Presentation Boards

Final Practical Peer Review

Some interesting point raised in feedback.

Key parts:

• ‘Plenty of tests’
• ‘Work has repetition - just like the everyday’
• ‘Monoprints have a really effective ‘mood’ - lets viewer take away their own perspective’
• ‘Mixed media work is a step in the right direction…the everyday doesn't have to be all the same’
• ‘A full scene of people could be interesting - a larger documentation’
• ‘Maybe focus on other elements of what you are documenting…what can you hear? what can you smell?’
• ‘Homely, Silent, Nostalgic’

I believe the practical work has reached a point of making sense, of being whole and coherent without the aid of the essay when presented in the crit. I have ended up with quite a large amount of drawings, especially as I have been redrawing sketches from my sketchbooks in order to preserve some coherency in my final publication. 

I was really pleased with the 3 words that somebody put to sum up the work - Homely, Silent, Nostalgic. I think nostalgic particularly makes it relatable, allowing the viewer to picture their own life and past in relation to the drawings. This creates a connection between the work and the viewer, provoking an emotional response which I find very important.

The only think that I think lets the work down is the absence of the writing. This particular practical project I feel stands strongest when viewed alongside the ideas and theories I was researching. I think that in itself it is not the most explorative of projects, but instead illustrates the ideas presented in my essay, as it would in a book. There is not so much a clear journey in the work when viewed alone and perhaps the overall conclusion or observations get lost in this regard - one of the comments received questions ‘…what the author (you) concludes personally?’, which I think is covered in the writing more than the images. 

I cannot help but wish I had been more explorative with the work I made on this project. Especially visually, had I pushed that side more I think my concepts and ideas could have been portrayed a lot more effectively especially to an audience who does not have my writing accompanying the drawings for context and background information. 

Project Update, Compositions

• Collating the separate parts of the everyday into these 'final' compositions serves as an overview of my findings during this project. 
• It draws links between the waiting dictated by the daily commute and also by the prevalence of technology in times of waiting.
• Blurs the lines between where one part of the everyday starts and one part ends. ‘...simultaneously both everywhere and nowhere’ (J.Ebery, 2016).
• I think drawing back into these would be something to propose to take the work further, further evidencing the 'layers' and 'levels' of the everyday and how they are inherently and inescapably linked and connected. 

Project Update, Cars in Colour

• Pushing the car drawings further, taking into account the idea of different individuals and identities within the everyday.
• Despite the differences between the cars, there is still a common 'everyday' and structure of the commute. The routine and mundane not only brings the individuals together but is also inescapable, as is the social connections between all the individuals within society.
• The roads are emblematic of the structures dictated on the everyday but society as a whole.

Pratical Peer Review 2

The work hasn't really reached a new focus since the last peer review, and many of the plans for development have yet to be implemented. However a newer focus on commuting, more specifically queues of cars has emerged. The research leading up to my essay writing discovered a quote by Henri Lefebvre, saying that waiting or commuting is, 'an inevitable product of the bureaucratic appropriation of the everyday'. I discovered that commuting is highly representational of the everyday, the daily rush hour being explicit evidence of society's focus on capital showing itself in the everyday. 

Feedback suggestions:

- Create zine focussing on different locations and observations
- Use combination of looser, faster drawings and more detailed, refined, giving more information about place
- Images as singular or sequential, which is more effective? Think about context audience receives work
- Draw same place over and over, showing passing of time, creating a narrative 
- Consider whether images are relatable/connect to an audience
- What is the conclusion of work?
- How is visual research going to be processed?

Plans for development:

- Continue focussing imagery down, just waiting and queues, for example - reread essay so that imagery can successfully explore ideas written about
- Start to combine drawings into wider images which explore the everyday as a whole, create compositions that sum up discoveries
- Create zines of themes/locations for example a zine of commuting cars, a zine of people queuing 
- Process visual research through collating, selecting, developing, redrawing, collecting, combining
- MAKE MORE WORK

Project Updates, Cars

• Really fun way to work, looser and full of movement and energy. Drawing static objects/slow moving as if they are 'alive'. 
• The structures of the different everyday lives are documented, brought together by the daily commute. The volume of vehicles shows the routines and waiting that modern western society dictates on the everyday and the individuals within it. ‘…the only life that people have, which is neither completely determined nor completely free’ (P.Sztompka, 2008)

• Using COP as an opportunity to push my visual language, I found this way of making images really enjoyable and fruitful, especially in a reportage context. The immediacy of the drawings is important, as the moments captured are commonly fleeting. The ability to document the necessary forms and aspects of an image in a short space of time is an exciting challenge.

