weekly journal

Class notes, thoughts, ideas, inspirations

Week two

  • This week’s SLP tasks began with some horizontal thinking, prompting me to mind map all the various themes, ideas, and inspirations floating around in my head.

    I began thinking about flowers in a more literal realm, rather than the metaphoric and gestural meanings I have been inspired by. My map thought of physical locations, in London and beyond, that intertwine with flowers - particularly in conversation with community.

    Then, I sorted through my various ideas and made six further mind-maps which considered:

    1. Form, Style, Genre, Performance Modes

    2. Content, Themes, Ideas, Conceptual Dimensions

    3. Audience/Spectator: Configurations, Relationship, Attitude Towards

    4. Space, Image, Materials, Aesthetics

    5. Sensation, Atmospherics, Effects, Affects

    6. Methodologies, Strategies, Composition, Structures

    Within this exercise, I really thought about intentionality and making active choices. Each mind-map then was made into a short video, my favourite of which flipped through an album of photos taken across the span of the past two years - showing time passing and the digitalisation of this.

  • In our first in-class workshop, we were introduced to the idea of break down/falling apart, through the first exercise which required simultaneous thought and movement. The space in-between can show new ways of thinking and allow for imperfections - so important to remember.

    Through perceptive exercises, such as see/notice/imagine, we explored how first sight can be expanded into closer looking, into imagination and inference.

    Something that Julia said that really has stuck with me is the idea that the project doesn’t have to be about something, it simply can be that thing. And I think that’s so important and so much of what I want to create. Especially working with themes of impermanence, making sure that the moments themselves are fleeting is so important.

  • After playing with interpreting our draft proposals (both spoken and with movement), we did some more horizontal thinking and created Maps of Thinking, which intersect key words and touchstones with selected objects, allowing us to see connections form between our ideas.

    My map came in the form of a flower, with five petals each representing a strand of my inspirations and thoughts. Inside each petal, I wrote down all my thinking points on that specific topic - such as the CONNECTION petal also housing CONVERSATION, LOVE, CARE, STRANGERS, WORDS. I then began to, with pen and string, connect various ideas across the map until the page was full of strings, connections, and conversations between these thoughts.

    There is something so beautiful in finding relatability between two initially separated ideas. Like with the earlier workshop exercise, after first seeing you can then notice further details, triggering imaginative responses.

    Materially, using string was fun to both connect ideas literally, as well as metaphorically intertwining with thinking my about invisible strings and connections. I brought in a pressed rose, and removed four petals from it to incorporate into my map. I played with breaking them, sticking them down, tying them up. Taking the same thing and exploring different ways of shaping it was really fascinating in the exploration of choices and decisions - what can happen when you make a different choice from the same initial starting point?

  • Some new words and thoughts that have cropped up from this week’s exercises and workshop:

    Temporality

    Inevitability

    Beginning, Middle, End

    Cycles + Patterns

Week three

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Week three *

  • PERFORMATIVE PROPOSITIONS

    • playing with materials to make flowers - paper, blu tac, etc

    • making flowers that last, or don’t

  • INTRODUCTION

    • talking through her work in its various strands and disciplines

    • social art

    • participatory/events

    • interest in the IN-BETWEEN spaces - her work within foyers, where people gather and wait - links into my interest in shared spaces and the middle-ground

    • Covet Me Care For Me - an installation work, inviting audience participation - I am fascinated in the way she invites participants into an act of destruction, but also gain, in their obtaining an object from within a glass vessel

    • A Restorative - participatory piece enabling participants to create their own dream pillow - themes of personal connection with the work, taking something away, building something.

    • introducing through a chosen OBJECT - begin with it, then the themes come out

    • translating the object into… TEXT

    • I brought in the stem of a tulip - this morning when I left, it had four petals on that were lost along the way, probably in the park,

    1. living room - describing what the project would be like as a living room:

      • carpet of flowers

      • no roof or walls, so the stars can be seen

      • a tree in the centre, surrounded by a circular seating area, books underneath cushioned seats

      • lights + music, atmospheric

      • a blend of flowers + colours

    2. WHY make? how do you want to live?

      • because nothing lasts forever!

