My project review question:

“I was trying to imply some kind of tension in the work I showed last week – but maybe not anxiety. I have been trying to make the moving image as near to still as possible, by looping or very slow movement. (Earlier in the course by sequential still images) My feeling is that still images allows greater autonomy, the viewer is not led by the moving image. Does any one have any thoughts on this?”
We didn’t really address this question directly, possibly because everyone else works away from moving image and it probably isn’t much of a concern in their work Andy did propose using these long loops and adding small ‘inserts’ that force the viewer/audience to keep looking. This is a very interesting area; attention span and control of audience. This could be a subject for post MA research. We also discussed the way that images are read, left to right as a section of my final show work does.
My notes read: spatial occupation, little slices of space, segmented areas (cut- ups) I think the last was in relation to how there may be points of convergence in different arts area’s. I am tentatively linking the diverse areas of my research to an exploration of the way we occupy spaces, and the negotiations that are enacted in occupying those spaces.

The other questions were concerned with the problem of linking theory research to actual work. How can the totality of our experience (for some of us lived little knowledge of art theory), which we have been translating into a visual form, now, be ‘attached’ to art or philosophical theory? One person’s example was the embedded architectural knowledge that she has through a lifetime’s work in the field. Although I understand this feeling, and do find it difficult to relate theory to practice, I suspect that as practising artist we will all have been absorbing the result – by viewing artworks – of art theory/art practice and related philosophies throughout our lives. I think of this as a kind of ‘memetic’ transfer. The difficulty that I, and some of the other students have is in knowing which bits of our artistic output come from where. We didn’t resolve this issue, of course, but it was particularly useful to discuss. Judith’s suggestion was to write down what one thinks while working on a piece. I like the idea of actually recording (using a microphone) this process.
How do we deal with philosophy that we do not understand? As artists I suspect in is probably inevitable that we will either misinterpret or misread at least some philosophical theory. The answer, we all agreed is to take what you can.
Another question was how do painters know when a work is finished particularly if the ‘unfinishedness’ is part of the way the work looks. Again no particular conclusion was reached but the discussion appeared to be helpful.

We also discussed writing texts to accompany work, an idea that fills many of us with horror. The comments were particularly useful to me as I always feel as if I am revering to junior school English e.g. ‘My work is about …’ or ‘ I like making pictures because …’ the most useful suggestion was ‘the text is not necessarily an explanation of the work it can be a complement’ Maurice Blanchot’s book ‘Writing of the Disaster’ was given as an example.