This short description of my external facing project is written partially from point of view of hindsight. As I write this am half way through this unit. I say a partial point of view of hindsight as many things in this project are still fluid. I have chosen to write this as a way of organising my thoughts and experiences, of showing where I have made false-starts and have questioned my own approach and worried over confidence but I can now see that all of this experience counts as building blocks and is not to be discarded, but instead can be thought of as things to think about and to try to learn from.

My search for how to progress the external facing project has been at times slow and frustrating. At the start, I found difficulty putting into words what I wanted from this external work. I eventually decided to go down the path of seeking partners to join me in collaborative efforts. This is something I have done before at level 2, working with a textile artist, a graphic artist and a poet but for some reason in my current studies I have found it very difficult to find external parties. I wasn’t sure if this because my research and creative work around loss and grief wasn’t appealing or was too emotionally charged or if because what I was asking of potential partners was too narrow and didn’t allow that artist any space for self-expression or if my growing knowledge of my own specialisation made this project somehow seem difficult.

I began my search by contacting Cristin Leach, who has produced work which was of great interest to me dealing with “ancient resonances” of sound coming from rock tombs in Ireland. I saw that there was a chance for a fertile collaboration based on ideas of these sounds as memory and how the sounds and my images could interact with the memory of place. Ms Leach lists herself as a writer, broadcaster and art critic but it was her work producing artworks of her own which interested me. We exchanged a couple of emails and she expressed her best wishes for my project but was unable to commit to a collaboration as was working on a second book, completing her PhD, working on some funded collaborations as well as her day job. This was disappointing but I then decided to continue looking into partners working with sound. I felt that my logic which led me to this was still sound even if Ms Leach not able to join me. I approached some universities which provided courses on Sound Studies and the Sonic Arts. I approached Universität der Künste Berlin (Udk), University College in Cork and the City College of New York. I deliberately chose learning bodies distant from me as I wondered if this might open up potential differences between how loss and grief and mourning might be perceived here in Scotland as opposed to potential partners further afield in Germany, Ireland and in the US.

My approach to New York never received any reply. The University in Berlin responded positively and asked me for a proposal which they would pass to their students. I produced this proposal and passed it on and am waiting to see how they might respond. The Senior Lecturer in the School of Film, Music and Theatre in Cork, replied saying my idea sounded interesting and passed my request to his students although he also set my expectations as said his student’s work was well advanced so there might not be space to take on new ideas at this time. I did receive a response from a student, Duncan O’Cleirigh, who said he was interested but is in middle of assignments and a live performance. To date, not heard anything more. The lecturer also asked me if I might be interested in taking their MA course and if so, I might consider exploring this sonic dimension to my work myself rather than through a collaboration.

One thing which occurred to me at this phase of my search for an external partner was a portal or a window for my work. I currently use my website for an educational purpose and it is where I keep my OCA blog and test pieces. I think it might make sense to have a brief website to showcase some of my work and ideas and maybe to make my work more accessible to others from whom I am seeking to engage. I will think about this. I could maybe reuse one of my sites I used for my blog for an earlier unit and repurpose the space. I can’t imagine I will need to keep undergraduate work from a few years back but I might archive this just in case I want access to it at some point in the future.

I started to worry about time this external project was taking with limited success and to get a little down-hearted, so while I was waiting on responses from some of the contacts I had made so far. I thought about a slightly different approach, firstly, involving rethinking my planning for the external project as a separate piece from overall 3.2 plan so as to give this work its own focus. I also decided to try and broaden what I was asking for so as to seek a wider range of potential partners. I thought of local artists and also posted on an OCA forum explaining what I was looking for and what I was interested in. This produced a few interesting contacts but at the same time some dead-ends which initially added to my sense of unease about my project and my approach.

One, is a poet, Sadie Maskery, who lives locally and is a friend of my wife. She produces poems on loss exploring the borders between dreams and the land. This is very interesting to me with potential for crossovers between my work and hers so we spoke a little on my ideas for a collaboration. Sadly, in her mind this would involve my photographs sitting alongside her poems on a gallery wall. It felt like my photographs would illustrate her poems and there was no sense of creating new or shared work so this didn’t feel at all like a collaboration as the word has come to have meaning for me. I don’t think I will seek to progress this relationship.

Some more of my relationships which didn’t get off the ground include a painting student looking at objects as carriers of memory and memorial who contacted me and we shared a few emails. She then told me she might not have scope or time to fit in a collaboration. Another student who bluntly told me that I should define what I meant by collaboration but at same time said they didn’t do collaborations, which made me smile and wonder why they had contacted me. Another student got in touch to say her practice was about book art and writing but after that initial contact never got back in touch and there was no response to my emails.

I think looking at my shifting approach for the external facing project has had negatives and positives especially as evidenced by my search for partners. Overall, it can be seen as an interesting guide to finding and dealing with third parties who, of course, have different priorities. Some of this process just seems to take time. There is no getting away from that.

I will detail some of my more positive experiences so far. These include contacts made within my peer-group on my own course, whether on my unit or the previous unit, artists whose work interests me with whom I have made direct contact and people who contacted me via the OCA forum as my work interested them.

With my peer-group of students on my course we are used to sharing work, seeking one another’s feedback and opinions. Even if these conversations have not always developed into any shared effort, the experience has been positive. My presentations seem to have found people with whom my work struck a chord. Two people came to me and expressed that my talking of my work in peer engagement and feedback sessions has helped them re-think their own experiences. One with Alzheimer’s disease and another who had experience working in a hospice. This contact was positive and affirming that my project not all doom and gloom filled with difficulty. After this, I contacted another fellow student on my own course, Caroline Black, to ask if she would be interested in a collaboration. I have always been interested in her work and can see parallels with what I am working on. Her work started from place of being childless and of miscarriage, the loss which she describes as being much smaller than my own sense of loss which I don’t agree with. She moved to look at folklore and storytelling. We are slowly building ideas together and sharing these. I am researching some of her areas of interest to learn more and help me decide on how her work and mine can better cross-pollinate our developing ideas. Another photography student, Helen Rosemier, has also been in touch and it very interesting, if sad, to hear her experience of recent loss. Our relationship is at an earlier stage than is my work with Caroline. A third student, Deborah Humphrey, who works on photography and writing and says she is interested in camera movement and the blurring of stories. This immediately made me think of the loss and fading of memory as we forget our dead. She tells me she works in healthcare and has used her writing and biography for therapeutic intervention. Again, this sounds very interesting. Memory, the photographic image, writing and elderly healthcare and those maybe close to death. We plan to catch up this month and share ideas. This relationship again at an earlier phase than is my work with Caroline.

To summarise, the external facing project has been slow and not yet produced concrete shared works. However, at the same time, this slowness has made me think of what the collaboration is for. The essay writing, research and creative works whether in academia or in the work of graduates beyond the walls of universities, can all be considered as a combined effort. All of our work is built on what has come before. So, a formal collaboration then, is not such a stretch of imagination. It is an excellent way to think of our shifting practice, questioning our research interests and perhaps seeking to amplify the efforts of working alone. This last point makes collaboration an excellent exercise for those studying from home as it can serve to break us from our sense of comfort and to look and to think differently at our world.