Charlotte Sometimes

Category: Studying

  • #BlurredLines

    #BlurredLines

    If you didn’t watch Blurred Lines last night on BBC, you probably should. It’s on iPlayer now, I’ll wait while you watch it.

    Watched it? Good.

    I thought it was interesting. Some of it was genuinely brilliant and some of it was… well… not so much. But a show that brings together Germaine Greer AND Mary Berry? It’s already fitting two of my academic hero’s into a mere hour of TV, so it’s going to be good.

    I had this bizarre meta experience during the show. Blurred Lines was a documentary on sexism and misogyny in the age of the internet and at the point where they began talking about twitter, I decided to log onto twitter and see what people were saying. Wow. People were taking part in casual misogyny about a program about casual misogyny… so meta it hurts! Good on you twitterati, congratulations for being absolutely fucking foul and proving you contain the absolute cesspit of human existence! Thankfully people were saying good things too, it seems the message was not entirely lost.

    Being a feminist is scary.

    Yeah. It is.

    I had a moment in class this term. It was Reading Art History, a module that explores different approaches that are open to art historians. So as usual I’d been pretty vocal throughout the previous six or so weeks. We’d covered biography, progress and Marxism amongst others. But on the way to the lecture I suddenly found myself panicking a little. I realised I was totally afraid of being outed as a feminist in a space that wasn’t ‘safe’. I was so desperately keen to discuss Linda Nochlin’s utterly brilliant essay, but at the same time scared of the backlash I might receive from my classmates. You know the even more crazy thing? My classmates are almost entirely female – I should have nothing to worry about.

    I spoke out, no one had a go at me. I mean I still get called a lesbian on a regular basis by a particularly delightful group of girls in my class (apparently short hair makes you want to have sex with women – who knew!) but nothing really changed. Why was I worried? Because it’s not unusual to have deeply unpleasant comments aimed at you if you dare to speak out in public about women’s equality. Usually it’s puerile comments about my breasts or vagina to be honest. Or people like to assume that I don’t have a healthy sex life. I’d like to say it’s water off a ducks back, but it’s not. The comments grind you down.

    So I was somewhat reassured when I went to a day of papers at an art history conference recently on the subject of curating feminist art and feminism in the future. There were some brilliant academics there, including one of my hero’s – Griselda Pollock. At the end of the day there was a round table discussion where there was some discussion about if being a feminist had become easier. The general consensus was that it hadn’t, and there was a deep sense of worry over young feminist art historians coming into the industry. Several participants said that they still didn’t always tell people exactly what their specialist area of research was, despite being some of the most respected feminist art historians in the world.

    This is really sad stuff, but for the first time in my life I had a moment where I understood what the ‘sisterhood’ that many feminists refer to was all about. For the first time, in that room, I felt solidarity to the cause and a resoluteness to continue the work of brave early feminists. I don’t want to seem like a martyr, but perhaps you have to have some people who work through the misogyny and the nasty comments in order to make the world a better place. And perhaps it’s better that someone is an argumentative and thick skinned woman like me. After all, I’m used to invading the domain of men – otherwise known as the internet.

     

     

    This posts now been in my ‘draft’ folder for a few days and I can’t remember what else I was going to write… I’m pretty sure I’ll come back and write about this again…

  • First year musings on getting good grades

    If I try really hard, I can get a GPA 4.0 for this year. I most likely won’t. Something will have to go very wrong for me to not get a GPA 3.5 so I’m banking on that.

    I’ve had a few conversations with people though over the last few months who have asked how I stay on top of it. To be frank, I study for my degree, I run my own business as a freelance writer/photographer and I still find the time to enjoy a rather considerable amount of hobby-time as well. Not to mention this academic year has seen two close family funerals, three house moves, drug dealer housemates, a period where I was commuting around five hours a day to make lectures and a couple of bouts of illness. I think I’ve got things figured out.

    1. Always go to the lectures.

    Just fucking do it. For six out of my eight modules this year I’ve had a 10% attendance mark awarded just for attending 80% of the lectures. In real terms, that’s enough to turn your GPA 3.0 into a 4.0 in many cases. I was getting up at 5am to drive round the M25 and get to my lectures, before driving back again. It was totally worth it.

