Practice-based research .11
New year, new tone, or however the saying goes
For the first time in almost 6 months, I ‘felt’ art.
I had that sensation, the one I get when something, an almost idea, is close to me or close to being a full idea, but I have to reach to fully grasp it, like the TV remote being on the table a foot away from you.
I’m writing like this for this entry because I have been writing like this for my PgCert submission and I vowed that this space wouldn’t have to abide by the same rules as that space. This space being mine and that space being theirs, mostly, y’know?
So I had that feeling or that urge to grab something nearby and I grabbed it, or maybe I just extended my body and did the first part; the leaning.
I yeeeeaaarrrrnnn for the studio and that’s always a nice feeling as an artist.
You feel like you are what you say you are when you urge to make art, the moments in between just make you feel like a fraud even though you are not. But imposter syndrome isn’t new and it isn’t interesting, to me anyway.
I’m bored of my own anxiety and bored of my own self-doubt, I’m bored of second-guessing what I know I am capable of so.
And please don’t mistake my tone for one that you hear when someone might be stating their new year’s resolutions, this isn’t that. I don’t set my intentions according to the Gregorian calendar. This, what I am writing here is me saying I am a bored of the expected self-deprecation that comes with being British. Hating yourself as a way of being polite, I don’t want to do that anymore.
So I am here wanting to make art [again], still telling myself I am an artist even when I am not making, shaking my backpack to encourage all the loose pencils to fall to the bottom where I can grab them easily.
And even though January is an ugly month for me - cold and meant for rest but expectations of you are even higher than usual, its dark out and money is tight, I am sitting here, with my sketchbook on my right knee waiting patiently for February to come, or March, because they always come eventually and then I can make these things that haunt me in the space that I yearn for.
I was looking back at some of my earlier blog entries and noticed that I fluctuate between my diaristic tone and a sort of formal journalistic tone.
I think that’s what institutional spaces do to a Black person though, it imposes this need to perform. And it’s more than code-switching, it’s deeper than that. It’s this improbable expectation to convince the institution of your intelligence, convince everyone who see’s you that you’re worthy of being seen, worthy of being in that space.
But it’s all bullshit.
Anyway, this entry is written in a tone impacted by the bullshit. I am still Exodus, the artist, researcher, educator, autistic lover boi with the best vinyl collection in the country, but with state violence at the end of my eyelashes and the cold deep in my bones, I am bound to write in a different tone, so this is my new tone.
Diary keeping as a method of research
Speaking of tones, I am planning on how I want to record some of my research, and I am drawn towards the diaristic tone. Diaries have long been a part of my art practice (some of you might remember my solo exhibition from 2023/4 where I shared a piece called ‘The offerings that remain’ displaying pages from 3-4 of my diaries, left on a different page each time it exhibited) and recently I was reading this journal by Dr Ruth Pearce, a fellow trans scholar based in the UK. Pearce, amongst many other pertinent topics, discusses the use of the diary in trans research. Pearce’s idea is that the diary, as a research method, does what other research methods can’t do; when the subject matter is so personal, so vulnerable and so feeling-centred, then the method for that matter has to be equally personal and capable of holding such depth and feeling.
Ruth writes about a few areas relating to being a trans researcher in academia but the bit that I want to bring here, to this space, is this power of the diary and what happens if you write a diary with an audience in mind.
Is the diary no longer a diary if you have written it with an audience in mind?
Can you truly guarantee a diary will forever be private?
Once it leaves your mind and lands onto paper, does something change?
Can a diary be altered after the fact?
When Sophie Chapman and Kerrie Jefferis wrote private insurrections to loosen public ground, did we really understand what they meant by diaristic mirrors?
Is a diary about recording or confessing quiet desires or noting a prayer or a thought or is it both?
My name is Exodus, many of my loved ones call me Exo for short. Exo has become a personal vow to love and hold myself and others, so with hugs and kisses, I thank you for reading. xoxoxo
Oh, and while you are here, please donate what you can to my top surgery Gofundme organised by my wonderful partner. :-)