Germinations
3rd August 2024
I find ‘lists’ constraining. The information can only be read in one of two directions – top-to-bottom and then in the reverse direction. Lists restrict the forming of relationships between thoughts & ideas. They hinder the ‘reading between the lines’ that sometimes unlocks the recognition of germinations. Their linearity hinders the relationships that give rise to the different layers of meaning. My mind doesn’t really work in lists – except for shopping. It feels more comfortable seeing ‘masses’ – which reflects the way that I am interested and curious about so much, probably too much. I see information, knowledge and facts (however small and apparently useless) as a form of currency that enables so much in life. So I collect it and store it, and am reassured – unconsciously – that it gives me the tools and capabilities to deal with life and the world.
So I’ve begun this exercise by creating a mass of possible ‘germinations’, or rather, the elements of germinations, as I think the words I have written live purely as siloed concerns, whilst the ‘germinations’ arise from the implied and explicit connections created by understanding how they connect and relate. My next step is to whittle them down to those that are of robust interest to me, that resonate with me, and begin constructing the loose connections that I could argue as those ‘germinations’, those beginnings of routes of conceptual enquiry.
This initial ‘mass’ of words and terms has come from reviewing my first year learning logs for Exploring Drawing Media, Understanding Painting Media and Understanding Visual Culture. I explored a lot during those three years and there were some nascent thoughts and ideas at play. At this point, my goal was purely to extract those interests from across the study periods, not to analyse them, just record them. Next steps, find a way to analyse them, create connections, discard, add to them. Begin to find a route towards a focus or focuses for my practice.
An aside: reflecting on the above leaves me wondering if this is too scientific a process to follow. Too forced. I have the sense that artists with deep concerns in their work organically arrive at those through process, over time. I need to accept that the process I am embarking on here is only the beginning of something, and it will take time, possibly beyond the length of this degree, to develop and arrive at those concerns that will become the epicentre of my practice.
15:05: I have also just noticed that this mass of concerns broadly focuses on themes and subjects (there are some influences in the form of artists). I have not considered my interests in materials, processes and sources
Distilling/ Reflecting
Step 1:
The first step: plotting the ‘germinations’ (that word is becoming a bit overused now!) on a ‘target’ chart – primary, secondary and tertiary concerns as concentric rings, allowing me to reflect on the relative importance of the ideas and concerns surfaced to me and my practice
Step 2:
The second step: concentrating on the area of primary concerns only, those elements that have continually arisen in my process, subdividing them into 5 key categories:
- The Materials I am fascinated with and use regularly
- Elements of Process that I explore and utilise
- Concerns, areas that have interested me that i want to further explore
- Sources, where I look for inspiration, knowledge and learning
- Influences, the artists who inspire me
Step 3:
I have a lot of interests, even within the primary concerns area alone. Even before this exercise, that was apparent in my practice. Frustration, which plays a large part in my process, is often the result of having too many dimensions competing for my attention I and I often respond to that with avoidance, seeking other things to do, distractions from the task at hand. It is often a fear response: I’m stuck, I don’t know how or can’t find a route from that ‘stuckness’ so I resort to mundane, unassociated tasks – housework, social media (a big time-waster when unfocussed), professional work, napping!. But I am aware when I channel that frustration and ‘stuckness’ into a supportive activity, such as research, experimentation – playing with materials and process, something gives and I find a route through the blockage. I have in the past thought of that as serendipity, and it is to a degree, but that serendipity doesn’t come from doing the housework, but it does arise from submerging myself in process, however lightly.
In this phase of this exercise, I have reflected on which of my concerns across my five self defined areas of the primary concerns are truly of more importance to my practice and work. This I have done by introducing a further, inner ring to the target map and bringing those concerns I feel most relevant into that. Some of them are speculative, such as patriarchy and feminism, which have arisen over the course of Understanding Visual Culture, but they are subjects that are beginning to seek my attention, and are areas whose influence I would like to explore in my work. Other concerns are long-established: paint, especially oil paint, and its materiality, how it can be used to reflect not just the physical form but the emotional as well. Repetition, scale, drawing as research & analysis – they have been present in varying degrees in my practice since my Foundation course
Step 4
Reflecting on borders and limits. At the moment, the distance between me and my boundaries is limited, whereas for an Artist like Akomfrah, that distance is far greater. This is the result of experience honed through years of practice and of taking creative risks, failing, trying, and of becoming deeply ensconced in concerns and ‘zones’. I am not that far along on that journey so my borders and limits are those that Akomfrah would have long transcended – laziness, procrastination, motivation, self-direction, material comfort zone, available time, fear of not being good enough, fear of taking risks, lack of knowledge of materials, of zones. These foundational limits need overcoming first before I can look into the unspecified territory and stretch beyond what is essentially, my current uncomfortable comfort zone.