    On top of that the lectures are full of good stuff. Sure, you might find that a lecturers style isn’t to your taste, but just grit your teeth and get on with paying attention and taking notes.

    2. Stop playing on your fucking phone.

    It’s two hours. Just TWO HOURS. With a break in the middle. Seriously. Can you not just leave your phone on silent in your pocket for TWO HOURS? If you’re playing on Facebook, texting people or prolifically taking selfies in class (!) then you aren’t listening and you aren’t taking notes. I might catch the occasional urgent email on my laptop during class from an editor, but like I said in the opening paragraph – I’m the one with the successful work-study-life balance here and I’m getting 70% on a considerable amount of my assignments. Aside from anything else, it’s really distracting for those around you. If you’re not bothered to get a decent grade then just don’t bother going to the lecture – it’s pretty harsh to also drag everyone else down around you.

    3. Take notes.

    Don’t just sit there feeling sorry for yourself about how hung over you are. In fact, don’t get hung over the night before lectures. I worked it out – I pay approximately £45 PER HOUR for my lectures. Is it really worth going to them in a state where you’re not ready to work?

    But make sure you take notes in a way that feels right to you. Lots of guides say that you should take them by hand and write in your own form of shorthand. I take them longhand on my laptop and in many cases I transcribe the lecture reasonably accurately in Evernote which also makes them searchable. I use these notes to refer back to in essays. It’s called playing the game.

    4. Play the game.

    No one cares about your opinion. You’re just a shitty undergrad student and anything you think of has already been thought of and written about by about a gazillion students before. Read the essay briefings and listen carefully (and take notes!) in the sessions where you’re briefed on the essay.

    I recently got 80% in an essay. You know how I did this? I answered the question. In fact he asked us seven questions in the essay brief. Some people didn’t bother to answer them. I just answered the question. He also complimented me on my flow. I answered them in the order he gave them to us. It’s not rocket science. Just answer the question.

    In addition, flatter your tutor. Make the extra effort to pick their book up from the library or search their journal articles online. Quote them once. Also engage with them in class. “So I was wondering if I could ask you about your specialist subject…” tutors love that shit. Don’t be fake though, be genuinely interested. In fact, of course you’re interested, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it as a subject at university, right?

    5. Read the fucking books.

    They give you a reading list for a reason. Use it. Read the books on it. It doesn’t take long to skim read a factual book and make notes on it. A few hours tops. I’ve been doing one a week for each module. It’s even better when you’ve been given the essay topics at the start of term, you can start reading with that in mind. Then you can do what I do and write your short essays in half a day flat, once you’re prepped.

    6. Play the game II.

    I keep a record of all the scores I’ve got. And then I work out what I need to get on the second/third pieces of work in order to get a GPA 4.0 (70%). At the end of this term I’m facing two exams which need smaller amounts of effort to get an overall 70% and one that will take ALL THE WORK. Guess where I’m focussing my efforts? Yup, that’s right. Time spend is proportional to the amount of marks you want to get. Study harder to get more marks. Don’t waste time studying harder for minimal reward on subjects you’re doing well at.

    7. Have a hobby.

    Yup, that’s right. Have a hobby. Not a team sport or drinking with your mates. Drinking isn’t a hobby. Have a hobby you can do on your own, when you want to do it. Can’t sleep at 4am? Do your hobby! Suffering writers block? Do your hobby! Seriously. A hobby is a great way to get over writers block. I’m a *really* bad writer. I’m even worse for procrastinating. So usually I take a few hours out, play some Warcraft or do some costume making and then I’m ready to go again. Honestly, it works. Get a hobby.

    8. Love your subject.

    When you love your subject, it’s never a chore to sit down and work on it. If you don’t love your subject… maybe you need to think about studying something else?

     

    This might all sound super obvious. And patronising. But I dunno, people don’t seem to get it. Do something you love. Make time for something you love. £27000 is an awful lot of money to fuck it all up because you can’t manage your time or because you want to go out drinking every night.

