the quarter light

Literature Challenge 2.0

I have to confess that the act of creating my post about my literature challenge inspired more questions than answers within me.

I feel excited, so I think this is a step in the right direction.

Frances of What The Fran reached out with kind words and asked me about what plans I had for "output" - and as encouraged as I was by her note, I realized that this was a question that had been weighing upon me as well.

Thoughts on Rigidity

It struck me that a rigid following of the syllabus and its accompanying assignments was being too hard on myself.

Now that I was doing something for my own pleasure, I wanted the opportunity to sit with it a little.

I wanted more time than I felt like I had when I was in formal schooling.

The impossibility of utopia

But... How much time was enough?

I knew that time and money was a constraint I had to live with.

One option was to MAKE time. The vision: Wake up at 4:30am. Zen master. Me, myself and ze books!

... Yeah. Nah.

I am a working adult, who has rent to pay, meals to cook, chores to carry out. I come home emotionally drained and physically exhausted and heavily reliant on social media to numb myself (D:)

I came to the conclusion that going from one extreme to the other was unsustainable. Upon reflection, I realized that I'd tried to do it before. But 5am wake-ups (!!!) quickly turned into 15-20min writing sessions on the bus (!!!) before work (surprisingly productive).

A gentle forcing

As I scoured the internet for ideas on "what to do", I stumbled upon this post from Sarah Rae Is A Real Artist, where she referenced Lenka Clayton's self-imposed residency in motherhood aka ARiM.

Reading the ARiM manifesto, I felt something shift quietly within me when these lines came up:

"... Despite a legacy of public artist/parents it still seems to be a commonly held belief that being an engaged mother and serious artist are mutually exclusive endeavors. I don’t believe or want to perpetrate this. I like to imagine the two roles not as competing directions but to view them, force them gently if necessary, to inform one another."

(from the manifesto linked here)

I'm not a mum, but this idea was strangely refreshing. Instead of denying who I was, I could instead focus on an integration between my work and what I was passionate about - two parts of my life that currently feel separate.

I had been researching the question of "what to do". But perhaps I needed to go backwards, to go forwards. I asked myself again: "why am I doing it?" or "what question am I seeking to answer as I undertake this endeavour?".

Pulling on the thread brought, some questions followed:

The possibility of residing

The pressure of performing lessened. It felt freeing to research "residencies" rather than "curriculums". The structure of art residencies made a lot more sense to me as a self-guided learner outside of school, as opposed to the formality of a set syllabus.

I decided to take inspiration from Sarah Rae's residency (linked above), which is being split into three parts, which I've paraphrased into the following:

(Note:I vaguely recall someone else using those terms, but I can't remember who right now - will credit if it comes back to me!)

Input

This is a time for gathering and consuming data. To begin with, my primary materials will remain much the same as those prescribed by the course, namely:

Secondary materials would come in the form of research (e.g. lectures, wikipedia, youtube, etc) to answer questions I've got.

Gestation

This is a time for processing and progressing.

One key component is the keeping of a studio diary - I'm interpreting this as a document that serves as a log, to capture progress + process notes, questions/answers, summaries, and all kinds of loose threads.

This makes sense to me as a self-guided learner - learning by discovery/accident means needing to pay attention to the thoughts / questions that float in and out of one's consciousness like clouds. Hopefully, the fragments of ideas and observations contained within can light the way for future work.

This may also be a time to attempt some prescribed assignments, as I do feel that it would be appropriate to test my understanding and explore curiosities/conflicts. This would be a good opportunity for refining formal thinking and writing skills too.

Output

From there, my thought is to come up with a portfolio of "threads" turned into more formal pieces of work - e.g. close reading exercises, research essays, zines... the world is your oyster.

I learnt about this concept from Arden's Asides, who is incorporating this into her framework for personal learning. I appreciate the flexibility of having different options to demonstrate what has been learnt.

Take up space

Separately, while knocking around the "residency" spaces on Substack, I found this perspective from JournalRash.

She mentioned the idea of a "research residency", where "the research is the work". It's a space to knock on doors, try things, make things, fail at things, try again. I really appreciate the freedom that this brings... but I do feel the desire to have some accountability and some peer involvement so I am going to explore what that could look like in this space over the next few weeks, months, etc.

We'll see. I'm going to show up to the page... I wonder what will happen next.

Thanks for reading. Also, if you are on a similar journey of exploration/learning, write to me here. It would be nice to know I'm not alone.

N.

#my-literature-challenge