      • because temporality creates significance

      • because making ignites

      • because when else?

      • because focus on the present moment is necessary to progress

    3. practical research - responding to question prompts, allowing consideration into literal and metaphorical reality of the object

      • this exercise was SO helpful for me - made me realise the focus on the middle-ground is so central to my current thoughts and themes

      • what are the material properties? who made it? what does it remind you of? does it make you feel? how does it relate to the natural world? what would it say if it could speak?

      • this really helped me realise there are more connections than ever noticeable on first impression, and looking deeper into an object, asking questions of it, provides such unique ways of thinking

      • we then spent a few minutes free-writing inspired by our answers, I wrote about the tulip’s journey to the present moment. it became quite metaphoric, feeding into thinking about the commodification of nature and how separation occurs throughout the journey. how sometimes the roots and petals are gone, but the stem remains. the middle remains.

      • ‘loss is regular. change is ever-present and on-going. interventions occur frequently, sometimes things happen too early, too late, time waits for no-one.’

    4. deleting words, from existing text - what happens?

      • using One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty, Please - from the NYT’s Modern Love column

  • Things to look at:

    • cycles + inevitability

    • BEGINNING MIDDLE END
      PAST PRESENT FUTURE

    • an aesthetic of romance

    Ideas to explore:

    • a meal, but flowers

    • take one, leave one

    • flower windows

    • growth + destruction - natural v with human intervention

    Make and do:

    • print inspirations - collage words + images together

    • plant a flower, capture its life and death

    • read about life cycles

    • read about the meanings of flowers - victorians

    • recapping Sheila’s workshop & reflecting

    • researching Kantor - surrealist/avant-garde artist, set designer, director

  • key takeaways

    • manifestos as a physical manifestation of intent, values, promises

    • looking @ MANIFESTATION by Oscar Murillo

    • autonomous theatre as Kantor’s manifesto - representation and reality

    • Kantor as finding inspiration from the streets around him - in colour, style, line

    discussion + thought points

    • value of art through status and reputation

    • abstract art - layered materials

    • art as actuality - performing reality

    • living through, and making art within, complex political + historical environments - negates the need for context, the city surroundings are the context

    • autonomous theatre as separate from the play text - theatre as a separate entity itself

    composition

    • making through paying attention to form - using Bogart’s viewpoints

    • stepping away from text - composition through the body

    • playing with MONTAGE, in the composition of scenes/moments/images - idea of separate but together

    • using autonomous theatre as

    viewpoints, Anne Bogart

    1. tempo

    2. duration

    3. repetition

    4. kinaesthetic response

    5. architecture

    6. topography

    7. shape

    8. gesture

    9. spatial relationship

    • paying attention, having focus

    • leading on impulse!

week four

workshop with Lorenzo Montanini

‘Manifestation’, Oscar Murillo, 2019-20

Week Five

  • Through Lorenzo’s SLP tasks, making performance as informed by listed ingredients, I developed a site-specific video project filmed around the QM campus, starting in Arts One, then spanning out towards the canal and student village.

    I documented stills of plants and flowers in their varying degrees and stages - from plants growing in the foyer, to the allotment, to the trees along Regents Canal. The mixture of growth through both manufactured and natural means created a really beautiful array to be explored.

    One of Lorenzo’s prompts was ‘something that can’t be faked’, which I brought into my clips of plants being affected by their surroundings - namely in contact with wind and external factors. The unpredictability of what will happen to them was interesting to record, allowing nature to take its course in more ways than one.

    Another prompt was the ‘revelation of space’, which became clearer as I ventured outside of the building, into the wider campus. As a replication of journey, growth, and expansion - my chosen focal points within the film grew and progressed as the plants did/continue to do.

  • Within Julia Bardsley’s artist workshop, we went through the processes of physicalising our projects, and channeling the energies and manifestations they produce.

