Blogging on Degrees Unedited gave me the chance to write down thoughts and worries that were running through my head about the degree and upload it onto the website, instead of my usual ramblings and confusions that had been noted down onto paper and then lost within the piles of things to get done! Occasionally I would get emails from people saying they had read my blog, and then investigated further into my website, and then from there we sometimes would discuss ideas I was struggling with or things they thought were strengths and weaknesses.
Since graduation, we have set up an artist group called Tether www.tether.org.uk Knowing that if we didn’t start something straight away, it would be difficult to carry on alone individually; we built up this group and got studios and have begun to integrate ourselves into the art scene in Nottingham. The main excitement was Tether Festival that took place last November consisting of us curating shows, producing and submitting work and putting on performances and events.
I decided to throw myself into this opportunity, and collaborated with Matt Cooper in a performance named Forecasts. I then produced a book entitled “Were You There When You Read This?” which was exhibited in ‘Beneath the Tarmac: The Grass’. The last project was curating ‘Throes’ exhibition with Charlotte Pratley which was hard work and time consuming but we learnt an awful lot, and thankfully it very successful! More information available on my website: www.alexandriaclark.com
The Nottingham Trent Fine Art degree show, went incredibly well. The whole show was curated and executed professionally.
My degree piece, was similar my earler piece at the Surface Gallery piece Purest Possible Experience.
A small room to myself; all walls and ceiling painted pure white. The ultimate white cube. A simple desk and chair. A computer screen linked to a large projector.
For one hour, each and every day of the show, I entered the room, sat down and my fingers took their place.
Each letter and word, pause and flashing cursor was transcribed through the machines and onto the lit square on the wall behind me.
From here, the story began to unfold. A narrative of a freewriting, the rewriting of memorized previous writings and writing in response to the people and environment around me. No names, just you, I, she, he and they. No names of places, just descriptions. Complete ambiguity; only hints of the possible. Attempts to keep the viewer hooked... wanting to read on, yet alongside this, the atmosphere that maybe they are not supposed to be there reading.
I found doing this everyday for a week good to push myself, but it was hardwork and quite tiring and time consuming. Throughout the whole performance, I never once looked back and re-read what I had written. And at the end, I didn't have it in myself to read through it for about a week. It had become too important and too intriguing to take lightly...I had to pick the perfect moment. But in the end... it was just one of those days...the rain pouring and hours to waste... and it was then, that I just sat at my laptop screen and read and kept reading. It was strange how much I could see within the piece. Just like a dream. One where you can see yourself relating your past day's activities, events and the people you saw or thought about, seem to just seep through into your fantastical imagination. My life. My friends' lives.... characters from books and the movies... places I have never been to and experiences I have only ever dreamt about. The performance made me fall into a complete trance... I could hear the words around me...I could sense the people...but my mind... my mind was somewhere else...
This trance is an amazing feeling... yet it still scares me about what I might say or feel during the performance, and who will read it!
Anyway, I was happy with the piece... and when it came to a quarter to midnight the day before I thought the results came online... i received a text saying they were already there. I wasn't ready....already in my pjs, no one around... and I logged in... 75 first class honours... just couldn't believe it! So called my parents... and then went out with my bearded best mate to celebrate... what a good night!
# 14 [19 May 2007]
Surface Gallery exhibition Double Take has gone well this week, and it is coming to the last day today. The last day of the last show in the Rules Of The Game series.I have done an hours performance each day 2-3pm which has taken it's toll on me... I never realised how much hard work it would be..I am worried that I am running out of stories to tell... well maybe then it will become more focussed ont he freeform writing, maybe be more creative with the characters perhaps? I scrolled through yesterday (I have not re-read any yet...am going to wait until it is all over) and I have actually written so so much! I think I may look into making it into a book, and that can be the result of what the performances become. And only within the book is the whole text able to be read. Now to get on with making my artist statement more concise, and check my cv is up to date, and finish off my Practical Research... then hopefully I will be on my way to having it sorted! Am also in the process of getting my website up... not much to be seen right now...but it's getting there... at least the colour's all good!!!
alexandria clark http://www.alexandriaclark.com
# 13 [16 April 2007]
The New Writing is done...and is finished with for the moment...which is fantastic...
