This blog post covers the period from September 15 to October 14, 2016 and will include a brief explanation of the website structure, links to work posted, summary of meetings and reflection on the past month, and some considerations for moving forward. The purpose of this blog page is to serve as a general index for documentation of my project. I am first and foremost the creator and consumer of this blog, hence it is structured in a way that will best serve my needs in the development of my project through a reflective process. At the same time I am aware this blog also serves as a portal through which others can access what I am doing, trying to do and not always succeeding in doing, therefore I will try to formulate these blog postings in a manner similar to french doors through which the reader can peek into the rooms but not necessarily enter into unless he or she is drawn to do so by something on the inside.
Website Structure
The home page is titled Research; underneath the title are four subheadings linking to other sections of the website: BLOG, CURRENT, PRESENTATIONS, ARCHIVE. The first three sections are password protected. ARCHIVE contains the pages of the website documenting my MFA project and thesis. BLOG is the section you are currently reading, and, as stated, it is the general index and first point of entry. CURRENT has the subtitle Research and contains five subheadings linking to the following sections: STUDIO, a blog documenting the making, the practice-led research; WRITING, where the drafts, bibliographies and other written portions [which are not ‘the making’] of the project are documented; CRIT GROUP, where any direct feedback from my colleagues will be documented; OTHER, the location of anything else; BLOG, links back to this section, the general index blog.
Links to Work
September 15, 2016 revised proposal.
All studio work is documented in the Making blog; organized from most recent to oldest post [reverse order].
This month my focus is on learning more about my three existing alter egos and our relationship to each other in order to develop a greater understanding of who they are and what their specific role in this project might be. I did this through a series of three collage/print Double Portraits and writing. Details to the process of each can be found in the individual blog postings.
The written exploration postings are divided into three sections. The first section is creative exposition of my knowledge of and relationship to the alter ego, the second is more of a reflective, exterior observation of the alter ego from my point of view and information to his or her entry into my life, and the third section is a descriptive explanation and reflection of the process of making the collage. Below are direct links to the blog postings of the collages and the corresponding writings for each alter ego.
Double Portrait: Self and Franz Walsh
Double Portrait: Self and Melusine Van der Weyden
Double Portrait: Self and Petra Nimm
September 26, 2016 I gave a visiting artist talk for a Photography workshop on collage at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. An adaptation of the notes and slide presentation can be found here.
Summary
Meetings
Since returning from Berlin I have taken part in three group Skype calls with other MPhil/PhD candidates [September 13 and 25, October 12]. I have requested to present my work and project proposal to the group for feedback during our November 16 Skype call.
Due to not having a full committee [two supervisors] in place after leaving Berlin I have had Skype meetings with Anya Lewin, Andrew Cooks, Deborah Robinson and Roberta Mock to rectify this. Each meeting provided additional insight and thoughts to my project. I now have a full committee together with Andrew Cooks as primary supervisor/DoS and Roberta Mock as second supervisor.
The following abbreviated notes are bits and pieces of my notes from the insightful and thought provoking conversation with Andrew Cooks in New York City on September 30. [recorded here to digitally preserve them for myself outside of the Moleskine notebook]
American Beauty/Alan Ball
Review DTC handbook/Plymouth papers,guides,summer workshopPDFs
Think of it as a project, not application--look at the parts/editing/defining--make an argument of all the things you’re doing and why--then be as specific as you can in the report
Play-Make
Outline the identity of the characters-clothes-handedness
Rosanne oldest daughter-the different, but the same
Methodology- the How and the Internal Structure- the Why --- with a robust why [internal structure] and the how [methodology] will logically develop out of it
Van Morrison/Coney Island--”Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?” NO
DeKooning quote...[ask a., I forgot what it was]
fractured point of views...perspective [visual and mental]
Hockney’s photo collages -Pearblossom Hwy--the sky
The logic of cubism [analytical cubism]
Go back to some basic definitions- break out the survey books--explaining pictorially points of view
Are you a different person when your point of view [visual/mental] changes?
The Lure of Paris/Stephen Bush--undermining seriality, marrying early and late 20th c.
Is it convincing? [what I am doing]
Michael Blackwood’s Philip Guston film/ Dore Ashton’s Guston bio
the fewest…[something?] possible
Alain Nuis [Nuit sp?] French Garden- our dependence on peripheral vision- back to
Hockney [video installation at Pace two years ago]
The magic--show me something I have not seen before
Julie Mehretu -current show, article in NYTimes that previous weekend
Take a look back at what I’ve done, what I was looking at before…
searching for the kernel at the center of/from the self
Random thoughts, notes, read and seen...
Some of the questions I’ve asked myself about the alter egos:
What images would he or she put on an identity board project of his or her self?
How does he or she look, sound, smell?
What hand or foot does he or she favor?
How might his or her personality be reflected or formed by handedness, birth date [astrologicalsign], childhood, education, life experience?
What does he or she like? What are his or her passions?
What music does he or she listen to?
Thinking about alter egos, painters and celebrities. Identity being subsumed by the alter ego…parallels between celebrity and ‘signature style’. Warhol and Monroe versus Picasso and Meryl Streep. Authorship? Space of identity- the Warholian transformation- 15 minutes of celebrity- the anti-liminal space of identity formation?
Tony Oursler Imponderable [MoMA and Bard CCS]-- the archive, the research, the film. How does the artist communicate the research through the work, how does the curator/artist communicate the research sources parallel to the work? Structure.
Author: The JT Leroy Story-- literary hoaxes, the desire to believe fiction as fact no matter how clearly it is presented as fiction.
Deep Play, Dianne Ackerman-- how do I use play as a method?
American Beauty--the images of magazines posted on a teenager’s bedroom wall, the bedroom/home space as mirror of identity
Star Island, Carl Hiaasen-- celebrity, the double, and the author who writes in multiple genres under a single identity
Miles Ahead-- non-linearity of the film speaks of the music [the How and the Why]. Structure.
Marilyn: An Untold Story (Norman Rosten) versus Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe (Fred Lawrence Guiles) versus Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe (edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment)--A Painter of our Time (John Berger) and And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos (John Berger)--The Argonauts (Maggie Nelson)----ways of telling of our own identity and the identity of others, fact, fiction and the in-between. Structure.
Make Me Yours (Laura Gonzalez)-- reading for outline of structure/methodology of research, remembering workshop Summer 2015 built around this. Structure.
My daily playing with paint between easel and wall...continually adding layers to older paintings, what does the paint do, what am I doing? Playing, notating, waiting, keeping up my chops and building an archive of the material. Another structure.
paint play October 2016
Moving Forward
-I will continue with what I have been doing in the studio: playing, making, learning what the structure is at the core of the project.
-Focus on revising/detailing project proposal for the RDC1 submittal; addressing the two points noted in my meeting with a. on 9/30:
-Think of it as a project, not application--look at the parts/editing/defining--make an argument of all the things you’re doing and why--then be as specific as you can in the report
-Methodology- the How and the Internal Structure- the Why --- with a robust why [internal structure] and the how [methodology] will logically develop out of it
-A full committee meeting will be held via Skype.
-Look closer at my bibliography, sort, analyze and map to identify what it is saying about the project. Structure.
-I will present my project to the MPhil/PhD crit group for feedback.