I’m moving to London

I’m going to live in London for a while. I spontaneously applied for a two year UK visa and it was approved surprisingly quickly and I booked a flight to London for July and then I resigned from my job. I’ve been in a daze for weeks, too tired to function. Thinking about acceptance, selfishness, sacrifice, serendipity, foolishness, fate, ambition, self-awareness. Feel like walls are closing in on me but also collapsing at the same time. Whatever happens was always inevitable. I’ve never had access to a lot of physical space to make and store work and now that I’m only able to take a small amount of things with me to London I have had to adjust things even further until I leave. I’ve been making art works with small pieces of paper and in my imagination. I’m writing a lot, typing and writing words on paper. I want to write on huge pieces of paper but I’m keeping them small for now. Years ago when something very bad happened to me, I soothed myself with the mantra: “if very bad things can happen to me unexpectedly, then very good things can happen to me unexpectedly too.” Things are always moving around, changing, I barely recognise myself but there is also no other way that things could have been.

research paper thoughts in notes app while sitting at the beach

class 11/04/24, research paper ideas

In class we talked about the research paper. I keep thinking that I want to write about Francesca Woodman, I have felt an affinity with her and her work for a long time. But I don’t know what I would want to research specifically. Some thoughts:

• I relate to her interest in the body. I’m interested in using the body as one’s work, which she also did. And she often photographed her body in a way that explored/depicted physical interactions with her own flesh. Distortion. Subtle discomfort. Clothes pegs on her stomach and breasts, a telephone cord in her mouth.

• Her photographs are often analysed through the lens of her suicide. Her death and cause of death are often projected onto all of her work, her work is read as her attempt to “deal with” mental illness or something. There is something compelling to me about the way people try to psychoanalyse her through her work, especially when she herself said that her main concern was composition not emotion.

• When I look at her photographs I feel relieved. I think this happens because she was able to create this uncanny sense of balance or visual “rightness” but she did this through the apparent awkwardness and visual imbalance of the composition. She often privileges space in her compositions, she will photograph herself in an intriguing pose but her body will be positioned right on the edge of frame, with most of the photograph taken up by the room she’s in. Things are often off-centre but in a way that makes perfect sense.

• I think she was interested in dreaminess, mirrors and angels, as am I.

• I think often about what kind of work she would have continued to make if she had lived longer.

• I perceive a kind of tension between a certain presentation of “candidness” and a very deliberate stylisation that she creates in her photographs and it’s something that I think comes up in my photographs too.

• The blur and the glow. Her photographs have these. I’m also interested in these, my photographs have them too. I bought a monograph of her work from a gallery in Paris and when I read this quote from her my heart beat so fast: “And as Woodman herself wrote in an undated diary, ‘A while ago my pictures started getting smaller and smaller – now they are getting whiter and whiter and soon there will just be small … areas of glow.'”

Paris, 3

Paris, 2

All I had wanted, the last time, was the conviction and the knowing.

When it’s offered to me now, it doesn’t seem right. I don’t know why.

There’s nothing I can do to access the quiet that I need.

They make a lot of promises. Do they believe that they mean them when they make them?

It’s beautiful good luck to know a new city.

Everyone wants to be in the place they are not.

Paris, 1

I can’t tell where the money is coming from or what it is for.

Money into this hand, then into the next hand, a glass of wine placed next to a small slice of cake, a spoonful of cake placed into my mouth, my jacket placed on a chair.

A note on the table, then another and another, then coins replacing it and replacing it again.

A glass of mint tea swapped for another note, then the tea taken and transferred into someone else’s hand, then another slice of cake on another small plate passed to another table.

The chairs rearranged and placed here, then there, then another glass of wine moved across the table, then replaced with another glass before it’s finished.

A handful of notes placed into a pocket. Coins spilling onto the floor.

Please don’t order me another glass of wine.

You want to walk or take the metro. I don’t know because I don’t know where we are going.

Why do you like me.

It’s no problem.

If I am patient with other people, other people might be patient with me.

Are you walking.

Where are you.

Take a photo of the slice of cake.

Do you want some.

Nice to meet you.

London

I wanted to write a post about my time in London but I don’t know how to. The whole experience was overwhelming for me and I feel quite fragmented. A lot of things happened that were beautiful, interesting, frustrating, inspiring, confusing and comforting. I don’t know how to process it or reflect on it.

book art workshop with Rosie Sherwood

I was looking forward to this workshop as I’m planning to make some books of my poems. It was really helpful.

Some notes and thoughts:

• Is the structure of the book part of the meaning of the book? If the structure was different would the meaning of the book change?
• One of the poems that I would like to turn into a book was written over the course of one year. I contributed at least one line to poem each day for 365 days. So during the workshop I thought about how the structure of the book might connect with how the poem was written. I thought about diary and calendar formats, using these formats as some kind of starting point/inspiration.
• Rosie talked about the idea of “book” and how broad the definition of “what is book” can be… “bound together in some way”. To me this was quite moving to think about, the expansiveness.
• I’m thinking about the difference between making a book that is a one of a kind art object versus a book that can be replicated into multiple copies. I would like to try both but right now I’m more interested in making a one of a kind art object, something that I would view as a sculptural object to be used in an installation.
• I liked learning the basic folding and stitching techniques. Right away I wanted to experiment, fold things in different ways, create asymmetrical edges on the paper.

collaborative sculpture workshop with Alex Schady

Some things I thought about during this workshop:

• There is a relief in making some kind of physical thing with no preconceptions, goals, pre-planning. It can be therapeutic.
• Unexpected connections can be formed when serendipity (or destiny) is allowed/encouraged.
• Maybe approaching materials without preciousness is an effective way in to making.
• I’m so interested in the philosophies and concepts and choice-making strategies behind art curation, it’s really fascinating, feels like a whole other huge world.
• There is so much beauty.
• I love both the concrete and the ephemeral.

disconcerting email

I woke up on 22 February and saw this email that I had apparently sent to myself at 12.03 am.

I often email myself things that I need to remember throughout the day, notes or things to add to my to-do list. But when I read this I had no recollection at all of sending it and I still don’t. I must have been barely awake when I wrote it. This hasn’t happened before, I always remember. I don’t know why I sent this. Sort of sweet, sort of apt, sort of unsettling.