Reflection – 04/08/24
Whilst there felt like an element of contrivance (for academic purposes) with this exercise, I have found it useful to begin (only ‘begin’) a process of understanding my core artistic concerns. As I mentioned above, I feel that artists arrive at their core interests, their concerns, through a natural process, that is at once intellectually driven, emotionally informed, materially focused and, most importantly, practice centred. It is through the making, the creating, combined with research, that they arrive at, then develop the subject matter for their artistic conversations. The artefacts of their practice are the manifestations of their interconnected concerns, their intellects and emotions the repositories that hold, sort, discard, refine, decide upon and connect the concerns, to form germinations, and explore them to a point where they become the sensory conversations that intersubjectively connect with audiences through whatever zone ‘they’ leverage. In short, how many artists follow what feels like a purely academic diagrammatic ‘storming-norming-forming’ approach to understand their practice?
But that is a very dismissive attitude for me to take. If I think beyond the boundaries of this exercise, I can see that, subject matter aside, I am engaging in a process of research and reflection about what is important to me creatively, something I haven’t concertedly done before. Previously, it has been ad-hoc, siloed within the confines of whatever I was exploring at the time. This exercise has required me to take a big step back and view all of the different dimensions that have, at some point, exerted an influence on my creative attention. It’s almost I have become a drone and flown myself above a landscape of my creative concerns. For the first time I can see a fuller picture.
That fuller picture is very busy. I have many interests, some more present than others. As I spoke about above, I value information, facts and knowledge as a currency that creates and opens opportunities. So I tend to hoard information both physically and mentally, though it’s not really organised or structured in a way that I could label it an ‘archive’. It’s just there, in my head, on my shelves, in my plan-chest, on my computer and external hard-drives. Some is more visible and easily accessed. Much is, not exactly hidden, but less easily accessible, often requiring inordinate amounts of wasted time looking for something that was hazily remembered in the first place. Then there is that unconscious layer of information and knowledge, that which I don’t remember I know, which often appears unbidden at appropriate moments.
And that suggests an issue that maybe, very likely, affects my practice. A lack of organisation and recording around information and knowledge could be blocking the germination of some ideas, prevent me from seeing links and connections that could be salient to the development of my work. Over the course of the past three years of study, I feel I have approached each unit and its constituent parts as siloed entities, doing what was asked of me, limiting the exploration beyond the ‘hoops’ of the academic boundaries. Whilst I have learning logs as organised archives of these periods, they feel unconnected and don’t combine to form a wider practice. This exercise has begun a process of examining everything, and beginning considering connections. It’s indicating to me that I need to begin thinking about how I organise the different facets of my creative life, so that information and knowledge is more readily accessible and useful.
My landscape of concerns is also too broad, it needs reducing. That will be diluting any focus to my practice: in fact, I am clear at the moment that I don’t have a defined, ongoing focus for my work. There are topics I have explored previously – movement, embodied emotions, the small moments of my life, my privilege – but, again, they have been siloed and unconnected. My practice to-date has been defined by my studies: I have looked to those to assign a purpose, a reason for my work, and whilst I have ‘bent’ the requirements of the modules so far to my interests, my output has still been in response to course needs. Being able to reduce my focuses down to a core, I may be more governed by ‘passion’ for a subject or theme, rather the exercises and assignments, and then shape my practice to my needs first, the degree’s second
But I don’t think I can carry out that reduction on a diagram, nor fully address the connections between concerns in the same way. Process and practice is the only method I feel that will allow me to arrive at my conceptual destination. Researching and analysing a subject through a material process will allow the germinations to grow, or die. Practice through material process will be better at connecting the concerns of an intellectual level to an embodied emotional experience than writing about it, or creating diagrams that are not a natural part of my practice. That’s not to say that writing and diagrams do not have their place – they do. But in a looser, ad hoc, playful way: post-its on a wall, scrappy mind-maps on A1 sheets of paper, the clichéd sketches on the back of beer mats. It’s more important that I become more rigorous in recording and archiving that material in a way that is accessible and easy to reference.
And lastly, after noting all of the above, the most important aspect is for me to start understanding ‘why’ I have these concerns, why they hold my interest, why do I want to create around those themes? This exercise hasn’t asked us to consider that aspect: I feel as if it assumes we already understand the ‘why’. At the moment the only deep fascinations that I can firmly place my finger on are the human figure, specifically the face, how a person’s interior world can be captured artistically, and how the qualities of the materials used are intrinsic to that process. But there is more that is connected to that, as documented on the above graphics, that could give these subjects depth and a deeply personal focus. I feel, that process of discovering what those connected aspects are through practice, is my pathway through this module.
List of Illustrations
Fig.1. Emin, T (2019) I Wanted to Feel Safe With You [Acrylic on Canvas] At: https://tlmagazine.com/tracey-emin-charting-bittersweet-unconditional-love/ (Accessed 03/08/24)