I think it was ok in the end...it said what I wanted about storytelling and creating lives. It included many quotes from people who have inspired me...and I feel I managed to convey the idea of role-play in the structure... now do I actually think it worked ...or would I like to think it did? Anyway...cant change it now so...what can you do...
Next step...on to writing the essay for the Transition exhibition at Surface Galley, Mansfield Rd....the first draft has to be done by friday...its monday...still not luck with a beginning. And the exhibition starts on the 1st May... All will be fine I'm sure...what with sonic washing machines and other play type stuff...it'll all be fun and games wont it?!
oh...and next week...Im making a start on my website design with Mark Gubb...hopefully that will go well...if my heads still here on earth by that time!
# 12 [10 April 2007]
Bloody hell!... What has happened to me? I used to be so good with deadlines. I would get set the work and then would get it done asap usually within that week.
But now...now when it actually counts.. bloody writers block! OK, so I have this piece of writing to do ...called "New Writing" ..oh right!
A creative yet critical piece of writing...only 1000 words... that tackles ideas within your practice and is also a way of writing that you dont usually work in. GREAT! So where do I start?
Well I wrote half of it a while back... transcribed a conversation had with someone that I had written about within my practice... and we talked about why he thought I did; the ideas of roleplay; and of voyeurism. I think this part is quite successful. It really puts another look on my work...you see the 'one watched''s feelings...not just my own.
And now on to the second half! Deadline...Wednesday... Yes that's tomorrow... Well...ok so my idea... to continue the idea of conversation...but in this half, take quotes from artists, authors, writers, philosophers and use these as parts of the conversation...
Does that make sense? Probably not...but it does in my head..and hopefully will once it is put to paper...or screen and then to paper!
It will basically be me, having a conversation/discussion with authors, artists, writers, philosphers, perhaps poets....about roleplay and writing.
I plan to have it starting with the transcribed conversation..justified to the right...and the second will be justified to the left... an attempt at a more free piece on the right and the more constructed on the left..and hopefully then I will have fulfilled the criteria of citing references and being creative..and having an argument with in the piece...discussing the themes within my work. Sounds great to me... that is if it works...so its in for midday tomorrow...that means I have approximately 24hours to get it written, edited, printed off and handed in...
I was asked to write a piece for our degree show catalogue...and this is the final piece I have written.
I decided I wanted it to be like a stream of consciousness ...kind of note like.
Writing.
Writing...the quest to express something of life...to translate a notion, an experience, a record of something we don't want to let fade into the distance.... the distant past. Through this natural....or strangely unnatural urge to create, we all as future artists... are yearning for this translation...this ability to make something that replicates an element of what is already there.... or to invent something that shows elements of what we see could be there.
On occasion, this urge can only be portrayed through language. Sometimes words are the only way... the only way to find... or even come close to describing...to creating... to fulfilling this urge.
Language is everywhere. It is vital within the visual art context...You may not realise it...but subtly it is everywhere...from the titles we give our work, to the pieces written about it, to the conversations that surround it. It is the beginning of the art...the core. Only from the words, the thoughts created in the mind...and then transcribed out onto the paper of your moleskin notebook ...and then...only then does it reach materialisation. It is the beginning and the end... the bookends that encase our practice...and at the same time, the thread that runs through and binds, holding the object and intention together
At times, nothing but the simple complex forms of words could possibly transcribe and portray what is yearned to tell you... intensions of giving something to this world.
Of bringing you in to ours and thus forming a bond...a bond only reached through the connection of an idea.
Sometimes things cannot just be translated into an image. A visual image just isn't enough...it cannot describe fully... it cannot control like a word can... It cannot take you completely in...and then...if it chooses...chuck you out on to the street... fed up with the unreality or the rational that you bring to it. Words surround us daily. They have the power to encircle, to grab hold of you...and not let go...until they feel like it. A photograph can signify memories...you can see the look in the eyes, the location, perhaps the occasion...yet...only a series of letters, that make up words, that make up a sentence, that make up a paragraph, that can completely entangle you. There is no escape once you are in...yet if you could ...you probably wouldn't choose to.
