Sunday 27 September 2009

Coming Up For Air!


What with one thing and another (a trip to Venice, Sarah's stint on 'the fourth plinth' and my coffee morning in case of Macmillan Cancer Support) it's been a fair while since I last posted anything here. I do wonder what the purpose is...after all at best a handful of people view it...all of whom I could easily have a decent conversation with! Nonetheless I shall try and rachet up the postings as I move into the second year of the MA. We have been given our initial materials for the upcoming semester that include the pro forma of the 'learning contract' which we should have completed in draft form by Wednesday week (our first session of AY 09/10). A daunting prospect - even for someone like myself who started drafting these things around 15 years ago when a colleague and myself established an MA by project and felt we ought to have a means of benchmarking the student's progress over a major project against some sensibly articulated document setting out what they intended to do.

Of course now the boot is on the other foot and I am the student I'm bristling at the impudence of lecturers trying to tie down my unfettered creativity in advance of making the work! Still it's a good discipline to have and exactly why I signed up to the programme - though I am determined to keep the document hazy and provisional for as long as I can get away with it!

Over the past few weeks I have been mulling over the final project and now I have to write up a draft it seems so...banal...methinks. But whenever I try to think of something more exciting, dynamic or - goodness - original I simply blank out.

Anyway more of that later - for now here's an image of my 'Andy Warhol says give peace a chance' - made in 1972 to accompany a 'sound piece' and performance - and resurrected for my Macmillan Coffee Morning event!