I am going through a phase where can’t seem to keep up with the course: going through the learning outcomes/assessment for unit one; thinking about the essay, trying to keep up with the chat content.

I realised today that a key element about walking for me is that it represents a freedom. A political freedom: anti capitalist not be reliant on money for a car, bus, whatever. I have never thought about the political implications. There was just a satisfaction in walking from A to B. That’s an issue that comes from the virtual walking environments currently being developed… lack of freedom. I will need to pay. Someone else will prescribe my views, my interaction, and sensory experience. Those implications worry me.

I was born and grew up in London. My family didn’t own a car and there wasn’t much money, if you wanted to go somewhere you walked. I would regularly walk from Kilburn where we lived to Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square or the Tate gallery and back again, without thinking about it.

Walking represents a personal freedom I never queried until health issues, location and transport became factors to me. For one reason or another it has become problematical to rely on walking and I realized that the small films I’ve made about walking for the course in some ways have acted as a document of that contrast.

It took writing the essay to make me realise these issues. It feels like not having seen something because it was too close. I wish I’d had had this overview before writing the essay but can start to take these ideas forwards from having engaged through the essay.

The essay is nearly finished. Just waiting for proof reading, and to do the layout, etc… It has proved a far more rewarding experience than I thought. Just to have done the reading at that depth, even if it hasn’t all been absorbed or put in the right context. Might not have done a good essay, but have found it a positive way of asking questions and opened up to ideas and exposed thought patterns that weren’t very useful but are proving very hard to root out… Think like a lot of the course the pay off will come later down the line, and it can be filed as another learning curve.

Next Post

 

Been thinking about Jackson Pollock, and Pollock’s interest in Jungian psychology. Reading around some of Jung’s ideas and considering Pollock as an archetypical hero in Jungian terminology.

Here is a web definition of Jung’s archetype of the hero:

‘The hero basically represents the ego. The hero is something we all identify with, something we all want to project to the world: a balanced, gallant personality with the ability to face obstacle with grace and strength. However, the hero is very ignorant of the unconscious, just like the ego is. The hero archetype seeks to battle these shadows, unaware of the fact that itself is created from the same thing. In other words our egos often seek to individualize ourselves, to make decisions with as little consequence as possible, yet it’s still connected to a collective psyche that includes hidden motives and drives. In Jungian psychology, the hero represents a self-sacrificing character that faces great adversity for some greater purpose.’

Collective consciousness how does it function on the web/ Cyberspace?

If archetypes are rooted to a shared consciousness what happens when that shared consciousness becomes a mechanical/electronic structure rather than an organic structure as it has previously been? Is this the reason for the rise in much negative human experience: cyber bullying/sense of isolation/ our need for rapidly changing identities?

According to Jung we are born with a psychological heritage as well as a biological heritage. Both according to Jung are important determinants of behavior and experience:

“just as the human body represents a whole museum of organs, each with a long evolutionary period behind it, so we should expect to find that the mind is organized in a similar way. It can no more be a product without history than is the body in which it exists” (Jung 1964, p. 67).

Still at the essay.  I am dreaming about  it. I wake up  re writing  passages of it.  If I had time and wasn’t so slow would aim to restructure it. Still to have got this far with it is an achievement.  Bit more pushing and it will be finished.

Newcastle

Went up to Newcastle this Saturday to visit ‘Coil to Met’ an actuation by artist Alastair MacLennan.

 

It was both disorientating, being shown in a disused bathroom sales room, with leaking ceilings, and empty display bays. Disconcerting with MacLennan’s disciplined use of his own body; sitting immobile under a mound of old discarded shoes.

 

The real impact for me was that the presence and involvement of the artists own person of the piece.

 

I spend a lot of time looking at work on the internet, or in galleries where the artist has absented themselves, left the building, and for me MacLennan’s piece brought a level of impact that I haven’t experienced before.

 

 

http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/maclennan/

 

 

http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/article.aspx?art_id=1088

 

 

It has made me resolve to buy a projector for a version of the projection piece outlined a couple of posts back.

Spent time doing more  essay writing today.

This evening went to Lumiere  at the Botanical Gardens, Durham. Exhibition of light and sound pieces.

The truth is I am completely exhausted at this point. Life is currently full of hospital appointments, GP visits etc. which are very often back to back over the week. Have a general lack of sleep and energy.

The essay needs finishing and am too tired to see straight let alone think sensibly. Things keep sabotaging my time for the essay. That creates a sort of panic and reluctance. It is hard to keep calm when you’re tired like this for some reason.

Got really frustrated with WordPress over the last post as it wouldn’t add on the tags for abstract expressionism etc. I spent over an hour trying to make it.  That really annoyed me as I realised I was being silly and wasting time and was unable to stop myself at that point.

Need to get out with a camera again; it always helps to re connect with the practical side of the course.

“The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.”

Willem de Kooning

Took a few days away from the essay to give time for the presentation  feed back to settle in.

Doing some more reading  brought me back to the abstract expressionists; in particular Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning because of the emphasis on  gesture and physicality in their works.

Here is the link again for the interactive Pollock site that  I posted about  at the beginning of the course back in 2007/8.

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

The interest for me when making these digital Pollock style pieces is that the focus on the  physical engagement of the original works  is gone. I  read recently, that all of our online interaction happens through hand movements on the mouse or keyboard. What used to take bodily physical motion and time to achieve has become condensed in to small low impact isolated physical actions.

How does the concept of the ‘artist’ of 60 years ago may compare to today’s  understanding of the term ‘artist’ … the differences of expectations and contexts of that term; where that may currently fit in to a sense of global identity and propaganda?

Historically, abstract expressionism in the US has been interpreted as an exercise of a form of cultural imperialism by the USA a response to the cold war.

Threads seem to  lead to more questions in philosophical concepts.

Rationally I understand that the essay is an academic exercise. The goal should be to make a good contained job of writing and presenting the essay.

Just aim to get the essay finished.