The course notes divide work for this month into 3 exercises and a research task looking at a case study. I find this too prescriptive so will cover them in my own way.

I have spend time thinking about my project. I would say this is the foundations for a plan but that a detailed plan lies ahead.

Part I – Observations on planning for Major Project

My chosen subject of the liminal space surrounding death is an ideal project to explore through the liminal medium of photography. Photography shows what is to come and that which has already passed. Photography is often used to try and preserve a sense of life when in reality it preserves a sense of loss. Having said this, how do I go about throwing the idea of the reason why I create my work to the forefront and at the same time don’t make this obvious or repulsive? If the concept behind my art is the basic idea of confronting our mortality, then how to engage with my audience through my ideas and the presentation of my work and at the same time how not convey the meaning until the end? Much here to consider.

It is interesting to me that one of the exercises from last month was to draft a project plan with detailed timeframes, a breakdown of costs and funding, practice and research outcomes and more. This plan, the coursework suggests, should be 1,200 words. I read this and have been thinking about it but it still feels way too early for me as if it putting the cart before the horse. In my practice, I don’t feel ready to detail such specific elements of my plan when I have not yet decided how my idea will develop.  I note that one ask for month 2 is to revise that plan from month 1. It feels like one of the strange ideas we come across now and again with OCA coursework.

Before I can produce any kind of detailed plan I must first look at the most basic considerations for my project and practice:

• keep working creatively, trying different ideas and techniques and slowly refining the visual expression of my thoughts.
• As part of my existing experimentation, I bought an old photograph album and several job lots of old photographs and some individual old photos which interested me. One of these came from Germany and I wondered whether I would notice any obvious differences in the images which interested me, from ones I had used in the past from the UK.
• I also built myself a copy stand from a chopping board, some plumber’s pipe and a floor flange to which I added a clamp for the camera and some spirit levels. I will use this when I digitise the old photos and to ensure the work is level. Such manual tasks give me time and space to consider my practice as I work.
• If, at the heart of my thinking is to build some form of exhibition around an idea, how would I present that idea? As part of this, I will research other practitioners
• Research conceptual art and the idea of the presentation of an idea over a ‘traditional photography exhibition’
• Research other conceptual artists using photography. This will help me think of my own personal journey.
• My research, creative experimentation and then feedback and reflection, which I used in 3.2 will continue for my major project. One helpful suggestion from Jane Weinmann’s Case Study in the course notes was to “share your work and ideas often – even if you think it is not ready”. Another idea to “be open to ideas from many different places”.

I had thoughts around engagement with other artists and maybe residencies, and while I will look at these and do not reject such input at this early stage, it seems that these depend upon finding some basics about my work and the direction I want to go. One thing I have done is build a website, separate from my OCA blog. This is specifically to act as a way to showcase some of my work so that when I do need to approach outside partners, they have somewhere they can come to gain a sense of my creative interests.

Part ii – A worked example

My tutor described to me a conceptual art project. This was made by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon who works with photography, video and film. This particular work by Gordon is called “30 Seconds Text” and was made in 1996. It surrounds experimentation conducted by a French doctor, Jacques Beaurieux, into victims of those executed by guillotine. After the execution of Henri Languille in 1905, the doctor asked the severed head to blink to try and gauge residual consciousness of the head.  His experiments showed that after 30 seconds responses faded. This is the same period a lightbulb is illuminated on some text in Gordon’s work. This work made me think about how long it takes to die. From that starting point, how long might it take to cross the River Styx from life to death? These two examples focussed on the dead person yet as my work has shown, the liminal threshold of death is not just a space for the dying but also for those who work with those close to death and those in the throws of grief. When I ask how long it takes to cross the River Styx, do I mean how long does grief last? Or how long before the rites for the dead have been completed and the living have found a resting place for their memories of the dead person and found a way to accommodate their own sense of grief?  In terms of memory of the dead and of our own grief, these are all things which fade and eventually vanish leaving no trace behind. Visit an old graveyard and look at the abandoned gravestones, left to weeds and waste, cracked stone and erosion. Where is the grief for the people buried here and the memories of these people and what they once were? Is existence within grief a balance or seesaw with different aspects of life and of memory weighing down on either side of the liminal threshold?

There are some basic foundations in this example.

1. How long do the dead and the living exist in the liminal gateway of death?
   
   
2. Our loved ones and ourselves will all vanish from the world as if we were never here. What traces do we leave behind and how long do these last?
   
   
3. The passage of time and when we die or how long we experience grief are outwith our control.
   
   
4. Should art which tries to make sense of this part of life, our transient nature and our lack of control be controlled or created with the same transience and lack of control?
   

I have wondered about how to engage with my audience. I had thought of an enclosed exhibition space such as a boat in the dark or a coffin. Spaces the audience could step down into and which I could fill with a digital exhibition space. Are these ideas too claustrophobic?  I also wondered in the past about placing a child’s coffin in an exhibition space and asking the audience to write memories onto pieces of paper and place these into the coffin. However, is the coffin, and especially the child’s coffin, too in your face and obvious? Am I forcing my idea down the throat of my audience?  I wondered about how to construct an exhibition which was more collaborative and less obviously about me with more space for the audience. I mentioned the see-saw or balance at the very point of death and with my work arranged around this balance on the floor and walls. I could build a seesaw to form a centrepiece of my exhibition. The audience could be asked to write thoughts of death, loss, grief and memory and place their pieces of paper on either side of the balance depending on where on the balance between life and death their thoughts feel right. So, with the balance made from heavy wood, the balance would subtly shift as the weight of paper is so slight compared with the construction of a seesaw.

There is potential for a second part of exhibition, a retrospective where I decide what to do with the pieces of paper from my audience. If paper is very light such as rich paper, could the audience on the last day walk to river with me and throw the memories into the water? This would mimic the casting of Rebecca’s ashes into a river.

These questions are in part about time but also about our relationship with the dead and also with our own mortality.

I have been working on some creative test pieces which might not be an end in themselves but instead allow me to explore methods of working and different outcomes. I will present these for peer feedback and from there will be better equipped to pen a reflective statement of my earlky work in 3.3.