From My Head to my Phone

Hi Ben, I like the phrase 'Instagrammable Truths' - it interests me how your appropriation feeds mainly from the internet, while mine comes mainly from the material world. Just as your sense of self was partly formed by finding a 'tribe' online, whereas I looked to the outdoors. In this work I recognise my need to see the material behind the image (e.g in the mismatched lettering on an old wall), and to feel a connection with my environment through my senses - to let it speak to me through my body.

These last few days have been tricky in terms of trying to make work, but interesting nonethless. I had an idea of what my work would be like, but it being Half Term, with a busy boy and a poorly dog, has meant that my time has been squeezed. I have found myself turning to apps on my phone more and more, to combine images of mine, yours, and Karen's from Block II. I've also found that I've had to make the most of the little windows of time that I had, so photos of me wearing imagery are more spontaneous and shot where I happened to be, with the help of my son, rather than planned out and more carefully 'curated'.

I've enjoyed the immediacy, the playfulness, and the learning that has come from it and the exchanges that have followed. It's led to me remembering that work which explores my place within my family and my home is just as important and valuable as that which heads out into the 'wilds' of Wiltshire. But I have missed getting more hands-on. I have involved my body through combining it with other imagery, but not in such an active, full bodied way.

Today I have printed off a selection of images from the last week and a half and am going to have a play with them, both inside and outside. I see them forming both a book and a path. Pages and stepping stones.

I continue to explore my skin as a permeable boundary, alongside the idea of The Commons, and the potential to move 'Beyond The Binary' through noticing and responding - reflection on the self through identifying what one notices and why.

I could write lots more but I want to keep things shorter this time, and focus more on the images. I feel the need to let other 'voices' in by being playful and intuitive and opening up my noticing for further layers of noticing and response (i.e I'm taking the images back out to further respond to what I notice, layered over the top of the first set). I guess in this way I am mirroring your returning of gathered and re-presented imagery 'plastered onto the streets of the internet'.

I'll let you know how it goes.