MA-Ness Week 8 Cyanotyping, Trying To Get Ahead Of Myself, Watching Others, A Dry Wank and can't quite read/understand my own notes....

Last week I tried to get ahead of myself by writing this blog post on Sunday rather than my usual Monday and this week finds me doing it today partly in an attempt to get ahead of myself, partly to take advantage of the fact that I've had a college free day today as most of my fellow MA-ers are in Poland and partly to do something so that I don't feel my original plans of having a reading day have gone to waste (as aisde from Farcebook and an interview with Laibach I haven't read anything of note so far today) and also to do something to stop my impatience whilst waiting for my latest batch of cyanotypes to dry....

I'm also trying to work out what I meant by some of my notes - in particular what I meant by BAF Syndrome - if you have any idea then please let me know.....edited to add at 17.45 - BAF stands for Blue Arsed Fly as I have been running about like a blue arsed fly most of this week. Anyone who knows the origin of the phrase - please do tell me.

It's been a really busy week not helped by feeling under the weather and waylaid by appallingly bad stomach ache either but I feel I have got a few things done this week - namely got some printing done with the help of the chap deep down in the bowels of the college - I printed or rather had printed some 7 images that I'd taken (2 digital - one of me and my husband at the top of a car park in Manchester taken in January and one of the view out of the window of the Chapel in St George's Fields taken last summer when the university very kindly gave me access to it, and 5 on film - 3 on colour film at Temple Newsam taken just before xmas and two of the same film image of a bench in St Marys Churchyard one inverted and one normal taken last November.

It was interesting to see how the different printing methods each changed the way the same image looks - the inverted black and white digital images look okay on canvas but the colour ones of flowers look like any of the canvas prints you can now pick up for cheaps in Ikea or Wilkinsons (not that there is anything wrong with that but I want my images to stand out not blend in with commercially available homogenised ones) plus canvas is quite expensive to print on.

The ones on matt A4 paper again look okay but nothing special but the ones printed on tracing paper (which joy of joys is the cheapest to print on) look by far the best - they have an ethereal translucent quality to them which I love plus they will look good either just hanging or up against a window or a lightbox and I am now planning to rescan the original negatives of them so I can get them printed to AO size without losing any of the quality of the original image.

Think I will also have to try and retake/ remake some of them on 120 film aka medium format using my favourite camera - a Nettar Zeiss Ikon from 1956 which both looks fabulous and is a joy to use. Fingers crossed they will come out okay though...aah the unpredictable joy and difficulty of using film without that handy screen on the back of the camera reassuring you that yes it's working or immediately telling you no, it isn't so change your settings......

Which leads me nicely into the unpredictable joy of cyanotypes too - I prepared a lot of pieces of paper with solution earlier this week, including some more grey paper which I really like (see top image above which is printed on it) and another piece of tracing paper but alas I am a tad too heavy handed with that and have torn the corner slightly plus it is a bit of a bugger to work it as it is so flimsy and folds over on itself so easily, and some water colour paper, the offcuts of the paper I had my images printed onto in the college darkroom (I want to make full use of everything and waste as little as possible) and some newsprint which I won't be using for cyanotyping again as it doesn't hold the solution well enough.

I also experimented with different shapes on the surface of the paper (circles, squares) and am v pleased with the circular one - though part of me is thinking maybe I should have left it in the sun a little longer but it clouded over and I thought I saw a spot of rain on the window.....and of course it brightened up again whilst I was washing it but a chum has said it has an opening credits of Bagpuss quality about it, another has said it looks v victorian and another said 'they have a very errie quality-a bit like what might stay with you after waking up from a dream' which pleases me enormously, plus hopefully once they are dried and framed they will look even better. I have started saving the dying petals from the bunches of flowers I have to go in the frames and I intend to pick some site specific flowers too if possible.

So lessons learnt - different papers/printing surfaces make a massive difference, I need to curb my impatience, practice at drawing/painting a circle and not to lose sight of the fact that this is the best photographic fun I've had in ages and as much as I love the college darkroom I'm happier at home where I'm in as much control as I can be of the process - ie no-one except a cat walking past to look at what I'm doing and no-one to dry or drain anything else on top of what I'm trying to do. Plus I am loving it's haptic hands on physical interaction as opposed to just clicking a button on a machine - though to be fair that is involved too, either with the original image or transferring it onto acetate to then put on the cyanotype paper.