Practical Peer Review 1

Positive, encouraging feedback from peers. Work is at broad stage, documenting people in both Leeds and Manchester city centres who are ‘waiting’ or going about their daily business. Not yet explicitly focussed, a good method for starting out, being broad and seeing how it focusses ‘organically’. Review suggests that text and image results are most effective - I will try and incorporate both in my final images, letting the text give the images context and a deeper exploration of the everyday. Reduced and gestural line work was well received, saying it ‘captures passing of time as it is responding to’.

Suggestions for development - 

• delve in more, speak to people

• include individual daily routines

• zone in on favourite parts, develop

• make publication

• screen print layering line drawings up

• incorporate more text

Plans for development - 

• focus on main concepts and areas, waiting/commuting and impacts of technology on the everyday

• think about collating images into publication, collections of topics, themes, subject matters to build up a series of the everyday through different categories

• think about ways of incorporating text, talking to people? overheard conversations? interviews? own observations might make an interesting context?

• continue pushing visual language of work, develop loose mark making and quick representations of forms and subject matters

• ensure practical work links to and explores content of essay

The work could definitely be more explorative and experimental in its documentation methods and visual presentation. I am going to try and combine more research methods into single images to create a ‘map’ of sorts that builds up a picture which represents the everyday in a more detailed and broad way, taking into consideration the complexities and multiple factors of the everyday. 

Project Updates

• Research on Henri Lefebvre's ideas on 'waiting' as being an inevitable part of the everyday. Started documenting people waiting, queuing and going to work.
• Commute observed as a very common, repeated structure of daily life, experienced by the majority.

• Immediacy and gestural nature of the cars queuing became an essential part of the project. Capturing the aspects of the everyday in a more abstract, looser way reflects its intangible definition. The drawings simultaneously have structure and routine yet are also ever-changing, just like the everyday. 

• Henri Lefebvre's 'vacuum' is well documented in these drawings from Manchester City Centre. A lot of the people I observed were on their phones, and by capturing them en masse it highlights technologies presence in the everyday.
• The anonymity of the individuals documented speaks to the universality of the everyday, where even individuals with differing routines, structures and definitions of the everyday are still a part of the social whole, of society, and of a web of human connections. 

Project Updates, Hubberholme Trip, City Centre Focus

• started with a place to visit and document the 'everyday' in that place. I wanted somewhere different and unique from the ordinary everydays of modern society and so picked the small hamlet of Hubberholme in the Dales.
• The difficulty of  getting there and the lack of 'action' meant I couldn't continue making work there.
• However the trip was helpful in starting the work and opened my eyes up to the challenge of documenting the mundane.

• The accessibility and variety of goings-on in Leeds City Centre made it a good choice for the location of the project.
• Started by attempting to 'exhaust a place', similar to Georges Perec, writing observations of what happened around me, along with quick sketches
• I was not too happy with the drawings, I don't feel like the are well done, nor do they seem to tell much of a story of the everyday, however they were a start.

• The idea of documenting everyone entering and leaving a place tells more of a story than the random observations.
• Not only is the passing of time documented but also the variety of differing individuals connected by a unifying action. Closer observations can be made, or questioned, such as why are these people visiting the gallery midday in the middle of the week? What does this say about society as a whole?

Project Proposal/Presentation Feedback

Presentation went well, but discussion afterwards was so helpful and invaluable - I needed feedback to know if the seed of an idea or direction I was heading in was sufficient enough and the answer was most definitely yes.
Over summer I had the idea of documenting and recording life, but at that stage it was way too broad and I was unsure how to narrow it down into a manageable, interesting exploration. The work in the module briefing and in my portfolio that interests me the most were about a place - so this will be my starting point. Narrowing down to a starting focus ensures that the idea can be explored properly via that starting point; the place I choose will become the filter with which to explore the everyday.

Some key words/points from feedback:

- Small personal experiences
- What is the everyday? Mundane? Define
- Untold story, place nobody knows - unexplored
- Have something to say - why should other people care?
- Start broad, record everything
- What interests you in the place?

Next Steps:

- Define 'everyday' and 'mundane'
- Research suggested contextual sources; other artists, illustrators, scientists
- Choose a place; unexplored, unknown, historical
- Spend time in place; thinking, observing, exploring, finding
- Start recording discoveries; sights, sounds, smells, sensations, landmarks, people, wildlife etc.
- Build up varied portrait of place with recordings
- Analyse findings; anything unusual, particularly interesting or unique? Anything worth focussing on or exploring more?