Sometimes reality just becomes overtaken by the signs of reality...or the debris...of what we leave behind. The real...the facts and figures...the experiences I long to cling on to...grab hold of...become a work of fiction...or what we want to remember and what precise moments we choose to let stay in the edited version of our past.
Something more is needed in the image than you can ever create visually.
Text can sometimes be the only way to show more...give a smell, and air, a lighting a composition that images have to leave out.
I have recently just seen the initial draft of the advertising poster for our show...and I think it is terrible. It looks as if someone has just found computers and photoshop and used every tacky function in the book..i mean..on the screen...spray paint and jaggedy images.,..you cant even tell what they are!
It's ridiculous...now how do I get up the confidence to tell someone?!!
a pathway that connects the artist with their audience.
Through this idea, I aim to produce work that can reach the viewer on a personal level, by evoking memories, exposing my own, and taking them through an experience that connects us intimately.
I am mainly interested in recording myself and others around me;
It is the notion of watching people and exploring the boundaries or ‘crossover' between innocent observation and actually becoming an intrusive voyeur that truly intrigues and excites me.
The people of our world seem to have an obsession with being noticed. I share the idea that we are all worried that one day we will realise that our life has passed us by without us being recorded and thus not continuing to existing in some form after we have physically gone with writer Margaret Atwood.[1]
My audience is for not for the young as it can be quite intimate and could be unsuitable, but apart from that, it is for anyone: each viewer has the potential to develop characters within my story and thus become entwined with my memories.
I am continually writing down descriptions, feelings, notes on certain experiences in my many notebooks and incorporate parts of it into my freewriting when appropriate and where certain thoughts spark off connections to these recordings of past encounters.
My work takes the form of language and text within a performative context. Through live performances of typing, I have explored the act of writing, where time is overlapped, where the dimensions of memories in the past, and the record of people in the present are merged.
I am very interested in how the words appear on the page and fall
down
the page
and how each pause and how it is supposed to be read is shown through the spacing.
Through being personal and writing about private and intimate relationships and experiences, it creates a sense of awkwardness and the uncomfortable for the audience. I find this control that it gives me, a very important part of my work.
Within my work there is a continual theme of the idea of playing games and ‘role-play'. During the performances, I take on the roles and perspectives of different people, both real and fictional. Throughout the piece, there is persistent questioning on whether it is make believe or truth or a mixture.
When it comes down to it... it all really...
is just a game.
[1]("Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we are still alive. We wish to assert our existence...At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.") (ATWOOD, M., Blind Assassin, P188)
# 7 [22 March 2007]
I have just found out that my proposal has been accepted for one of the "Rules of Game" exhibitions at Surface Gallery, Mansfield Road, Nottingham. It is titled "Double Take" and will be on 15th-19th May 2007.
I feel pretty excited yet scared as it is so close to the degree show, although I feel that it will be a good chance to prepare for it and hopefully straighten out any problems.
Today I talked with the curator at 1pm and we have sorted out where I will be showing/performing and talked through the work of others within the exhibition. I think it should be good. It's all about perception and possibilities of things not being quite as they seem. I feel that mine should fit in with this.
I am currently worrying slightly about finding the perfect desk and making sure that I can hire out a projector from the stores at uni, and also that it will not overheat, and that I can find a really cheap laptop to buy(all i need is notepad on it) so that I can leave it on the gallery, without too much worry.
But they seemed enthusiastic about my piece. I will start just before the opening begins, and then continue for the first hour, and then finish and hopefully enjoy the rest of the opening night with a couple of glasses of red wine!(fingers crossed I wont need them too much by them).
I think the most worrying part, is that people I know will be there..and what I write about can be quite personal and intimate, and although they should be questioning whether it is real or not...Im not sure I want acquaintances to know me quite that well!! it's so much easier with strangers!!
Especially with a particular person who is also exhibiting...I am unsure whether that means that I wont be able to write about certain things, or whether it will just mean that it will be more powerful?
I dont know...I suppose I shall just have to wait and see!
[enlarge]
Alexandria Clark, 2007.
# 16 [27 February 2008]
2008 update
Blogging on Degrees Unedited gave me the chance to write down thoughts and worries that were running through my head about the degree and upload it onto the website, instead of my usual ramblings and confusions that had been noted down onto paper and then lost within the piles of things to get done! Occasionally I would get emails from people saying they had read my blog, and then investigated further into my website, and then from there we sometimes would discuss ideas I was struggling with or things they thought were strengths and weaknesses.