  • ISM – Self portraits musing

    So I’d initially set out on this journey having a fairly resolute idea of the pictures that I wanted to go into my ‘exhibition’. There were Nan Goldin and Tracey Emin, Ana Mendieta’s video work, Robert Mapplethorpe and then David Bailey for his hard and unrelenting stare.

    And then it started to niggle me. I don’t have permission to use these artworks in a print format. I know that there are arguments about ‘fair use’ and educational use and that’s all well and good. *Legally* I could use them. However it just didn’t sit right. I wanted to do a real exploration into the subject and perhaps discover something new.

    Of course, as it always happens, the project grows in my head. Wouldn’t this be cool if… people could buy the book and my essays. If it was an ‘artists book’ (more about that below). Wouldn’t this be cool if… we could pull this together into an exhibition. I like to dream. And I like to dream big. Even if it doesn’t go anywhere it’s always great fun to dream. So instead I’ve been considering scouting out some relative unknowns – although I have to admit, I will still be contacting the ‘big names’ to find out if I could potentially use their images in the book.

    So about this artist book idea, that’s an interesting proposal to me. Artists have always made books of their work (well, in the last hundred years or so anyway) and so the artist book is a medium with history. It’s interesting. But can a curator make an artist book? Is that what my book would be? Perhaps it would be a curators book. Doesn’t sound as fancy as artists book, does it? It’s the same idea on the whole though.

    I’m hoping to reach out over the next few months to artists who have shot self portraits and see if they might be interested in coming together in this project. Its not going to make them any money, but if the project comes together over the next year and something interesting comes out of it, maybe there’s a group exhibition in there too. Certainly I have access to the space at Oxford Brookes – I could submit a proposal for an exhibition and we could go out and crowdsource the funding.

    It’s a bit of a strange way round to doing things. Conceiving the catalogue first and then potentially if it works looking at an exhibition but I don’t think it’s impossible. And it would certainly start to get my name out there as a writer, book producer and curator.

    These are just ideas at the moment, nothing is set in stone. I have a few people in mind I want to approach and I’m hoping that they’ll say yet. But we shall see. Ultimately though, I need to write two essays on a body of photographs. I mustn’t lose sight of the goal.

    But the goal is coming along nicely and I’m starting to get my teeth into some serious research. Today I’m attending a panel of six papers on the subject of Exhibition Cases as Experimental Spaces. It’s been rich with source material and ideas and I plan to draw huge inspiration from Richard Hamilton’s catalogue designs for the ICA. The idea that a political message can be put across in a catalogue is an interesting one. Thursday I saw a series of papers on Feminist Futures in Art Practice, Theory and History which also ties in nicely to what I’m doing. I believe that there are particularly discourses around the way that ‘men’ and ‘women’ represent themselves through photographic self portraiture – now more than ever with the rise of the camera phone selfie. And on top of that yesterday was a whole day on the subject of Expanded Photography where various academics and artists examined what photographers have done in the past that is outside the box, as it were.

    I hope to bring all these of these aspects together in my exhibition catalogue project, very much using it as an experimental space for the curation of photography. I’m hoping it will be really interesting, not just to me and my tutors but perhaps to a wider audience.

    And of course if you’d like to nominate an artist who has worked with self portraiture, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

  • ISM – Theme and Project

    Well, it all got decided on Friday.

    I’m going to be working towards producing an exhibition catalogue. A physical book, printed most likely by one of the on-demand services.

    I have a word limit of 3000 words total and it’s not allowed to be an extended essay (they prefer us to do more experimental projects). The current plan is to produce a longer introductory essay that explores the themes and concepts and then shorter essays introducing each ‘room’.

    My subject is going to be how photographers represent themselves through self portraiture, focussing on feminist/queer studies interpretations of the male gaze. I’m thinking that I’d like to plan two rooms, one room with ‘watchers’ and one with ‘watchees’.

