MA 1 Visual Enquiry

06/11/2017 - Task 2 - FFF - FRAME - Sketchbook & Research: reading notes and thoughts

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Thinking about steps and ladders in art as a means to get higher, climbing the ladder. How long is it? What is it constructed from?
climbing class, society, we talk about getting high as a means of aspiration, to rise up.

'in a field of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body’ (Benjamin 1973: 84). The juxtaposition of an industrial, technological and destructive force, with the ‘unprotected’ human body sets the scene not just for modern warfare but for modern life in general.' (p57, Highmore, B, 2003. Crashed out - Laundry Vans, Photographs and a Question of Consciousness)

delicate humans - embroidery - muslin - low thread count

thread - tension - life, everyday

traffic lights - speed, slowing down, control, restriction - pushed forward then pulled back. controlled freedom. (Influenced from Highmore, B, 2003. Crashed out - Laundry Vans, Photographs and a Question of Consciousness)

soft and tactile - rendering of structure of the city - its materiality - soften it - as it hardens us.

'What is being pictured is not the disciplined bodies of worker-soldiers, but the lithesome and mutable body of the dancer. The crash releases the body from the constraint of a certain attitude, it allows for another manner of being.' (p59. Highmore, B, 2003. Crashed out - Laundry Vans, Photographs and a Question of Consciousness)

The phrase Barthes (or his translator, Richard Howard) uses to insist on a weaving of the real through the threads of textuality is ‘image repertoire’. It is to this that we are condemned. (p60. Highmore, B, 2003. Crashed out - Laundry Vans, Photographs and a Question of Consciousness)

06/11/2017 - Task 2 - FFF - FORM - FRAME - FRACTURE - Sketchbook: question

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What does it mean that you use the same process; that your practice and the content of your work go through this habitual taming and liberation? 

practical repetition - process & inspiration - mirroring & replication
reiteration
restatement
retelling
recapitulation - summarising & restating main point = dearted
reprise
iterane
reccurrence
reoccurence
replication
duplications
echo
Pattern: design, motif, system, arrangement, sequence, framework, composition, layout, shape 

To use the same process.
Practice & content continually/habitually tamed & liberated
accumulation gives a sense of direction
repetition moves forward & descends in to controlled process produced chaos.

for me: repetition of process provides accumulation, which gives sense of direction, it moves forward, mirroring the everyday that takes persistently recurrentlyrepeatedly us through life.

collage created from own image archive

collage created from own image archive

digital patterns created from own image archive.

digital patterns created from own image archive.

utilising the symmetry of the architecture alongside perspective of image to generate new lines of symmetry

collage created from own image archive

collage created from own image archive

collage created from own image archive of digitally manipulated photos

collage created from own image archive of digitally manipulated photos

digital patterns created from own image archive.

digital patterns created from own image archive.

digital patterns created from own image archive.

digital patterns created from own image archive.

utilising the symmetry of the architecture alongside perspective of image to generate new lines of symmetry 

05/11/2017 - Task 2 - FFF - FRAME - Sketchbook: research quotes to move forward

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Reading or to read: Rita Felski, Henri Lefebvre, Situationalists, Marx, Critique of everyday life, Ron Silliman's Ketjak, Attention Equals Life: the pursuit of the everyday in contemporary poetry - Andrew Epstein,

'forms based on repetition & accumulation can be a powerful tool in the quest to rescue the everyday from neglect' (Attention Equals Life: the pursuit of the everyday in contemporary poetry - Andrew Epstein)

'the deliberate structure of accumulation and repetition is directly tied to its desire to approximate the experience of everyday life' (Attention Equals Life: the pursuit of the everyday in contemporary poetry - Andrew Epstein)

'circularity and repetition that gives the everyday its flavour of ennui', sameness, art, perpetual reoccurrence'. (Attention Equals Life: the pursuit of the everyday in contemporary poetry - Andrew Epstein)

'each dawn (is) a return to an eternal conclusion' Silliman'distinguished from the exceptional moment.' (Felski, The Invention of Everyday Life, 2000)

'immanence rather than transcendence' (Felski, The Invention of Everyday Life, 2000)

'everyday rituals may help to safeguard everyday life.' (Felski, The Invention of Everyday Life, 2000)

'repetition can signal resistance as well as enslavement,' (Felski, The Invention of Everyday Life, 2000)

'the most repetitive of lives bears witness to the irreversible direction of time; the experience of ageing, the regret of past actions and inactions, the premonition of death.' (Felski, The Invention of Everyday Life, 2000) 

05/11/2017 - Task 2 - FFF - FRAME - Sketchbook & Research: a collection of thoughts

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Look at colour & texture

Poetry about the city | diasporas | London | Brixton | Brooklyn |

refugee camps - stacking people - holocaust - concentration camps - comparison?

