Early doors but not there yet...

Early start... up at 6am killing me. A day return. This is only a possibility when I don't have to start at 10am.

Today I need to pick up my (assessed!!!) work, and be introduced to Practice 2: our new module. I am VERY excited...now is the time that I EXPLORE my idea's practically and creatively.

I have been advised that I need to SHOCK to get 'my' message across, in order to draw attention to the Chernobyl issue and/or other major issues and horrific atrocities, and NOT to (necessarily) produce something aesthetically pleasing (which was always my intention), so the upshot being that as soon as I think I know what my intention is, there comes the proverbial 'spanner in the works'. I was also advised that it would be VERY difficult (argh).

So although I have my concept, which although now much more focused, continues to need much more research and another trip to the Ukraine (Chernobyl again but I have also just found about Babi Yar - how/why did I not know about this already?!), I still don't know what I am doing. ALSO after intense thinking and sweating about WHAT I am designing for, I have been advised that I now don't need to know this - which is very free-ing in a way and very scary in another. Hopefully I'll know by the time Practice 3 comes around.

Babi Yar

And in other news: I am all booked up to spend 5 days in Poland in September, again for research purposes, incredibly luckily I have funding to do this. I am not excited, I am afraid. I will be visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau. I need to allow myself to be emotionally immersed in the experience in order for it to inform my practice and influence my work but as a rather closed person (I think??!) it will absolutely destroy my composure (and I feel selfish for even worrying about this).  

Book I'm finishing on the train

 

List of immediate jobs:

• Finish reading 8 books (interesting)
• Start a new sketchbook (delicious) 
• List the main (shocking & relevant/appropriate) points I need to raise (thought provoking)
• Think about how to do this (impossible)
• Research 'memorial art' and 'shocking work on big issues' (time consuming)



Holocaust Monument, Berlin