Summer Research - David Letterman, Paper Cups

One cup = one completed show

Collection of one object recording the passing of time, and a career. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/arts/television/david-letterman-reflects-on-33-years-in-late-night-television.html

Summer Research - Theories, Narrative Exposure Therapy

'Only through an externalisation of the feelings, abuse and distrust, will true healing occur'

'As narratives are an integrative part of every culture, NET is a culturally universal short-term intervention for the reduction of traumatic stress symptoms...NET is a form of exposure that encourages traumatised survivors to tell their detailed life history chronologically to a skilled councillor or psychotherapist who will record it, read it back, and assist the survivor with the task of integrating fragmented traumatic memories into a coherent narrative'

- Proves the importance and benefits of externalising life events, whether traumatic or otherwise

- Sees life in narrative structure, recording chronologically as a method of understanding and processing experiences

M, Schauer, F, Neuner, T, Elbert (20050, Narrative Exposure Therapy: A Short-Term Intervention for Traumatic Stress Disorders after War, Terror, or Torture, Hogrefe & Huber, USA

Summer Research - Ephemera

http://www.ephemerasociety.org/def.html

'Maurice Rickards, the famous authority on ephemera and noted scholar, suggested that for collectors of printed material, the word refers to “minor transient documents of everyday life". The use of the word “transient” implies that once these printed items had served their intended function, they were “generally expected to be discarded.”'

'Ephemera may be primary evidence documenting an historical event'

'Ephemera may be a way in which a particular social attitude of the time is evinced'

'Ephemera, as artifacts of history, inevitably contains facts, prejudices, and other aspects(such as language, art and social organization) reflecting their particular time and place'

'Ephemera is revered not only for its content, but also for the beauty of its presentation'


- Collecting ephemera is documenting life, the nature of them both fleeting and impermanent 

- It serves as records of past and present that would otherwise get lost and discarded 

- Each item can preserve a number of different information i.e. economic climate, travel habits, cultural icons etc 

Summer Research - Bobby Puleo, Ephemera Collector

Bobby Puleo - Clues About The Rest Of The World from Tobin Yelland on Vimeo.

'Certain people would look at it and be like it's a fuck up that somebody tossed. I'll look at it and be like that is everyday life taken out of context, and that in itself makes it interesting or beautiful or art'

- Grouping found objects, transforming them into something new through a collection

Summer Research - Mass Observation

- Social research organisation founded 1937 to create an 'anthropology of ourselves

- Recruited a team of observers and investigators to go out into the public and observe and record every day people's behaviours, conversations and lives

- Had National Panel of Diarists who kept regular diaries or responded to a number of open-ended questionnaires on a variety of topics and subject matters

- Generated and archived people's history up until 1949, the archive being held at University of Sussex

Projects such as Mass Observation are crucial in preserving social and cultural history. They offer an invaluable resource for learning about our society in the past, how it has changed over time. Without it, a lot of the information would have been lost. 

Summer Research - Liev Schreiber & Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

- Collecting objects from family history

- Three dimensional documentation

- Not about the aesthetics of the objects but their connections

- Where drawing and writing 'captures' life's history, the objects are life's history

- The objects are made into capsules of the past, their functions no longer as intended

‘Just as the function of dreams is to ensure the continuity of sleep, objects ensure the continuity of life’ - Jean Baudrillard

Summer Research - On Kawara, I Got Up/Date Paintings/I am Still Alive

- Mundanity and simplicity

- Connecting with people & sharing, social aspect

- Seemingly unimportant

- Existence

- Non intimate and objective

Summer Research - Ed Ruscha, Gasoline

-‘Travel Log’ documenting journey/space between L.A and Oklahoma

- Snapshot style, not overly-considered/labored over, just captured

-‘Reporter’

- Series, tells journey through one selected aspect

- Shows subtle differences between place and time

- How much is he actually exploring in the end? Just carrying on project for the sake of it?

Summer Research - David Lemm, Mapping Kings Cross

- Monthly

- Combines simple written observations & abstract images

- Incoherent, structured only by time (month)

- Objective

- Record of artist’s environment & relation to it

- Mapping not just a physical space but also a passing of time

Summer Research - Charlotta María Hauksdóttir, Outlook

- Series taken over Autumn months 2015

- Documents subtle changes & passing of time in single place

- Relationship between life inside/outside window & current affairs on pin board

Summer Research - Hachette Book Group, David Sedaris Diaries

Summer Research - American Scholar, How to Write a Memoir

https://theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir/#.W6O7PbGZNn5

'Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what you must become if you want to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into'

'Too often memories die with their owner, and too often time surprises us by running out.'

'Writing is a powerful search mechanism, and one of its satisfactions is that it allows you to come to terms with your life narrative. It also allows you to work through some of life’s hardest knocks—loss, grief, illness, addiction, disappointment, failure—and to find understanding and solace.'

'That was my remembered truth, and that’s how I wrote it.'

'...writing a memoir became an act of healing.'