PhD-Ness part 4 in weekly series - reading, listening, pomodoring, Sebald and Infest

slightly emptier notepad this week, another matte medium image transfer - this time onto canvas using a two week old black and white photocopy and finally(!!) started reading Sebald and the blue post it note stickers indicate places in the text where there's something I need to look up, something I want to think about a bit more, something I want to quote or some mention of death/funereal custom - I'm not sure where I got the copy from though, I usually remember where I get books from but can't remember with this one and it doesn't have a charity shop mark I recognise in it.

So finally started reading some Sebald - Rings of Saturn 2002 edition and so far I am absolutely loving it, in a similar way to the way I completely fell in love with Barthes Camera Lucida because it is so immediately emotional and personal plus he is writing about things I love - the past, bones, burial and fascinating recounts of individuals histories. There are also stark shocking figures about the bombing raids during the 1939-1945 war which originated in East Anglia. So far I'm up to the silent housekeeper and her inheritance - I am looking forward to reading more and thinking about the themes of the book and the way it is constructed and written.

Along with looking up some of the references in Sebald's book I also need to do some investigating into the life and work of Elizabeth Fulhame who published a book called An Essay on Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dying and Painting in 1794. She is credited with discovering photoreduction - which is to do with light dependant reactions and the concept of catalysis -  which is to do with what chemicals can be added to others to alter the speed of chemical reactions to give a desired outcome. I think. I'm not really au fait with chemical terms and so I can forsee a lot of dictionary checking and asking questions of my chums who are chemically literate in my future.

I had never heard of Elizabeth Fulhame before last week when she was talked about by Irfan Shah during his very excellent Measure of the Moon talk at Leeds central Library last week. He talked about the connections between photographic and film experimentations and Leeds. It was fascinating to hear him trace the threads and leads between the invention of the micrometer, calotypes, daguerreotypes (am especially pleased because that's the first time I've been able to spell that word correctly without having to look it up!!) and the creation of moving images by Louis Le Prince. Much more investigation needed on my part to find out more about Elizabeth and also to hopefully read her book and ideally be able to understand it....

I'm interested in her work - partly because she was a woman but also because of my work transferring images onto material and to see whwther or not she uses any techniques I could learn from or copy.

As ever I've been really struggling with concentration, flitting from one thought to another or one website and another so am going to make a concerted effort to do one thing at a time, either until that particular task is finished or for a set amount of time before swapping to something else - essentially the pomodoro technique. Sometimes though it is the chance finding of seeing another potentially useful source whilst looking up or working on something that is most fruitful but also potentially most distracting. This most often happens when I am having to look a word or a reference up which either leads me down another path or down the siren path of social media. Must be a bit more disciplined though and make productive use of as much of my time as possible eg like reading more Sebald whilst on the bus earlier this week, whilst waiting for a chum and whilst waiting to be called in the health centre waiting room.

This also makes me think about procrastination, it was a real light bulb moment when I read about procrastination often being a mask for fear of failing the task you're putting off. A feeling I can all too readily identify with, though sometimes my procrastination is also useful as it means I'm mostly on top of the non scarey more routine tasks and life admin type stuff. Though in spite of checking my diary almost every day - I still often forget to get birthday cards in the post in time for folks.

The Tetley run an artists associate programme and I applied for it through the very marvellous Curator Space a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit of a last minute application as I'd not checked Curator Space properly and so was only aware of the opportunity thanks to the email reminder of last chance opportunities. I've had an email to say I haven't been successful which I'm not surprised about partly because last minute applications are not as well thought through and put together as ones done well in advance and also because I'm not sure the kind of work/subject matter/approach is what they're looking for but I've asked for feedback on my application so I'll see what they say.

Last week was very busy in terms of lots of lovely things too - namely Infest which is an annual goth, dark wave, industrial, synth pop festival in Bradford. It's usually three nights but this time it was four as it was the twentieth anniversary. As there were other family things going on we only went for the Thursday night which was also the evening that our friends Zeitgeist Zero were playing and they were brilliant and so were Peter Hook and the Light. There was also the Gravediggers Union and Empirion but I didn't watch those as my attention was all for Zeitgeist Zero and Peter Hook and the Light.

