I didn't do one of these for 15 aug because I was in Berlin, and we all were, and that's how it was in August. Talking about what we've all been working on for a year, and working on some new things, and then talking about those things, too. So this post might cover anything not covered in all of that, and then there's more.
Between this post and the last post, the written portion of the RDC2 was returned for resubmission with rewrites. In order to meet the timing of the studio work (which was looming, now it is not 'was looming' but rather 'is looming' or better, it 'looms'), I took a week in the residency to do the rewrite, which is not necessarily typical, and I don't know if I would recommend it (on principle, because missing any of the sessions in the residency isn't what I would recommend at all), but I'm very glad I had the time to focus, because I came out of the fire of writing in the middle of things like that very much energized. And in the process, had some wonderful conversations with my advisors, as well as the third reader, and left Berlin feeling much more grounded, grounded in a PhD program, and particularly in this one.
And two days ago, when this post was due, I got word from my DoS that the revision of the RDC2 was accepted, and, that symbol that applied to me before, 'MPhil/PhD' is now just 'PhD' and that feels very good, but more than that, it feels earned, earned with an awful lot of help and support from TI and Plymouth. This was such good news, in fact, that I entirely forgot to write this blog post, which was due on that same day.
So I'm in the beginning of studio project #4 now, Monsters of the Sea/ Hotel Athena, with a script written and in rehearsal, and also have about 3,000 words on the next chapter on Methodology. And for the first time, perhaps (though there is a philosophical problem with origins of course), I am experiencing the writing as not simply a hoop, an exercise, something to show the work, but as the work itself, that the writing is the work. And the documentation is the work. As much as the studio practice is the work. That is to say, I have a better grasp on what artistic research is, and what it is for. I'm finding the whole process very useful, and in itself energizing.
Part of the challenge could be to hold to an attitude that it is energizing; I think I can do that, because right now any bumps or blocks in the writing aren't coming from laziness or boredom with the tasks at hand, but result from things that have not been thought through fully.
This is important, I think.
Two things happened at the residency that lead to this. First, the workshop on he Exhibition with Geoff, and the thought of Michel Schwabb, along with the presence of other PhD researchers opened up a fundamental discussion, one I'd been having unconsciously with the process, but had not brought into the light of consciousness (if it can be described as light). This came about from seeing an art practice PhD in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is, to begin with. What it is came later.
What it is not: through reading and listening to Schwabb, I understand that this kind of PhD is at odds with standard academic formulations, because it needs to live in two worlds at once, one that adheres to the modernist demands to 'make it new' while also conforming to the standards of, usually, social science practices. And the challenge (ironic sense of the word) is to maintain the integrity of the PhD as artistic research that also performs artistically. This while also being clear that, although it cannot live comfortably in the social sciences, it can and should use the tools of traditional humanities methods and methodologies. So this became a question of re-framing, but particularly in terms of that sticky problem of method and methodology.
Here's a story: (this really happened) I stopped into the office of one of my old friends, a colleague who is tenured at the university I sometimes teach at. He asked about my time in Europe, and I told him about RDC2 struggles and other things, and said that my problem was that I didn't really understand the difference between method and methodology.
He got excited. "Tell me the difference!" he said (I use double quotes here because it happened in the U.S.). Before I could tell him, though, he interrupted (this happens a lot to me, I don't talk loud enough, because I like to listen, I suppose). He said, "Because it's obvious to me that no one really knows! We teach it here, and if you look at the dozens of texts we teach from, they all say something very different."
End of that story. All to say, this is nothing unique to an arts PhD, but to all of them that deal with constructions outside of the established disciplines. So are we establishing the constructions, then? Maybe a little, I like to think so, because it helps me to make a thesis knowing that this is something rather new, and we all have an unusual degree of freedom in determining the inner logic of what we are making. But oh, there has to be an inner logic.
So the breakthrough here, in these stories, for me, was that I had written my RDC2 to try to satisfy two separate models, a social sciences model that I am not trained in, and an arts research model that I had not fully constructed. So I had to construct it again. And fortunately I had help.
Short version: I threw out the (unstable) dependence on ethnographic, psychoanalytic, and phenomenological methods altogether, using them, with my advisors' and third reader's recommendations, as contexts instead of methods. And the bricoleur methodology I barely articulated was thrown out in order to give a place for the first instinct, the methodology of the Kanga, a new methodology. Using practice-lead methods, interview methods, and subjective methods, to build a frame for what I was already doing. Thank you all for all of the help.
