Today I think my PhD has turned another corner. In an exciting way. I met with both my new main supervisor and second supervisor.
I kind of went in with where I was up to rather than what the project was about so it took a while to unpick everything and with the help of Anna actually remember what my project was about! I think I’ve kind of lost my thread along the way quite a bit and not having set amounts of time to invest into it has meant that all the knowledge I had at the beginning has drifted out of my head!
We talked about making…I showed them my finished ‘crochet toilet doll’ which although I’m glad i’ve finished it felt a step away from my usual work, which when I showed them my leather and silicone stuff I think they realised how ‘lost’ i’ve got. Although it’s a translation of the story into a new object that to me ’embodies’ the story and has 
been made whilst thinking of the story it doesn’t capture my own practice as a maker. So….after not much thinking about it really, we discussed casting her in silicone and all sorts! I think this would be a really good idea so i’ve already crocheted a couple of samples to try putting in silicone to see if they can be removed. Really looking forward to getting back to my roots!!!
It’s also made me more excited as my leather craft was a side that I wanted to develop further and weirdly 2 years ago today I was setting up for the exhibition in Florence as part of the IFFTI conference! I want to get back to that kind of thing.
The other things we discussed was the actual question. How it’s kind of evolved away from the focus being on ‘love’ to the focus being on objects and possessions, which is the way I was starting to read when I did my progression panel.
I’ve been advised on a couple of books which I’ve bought and found in the library and downloaded a few papers, so tomorrow I’m going to get stuck into a spot of reading. I think before I was having trouble reading because I was falling asleep really easily due to the high blood sugar and anxiety I’d been suffering, but I think now I may be good to go!
So now I feel invigorated, I’ve got to plan a few things for my new team and ME.
- Write a couple of hundred words about each case study so the team know what I’m looking at. This will also give me a bit of time to revisit them and reignite ideas.
- When reading the stories make sure I am looking for…my own emotional response to the story, context of the story, where they were and what it was and why they are telling the story.
- Re-think about the question. Does it need to adapt….? Probably, but I think I will do some further reading around objects first.
- READ STUFF…I’ve got a few things that I plan to look at over the weekend and tomorrow on my research day.
- Keep a record of how each of the stories evolve. I think I will do this as part of the blog and then it will make it easier to piece together at the end.
- Re-visit the timeline – Plot the case studies and how I will do them.
I think that’s plenty to be getting on with, but most importantly I need to make the project mine, it’s my research and I can chose the direction so to be confident in my ideas and work and show it!
A Matter of Artefact 