Peter Hook was one of the founding members of Joy Division who became New Order after the death of Ian Curtis in 1980. I've kind of grown up with Joy Division and New Order - coming from Manchester you'd be hard pressed not to have heard of them, even if you're not a fan of the music they made. So it was amazing to hear such wonderful iconic songs that have meant a lot to me and so many others over the years played live with such passion. A friend writes with much more eloquence about the performance and its link to the goth scene here. 

It was also especially lovely to hear, dance and sing along to those versions without the usual annoyances of having to watch it through other people's phone screens or being forced to listen to other people's inane conversations. That's not to say that those things weren't happening but they were few and far between and easily avoided. It was also a lovely opportunity to get properly gothed up, wear lots of make up and see lots of friends in real life as opposed to chatting to them via social media. Social media is exactly that - social but it's also a media as opposed to a direct physical immediate experience and whilst it is a good way of keeping in touch with people it's so much lovelier to see them in real life. In the same way that I'm all about the analogue when it comes to images - in real life I'm all about the real as opposed to the virtual simulacrum.

Programmes/films watched
Nothing of note except for yet another rewatch of Jacques Tourners Night of the Demon (1957) its monochrome gorgeousness is just enchanting, especially the corridor Caligari-esque scenes and the scenes in the wood (it's in the trees, it's coming!!') with the lights in the distance has given me an idea for a photo sequence I want to try using dusk, torchlights....and maybe even a smoke machine.

Books read
(finally) started Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald
still reading Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayer and am struck by the arguments around women and work, careers, marriage are still being had today - some of the archaic language being used aside. Given that the novel was first published over 80 years ago and we have had things like The Equal Pay Act in place for 40 years makes me feel that Sayers was a prescient and still relevant novelist and depressed that not more progress has been made.

Exhibitions Attended
No art ones but did go to Yorkshire Air Museum last week. My brother was up for a visit and it was his choice to go there as he is a bit of an aircraft nerd. I've been there a few times now and there were quite a few new planes and others were at more advanced stages of restoration than when we'd last seen them but the thing that struck me this time was the lack of context around some of the things on display. There is lots of technical information around dates of use, size of engine etc and displays around the development of aircraft and the use of aircraft in the 1939-1945 war in particular.

However the object that to me was without much context and that I found especially horrifying and depressing was a cluster bomb, on display with half of the cover removed so the smaller bombs it contains with technical details next to it, but nothing about who designed it, who makes it, who sells it, who profits from it, where it has been used and that kind of information.  I also had my usual cognitive disconnect/does not compute on visiting the Chapel, my reading of the new testament was a long time ago but I am fairly sure Christ wasn't reported as saying many pro-war/fighting things if at all.

So a busy week of doing a bit of reading, some photo editing - did a lot of flipping of images ready to print them for matte medium image transferring, some dressing up, some dancing and some socialising - all of which are good for my soul.



    

PhD-Ness Part 2 - Slightly Less At Sea-Ness, Leeds Library-Ness, Theory, Reading,Note Making, Doing.....

mix of notes made as I've been going along the past few weeks, and my contribution to Alabama 13's piece for the Girls Make Art #2 Reclaiming Pink event/show at Wharf Chambers Saturday 11th November and Sunday 12th November. 

Part of my lovely skully haul from Whitby Goth Festival - cushion in background bought a while back, pincushion by kerrysgifts, mug from which I am going to drink hot chocolate came from the English Heritage shop at the Abbey  

Latest book haul from the very marvellous Leeds Community Trust bookshop

So it's almost a month since I've written and it's been a busy one - not necessarily with study as I've also spent quite a bit of time at the dentist having root canal treatment (here's hoping I don't have to go back til my next scheduled check up and that I don't need anything doing then) and I am also just back from a delightful few restorative days in Whitby at the Goth Festival.

