It's been a very busy and stimulating week. On Wednesday night there was a panel discussion about ethics and the use of public images at Fabrica and then on Thursday Thomas Hirschhorn came to Brighton and delivered a talk about his work. And today was the closing conference of the Brighton Photo Biennial at Brighton University.
I'm thinking about the fact that my residency is going to end soon (tomorrow!) and what that means. I am aware that I've got a backlog of material to put on this blog and I don't want to 'lose' it by letting it slip by without writing it up and thinking about it in the considered way that the blog encourages.
So I think I will continue to keep the blog for a while longer and see how it develops outside the official space of the term of the residency.
There are lots of loose ends to tie up and many questions still to be posed. The ends won't get tied up. I kind of hope they don't, because they are all threads that might lead somewhere. And the questions seem to give rise to further questions. Answers seem like illusions.
Having not had internet access from home for nearly three weeks for the second half of the residency was, I feel, very detrimental to this blog. It was so unfortunate. I lost the rhythm I had got into of late night blogging: that quiet, night-time space of darkness and the expansion of thought. I had to adapt and post items up hastily from my work venues which created a different kind of mood to the postings; less reflective and considered, less well-edited and ultimately rather unsatisfactory. I tried to make the most of it calling myself a 'nomad blogger' but really I was not happy.
Tomorrow is my last session in the gallery at Fabrica. I've sent an email out to all at Fabrica thanking them for making my residency such a good one. And tomorrow I'm taking in some cake for anyone who is there. It was an odd email I sent out. It was right from the heart but after I'd sent it I worried that it was too euphoric and too revealing. I made a connection at the end of it between aspects of my parental grandparents' lives and my precarious sense of being in the world. I started off this blog mentioning parts of their lives and it feels as if I have come full circle in some ways to have got to this point but with a greater understanding and some new insights.
I know this sounds rather cryptic and unexplained so I will attempt to unpack some of what I am talking about in the posts that follow this. And I will do this, I promise (myself), in order to make the connections apparent, through writing.