Plus as I said before cyanotyping is a victorian process in origin and it was popularised by a woman called Anna Atkins (details about her here) so it warms the cockles of my victorian era loving feminist heart. However the irony of a self proclaimed goth and lover of the darkness being dependant upon strong sunlight to create the images I want is not lost on me....but then aside from a love of gothic literature and lovely old black and white horror films and a fixation with graveyards I'm quite a crap goth really and even my hair isn't as black as it could be as it's a while since I dyed it and I haven't had chance to redye it and now I'm waiting til I get it cut or else I'll have to do it twice .....and it was a music subculture when I first came across it in my tender and impressionable teenage years and I am much much happier listening to lovely 1930's and 40's big band swing, or Frank Sinatra's greatest hits.......

But I am excited about seeing Laibach* in a few weeks and read with interest an interview they did for Louder Than War earlier this week (full interview here) (and I am writing this blog post whilst listening to Spectre and whilstling along v badly indeed..) and I was most struck by their response to the question about them being provocative:

'..We like conflicting situations, but we never provoked for the sake of provocation itself; we did it out of necessity, because by definition a work of art is no good if it doesn’t provoke – and that is a vital rule, valid in any political system anywhere.' 


and there is a lot of food for thought in that for me......not that I think I am brave enough to provoke....

 
As well as printing, personal tutorials and attending the last of the very informative Leeds In Your Lunch Hour lectures at Trinty Church by Dr Kevin Grady of Leeds Civic Trust I also attended the Feminist Art Event at Leeds Library yesterday which sadly due to stomach ache becoming intolerable I had to leave at lunchtime, but which featured entertaining and thought provoking presentations from Casey Orr whose portraits were a joy, Jo Hassall made me chuckle and think with her presentation which featured a hostess trolley and a scab picking finger ( I would kill for a hostess trolley)and the talk by Melanie Maddison about her feminist zines Shape and Situate and Colouring Outside The Lines was both enlightening and empowering. I bought copies of all her lovely zines and the Home Rules presentation by half of Bristow and Lloyd was also a joy  - but the morning was also beset by technical difficulties with the projection equipment and Kiff Bamford's talk about a photograph of a vulva by Henry Machionne as discussed by the french philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard left me completely cold. Partly because he read out his slide - admittedly it was in french but even so I can read and do not need someone to read things out for me - translate yes, but not read.

There was also mention of Derrida and (my beloved) Barthes which made me feel like it might not have been very accessible to folks who are not familiar with either of those I've just named, and also like it was bit of an exclusive club and I'm not sure how I feel about that except it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable,  even though thanks to my recent reading I have some understanding of the ideas and concepts and so am on the edges of that group. Is it being on the edge that bothers me? No because my discomfort is not about not being fully part of it but being fully part of it.

Which in turn makes me worry and think is it inevitable that we all become what we most fear and more than occasionally and possibly unfairly deride?....

And speaking of intellectual approaches, was chatting with a chum who is working on the last song for their third album (and who have also kindly provided me with a soundtrack for a piece of visual work I am hoping to start work on when the weather has improved a bit and so it won't be too horrible for my long suffering ever patient and lovely husband to lie down on the ground and pretend to be a corpse for me) and you can check out examples of their fabulous work here and how hard I am finding it approaching art from an intellectual angle as opposed to an immediate emotional response and how yes it does deepen understanding, change the way I look at things and think about them and think about creating them and what I am trying to achieve with them but how it also makes me think of my chum Jon who when watching a lacklustre phoned in performance from a band at a festival pronounced it ' a dry wank'.

And this is what I fear an intellectual response to artwork may become - a dry wank of a response trotting out standard philosophical approaches as opposed to something immediately heartfelt and visceral.

What else - earlier in the week I met the external examiner for the course who seems a thoroughly nice chap (and no I'm not just saying that because at some point he'll probably read it) and who gave me some useful reading recommendations and we also talked about the uses of flowers in memorials and how they differ from culture to culture - how they are mostly used to signify a death in the UK but how they are used as offerings in other cultures which them lead to a discussion about what we have left on graves and what we want left on our own. I once left a toblerone on my Nana's grave as she didn't like cut flowers (what use are they, you can't eat them) though she loved flowers and had a kitchen and garden full of them but she did love Toblerone so I left one of those on her grave instead. My husband said I'd made a tramps day....

I'm not sure what I would want left on mine.....what would you like left on yours?

I've been dared to put a picture of Peter Cushing in my next presentation which is easy as I've done that so far anyway but the sting in this tale is that it has to be a picture of Peter Cushing from At The Earth's Core which is not one of my favourites of his as he looks nowhere near as dashing in it as he does in The Curse Of Frankenstein. But never let it be said I don't rise to a challenge so will have to find one I like and one which will fit in context.....

I've been writing this for over 2 hours now and my prints are almost dry but not quite......I'm just too impatient.....