The second thing that happened at the residency: Wolfgang's seminar on Conflict. Based on the theme of conflict, I watched him tell us a story (with too many interruptions, he does not talk loudly either, I like that in a thinker) about a history of the continent I was on, one that reflects some essential conditions (historical, political, and philosophical) of the continent on which I live most of the months of the year. This experience in thought, ideas that added up to a story, with an underlying imperative to make work that speaks to that story, was groundbreaking, because I have not been able to follow lines of thought all the way through, for the better part of a year, and maybe even two years. (Mostly because of personal losses that made it difficult to think, but also because the work on my thesis was still a batch of unconnected things, waiting for me to find the connecting threads).
So I left that continent, thinking about the bullet holes in the walls, the dirt from another visit to Sachenhausen (am I going to visit this place every year??), and the things that artists do after a war, to come back to a place where everybody seems so terrified of losing all of their material things they don't think much of anything beyond it, and also a place in the middle of terrible violence from the police against young black men (among others), annnnnnd work at a university where they are going to start arming the campus police with assault weapons (there has never been a riot on campus, it's too hot to organize).
Putting the growing desire to move to Europe aside, I'm back to where I have been working with many others to build an artistic community based on mutual support, and back to work.
The new project, Hotel Athena, is a theatre piece for multiple rooms, set in a hotel in another country, where someone is looking for someone he lost. The theme is a little bit Robert Graves (of all things), loss of the feminine, death of the father (the master texts), and the resurgence of the maternal/feminine in the material and immaterial world. Lots of room for ghosts. The performers have been through the spell, and we've begun trance work; it's much more individual this time (and the spell is much more communal this time), so the methodology is already serving as a potent guide. For documentation, we're recording more, images and words, using better video and sound capture tools, and I'm also starting to look more at how projected text can work (I understand how it can work to generate meaning in the documentation, but am working on the aesthetic, so that it is pleasing to the eye even if it is sometimes confrontational). I'm still looking, though, and always open to suggestions on that part of things.
Deborah sent some wonderful resources for ethnography and video, taken from the field of cultural geography, that will be useful in guiding this next phase of documentation.
And a central concern, one that Laura brought up when we talked this morning, has to do with, interestingly enough, voice. Finding the voice (or vocalities) for the one who is making the Kanga, the voice I will use as the central narrative author for the text of the thesis. Be ruthless, go for the jugular, don't edit yourself, and consider what the placement of words can do to a page; all of these things.
Ok that's enough. I hope you've been well.
xo
c
Between this post and the last post, the written portion of the RDC2 was returned for resubmission with rewrites. In order to meet the timing of the studio work (which was looming, now it is not 'was looming' but rather 'is looming' or better, it 'looms'), I took a week in the residency to do the rewrite, which is not necessarily typical, and I don't know if I would recommend it (on principle, because missing any of the sessions in the residency isn't what I would recommend at all), but I'm very glad I had the time to focus, because I came out of the fire of writing in the middle of things like that very much energized. And in the process, had some wonderful conversations with my advisors, as well as the third reader, and left Berlin feeling much more grounded, grounded in a PhD program, and particularly in this one.
And two days ago, when this post was due, I got word from my DoS that the revision of the RDC2 was accepted, and, that symbol that applied to me before, 'MPhil/PhD' is now just 'PhD' and that feels very good, but more than that, it feels earned, earned with an awful lot of help and support from TI and Plymouth. This was such good news, in fact, that I entirely forgot to write this blog post, which was due on that same day.
So I'm in the beginning of studio project #4 now, Monsters of the Sea/ Hotel Athena, with a script written and in rehearsal, and also have about 3,000 words on the next chapter on Methodology. And for the first time, perhaps (though there is a philosophical problem with origins of course), I am experiencing the writing as not simply a hoop, an exercise, something to show the work, but as the work itself, that the writing is the work. And the documentation is the work. As much as the studio practice is the work. That is to say, I have a better grasp on what artistic research is, and what it is for. I'm finding the whole process very useful, and in itself energizing.
Part of the challenge could be to hold to an attitude that it is energizing; I think I can do that, because right now any bumps or blocks in the writing aren't coming from laziness or boredom with the tasks at hand, but result from things that have not been thought through fully.
This is important, I think.
Two things happened at the residency that lead to this. First, the workshop on he Exhibition with Geoff, and the thought of Michel Schwabb, along with the presence of other PhD researchers opened up a fundamental discussion, one I'd been having unconsciously with the process, but had not brought into the light of consciousness (if it can be described as light). This came about from seeing an art practice PhD in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is, to begin with. What it is came later.