Since graduation, we have set up an artist group called Tether www.tether.org.uk Knowing that if we didn’t start something straight away, it would be difficult to carry on alone individually; we built up this group and got studios and have begun to integrate ourselves into the art scene in Nottingham. The main excitement was Tether Festival that took place last November consisting of us curating shows, producing and submitting work and putting on performances and events.
I decided to throw myself into this opportunity, and collaborated with Matt Cooper in a performance named Forecasts. I then produced a book entitled “Were You There When You Read This?” which was exhibited in ‘Beneath the Tarmac: The Grass’. The last project was curating ‘Throes’ exhibition with Charlotte Pratley which was hard work and time consuming but we learnt an awful lot, and thankfully it very successful! More information available on my website: www.alexandriaclark.com
[enlarge]
Alexandria Clark.
# 15 [13 June 2007]
The Nottingham Trent Fine Art degree show, went incredibly well. The whole show was curated and executed professionally.
My degree piece, was similar my earler piece at the Surface Gallery piece Purest Possible Experience.
A small room to myself; all walls and ceiling painted pure white. The ultimate white cube. A simple desk and chair. A computer screen linked to a large projector.
For one hour, each and every day of the show, I entered the room, sat down and my fingers took their place.
Each letter and word, pause and flashing cursor was transcribed through the machines and onto the lit square on the wall behind me.
From here, the story began to unfold. A narrative of a freewriting, the rewriting of memorized previous writings and writing in response to the people and environment around me. No names, just you, I, she, he and they. No names of places, just descriptions. Complete ambiguity; only hints of the possible. Attempts to keep the viewer hooked... wanting to read on, yet alongside this, the atmosphere that maybe they are not supposed to be there reading.
I found doing this everyday for a week good to push myself, but it was hardwork and quite tiring and time consuming. Throughout the whole performance, I never once looked back and re-read what I had written. And at the end, I didn't have it in myself to read through it for about a week. It had become too important and too intriguing to take lightly...I had to pick the perfect moment. But in the end... it was just one of those days...the rain pouring and hours to waste... and it was then, that I just sat at my laptop screen and read and kept reading. It was strange how much I could see within the piece. Just like a dream. One where you can see yourself relating your past day's activities, events and the people you saw or thought about, seem to just seep through into your fantastical imagination. My life. My friends' lives.... characters from books and the movies... places I have never been to and experiences I have only ever dreamt about. The performance made me fall into a complete trance... I could hear the words around me...I could sense the people...but my mind... my mind was somewhere else...
This trance is an amazing feeling... yet it still scares me about what I might say or feel during the performance, and who will read it!
Anyway, I was happy with the piece... and when it came to a quarter to midnight the day before I thought the results came online... i received a text saying they were already there. I wasn't ready....already in my pjs, no one around... and I logged in... 75 first class honours... just couldn't believe it! So called my parents... and then went out with my bearded best mate to celebrate... what a good night!
# 14 [19 May 2007]
Surface Gallery exhibition Double Take has gone well this week, and it is coming to the last day today. The last day of the last show in the Rules Of The Game series.I have done an hours performance each day 2-3pm which has taken it's toll on me... I never realised how much hard work it would be..I am worried that I am running out of stories to tell... well maybe then it will become more focussed ont he freeform writing, maybe be more creative with the characters perhaps?
I scrolled through yesterday (I have not re-read any yet...am going to wait until it is all over) and I have actually written so so much! I think I may look into making it into a book, and that can be the result of what the performances become. And only within the book is the whole text able to be read.
Now to get on with making my artist statement more concise, and check my cv is up to date, and finish off my Practical Research... then hopefully I will be on my way to having it sorted!
Am also in the process of getting my website up... not much to be seen right now...but it's getting there... at least the colour's all good!!!
alexandria clark http://www.alexandriaclark.com
# 13 [16 April 2007]
The New Writing is done...and is finished with for the moment...which is fantastic...
