As I write this, I have received feedback from eight students which has grown. My first peer feedback had four responses and the last one, five responses. I think it worth commenting on the standard of the feedback. This has grown and developed and is more and more helpful to me and at the same time, more time consuming to absorb this. Whether this due to educational journies of my peers or is in part due to feeling more comfortable and aware of my work am less sure. Maybe a combination of these things.

My first responder commented about my initial image this month as being “quite powerful and not a little disturbing”. This is what I was aiming for as a work investigating liminal death space. I do wonder how much of the impact might be visual and how much because my peer group now know my back story to this project? Additional comments from this student about my ideas of texture and maybe of using layering up physical things which might bring another sense of texture. This seems similar to a previous tutor who commented that he enjoyed the tactile sense of my physical pieces. The student recommended the work of Miho Kajioka and her textured work created in darkroom so produce analogue prints which are regarded as not only images, but also as objects. I will investigate this work further. One final point here was perhaps arguing against placing too much value in feedback. My work relates my experiences and studies to my creative works but that the intensity and strength of the emotional depth is what should lie at the heart of my work.

Comment from another student; my initial image produced a sense of the liminal space which this student imagined as fading to nothingness. My image created a sense of “active disappearance” with its lack of colour, the roughness of the texture and the haziness of the presentation. The sense of the photograph itself as fading to nothing and being a “victim of demise”. The student commented that this is like memory. One suggestion was to consider exploring my imagery from the perspective of my daughter. I would have to think on this as it would strip out the photograph as a tool memory as the dead have no memories. One final comment was on construction of my image and in the layers and outlines of album images. I have been exploring this in many different ways. One idea was to use this outline on the raw plasterwork I use in many of my images. A final thought was that my best work seems to come hand in hand with periods of feeling lost and disconnected. I love this idea that only in the place and mood of the liminal space am I best placed to interact with it.

Another student commented that my theme seems well developed and clear. My ideas of layers of memory and loss seemed to him to work well with idea of liminality. He spoke of my ‘world view’ and of death as an end and that he didn’t agree. I felt that some of the comments here related to his own work rather than specifically to mine but was interesting all the same. I suppose that if death wasn’t an end, that would drastically change my sense of the liminal death space.

A fascinating comment next about whether the “infinitely depthless surface of our monitors with the electro-neural processing of the brain being mirrored by the internal process of our devices…”  This a very interesting comment. Is the starting point for liminal space our computer screen or the surface of our phones? A surface that is flat and shiny with finger prints. Do the smudges and finger prints hint at something beyond that which is contained and displayed on these screens? The student commented on difference between works with real texture and those with a digital texture. They also suggested trials with colour album photographs to see how that changed the feeling. Lastly they wondered about my graphical images of child perched on edge of a cliff and suggested the scale of this would be interesting maybe in a gallery setting making the cliff really big. I might further explore this idea with other high places such as buildings or maybe famous tourist spots such as the Eiffel Tower.

The next piece of feedback thanked me for my words expressing the challenges of home study. They raise issue of time and of art withing academic structure. I think I agree that the time limits of a course contain and shape our endeavours. I suppose they also help produce a way of working which in the future we can follow or reject as we please. Once again, the favoured image was first one I presented. Comment was that it reminded student of dreams with fragmented memories randomly (or seemingly randomly) fitted together. My work reminded student of early spiritualists and surrealists and of an auro left behind by the body. My idea of texture was interesting but how was this framed through use of words which made the idea more sensible. How would it have appeared with no words? Walter Benjamin and Lacon were mentioned along with “Liminal Landscapes” by Hazel Andrews and Lee Roberts.

Very interesting feedback from another student. They spoke of folk tales and the symbolism around the creation of the world – https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/pages/native-american-symbols

Loose threads of memory and the survivors of war and Jan and Aleida Assman’s theory on cultural memory –

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_memory

And Kubler Ross abd research into grief –

https://www.ekrfoundation.org/5-stages-of-grief/change-curve/

I had a quick look at this. It seems to eb one of these ideas about the stages of grief which I am very wary of as many of these the end stage is where we “recover” or are “healed” from the state of grief. I do however love the colours within her charts tracking the emotions around grief. A very interesting idea could form from that.

An interesting outcome from looking at my work was sense that there was a disconnect for them and that they had difficulty connecting my images with liminal space and that the children in my images are lacking context. These too distanced from the ideas of life and death. One suggestion was around how my story is told whether in an old sense or a modern sense? Is this down to taste or a wider sense? I will think on this.

The next student’s comments were more emotional based around the feelings, empathy and friendship. They comment on the suffering of those who remain, “Memory supports the bridge which, however, crumbles underfoot, just as the sharpness of the images, which fade, overlap and blend.” A very thoughtful and emotional response worthy of thinking about. If my work capable of producing such a response then would feel very proud.

Interestingly, none of the comments from students picked up on my use of text so I wonder if this ineffective in communicating my ideas. Interesting too, that my idea of texture as a tool of the image rather than as an expression in words. Yet at same time many students commented on my words and how they took meaning from what I said. I wonder about a test piece exploring liminality is a creative sense using words in an image?