    I’ll stick some examples up in a sec, although I’m using the internet through my mobile phone since I’ve just moved into my new flat today. No proper broadband until 24th March. 🙁

     

    Nan one month after being battered – Nan Goldin

    Self Portrait – David Bailey

    Self Portrait – Mapplethorpe

    Bailey is a ‘gazer’ in the shot here, while the other two are being ‘gazed’. Mapplethorpe is the interesting one that I’m keen to include – as a gay man he doesn’t fit into the Western Canon of what artists should be… traditionally…

    I also want to include an Ana Medieta film – possibly this one. I’m comfortable putting video under photography, or rather grouping them together as ‘lens based media’. I think it’ll provoke interesting discussion with my tutors anyway. This is one of her photographs, but I’m keen to research and include a film.

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  • Independent Study Module

    Today there was good news to be had at university!

    We’re making the module selections for our second and third years (seems so far away…) at university. One of the reasons I picked this course was because of the independent study module that we can opt to take in the second year. It’s been agreed in principle that I can take it and I just have to meet with the head of department in two weeks in order to discuss my programme options and start putting ideas together.

    I figured it would be interesting to document the process here and to go through the process of designing, writing and then ultimately studying my course. And I suppose if you follow along then you might also be doing a second year module in something related to photography!

    That’s going to be my subject choice – photography. I’m hoping to do a photography related dissertation in my third year and so this would provide me with the time to get a base foundation of knowledge sorted before I attempt that in my third year.

    But exciting times lie ahead! Assuming the drive home from Oxford tonight isn’t too torturous, I plan on starting some ideas for plans tonight. Nothing like being totally over prepared for my meeting.

  • Teaching basic study skills to those who don’t want to learn

    I know, a longwinded post title, right?

    My intention in this post is not to ‘call anyone out’ or to diss those who lecture me if they happen to somehow read this. My lecturers know how much I love the course I’m doing and that my feedback is overwhelmingly positive. With that said, here we go.

    As I settle into the second semester of my undergrad degree at the ancient age (compared to my classmates) of twenty eight there are some things that are bothering me. The hangovers of my colleagues I can just about manage. I can even mostly handle the irritation of people lacking respect for the lecturers by whispering to each other (no matter how quiet you think you are, you’re not) and the constant need to check phones. But one thing stands out.

    It’s the lack of ambition.

    I had this dream that university would be this place where everyone was there with a common goal. There would be hours lost debating art historical politics and investigating radical, revolutionary artists. On how we should deal with ‘the female problem’ and the canon of dead white guys. Or anything exciting. You know, time spent in the library together pouring over exciting journals and visits to exhibitions.

    Apparently not.

    I mean, I’d settle for just ‘interested in class’ and ‘does the minimum background reading’ but it seems that people don’t even want to do that.

    In the first semester one of our modules had two pieces of coursework. The first was a guided bibliography where we were directed to investigate, in steps, an artwork and basically compile a bibliography for a fantasy essay that we had not written. We had to write about why we selected those sources. The second piece of coursework was a guided essay with a set of questions to think about that led us through the process of constructing an essay. We had a similar one for our architecture course but it didn’t seem as forced. I treated these pieces of work with my usual level of contempt and go the

    The issue I have with these pieces of work is this. They should not be taught at undergraduate level.

    I appreciate that during A Levels you may not do subjects where you are taught how to approach research or write a bibliography, I certainly wasn’t taught these skills since I did physics, maths and music technology all those years ago. However when I came to do my first essay with the Open University we were simply thrown in at the deep end with nothing more than a ‘study skills’ guide and the phone number of our tutor. We were expected to go away and teach ourselves form the myriad of resources available how to write an essay.

    This stuff isn’t rocket science. I would expect anyone who is capable of studying at undergraduate level to have the ability and the drive to go and find this stuff out. It’s not as if writing essays is a surprise on the course, you have to do it on every undergraduate course. To be honest if you can’t even be bothered to look up how to write a correct essay then you’re not going to get very far.

    Lets put this in real terms. Each module costs me £1125 which is quite a lot of money to someone who doesn’t have very much. I want to spend that £1125 on learning and being tested to find out where my abilities lie – not being taught how to write an essay. Now obviously not all of the teaching on the module was spent teaching these skills, but a surprisingly large portion of it was. It was just frustrating.

    But the frustration is not directed at my lecturers, the course or the university system. My frustration is directed to my colleagues who do not seem to want to open a book and learn something for themselves.