23rd October- Tutorial notes/Reflections-

Tutorial notes/Reflections- 

Tutorial Notes: 

The discussion included your varied outputs including the 'Solidarity Collective', disrupting 'Black Friday' and your contact with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research and associated engagement workshop with public facing exhibition.

It was helpful to clarify your stated goal (to paraphrase) : "To engage creativity into a more active social & political function. Trying to find a political solution within the sensory domain' which acts as a sort of mission statement.

The 'echo chamber' effect and the actions of 'preaching to the converted' and also the problem of having audiences who are already 'onside' to your project. How far your works reach.

You also raised the issue of hierarchy within art and the breadth of iterations especially within the crowded field of political / disruptive /public engagement oriented practice.

Next Steps: 

Much of your work that is generated by political and ideological benefits from contact - that is, contact with audiences, the public and through consultation and engagement through action research / workshop oriented practice. Although nascent, continue to develop projects whereby your participants/audiences benefit from forms of discourse that educate. 

After a meeting with the environmental society we have discussed the concept of working toward a type of booklet/newspaper that could be used for wider distribution. The society would like to produce these often however the first could be as part of my public engagement investigation. This begins to engage with the audience in a creative way as its contents would be communicating information in a creative way. 

Develop an understanding of certain demographics as well as developing your research with harder evidence to support and bolster your claims. A project in Norwich will differ from one elsewhere. Challenge your own assumptions as well as those audiences you seek to engage.

I have spent my entire degree trying to best understand people and the way in which they interact with information and art. Therefore my work now in communication is the best step to act on this. My claims made are based on experience and research/interaction with others, the main finding is the echo effect with information and art. The collective projects and the collaborative works that I am carrying out are an attempt to better access different demographics, this is also ensured through them being public. My investigation is aimed toward two different demographics. The collaborative public work is aimed at the general public, however the continued use of the gallery space is justified through my desire to appeal to the % of society who produce the most pollution. 

How do you see these clay pieces? Are they tokens or some kind of tablets? The vulnerability of unfired clay seems important. Can the metaphorical be brought to bear more? Handling and exchanging adds wear and denudation. Perhaps there is scope to work on more architectural scale - clay structures that stand in for institutions or bodies. Maybe dig and refine your own clay. Clay to coat walls and floors or clay to cast into forms. Clay as anti technological? The impressions into your clay pieces seemed important - like fossils or Phoenician alphabets. 

Full reflections concerning my clay work are in my red notebook however they are the most interesting aspect of my own reflection currently. They offer an anti-technological realm to my work, as does my planned fabric pieces. The natural sediment that they are made from refers directly to earth without the work being explicitly labelled as environmental. The cyclic nature of them being unfired suggests that they may one day return to the ground, as 'restless' did. This earth back to earth is reminiscent of an exchange between man and nature. The shapes within the work offer metaphorical commentary on the level of communication they might hold. They question their own viewer and the naturally occuring cracks in them show the ways in which these theories may be faulted in their own right. The complicated network off communication in modern day often forgets the object and the level of connection in hand craft. This craft is vital and the use of clay nobs to traditional ways of sculpting. The works appeal to the human brain that still desires a contact. 
Your work touches on issues around the Anthropocene condition and there is a great deal of research and current debate around this. Read Edward Burtynsky as a good starting point. This also connects to your reference to people 'ostraching' and avoiding truths perhaps (ie. climate change deniers). Your connection to clay, to working in a way that neither adds or removes materially suggests that the work of George Bataille could be useful especially his writing on Base Materialism. Other research could include the work of John Latham (and Flat Time House) and the work of Joseph Beuys (and his latter involvement in politics and the Green Party).