half a fiver

Today, I found half a fiver. It turned out to be a metaphor for my day.
It's a Steve week, and Susie and I head in for 10am. We hook up with Lois and Mary, who have been in since before 10am. No Steve...
Susie's space (it's her week for the whitespace) has been vandalised over night, some clever student has written "pretentious" on the wall. I'd have gone ballistic, Susie Laughs it off, for now...

we go grab a coffee..and along the way, I find half a five pound note. It's an interesting find, seductive ("yas! I've found money!..damn, it's worthless). I think of the other half, and how I'd like to give it back to its rightful owner. (I can't buy 2.50 worth of chips!).

We get back to the room, and still no Steve. We wait for half an hour, and Lois phones Iain. "Is Steve in?" "yeah, he went to the room, saw no one was there, and came back here (the office)". Typical. We must learn to leave notes.

When Steve does come in he's his usual self, hard to tell if he's glad to see us, hates the sight of us...whatever. He presents us with a poker face that's so hard to read, and this is what gets me headed in the general direction of a bad mood. We're not sure what's been arranged (nothing? is that our fault? is it a new "lets see what happens" approach to tutoring?...) Mary goes first, as she needs to leave in the afternoon, I'm told "I'll see you after dinner (when is that?) "1.30". Cool, something is forming, some plan. I can go with that.

1.30, "end of dinner". no Steve. I wait till 1.50, so I go looking for him, and bump into him on the ground floor. "Hi Steve, I was looking for you!"..."Blimey, you are keen" (no, 20 mins late, that's not keen, that's wanting to get a show on the road).

When I do get my time with him, it's fantastic. My bad mood is dissipating fast, it's amazing what a talk with a tutor can do!

We talk about my past week's experience in the whitespace. Steve asks some interesting questions, aimed at getting me to understand people's perspectives and take on the work. I do struggle to remember all the points raised in the group crit, is that because I have assimilated them into my own discourse / dialogue / understanding of the work? I'd explained that the Friday "open day" was great, the many different perspectives / points raised, how I was quite happy to engage these perspectives, in a sense that I'd somehow considered them beforehand, without realising it. I truly had thought of many aspects of the work / use of space. Many of the questions (thinking about it, when talking to Steve) were about the process, or build, or technicality of the work, and here lies my problem, highlighted by talking to Steve about the work. I haven't contextualised the work in a conceptual realm. I know fully HOW this works, WHY this works, but I've not really considered the WHY IS IT HERE, WHAT DOES IT SAY?

Steve is exceedingly helpful today, I ask him to simplify some points he raises, so I do make sure I understand fully. Again, I am missing some of the points he's putting to me, I have a tendency to talk about process, build, communication, but forget about the conceptual theme(s) / ideas behind the work. Tom had asked last week "is this a satirical view of technology?", which struck me as nothing to do with the work (again, thinking of the physical aspect of the work), but in essence was trying to get out of me the what the idea behind the work was, not what the work was (if that makes sense).

So, the missing part of my fiver (my art) I am starting to see now. I understand where contextual analysis helps, it's not a search for methods of how to make work, it's a search for where the idea fits into the art world. It's not about simply abstracting objects, it's why abstraction is used (for example).

Steve concurs with J&T about my "needing to find a language in which to discuss the work". I didn't fully understand that point last Thursday (melted brain after 5 hours of intense debate?). But now, "language" is referring to realm of meaning, sphere of research, context.

As Stewart McDonald, head of Gray's said so deftly last Friday :
"this is good, but it needs context".

I might just have a whole fiver at the end of semester two.

Listening to : mark van hoen - your selfish ways : murcof - remembranza