My Swedish friends think my enthusiasm over the Kultur & Media job centre and unemployment services is highly amusing. I am going to recommend that they take a trip the job centre on Burdett Road.
What they find strange, and so do I now I think about it, is that there are government funded universities offering courses in a subject which other government departments do not recognise as a career and /or identity. I had no counter argument. I think this is symptomatic of the UKs lack of joined up thinking. I could almost accept it more if all art schools were private, but they are not. The Kultur & Media office of the unemployment office here might not ever find me a job but its very existence is a sign of recognition that artists exist, and that they work!
Received positive feedback about my writing for the research course. The tutor suggested that I got the headings around the wrong way, meaning that I described my artwork instead of myself and myself instead of my artwork. Does this perhaps hint at a slightly more worrying possibility that I find it hard to distinguish myself from my practice – to the point where there seems to be some kind of identity confusion … I hope that I simply misunderstood the academic phrasing of the assignment.
The course is becoming more and more interesting. Sometimes I feel so alien, so English, so less than successful English artist … I could keep adding words! What I realised during Friday’s session is that I feel conditioned to be in a state of inferiority, and this is neither healthy nor helpful. I can give all kinds of reasons for my condition, they are almost irrelevant though, as the main thing is to realise that I am now in a situation where it will benefit me to feel equal. Perhaps without consciously realising it somewhere along the way here I lost my sense of equality. It is high time to find again!*
Research might be a good place for me to be. It seems to be a place where there is excitement around connections and my work is always about connections: immediate, distant, conceptual, literal, figurative, material, historic, social, political and cultural – along with the everyday and vulgar connections which keep me childishly amused! It would be wonderful to have a place where I can continue with what I am already doing and develop it, make it better, communicate its significance, contribute to other and more discussions ….
Over the weekend I began to wonder if part of problem with coming to understand ‘research’ is that I am already doing it. By this I mean that I have been looking for this ‘research’ thing as something new and external to myself, where as it is actually very familiar and already rooted in me and my practice. From now I am going to take the position that I already do research and that I am learning to refine and develop processes and methodologies that already exist.
It is counter-productive to spend time worrying about entitlement, authority and permission, especially on the course at Konstfack, as these things are taken for granted – hence the general confusion when I raise them as ‘issues’. Sometimes I do feel so very very foreign! What happens if I look at my practice through the lens of ‘research’? I remember saying here, a few years ago, that I was suspicious of artists claiming that their practice was ‘research’ – I’d like the opportunity to review that statement! Perhaps what I was (and still am) resistant to is the tailoring of practices to fit pre-existing or imagined research methodologies – the practice must always come first …
*Embarking on a grand quest with no route map. The great thing about not knowing where the journey of this sort ends is that it never need end.
ps. at about 5pm on sunny afternoons when I am elsewhere I think of the sparkling door in the studio – the thought of it makes me happy