That was mostly marvellous - catching up with chums, going on a river cruise (saw seals, a heron, shags and a very fat squirrel) I also ate lots of lovely food (but didn't ice cream or fish and chips) and drank lots of lovely beer (diet starts now) a mooch round the Abbey which also led to me taking part in a Victorian funeral procession re-enactment - it was a walking* funeral and I banged the drum, a mooch around the Museum where I gazed again upon some of my very favourite artefacts namely:

• the dead mans hand - a charm of a light made from a hung mans hand allegedly used by robbers to ensure homeowners stayed asleep when being burgled
• Dr Merryweathers Tempest Prognosticator - a weather predicting device using the barometric pressure sensitivity of slugs to warn of impending storms
• the charm against sore throats which was a tiny piece of the hangmans rope next to a little gold figure on a gibbet 
• the jet jewellery
• the camera cabinet - which houses many models of camera which I am fortunate enough to have of my own and be able to use
• the creepiest collection of Victorian dolls - there is something beautifully sinister about their cracked wax faces
  
  
  The unmarvellous bit was seeing images of someone dressed up as a kind of wolf in nazi uniform - alongside a child also dressed in a uniform with a swastika - quite why anyone would want to do that I am not sure, it also distresses me that someone who was at the Goth Weekend as an onlooker as opposed to participant would think that was a normal and both acceptable and accepted part of the goth subculture when in my experience it is very much not. Quite how to challenge it effectively though I am not sure. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

I did take some books to Whitby with me to read - some textbooks - Foucaults The Will To Knowledge, some reading books/primary sources of the Victorian period - Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (started reading this as part of the read along earlier this year organised by Janine Hatter on Twitter. The aim was to read it in three chapter installments once a month - the same as when it was first published in Temple Bar Magazine in 1862, but I'm afraid rationing the chapters as opposed to reading it all in one go as and when I can has made quite a fractured experience for me and I can't always remember what has just happened and have to reread bits and I have fallen behind with reading it - in spite of it being a wonderful read when I do read it.

I wonder if it was printed with a precis of the action so far? Anyway I didn't read anymore of it in spite of my plan to finish it - the sitting room in the cottage was a bit chilly and so I couldn't find a comfortable long term reading position, nor did I get further than the introduction to Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall but I did read a couple of HP Lovecrafts Short Stories from the Horror In The Museum collection - not the thing to read before going to Sandsend in the pouring rain with the waves pounding up the beach when everyone is walking past with their hoods up - to keep out the rain I know but part of me was wondering if it was whether or not to hide proto gills....

So aside from Whitby based loveliness and dental unpleasantness what else have I been up to - have been reading Barthes Mythologies, Peter Barry's Beginning Theory - a really basic but useful introduction to theory - something I am beginning to think about in much more depth. I haven't met with my primary supervisor yet as they are on sick leave but I have met with my secondary supervisor hence my theory reading and reading of Foucault in particular - at her suggestion.

I'm still feeling a bit at sea with it all and had been worried I wasn't doing any doing at all - but I did do a couple of churchyard visits in Whitby (St Marys and St Oswalds) and took some photographs on film too which I intend to use to make some prints and images with - providing they have come out okay that is. Both films (one 35mm, one medium format) are Ilford XP2 which means although they make black and white images they need the colour C41 process to be developed. So I shall take them to my usual colour film developer Mark at The Photo Shop in Headingley rather than stand shivering in the garage aka pop up meth lab to do them.

Both of the churchyards I went to had very similar gravestones in terms of overall shapes, and carvings on those shapes. Draped urns seem very popular as a carving whereas in the gravestones that remain in St George's Field the draped urns figure as actual objects on top of gravestones as well as carved on them. Grave poetry doesn't seem as common in either of the churchyards. Neither churchyard had any obelisk type gravestones. I'm not sure how much of that has to do with fashion, or with rules about what can and can't be used as grave adornment in either place.

I have still been trying to get a routine sorted out too - until my primary supervisor is back from sick leave I'm not sure when my meetings will be, but in the meantime I am still doing my roughly nine to five reading/working at the computer each day. I also need to work out a proper reading schedule and start compiling a to do list with dates to be completed by as opposed to just a to do list that I tick off (or often don't...) as I go along.