I think it was ok in the end...it said what I wanted about storytelling and creating lives. It included many quotes from people who have inspired me...and I feel I managed to convey the idea of role-play in the structure... now do I actually think it worked ...or would I like to think it did? Anyway...cant change it now so...what can you do...
Next step...on to writing the essay for the Transition exhibition at Surface Galley, Mansfield Rd....the first draft has to be done by friday...its monday...still not luck with a beginning. And the exhibition starts on the 1st May... All will be fine I'm sure...what with sonic washing machines and other play type stuff...it'll all be fun and games wont it?!
oh...and next week...Im making a start on my website design with Mark Gubb...hopefully that will go well...if my heads still here on earth by that time!
# 12 [10 April 2007]
Bloody hell!... What has happened to me? I used to be so good with deadlines. I would get set the work and then would get it done asap usually within that week.
But now...now when it actually counts.. bloody writers block! OK, so I have this piece of writing to do ...called "New Writing" ..oh right!
A creative yet critical piece of writing...only 1000 words... that tackles ideas within your practice and is also a way of writing that you dont usually work in. GREAT! So where do I start?
Well I wrote half of it a while back... transcribed a conversation had with someone that I had written about within my practice... and we talked about why he thought I did; the ideas of roleplay; and of voyeurism. I think this part is quite successful. It really puts another look on my work...you see the 'one watched''s feelings...not just my own.
And now on to the second half! Deadline...Wednesday... Yes that's tomorrow... Well...ok so my idea... to continue the idea of conversation...but in this half, take quotes from artists, authors, writers, philosophers and use these as parts of the conversation...
Does that make sense? Probably not...but it does in my head..and hopefully will once it is put to paper...or screen and then to paper!
It will basically be me, having a conversation/discussion with authors, artists, writers, philosphers, perhaps poets....about roleplay and writing.
I plan to have it starting with the transcribed conversation..justified to the right...and the second will be justified to the left... an attempt at a more free piece on the right and the more constructed on the left..and hopefully then I will have fulfilled the criteria of citing references and being creative..and having an argument with in the piece...discussing the themes within my work. Sounds great to me... that is if it works...so its in for midday tomorrow...that means I have approximately 24hours to get it written, edited, printed off and handed in...
I'd better get cracking!
[enlarge]
Alexandria Clark.
# 11 [22 March 2007]
image of my current work
# 10 [22 March 2007]
I was asked to write a piece for our degree show catalogue...and this is the final piece I have written.
I decided I wanted it to be like a stream of consciousness ...kind of note like.
Writing.
Writing...the quest to express something of life...to translate a notion, an experience, a record of something we don't want to let fade into the distance.... the distant past. Through this natural....or strangely unnatural urge to create, we all as future artists... are yearning for this translation...this ability to make something that replicates an element of what is already there.... or to invent something that shows elements of what we see could be there.
On occasion, this urge can only be portrayed through language. Sometimes words are the only way... the only way to find... or even come close to describing...to creating... to fulfilling this urge.
Language is everywhere. It is vital within the visual art context...You may not realise it...but subtly it is everywhere...from the titles we give our work, to the pieces written about it, to the conversations that surround it. It is the beginning of the art...the core. Only from the words, the thoughts created in the mind...and then transcribed out onto the paper of your moleskin notebook ...and then...only then does it reach materialisation. It is the beginning and the end... the bookends that encase our practice...and at the same time, the thread that runs through and binds, holding the object and intention together
At times, nothing but the simple complex forms of words could possibly transcribe and portray what is yearned to tell you... intensions of giving something to this world.
Of bringing you in to ours and thus forming a bond...a bond only reached through the connection of an idea.
Sometimes things cannot just be translated into an image. A visual image just isn't enough...it cannot describe fully... it cannot control like a word can... It cannot take you completely in...and then...if it chooses...chuck you out on to the street... fed up with the unreality or the rational that you bring to it. Words surround us daily. They have the power to encircle, to grab hold of you...and not let go...until they feel like it. A photograph can signify memories...you can see the look in the eyes, the location, perhaps the occasion...yet...only a series of letters, that make up words, that make up a sentence, that make up a paragraph, that can completely entangle you. There is no escape once you are in...yet if you could ...you probably wouldn't choose to.
