I need intellectual … mental … stimulation! Those two lectures at Mejan have made me realise how much I need to engage with intellectual … academic ? … discussion around practice. The question is how. It would be great to find a course … but I don’t know how to do that – Uppsala university’s website is not easy for me to navigate. And what kind of course do I want to do? Earning points – credits– toward an MA isn’t so important but at the same time I want something that is demanding and that will make me think … and why not read and ’present’ too!
Yesterday, while looking for something else, I came across an announcement for a ’50% PhD seminar’ the title of which is Shattering Myself Together: Cruising Possible Queer Cartographies with Craft. I can honestly and simply say that I have no idea what that means but … and! …that I am very intrigued by it. I understand each word in isolation but put together like that there is for me ambiguity, playfulness, pretention, frustration, exclusivity. I want to understand … to comprehend … but somehow I can’t … I don’t have the necessary skills or tools … If I don’t engage with this kind of research/project/way of thinking then I will never come to understand it. And for whatever reason there is something that I find attractive and alluring about it … something that excites and challenges.
I can’t see myself ever getting on to a PhD programme. Here in Sweden at least it seems that you have to already be working in a particularly academic way, or already be a part of an institution, to stand a chance of coming in to such a position. There have got to be other options … perhaps something that isn’t directly visual arts based but which I can apply to my practice – queer studies perhaps?
Or maybe I just keep going to open lectures and seminars … at least for the time being … and see where that takes me. I feel a bit adrift … in search of a way of being … or a new context.
I am making remarkably slow progress with sorting out the studio. Last week I took four full packing boxes from the temporary store room and surprisingly quickly the contents were placed on shelves and in cupboards. Those four boxes are a mere fraction of what remains but it feels good to have done something … small steps. I am determined to unpack a few more boxes this week … today! Time disappears in a whirl of work, project emails, conversations with friends, and domestic activity. I bore myself repeating the observation that it always my practice that comes last on my ’to do’ list. It is only me that can change this – another often revisited phrase.
It is soon March, two months of this ’new’ year will have soon passed. I seem to be in some state of confusion – there is too much going on and yet at the same time I am aware that something is missing … I guess that (some of) the things that are going on aren’t the right things and that it is this that causes the frustrations and awkwardness – the persistent nagging sense that something is lacking. Perhaps getting on with practical tasks is as good a way as any to shift things and perhaps … hopefully … obtain some sense of progression.