What it is not: through reading and listening to Schwabb, I understand that this kind of PhD is at odds with standard academic formulations, because it needs to live in two worlds at once, one that adheres to the modernist demands to 'make it new' while also conforming to the standards of, usually, social science practices. And the challenge (ironic sense of the word) is to maintain the integrity of the PhD as artistic research that also performs artistically. This while also being clear that, although it cannot live comfortably in the social sciences, it can and should use the tools of traditional humanities methods and methodologies. So this became a question of re-framing, but particularly in terms of that sticky problem of method and methodology.
Here's a story: (this really happened) I stopped into the office of one of my old friends, a colleague who is tenured at the university I sometimes teach at. He asked about my time in Europe, and I told him about RDC2 struggles and other things, and said that my problem was that I didn't really understand the difference between method and methodology.
He got excited. "Tell me the difference!" he said (I use double quotes here because it happened in the U.S.). Before I could tell him, though, he interrupted (this happens a lot to me, I don't talk loud enough, because I like to listen, I suppose). He said, "Because it's obvious to me that no one really knows! We teach it here, and if you look at the dozens of texts we teach from, they all say something very different."
End of that story. All to say, this is nothing unique to an arts PhD, but to all of them that deal with constructions outside of the established disciplines. So are we establishing the constructions, then? Maybe a little, I like to think so, because it helps me to make a thesis knowing that this is something rather new, and we all have an unusual degree of freedom in determining the inner logic of what we are making. But oh, there has to be an inner logic.
So the breakthrough here, in these stories, for me, was that I had written my RDC2 to try to satisfy two separate models, a social sciences model that I am not trained in, and an arts research model that I had not fully constructed. So I had to construct it again. And fortunately I had help.
Short version: I threw out the (unstable) dependence on ethnographic, psychoanalytic, and phenomenological methods altogether, using them, with my advisors' and third reader's recommendations, as contexts instead of methods. And the bricoleur methodology I barely articulated was thrown out in order to give a place for the first instinct, the methodology of the Kanga, a new methodology. Using practice-lead methods, interview methods, and subjective methods, to build a frame for what I was already doing. Thank you all for all of the help.
The second thing that happened at the residency: Wolfgang's seminar on Conflict. Based on the theme of conflict, I watched him tell us a story (with too many interruptions, he does not talk loudly either, I like that in a thinker) about a history of the continent I was on, one that reflects some essential conditions (historical, political, and philosophical) of the continent on which I live most of the months of the year. This experience in thought, ideas that added up to a story, with an underlying imperative to make work that speaks to that story, was groundbreaking, because I have not been able to follow lines of thought all the way through, for the better part of a year, and maybe even two years. (Mostly because of personal losses that made it difficult to think, but also because the work on my thesis was still a batch of unconnected things, waiting for me to find the connecting threads).
So I left that continent, thinking about the bullet holes in the walls, the dirt from another visit to Sachenhausen (am I going to visit this place every year??), and the things that artists do after a war, to come back to a place where everybody seems so terrified of losing all of their material things they don't think much of anything beyond it, and also a place in the middle of terrible violence from the police against young black men (among others), annnnnnd work at a university where they are going to start arming the campus police with assault weapons (there has never been a riot on campus, it's too hot to organize).
Putting the growing desire to move to Europe aside, I'm back to where I have been working with many others to build an artistic community based on mutual support, and back to work.
The new project, Hotel Athena, is a theatre piece for multiple rooms, set in a hotel in another country, where someone is looking for someone he lost. The theme is a little bit Robert Graves (of all things), loss of the feminine, death of the father (the master texts), and the resurgence of the maternal/feminine in the material and immaterial world. Lots of room for ghosts. The performers have been through the spell, and we've begun trance work; it's much more individual this time (and the spell is much more communal this time), so the methodology is already serving as a potent guide. For documentation, we're recording more, images and words, using better video and sound capture tools, and I'm also starting to look more at how projected text can work (I understand how it can work to generate meaning in the documentation, but am working on the aesthetic, so that it is pleasing to the eye even if it is sometimes confrontational). I'm still looking, though, and always open to suggestions on that part of things.
Deborah sent some wonderful resources for ethnography and video, taken from the field of cultural geography, that will be useful in guiding this next phase of documentation.
And a central concern, one that Laura brought up when we talked this morning, has to do with, interestingly enough, voice. Finding the voice (or vocalities) for the one who is making the Kanga, the voice I will use as the central narrative author for the text of the thesis. Be ruthless, go for the jugular, don't edit yourself, and consider what the placement of words can do to a page; all of these things.
Ok that's enough. I hope you've been well.
xo
c
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