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