*I think Laibach are responsible for the most beautiful cover version EVER - namely their version of Across The Universe though I am also a huge fan of their more stompy dance music too - and just hearing the beginning of Tanz Mit makes me want to put on very big boots indeed....though my fave stompy big boots dance tune is still Lass Uns Tanzen by Scooter which I absolutely adore as it reminds me of dancing about in Whitby with good chums and also my lovely much missed friend Henry who translated the lyrics for me and they mean 'let's dance or fuck or both as we will all be dead tomorrow'. Fairly good advice there I think.

 
 

MA-Ness Week 4 - Slippery Slopes and Painkiller Hazes....

This is this weeks post it note which like last weeks makes some kind of sense but not completely but that is no surprise as last week I was in the midst of dental woe (an abcess which led to tooth removal) and on v strong painkillers indeed and in fact today is the first day I've not had to take any painkillers in well over a week. RESULT!!!!!

However such was my state of pain, soreness, painkiller out of it -ness and last but not least swollenfaceness that I missed last Friday's workshops at college which is a shame as looking at the notes the tutor has put on the college website - it looked like I missed an interesting and thought provoking discussion....oh well I hope to catch up with it all properly soon.

Anyways - here's to my post it note scribbles....

This is a public as opposed to friends only private type blog (though is anything really private on the internet? no - not really) and I started it many moons ago before the reality of college attendance was even a pipe dream. My first post was back in July 2012 and in it I said I wanted to talk about 'photography, my collection of kitsch items, knitting and stuff like that' and that's how it was until I decided to use it as my research journal to hand in for college - though I also have a paper sort of one too and some of the feedback I got from my assignments was to talk about the ideas I have art-work-wise and to show them on here - something which I haven't literally done so far - partly out of a no doubt misplaced fear of being copied - yet I happily post photographs I have taken both on twitter and on farcebook (deliberate sp) without a 'copyright' notice/name superimposed on them and I should really a) learn how to do that and b) get into the habit of doing it. 

And also because I've not been doing so much 'doing' but more 'thinking and reading' - the latest book I'm ploughing through is Death,Grief and Poverty In Britain 1870-1914 by J M Strange which is a very interesting book - especially as it is looking at the more working class approaches to mourning in victorian and edwardian Britain and interestingly she draws on literature (among many other sources) - namely a work from 1897 called The Nether World by George Gissing to evidence her arguments. I doubt this approach would have been approved by my history tutors back in my undergraduate days. A creative work is not the same as a piece of legislation or electoral registers but does this a) make it any less valuable or reliable as a resource? After all newspaper and diary accounts are often used as evidence to support arguments or even to show timelines and aren't these just as subject to author bias as 'creative' work? Mmm lots of food for thought there....not least the often blanket assertions by historians and social commentators that really get my goat - like if anyone was to look at the newspapers of September 1997 when they were dominated by saturation coverage of the death of Diana Spencer and phrases like a 'nation was in mourning' are bandied about - er me and a lot of my friends are part of this nation and we definitely weren't in mourning but hey ho.....I'm going off at a tangent but one which I keep thinking about.....  

So in the meantime I'm also still thinking about the best way/place for me to show/talk about the work I'm working on....maybe I should set up a new blog and just not publish it and use that as a record. Or maybe record it entirely in a paper notebook instead - or maybe a mix of the two but however I do it, I'd best get on and do some as this term is all about the handing in of work either completed or in progress so I really must get on and do some.....as opposed to just writing and thinking about it.

And speaking of actual creative work - aside from trips to the dentist I left the house for what felt like the first time in ages on Saturday to both pick up some books from the local council library (the Rev Richard Coles autobiography which I am v much enjoying and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd which is the next Buns and Roses WI Book Club choice) and to pick up the film I'd left in for developing at the ever helpful and reasonably priced Photo Shop on North Lane. I'd used Kodak Colour Plus ISO 200 and I am v pleased with the results - though I am not going to show them here yet as a) they need a little bit of editing and by that I mean a bit of cropping, and I might convert one or two to monochrome and b) I'm going to get them printed out and see what they would look like as a narrative photo book....

I might also use the new graphics tablet which my husband bought last week - I've had a little go of it and my initial thoughts are 'ooh the possibilities' along with 'really am going to have to get to grips with powerpoint' as that has more options available in it than my usual microsoft viewer or paint, and also 'christ almighty, it's really fecking fiddly' as you don't look at where your pen is going on the paper like I normally do when drawing but where the cursor and pen are on the image on the screen so in some ways it feels like I'm drawing blind as I'm not looking where I normally look when drawing....I think it's going to take some getting used to. But it's very exciting....

