Reflection on TENC process:
I have from this month (January 2014) a 6
month permanent contract at CPUT, lecturing Surface Design, 1st, 2nd
& 3rd year. Yesss to
regular income!
I am thus very busy:
- 1. Lecturing
- 2. Performing TENC
- 3. Managing Thundafund campaign
- 4. Starting MTech (I am submitting TENC as a maters research project!)
Lecturing
I am excited, happy and very grateful for
this opportunity. I feel at home in Surface Design. I am aghast at the amount
of admin that goes into teaching and lecturing. I am busy from the moment I
arrive, and by the end of the day feel I have no-thing to show for what I have
done during the day. No-thing ever seems to reach a stage of completion, things
are constantly being redone. I need to shift my focus from concrete tangible
outcomes (objects and materials) to processes and procedures which are simply
on-going/continuous rhythms. If I don’t, I’m likely to burn up as I tend to
want to work harder/achieve more in an attempt to end with something.
TENC
Time has become really scarce. I find I’m
not getting to make yarn, knit and perform. I’m also becoming increasingly
aware how labour intensive the yarn making is. I feel I need to honour this
aspect of production more.
I have been reflecting on the pressure I
have been putting myself under by expecting myself to produce a piece of fabric
(150 x 150cm/18 – 19 balls of yarns worth of knitting) a month. I’m realising
that this rather idealistic approach is quiet mechanical, demanding or
expecting a consistent regular output. In reality this is not the case. The
performing and production of yarn and fabric has been irregular. My focus has
been consistent.
Besides other objects, over the past 7
months, TENC has produced 4 completed cloths, lost 1 near completed one, and
has one in process.
Today I was trying out the machines in
Fashion Design to see whether I could stitch in the department and make yarn on
campus. The zigzag machine refused to stitch paper! During this experiment,
Hannie the secretary of Fashion and Surface chatted about the work, saying that
she had been musing on possible uses of the fabrics. I reacted saying ‘OH! but
this art, it doesn’t have any use!”
Anyhow, I put my arrogance and closed-mindedness
aside and placed the piece of knitting against her window as she had suggested.
This opened something up for me. I was able to see the work in different ways:
a suggestion of a garment, another possibility for display (light shining
through the fabric), that I don’t need to produce completed uniform squares
(that maybe it’s this very aspect in education that needs to developed and
evolved), that the piece of knitting attached to the yarn with untorn stitched
paper altogether make a piece.
Thank you Hannie for opening my eyes!
I have also considered going back to the
orginal concept of producing a huge piece of knitting, which as an object
becomes problematic. What would one do with such an object?
Thundafund
I have been putting more energy into the
crowd funding.
I have targeted organisations, rather than
individuals. I have issues around the whole crowd-funding concept:
I am really uncomfortable asking for help,
particularly money.
I am REALLY
uncomfortable selling things. I don’t appreciate things been sold to me, I
find it invasive and thus feel I’m out of integrity doing it to others.
Having written all that; the campaign is
almost 75% of the 1st milestone (R 10 000), It seems this will
happen and TENC can then tour Jozi and Pretoria!
Masters
I have received enthusiastic and encouraging
responses for TENC as a master’s research project.
I’m looking at the performance as a
research methodology, a method of collecting data. The book would be the
findings and or analysis of this research. I not clear on all the aspects of
the research yet.
I have also been encouraged to explore
unorthodox forms of presenting the masters.
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