READING: SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT FIELDWORK

It seems trivial to be thinking of this project in light of the terrible tragedy in Christchurch, but I’ll continue anyway.

After a few days in which not much has happened within the residency, I thought I’d return to the book I was reading at the beginning of my time here. It’s a book that Lisa Kelly gave me when we swapped cities a year or so ago. It didn’t engage me so much then, but something compelled me to pull it off the shelf when deciding what reading matter to bring with me. Titled Fieldwork, and put together by ART/SPACE/NATURE (an interdisciplinary course run through the Edinburgh College of Art), it comprises a series of interviews and discussions with artists, educators, architects, archaeologists and anthropologists about their thoughts on ‘fieldwork’.

LUNAR CYCLES AND BIODYNAMIC PLANTING

Since looking at the lunar calendar you posted, Andrea, and thinking about our discussions for possible activities that the movement of the moon might dictate, I’ve done a little more research. Yesterday I visited the City Library, and found a number of books about biodynamics, a topic I know very little of, but which seemed to tie in to our interest regarding lunar movements and their relation to planting. 

THOUGHTS ON ARTISTIC RESEARCH

Simon Sheikh, Objects of Study or Commodification of Knowledge? Remarks on Artistic Research', Art & Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods, Vol 2. No. 2, Spring 2009, http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v2n2/sheikh.html

I came across this article by Simon Sheikh a while ago and it immediately made me think of your practice. There are plenty of parallels between Sheikh's text and your work, and this is starting to come through on the blog.

In keeping with the first stage of the residency being 'observations', I've decided to paste these quotes below as raw data, as if researching towards an essay, or as a way of framing or positioning Observations, propositions and re-presentations.

SLOW BEGINNINGS

Over dinner, on the first night I arrived in Wellington, we had a brief conversation about the difficulty in designating the beginning to a process orientated project, a topic that seems to be recurring. Did this project begin when I got off the plane to be picked up by Andrea and Steven? Or did it begin with the dinner we had in the gallery on Friday night? Or the next day, after we cleaned up, and Laura and Amit (metaphorically) handed the space over to me? Or is it only now as I finally get around to posting this on the blog? Maybe it was when I resumed reading Conversations with Art/Space/Nature on the flight over here (more on that later). It seems that the beginning of this project has come on slowly, with many potential starting points, that may only become clear when looking back from the end of it.