel this working draft does work, it provides a frame and focus onto the questions that animate the PaR and it offers a series of original insights. What forms and publics these may seek beyond the assessors is a different question, which in part can also be attended to in SYP.

The early discussions around the glossary as well as satellite objects and excess has found a form and expression that seems fitting to me. It allows for different registers and media to circle in different orbits around the text.

There is a lot more in the reference (both artistic works and academic writing) that is not expressed in fullness, Friedrich Kittler’s work remains salient and solely features in a footnote. Relating Laura Marks sensuous theory to Kittler seems promising and is not articulated in writing (though perhaps in practice).

That this is completed almost 12 months late feels like a considerable achievement. I pressed pause at the start of the pandemic, then a combination of winter wave and family illness pushed me further away from the academic work while generating far more practical work (while all the same the loss of distance to and detachment from seemed to ever increase).

I am excited that it is at this stage, I look forward to the discussion of some of the findings and ways to hone and sharpen the written contribution for the Research module.

There are two things remaining ahead of the tutorial:

1. I want to provide too an update on my BoW padlet (https://oca.padlet.org/gesa492645/rthyyn7qr5iz1zak) to account for the works that have developed alongside the writing of the text.
2. Stromverteilen as padlet has developed from a single (and naive, first encountered) site to effectively function as portfolio for the whole BoW (https://oca.padlet.org/gesa492645/8vgddo2olqqwjib1).

I am not currently attaching the draft to this post, if you are interested in reading: send me a message and I am more than happy to send along.

My Research dissertation revolves around three case studies.

These exist at online sites along with a piece of writing. I narrate the writing in these sound files: