Mapping the Territory 3

Following up recent group email from tutor Angela about what is required of this project and how it is to be assessed, I realise that I am having enormous difficulty in understanding the question.

I am actually in a complete dyslexic funk, as I don't seem to be able to grasp how to create this mapping piece without the elements of mind mapping and listing I want to avoid. It's not just that I want to avoid them - I am actually extremely averse to them and have a strong feeling of as much as repulsion to this format.

The mirrors idea was a way of exploring this and still producing something, and in fact a way of illustrating the very point of disconnect I now experience. The multi-mirrored map of unknown territory was making sense. Going in the abstract way is my straightforward way.

This is the very territory it is so useful for me to explore. Somehow I feel the production of the map through what I think is required is worse than useless for me. I always have to rewrite the question in my own terms. I have to find a way in that makes sense - if I make a mind-map type thing, as I so far believe the brief calls for, I will not end up with clarity for myself, but more confusion.

If I stand back, I can see this is an interesting challenge for me to solve, and probably one of the reasons I felt I wanted to do an MA.

Also, I realise, I have a long held loyalty to my initial ideas - a trust that nothing will make me break. Everything can be reassessed, moved on, edited out, but I will always honour my initial idea of how to tackle an art piece, and what it is that I want to get to, somehow, in the end. So it is with this project. My internal difficulty is with the process in getting there, or rather, documenting the process in a comprehensive way for the assessment. I'll go as far as to say it is just not possible for me, although I have to find a way round it.


Mind Mapping - my aversions:

The map is as big as the territory

I can't see it all at once

It's scattered and disordered

It feels pointless and puerile

It's confusing and senseless

It's not formatted for understanding

It goes against my own developed methods of keeping and looking at information in lists and folders

It doesn't teach me anything

It's not how I think

I want to make leaps and not list everything

I could never do this in a way that would be satisfying to me

It feels like a project for someone else

It makes me feel panicked and impatient and actually nauseous

It all feels the wrong way round


..........................................



Okay, so getting around it, thought occurs of making a very long linear drawing, starting with a line, which travels through a sort of timeline. Then it becomes layered with others as the issues merge and get more complex. You see, it must be complex, but in my complexity! That begins to make sense, to somewhat fulfil the requirements of the brief. It could be a video - with time and development it could be an animation, layered drawings being drawn. Already I am forgetting the annoying criteria of locating this map somehow with the other elements to include - the context.

No matter what challenges or difficulties occur when making work, no matter how conflicted or pressured one may feel at times, there is a self imposed higher purpose in making art, the drive to produce and uncover that makes it all worthwhile when it just feels like work - perhaps the balance of good feeling outweighing the bad. I haven't found that yet with this. I haven't found the joy or the purpose. There would be no point at all in making something I didn't agree with or get something from, even for a qualification. The deeper truth that there is something in here for me to discover, a way to approach and understand this assignment that aligns with me and connects with the way I think.

I love maps. I have lots of maps, vintage and antique maps, foreign maps, out of date maps, book of maps, maps in frames, laminated maps as placemats. I love to look at them, to imagine territory. I used to obsessively draw imaginary maps when I was young. I especially love rather dated maps which are of the modern era but are already superseded - you might say politically incorrect maps.

The map is the context.

Everything is within the map.

The more I read the brief and email, again I feel I lose my understanding of the purpose of this task. Mirrors for another time. Actually drawing a map now will only confuse me more. I have to think.

I need to add elements of my confusion into the final solution - some dream feeling about having to read both sides of a piece of paper at once; the map being perfectly clear but oddly difficult to see - it must be viewed in reflection and translated from backwards; fitting a five sided carpet into a four sided room; putting your hand out to something that is really a bit to the side. These are similar confusions to those I have with the task, so will be the area where the piece is constructed and functional.

7th June 2011