Tag: Independent Study Module

  • Proposing to study video games

    Proposing to study video games

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    So I’d previously decided that I wanted to study photography and self portraits for my independent study module as part of my undergraduate degree.

    I’ve changed my mind. Feminist photography critique is a massively over subscribed-subject. People aren’t saying exactly what I’d like to say, but there are people saying things that are very similar. What I really wanted was to find something that was close to photography but not photography. A subject where I could acquire skills that could be applied to photography (as well as other areas of contemporary art and design) but an area that also offered the tantalising possibility of creating genuinely groundbreaking research.

    Video Games

    You heard that right. Video Games. They’re very much an untapped resource when it comes to academic scholarship. Although there is comprehensive game design and game theory scholarship out there, there’s very little that focusses on the social implications of games. There’s lots of critique too, but out of critique comes scholarship and I plan to be riding that first wave.

    Since I know that several people are interested in following what I do with this module I plan to blog about it. And for completeness you can download my initial proposal here:

    Video Game ISM Proposal

    Hopefully I’ll post more about my rational about choosing this as a subject later… but for now… to work!

  • 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.