Tutor Feedback.

Good to have a tutorial with you today Viv.

You are doing fine so don’t worry that your work is not progressing. If anything you are pushing yourself into more ambitious explorations of your relationship with the water and land, especially with immersion and installation. 

The process of you finding the debris, bringing them back, typing them up and then unravelling is both a tension (tying/wrapping) and a cathartic process (unravelling). This suggests the continuation of the love/hate relationship. This is a pertinent comment you used-

“The pieces connect directly to their environment and embed the traces of a lived experience. The resilience and vulnerability within the landscape, a place for now, that is secure and unburdened.”

We discussed that installation was a way forward, especially with your bodily connections with the fabric and how you are responding to the land and water. The fabric is an interesting material to work with as it flows, you wear it, it is almost like a net where you fish for the debris. It becomes undomesticated when you take it back to the river and becomes more elemental. 

When pursuing more installation experiments, think about above and below- where will you put the fabric- battle with it, flow with it- think of actions which you can film. Think about engagement and disengagement with the water. Another quote which is relevant at this time-

“By releasing the control of the outcome and making the work responsive and time based, exploring the tactile and physical, makes the work more true to me.”

Tutor feedback on Learning Outcomes

Have a look at the learning outcomes Viv so you are aware of the requirements. 

• Independently organise, manage, and sustain your own creative practice and the delivery of outcomes in response to Identified opportunities

This is coming through with your experimentations and the concepts and relationship with the water. 

• Independently engage in the creation and development of your personal practice and professional identity

Bring your work to the outward facing aspect. Apply site specificity to your work and consider how your work is located in this artform. 

• Synthesise contemporary theories, histories, ideas, debates, and practices alongside visual, technical, communication and contextual practices relevant to your individual illustration practice.

This will come through in the critical review. It’s a good idea to start thinking about how site specificity is triggered in your work and this can be the basis of the CR perhaps? 

• Effectively communicate outcomes and ideas to a range of identified audiences.

This will come in time once you engage in the outward facing aspect. 

Student notes and reflections

• The work for now has moved outside, it seems appropriate somehow to let it breath on its own and shift the language.
• We talked about using a drone to film an installation. This is something I would like to work towards through these projects as I try and work out a way to do it. Initial thoughts are maybe a web of tangled fabric with me in the middle. I have to wait a little for the weather to warm for me to spend a substantial amount of time in open water. Does it matter if I have a buoyancy aid? I don’t think so, safety first! Cold water cramps are common.
• By producing an installation would add a detachment or observational layer contrasting with the embodied struggle of the water below. The fabric reads differently from above, maybe appearing more calmer or ordered than it feels from within.
• Taking more surrounding photos will anchor the piece showing scale, the environment and my relationship to the site.
• Vicky and I are continuing to work on our water collaboration.
  

Action points

• Continue to do more videos but think more about including the land so we see the water, the river as well as you and your interactions with it. Think panoramic shots. 
• Conceptually think about what ‘Above’ and ‘Below’ signifies. This can now link in with installation, site specific work and Land Art and performance in Land Art.
• Have a look at Agnes Denes-  Wheatfield—A Confrontation and  Ana Mendieta who created the Silueta series, using her body covered in earthly matters. 
• Progress with the ‘outward facing’ aspect of the unit. Site specificity.