Planning and the Theoretical Framework

If the literature review explores an idea upon which I base my dissertation, the theoretical framework is about identifying a plan which will be used to outline how I will build the dissertation and what tools or stratagems or research I will use and also to locate and position my ideas within existing research.
A simple starting point for this framework has been the development of key words central to my work. When I started on 3.2, I listed these as Death, Loss and Commemoration. Even back then, I realised that these were not a final view but instead just a line in sand that I would build upon and which might get washed away or moved up the beach with the next tide.
Since then, I would add more words central to my work; Memory and what we Remember and Forget, Grief, Pain, Society, Liminality. I would also add the Visual Image and how this relates to Death, Loss, Grief, Memory and being in a Liminal space.
I first wrote this at the start of this unit. I said back then that this project started with the thought of a medical scan in relation to cancer and death, and that subsequent research has allowed me to look at this through a different prism. Death to me for this project started with my coming to terms with the death of my daughter, and three days before that, the death of my mother. Although I wrote of ‘coming to terms’; what does this actually mean? Do we even ‘get over’ our grief? I would now say that the roots of this project lay with the exact opposite of ‘coming to terms’ with loss and was because of my not being able to accept and to understand these deaths. Such thoughts, or maybe epiphanies, do not come quickly or easily. The idea of my different understanding of my starting point has not been something which dawned on me overnight but has been a slow and gradual change.
The loss of a child is traumatic, producing great emotional strains and mental consequences as well as impacting physical health. There is also a wider element to such loss and how society deals with the death of a child which somehow feels ‘wrong’ and out of place. Working on my project brought me close to feelings and thoughts I had forgotten or had pushed aside. The journey in my learning has been multi-layered; at the same time an educational journey and also one of self-discovery and of rediscovered memory. I have to admit that at the start of this journey, I hadn’t even considered myself in this process. Death, for me, was about those who are about to die or who gave died, yet my research shows that, beyond the simple end of life, mostly, death is about those still living.
My methodology for my practice has grown as I have worked on test creative pieces alongside my developing research. My methodology is based around critical theory and of using my art to explore ideas of loss, death, society and memory and the other keywords I have listed above. My work also touches upon iconography and the symbols associated with death and with phenomenology and the use of art to explore the human experience related to loss.
My research and creative work started with looking at the medical scan and trying to find a sense of the real person the scan is a portrait of and perhaps could be thought of as the most intimate and revealing of photographs. The stripping away of the familiar to leave behind structures only visible in medicine led my research to look at the abstract symbols associated with death. The same skeletons in the medical scan were carved onto gravestones and I was intrigued with the similarities between medicine and death. This led me to look at other types of symbolism such as the flowers and plants linked with death and of the stories in mythology linked with many of these. I looked at metonymy and of objects which serve as a link or which have an association with death but which also might be a way of alluding to death without speaking of it. Later on in my studies, I looked at the taboo of death in society and of photography after death. I also spent time on more personal areas such as how society views the death of children as opposed to the death of adults and of art and the depiction and understanding of death in Western culture and in particular in my home in Scotland. One interesting and key part of my research has been into the liminal space related to death and the space and time in between life and life which also seems to encompass grief. The sense of discomfort and of impacts to health which has links with many of my other areas of research. I think this point of research being related is important. I initially saw research as separate islands I was visiting. yet I now see that each of these connect to other areas and my research shouldn’t be seen as separate pieces or work but as part of a larger whole.
In my studies, I think it is crucial to base and anchor my research and creative works around my personal experiences, in how I have been impacted and changed. I believe this experience is a foundation to my work. This brings me to an interesting idea on the development of my project, my creative works and my dissertation, namely of writing to discover. In writing, this helps me to identify areas where further research might be required, it helps to better understand the logic of an argument as the flow of the writing develops and it builds and cements a familiarity between me and my chosen subject.