Thanks to a talk by Carol Sowden at the Art College (I'm finding it hard to remember to call it by its new name Leeds Arts University - I think it will always be Leeds College of Art to me) I also have some ideas about developing the more ephemeral aspects of my artwork, its connections to mourning culture and new directions in which to take it. This has involved buying some skull shaped moulds off the internet too. I am very excited about these arriving through the post - I can't wait to use them.

I showed a friend and fellow artist around St George's Field last week prior to going to the talk and then the fun of trying to find the correct chemistry department lecture theatre for Professor Griselda Pollocks talk on 'Truth Telling and Art History In The Digital Age of Global Uncertainty' which was both interesting and thought provoking.  Before we found it we did see some rather exciting locked rooms with impressive looking machines, bottles of impressively coloured liquid and signs declaring poisonous and dangerous substances within...

She concentrated on culture and what are definitions of it, quoting from Raymond Williams - someone whose work I am going to have to check out. It was also interesting to think of the differences between media and platforms as they often get confused, she also spoke of how cinema tells the stories of artists and invariably bolsters the idea that artists are neurotic. I also have a note that culture is not an it - it is a doing as it is being done all around you and you are part of it.

It was lovely to show a friend round what is one of my very favourite places and to see it again and afresh through someone else's eyes - someone who had never been there before. I'm talking of course of St George's Field - a place I probably go to at least once a month if not more and every time I go there is something either new or something that I haven't noticed before or something I hadn't realised the significance of.

This time it was the little shelves that could have just been decoration but could also be used to place  offerings on one gravestone, the proximity of innkeepers and temperance advocates graves (imagine the conversations between those graveyard occupants) and some symbolism on one gravestone in particular which I need to do some research into as to what it might mean,initial research leads me to believe it is a masonic symbol. I also noticed some espeically beautiful floral carving and I need to find a Victorian flower dictionary to help me translate some of the meaning of some of the flowers carved on the graves.

What else? I also asked my chums on social media what they think of if they see or hear the words 'Victorian' and got some interesting responses including one which made me smile which was 'grime, gruel, corsets,wills and fallen women'. This has given me some insight and ideas in terms of how eras are viewed by other eras - though I need to think more about how why what is thought is thought and how it has come about.

I've also joined the very beautiful and wonderful Leeds Library - an oasis of ages past calm on Commercial Street in Leeds. They have a wealth of Victorian era printed material and I have been very fortunate to see copies of Ainsworth magazine and editions of Gaskell's Ruth and Mary Barton from the 1850's in all their red rot encased glory. Utterly wonderful. My husband has taken to calling it the 'urban elite Victorian reading room' and I'm afraid the pedant and historically accurate nerd in me had to correct him and tell him that as it was founded in 1768 and moved to its current premises in 1808 strictly speaking it is a Georgian urban elite reading room. Plus unlike Huddersfield Uni Library - staff still stamp your book when you take it out - proper library bliss.

I've also been to the very wonderful and thought provoking Skeletons exhibition at Leeds City Museum which along with skeletons also has things made with human remains like a horn made out of a human thigh bone,mourning brooches with locks of hair and false eyelashes. The latter really make me feel icky in a way that mourning brooches do not. I'm not sure why - I think it's partly because anything close to my eyes always make me wince slightly but the thought of a strangers hair (or even if it was made from hair from someone I knew - and had donated it without coercion) so close to my eyes just makes me feel icky in a way that ones made from something artificial wouldn't.   

So in summary - been doing a lot of reading, a bit of doing and a lot of thinking and I have a LOT more reading,doing and thinking to do...I also think I'm going to continue with this blog but make it either a fortnightly or weekly thing again - it helps me gather my thoughts, review what I've done, what is working, what isn't working, what remains to be done and what I need to do to plan ahead. At some point I want to feel like I am properly researching again - it's still all feeling a bit tangential and not quite solid enough at the moment.
   

*that means there was no carriage pulled by horses style hearse - either the coffin was carried directly by mourners or pushed on a hand cart. It was the cheapest kind of funeral you could have.