Statement:
The boundaries of the text, the edges of the page, the paper, the canvas must be respected if they are to remain authentic.
Question:
are you making this sentence in the form of a statement of fact or intention or is it rather more open in those moments when it suits yours/their purpose/s?
Response:
I am making it as a statement of fact; as a metaphor for identity. Coloring outside the lines no longer being ‘acceptable’ at some point unless it is, at which point that definition of the identity of ‘he who colors outside the lines’ is applied, in turn creating a new edge. As to any scholarly research to back this up … I’m working on it, but I have a few examples out of my practice, including the responses to Melusine’s obit on FB. See Condolences in Studio Writing.
Statement:
Melusine ... is the most important 'tool' to my development as a painter,
Question:
and yet you have just done away with her ... is this part of this development or willful destruction or she has served her purpose and outlived her usefulness?
Response:
Willful destruction? No, a solution to a problem that had arisen. See: On Display for another example of this.
With email no longer possible, Melusine needed a new way to ‘exist’. She, unlike Petra and Franzi, was not physically embodied in the studio, did not produce ’stuff’ just words, and ‘lived’ in the emails she wrote which were improvised. Out of the emails her own writing practice developed, her conversations/interactions with the other two and myself.
It was not an intentional part of the development. Her essence can be kept ‘alive’ albeit the persona of Melusine cannot be developed or created further -a challenge for me. Her script has been written and she is no longer free to improvisation. Now she has to stick to the script, following the rules of her being stuck in a particular space … like an art work in a museum.
The writing she left behind can be cited in the paintings by the three painters, and Franzi might even learn to copy these in Sütterlin. Memories of Melusine can be conjured; and to your question on p. 15 even the conversations for Part III. can still happen as long as they happened before and acknowledge her ‘death’.
Finally, she remains useful, just not as intended - as I described in this text. She is a broken tool that can no longer fulfill her original purpose but has been re-purposed to serve another. From living well to dying well?… or as Dickinson wrote … Who, had they lived, had died, but when /They died, vitality begun
Statement:
[not specified, to a fragment of thought]
Question:
what is the impact of such reflective/reflexive thought on actual play? how many rules can we place around play for it to still remain 'play' or playful?
Response:
To the first: This is what I’m trying to figure out through the personas as tools of the practice. Generally, with a younger child play is more responsive than reflective. After about age 8 awareness kicks in and the need to apply strategy which requires reflective/reflexive thought. Think ‘pretend play’ vs. board games. The challenge with the personas is combine the two and see what happens.
To your second question: that all depends on who is making the rules?
Statement:
I believe there is at least a painter or a visual artist other than myself for whom my research can offer another approach on his or her personal quest to achieving this freedom in painting or whatever form of making he or she engages in relative to his or her painterly or artistic identity.
Question:
how important is this to the research ... or is rather an outcome that might be a side product?
Response:
Only important to my research as far as it is important for me in my practice. Otherwise it is simply an outcome or side product; a general persona-as-tool in a 'making' practice. This is definitely somewhere I must better articulate the purpose of the specific persona-as-tool in my practice versus a persona-as-tool customized by another user to his or her specific practice.
Question back to you: do you think this would push the idea away from a tool in a playful methodology to the/a methodology in its own right?