Sometimes reality just becomes overtaken by the signs of reality...or the debris...of what we leave behind. The real...the facts and figures...the experiences I long to cling on to...grab hold of...become a work of fiction...or what we want to remember and what precise moments we choose to let stay in the edited version of our past.
Something more is needed in the image than you can ever create visually.
Text can sometimes be the only way to show more...give a smell, and air, a lighting a composition that images have to leave out.
You cannot keep building.
[enlarge]
# 9 [22 March 2007]
advert for our show
[enlarge]
# 8 [22 March 2007]
I have recently just seen the initial draft of the advertising poster for our show...and I think it is terrible. It looks as if someone has just found computers and photoshop and used every tacky function in the book..i mean..on the screen...spray paint and jaggedy images.,..you cant even tell what they are!
It's ridiculous...now how do I get up the confidence to tell someone?!!
top [Thursday 22 Mar 2007]MY REVISED ARTIST STATEMENT
Art is a connection;
a pathway that connects the artist with their audience.
Through this idea, I aim to produce work that can reach the viewer on a personal level, by evoking memories, exposing my own, and taking them through an experience that connects us intimately.
I am mainly interested in recording myself and others around me;
It is the notion of watching people and exploring the boundaries or ‘crossover' between innocent observation and actually becoming an intrusive voyeur that truly intrigues and excites me.
The people of our world seem to have an obsession with being noticed. I share the idea that we are all worried that one day we will realise that our life has passed us by without us being recorded and thus not continuing to existing in some form after we have physically gone with writer Margaret Atwood.[1]
My audience is for not for the young as it can be quite intimate and could be unsuitable, but apart from that, it is for anyone: each viewer has the potential to develop characters within my story and thus become entwined with my memories.
I am continually writing down descriptions, feelings, notes on certain experiences in my many notebooks and incorporate parts of it into my freewriting when appropriate and where certain thoughts spark off connections to these recordings of past encounters.
My work takes the form of language and text within a performative context. Through live performances of typing, I have explored the act of writing, where time is overlapped, where the dimensions of memories in the past, and the record of people in the present are merged.
I am very interested in how the words appear on the page and fall
down
the page
and how each pause and how it is supposed to be read is shown through the spacing.
Through being personal and writing about private and intimate relationships and experiences, it creates a sense of awkwardness and the uncomfortable for the audience. I find this control that it gives me, a very important part of my work.
Within my work there is a continual theme of the idea of playing games and ‘role-play'. During the performances, I take on the roles and perspectives of different people, both real and fictional. Throughout the piece, there is persistent questioning on whether it is make believe or truth or a mixture.
When it comes down to it... it all really...
is just a game.
[1] ("Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we are still alive. We wish to assert our existence...At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.") (ATWOOD, M., Blind Assassin, P188)
# 7 [22 March 2007]
I have just found out that my proposal has been accepted for one of the "Rules of Game" exhibitions at Surface Gallery, Mansfield Road, Nottingham. It is titled "Double Take" and will be on 15th-19th May 2007.
I feel pretty excited yet scared as it is so close to the degree show, although I feel that it will be a good chance to prepare for it and hopefully straighten out any problems.
Today I talked with the curator at 1pm and we have sorted out where I will be showing/performing and talked through the work of others within the exhibition. I think it should be good. It's all about perception and possibilities of things not being quite as they seem. I feel that mine should fit in with this.
I am currently worrying slightly about finding the perfect desk and making sure that I can hire out a projector from the stores at uni, and also that it will not overheat, and that I can find a really cheap laptop to buy(all i need is notepad on it) so that I can leave it on the gallery, without too much worry.
But they seemed enthusiastic about my piece. I will start just before the opening begins, and then continue for the first hour, and then finish and hopefully enjoy the rest of the opening night with a couple of glasses of red wine!(fingers crossed I wont need them too much by them).
I think the most worrying part, is that people I know will be there..and what I write about can be quite personal and intimate, and although they should be questioning whether it is real or not...Im not sure I want acquaintances to know me quite that well!! it's so much easier with strangers!!
Especially with a particular person who is also exhibiting...I am unsure whether that means that I wont be able to write about certain things, or whether it will just mean that it will be more powerful?
I dont know...I suppose I shall just have to wait and see!