I have given much thought to this external project and have discussed this with peers and with my tutor.

The course notes in the Engagement and External Projects document have been very useful for this work to help me visualise where I want to go and what I want to achieve. This document states, “Work your way through the resource, and identify ways of working that are achievable for you and meaningful for your practice. Use these as starting points to help frame your research, practical project work, and your overall position to outward-facing creative opportunities.” It goes on to say of this external work, “opportunities to test, develop, and present your work and ideas within various real-world settings, and through this process to consider relationships between your work and others”.

My recent creative test pieces, my work on my dissertation and my research have provided me with a potential direction for this external project around the concept of liminality related to death. I was previously in contact with writer, broadcaster and art critic, Cristin Leach about her work, “We Do Not Leave Pyramids” and I decided to approach Ms Leach again to ask if she might be interested in helping to make a collaborative piece of work. I felt a collaboration was a good way forward for this piece of work and would aid me in different ways. I would start to build a support network of interested individuals I could approach to help support my work one part of which would be an audience interested in what I do. I might be exposed to different skills and experiences which I could reuse at a future point and the sharing involved in a collaboration might develop my work in unexpected directions. All of this might lead to different perspectives on my research and written work.

I explained in my email to her the basis of my thoughts that her idea of “ancient resonances” which link sound and place and the people who were in such places in relation to my own project on grief, memory and loss. I went on to outline my idea in further detail and to present a broad outline of the timescale I expect this work to take should she be interested. My idea is based on idea of liminal space at the threshold of life and death, of being trapped in a ‘thin place’ between two worlds, of being perched at the edge of nothingness and looking into the chasm. This thought of the space between life and death reminds me very much of the River Styx from Greek mythology. My idea would populate the river or the empty space in that chasm with fragments of sound, or as Leach phrased it, ‘ancient resonances’. As she is someone who has previously worked with the spoken work, I felt there was a good synergy between us and the possibility for our work to develop and head in many different directions.

An excerpt from my email to her is shown below:

“Recently, I have been working on some visual pieces exploring the idea of liminal places. The idea of the space at the threshold of life and death, of being trapped in a ‘thin place’ between two worlds, of being perched at the edge of nothingness looking into a chasm. This idea considers the River Styx from Greek myth and the wraiths said to inhabit the riverbank if the ferryman rejected their passage. I have the beginnings of an idea of populating this river or the nothingness with fragments of sound, as you put it ‘ancient resonances’. This neatly brings me to the purpose of my email. My coursework asks the student to work on an external project. For me I feel that the best way to develop my work would be with a collaboration with someone who has shared interests and who has previously worked with the spoken word. Would exploring these ideas through a collaborative piece of work be something which might interest you? I expect this project will not last beyond the end of this current year but of course if you are interested you might have your own ideas on timescales.”

Now it a matter of waiting on a response. While I wait, I will do more research and focus on my dissertation and will also try to identify other practitioners who might work in a similar area with similar interests who might themselves be interested in collaboration should Cristin Leach turn me down.

Update. Cristin Leach has replied but is busy studying for her PhD, is already involved with funded collaborations and is writing a book so is not available to work with me. While this is disappointing, I realise looking for a partner might take some time. I wonder if my idea for this shared project might be too narrow and not leave the other partner enough space to express themselves but for now I will persist and stick with my idea and continue my search for someone to work collaboratively with.

I have approached Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP) group who are a University of the Arts London research centre based at London College of Communication (LCC).  CRiSAP supports a “large cohort of PhD students who are conducting practice based and scholarly research into sound arts practice” asking if any of their researchers might be interested in working with me. My request to them more general in that I didn’t target a specific individual but instead left my request more open in hope a broader approach might find a suitable target. I will await their response but I already looked beyond CRiSAP to the LCC who, in addition to hosting CRiSAP, also run BA Honours in Sound Arts and Design and an MA in Sound Arts so depending or response to my current request, I am hopeful that there will be enough breadth and depth in this community to find some partners interested in my work.

Having found the Sounds Arts courses at LCC I have identified other universities which run this course so I have potential to greatly expand my search for an interested partner. Am also aware that the OCA student community might be a very useful pool of talent that I have previously used when doing collaborations with graphics desgn, poets and textile artists. However, for now I am holding off from going down OCA route but only because of my idea of using sound. As I have said above, finding a partner for my work might depend on broadening my project although at this stage I am reluctant to do that.

I have begun gathering work of rivers, chasms and areas where the land changes sharply and which I could develop into nothingness. Some of this work in the form of video and some is still photographs. Working between sound and the visual image is something which I think is exciting but at same time challenging and creates a sense of trepidation. I also wonder if part of this collaboration might be research based. I would need to think more about this idea and of course this would depend on interests of my partner.

There is one other point I would like to make at this stage of my planning. If I can pull off my search for a partner happy to work on collaboaration around my idea of sound then I wonder about a second collaboration based on a much less defined outcome and where the objective would be sharing and developing one another’s ideas and, with no clear idea of where this might lead, collaborating just to see where project might go.

26th April update – I thought long about this external collaboration to point where the worry of progressing with this part of my unit has started to impact other things I should be doing. I wondered about different cultures and their approaches to my work and whether these might lead in unexpected directions. With that in mind I approached some universities running sound art courses in Brighton, Cork, New York and Berlin. My approach outlined my project, gave broad timescales and listed what I was hoping for with collaboration with a sound arts student. The University in Berlin replied asking if I would produce a more formal proposal. I have thought about their request but prefer my looser approach rather than anything too formal and planned. Exciting news is that I have just heard from an MA student in Cork who has emailed me to say his tutor passed on my request and he is interested. At same time a poet interested in death has contacted me about a collaboration. I would need to think about this and whether I see opportunity for more than one collaboration. But very pleased to feel am getting somewhere. Exciting times.