Studio Practice Structure

The process and structure of working seems to be so important to me.

Recent MA projects, and I suppose being at this stage of the MA, has made me assess and reassess ways of working, solutions and reasons I have built up over the years. To summarise briefly, I feel I have been questioning my instincts and reasoning for working at all, questioning why and how I do what I do. More or less, I am coming to the same conclusions that I had come up with previously, and continuing along pathways already started, even though they may twist and turn, or merge into each other, rather than completely jumping media or practice.

It doesn't feel straightforward though, or comfortable.
I've found I've spent alot of time recently in trying to figure out what to do and how to go about things.

Have examined otherwise, I realise again that I find it difficult to make work without a purpose or deadline, and do not like at all having unending, open-ended practice or exploratory meanderings. I need to say to myself and commit, that I am writing a novel, or making a piece of Moving Image, or an exhibit for a specific project. It's the commitment more than anything. I need to have it all mulling over in my mind, making the connections, filling in the layers, ideas and solutions, and allowing the creativity processes to lead me. Then I am able to explore, meander and experiment. But I must have the reason, the idea or set of ideas I am exploring, the concept I am attempting to manifest, the feelings and thoughts I want to process through work.

I need the finish point to work its way back to meet me.

I am taking on the structure of eight blogs for the Studio Practice project - initially dividing the task into eight sections and updating them as I go along, so that by the assessment at the end of the year, I will already have them divided and formatted. It feels like a different way of working - still linear, but more multi level as I go along. This has much to do with recent dyslexia support, and evolutions in thinking and working practices I feel I need to make for the MA. The reason I passed my degree was by realising that I needed to break everything down into parts, stitch them together, and then reform them in a linear fashion. Now, I feel I have come to a pass where I need to work at things differently - integrating different aspects at an earlier and more multiple way, so, for example, I weave research, projects, working, etc, into work at a much earlier place, rather than unravelling everything at the end.

Difficult to exactly say in advance, as I am trying to get to grips with MindMapping and other things.

So far of eight:

1. this, Studio Practice
2. Sound
3. Film
4. Novel
5. Research
6. Drawings

29th June 2012

..........

I have assiduously pursued working through the Studio Practice project as decided, and largely found it workable. Dyslexia tutorials and IT training have added insight, but everything has to be worked through. I perhaps I am just beginning to feel I am getting the hang of researching in ways rather than patching things together. Thinking of allowing research and references to seep into my work, to allow all that to be part of the work rather than secretly behind the scenes.

It's been different. I have felt my mind working differently and making new connections. No matter how much you try to do in advance, things for all projects, exhibitions and this MA, can only all come together at the end - and I could only hope and anticipate how everything, the essay, the research, would work out. And so I found myself in a strange place in the end while writing the essay - I found that, yes, I had developed the ideas and research as I went along as intended, and yet, irony of ironies, there was still a confusing gap about how to weave them all together - I have given myself a workable solution, which involves frequent printing out, cutting and pasting by hand, and patching in post it notes of research, and so on. In a way I created a completely different way of arriving at a similar problem. It's also bemusing for me to notice that while I am doing this, I am making the moving image piece, which involves keeping multiple images and negatives of images in my head, keeping in mind the variations of relations between them, and imagining counter currents of video flowing in and out - basically a much more complex process than forming the ideas into an essay. The visual things and the concepts I can handle, but I have to resort to getting into a mess of papers for the essay. As long as it gets somewhere in the end.

23rd November 2012