    Using Chekhov’s psychological gestures - we drew from written prompts we had produced in impulse response to our projects, taking inspiration and physicalising it. In moving with the internal gesture, and allowing it to consume your movements entirely, it becomes a state of being separate to the self. Through this gesture, it can be channelled into decision-making capacities, producing outcomes unimaginable from the initial starting point.

    The idea of ritual enables the treatment of something as sacred and almost becomes performing a routine. Building a persona in this way allows for self-censorship to give way and generate new material.

    Whilst we were using another person as a mirror, getting ‘ready’ in the reflection of another, we were informed by our own internal gestures - their desires, their impulses. Outsourcing the generation to the persona. However, in the process of serving as a mirror FOR another person, somehow their physical projection onto us still fed into our own personas. You begin to make sense of any occurrence, and apply logic to make it a part of the gestural world.

    I am really interested in the process of BECOMING - the journey of transformation, the feeling that comes with the transformation. In how the internal translated itself into material reality. How finding the point of internal concentration can enable so much intrinsic potential.

    In discussions post-workshop, we spoke about the value and the interesting parts being how the internal gesture is translated - rather than necessarily looking at the reference points, and where this internal concentration stems from.

    • interrogation through PRACTICE

    • focus on the process of becoming - how does it feel?

    • finding the internal point of concentration, and using this to inform decisions, actions, reactions, making material

    • let the persona create! outsource

    • something about the ways the colours blend on the makeup wipes, process of unmasking, shedding the persona, the return/reverse journey of transformation

    • sometimes, it’s more interesting to think about the ways in which things manifest, the processes and rituals undertaken, rather than where something has come from. the stimulus, and explaining the reasons and meanings, are not always as fascinating as the essence of what is being created.

  • CONTINUES

    HAS NO END DATE

    IS IN THE MIDDLE OF ITS PROCESS AT THE TIME OF ‘SHOWING’

    IS AFFECTED BY THE WORLD AROUND IT

    IS UNPREDICTABLE

    CANNOT BE MANUFACTURED ENTIRELY, JUST PROMPTED

Performing Persona, Identity, Character

workshop

slp

Week Six

WEEK SEVEN - READING WEEK

  • MUSIC TO ACCOMPANY

    LACMA having audios attached to artworks - allows you to scan a QR code, leading to either a playlist designed to accompany the entire exhibition, or a particular exhibit

    STICKERS! LAYERING

    as going beyond collaging

    like how museums sometimes give you a sticker as a ticket, then people add them to a lamppost or something

    KUSAMA

    obliteration room = sticker installation @ tate modern last year,

    body festival = covering herself/others in dots - happening, political protest

    SEEDS

    in postcards!

    JOSEPH BEUYS

    social sculpture = everything is art, everything can be approached creatively

    social forest = reforestation action, planting of trees as part of conservation project

    ‘never stop planting’ !!!!

    always seeds to sow

    ZOLTAR SPEAKS

    fortune-telling, card dispensary

    links to seed cards

    MARIA MAGDALENA CAMPOS-PONS

    uses flora + fauna in her art - power of nature to grow + survive, forging + repairing relationships, attending to the world with care + empathy

    political dimensions - eg Butterfly Eyes for Breonna Taylor

    • never stop planting !

    • there’s something in stickers, layering, building, adding

    • where do the fallen petals go?

  • inspired by Sheila Ghelani’s living room research exercise:

    • shower, onto flowerbed

    • beauty + beast rose in glass case

    • paper flower making + burning - ritual

    • photomontages - with audio and video accompaniment

    • make a wish tree - but with a twist (idk what!)

    • QR codes with tracks relating to artworks

    • seed planting/postcards - take something away, legacy project

  • temporality, through flowers

    growth, through flowers

    connection, through flowers

  • persona making, of interviewer/curator/florist

    floristry workshop

    interview + consequential collage

    something about stickers, leaving your mark

Click for gallery

Week Eight

WiP Brainstorms:

  • photomontage

  • photo wall

  • seed-planting workshop