Low cost housing + -

City living - luxury vs necessity

Construction camps | labour camps- Flooding with people - council housing / Acton, London

The repetitive nature of a building - stacking recreated into another repetition - looming - unstable as architecture - repetitions of daily notices - subtract areas of image - create extra tall images then change fragments of the pattern so it doesn’t work (repeat).

architectual repeats

creating pattern from city scape

building upon the architects patterns

investigating won planning, city planning, pattern of dwelling, how cities grow & build skyscrapers (IE: book on building Effiel tower)  - feeds into fractal patterns -

tower-diagram

tower-diagram

05/11/2017 - Task 2 - FFF - FORM - sketchbook: thoughts for progress

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Transform digital works into large scale painted pieces - possibly spray/acrylic - with zones (dark) paint miniature scenes to fill them - from distance looks like solid colour, then texture - up close detailed narratives ‘everyone’s fighting their own battles’ with the geometry and the sort, routine of life, there are these changing patterns creating chaos.

Painted then embroidered canvas - cut through stitching to expose canvas beneath and created a rough tufted look.

04/11/2017 - Task 2 - FFF - FORM - Making Day 1

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It had been a long day. The full moon was working it magic and my week had been pretty emotionally intense. I had spent the day at my reading and critique group (11am-6pm), discussing decolonising archival research, dealing with a lot of heavy imagery and discussing the way images are read by different viewers. This had sat wieghty on my shoulders due to my own personal situations. It was my turn for a critique as well, and unfortunately I allowed the emotive discussion of the morning to unnecessarily penetrate in to my presentation, muddying the work, its context and therefore, my feedback. Meh!

I came to the making session exhausted but eager to drop off the day and work.

I chose to explore ways to create a partition type structure using my fractured geometries.

The first piece I sketched the broken pattern on to a piece of muslin, used a running stitch and began gathering the parts.

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I quickly dropped this as the pattern was completely lost and not what I was looking for. It felt wrong and not clean enough.

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Revisiting an embroidery piece I had started previously I thought of a way to create the interlocking aspect of the chain stitch, while maintaining the transparency. I'm think about the ways to keep the delicate nature of the embroidery while up-scaling. using larger threads such a roving doesn't feel like an option as it would remove the delicate nature.

I cut a small flat card loom as quickly as I could from the pieces of scrap mount board on my desk and proceeded to warp in with the same strong embroidery cotton I had been using on the stitched pieces.

Laying the geometry underneath the warp I proceeded to experiment with a tapestry rendering of the pattern. Using a Sumac tapestry stitch, which was repeated on top to give the look of the original chain stitch. Once I have completed the weaving/tapestry I will remove it from the loom and capture the top and bottom of the piece between supports so I can manipulate it in to a maquette of a space.

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I felt a tad frustrated at the end of the session to see how fruit full other participants had been. However I was quick to realise that the nature of my process is that large gains come over repeated processing days and to accept that as it is.

I think in future I may chose different materials to produce with on making days, in order to allow for greater discussion of the piece, although the reality is that it would depend on whether that is actually relevant to the work I'm producing at the time. Perhaps it is best to leave that decision open.

The feedback I received was really useful and informative. The words and text from the chat box are below:

  • intertwined, soft geometry(?), linked

  • disappearing, time, layers, materiality

  • Layered, ephemeral structurer

  • enlarge, 2/3 dimensional, different materials

  • Structure

  • thread as building material

  • powerful, jagged, delicate

  • Maybe knitted tubes, padded? would still have small stitch detail Fractals

  • and what about colour Katie?

- Colour is an interesting point. using the lack of colour to stop any extra reading to happen to the work, so it is just about the textures and patterns. HOWEVER, since undertaking some readings on decolonizing archive and how research has been previously preformed I am questioning if white is the colour most appropriate and if it could be read as a form of 'white-washing', whether my genres of 'white, female, British, expatriate' are read from the work, either consciously or unconsciously.