I did manage to put together a presentation though last week - and with my new found trick of taking a screenshot of the slide once I'd put it together and then copy and pasting that image it is a) easier to email as it is a fraction of the size and b) it doesn't matter what fonts they have at the other end either - result!! This is for a Cultural Heritage Show and Tell event  (details here ) and I need to practice it a couple of times before I need to deliver it but it is a mark of how much I have progressed as if you'd told me even 12 months ago that I would VOLUNTEER to stand in front of people and speak I'd have laughed in your face and thought you were rambling. Which is just as well as I think we have a couple of presentations to do at college-wise this term - am feeling a bit out of the loop college-wise as I've missed two weeks this term due to illness so I have emailed my tutors to make sure I'm back up to speed - especially with what needs handing in when.

Although this term is 'doing' in terms of handing in - workshop wise it is much more about theoretical perspectives which I am still trying to get to much better grips with - I really must read Barthes Camera Lucida properly as opposed to just skimming through it and I also have Baudrillard's Consumer Society to plough through and Danesi's Of Cigarettes. High Heels and Other interesting Things and whilst those are interesting books they just don't grab me in the way that Death Grief and Poverty does.... note to self - quit procrastinating and get down to some serious study....

I've been collected phrases which I find inspiring - either as springboards to ideas or potential titles or just because they make me smile, I handed them in along with this blog and I think 'dated confines' which is ion the middle of my post it note must be another one to add to the list as it doesn't make sense otherwise.

Which brings me round to the last two points on my 'blog post it note' that I want to write about. Namely what to do with human remains and what is the purpose of a memorial? I have been offered human remains by two of my chums - or rather part of their remains in the event of their death to use in my artwork as I see fit. This is both an incredible honour, a logistical conumdrum as in which medical school can help me with this and also in all likelihood an unrealised semi pipe dream as a) I don't want them to die and b) I might be too squeamish to do this.

I did ask the dentist for the bits of my broken tooth though - he looked at me funny but said 'yes of course, it's your tooth' and put them in a little blue envelope with a picture of a tooth fairy on it so am guessing they were designed for children as opposed to morbid adults. I've a vague idea to make them or rather have the bits made into jewellery but I will need to clean them first as they are still somewhat gory and they make my stomach go funny each time I look at them - though I suspect that is somewhat of a pavlovian response as they make me think of the really rather unpleasant procedure I went through for them to end in the little blue envelope and I was never a big fan of the dentist anyway.

Don't worry - I wouldn't show you the bits of tooth - not til I've cleaned them up at least....

Plus I have been offered these remains freely - not through a deal with coroners to use 'unclaimed' bodies from morgues so I have no moral qualms about using them - my qualms are can I do them artistic justice and how squeamish am I really? And how much stamina and cash do I have for fulfilling the legal requirements of the Human Tissue Authority?  As you need a licence to display human remains and they're not cheap - though you don't need a licence to show photographs of human remains....mmm legal loopholes to work my way through and round...

But what do you do with remains? I have the cremated remains of my beloved first cat who I adopted from the RSPCA when she was just 3 months old and she was my constant companion for 17 years. She died  6 and a half years ago. Her cremated remains aka 'cremains'  (or rather what we think are her cremated remains as I have not opened the beautiful wooden box that came back from the vets to verify this) now 'live' in the cupboard above the stairs where she used to demand to be given a shoulder lift to along with one of her favourite catnip mice but I don't know what I'll do with them if/when we move house. Does having actual remains (in this case feline) stop you from moving on grief-wise? I don't feel I need them now yet equally I couldn't imagine parting with them but when she died I did want them very much indeed or rather I wanted her back, still alive and purring but as that wasn't possible I made do with her cremains instead. Now however I take comfort in my memories and photographs of her - and a little video I took of her asleep and she was making little sing song snoring noises.

Also apparently there is a new process for dealing with human remains which involves your remains being put in a chamber which then fills with chemicals which dissolve the flesh and bone and the resultant sludge is chemically inert and can be flushed away - am not sure how I feel about this approach -  although on paper it seems the 'cleanest' and most final - but I think I'm still liking cremation best but am not sure why.

Which in turn leads me to think about stone memorials and what do they mean? and what are their function? I ask this partly with a victorian funeral monument afficiando head on - I adore them to look at in all their angelly over the top mawkish emotional expensive symbolic wonderfulness but even if they are all of those things they are also physical manifestations of love, regard and affection and the stonemasons art.  A marker of a persons life to hold onto when they physically have gone and all you are left with are the memories and possibly photographs and maybe some of their possessions and in this day and age their digital trace and a heart turning reminder from social networks when their name and face pops up....

As ever - so much food for thought.....