Tutorial 5 with Jonathan - 28 Feb 2025

 My last, I think, tutorial with JK. I thought it might be bitter-sweet, especially as I was in a rather tired and sombre mood (I keep thinking I'll do 'just one more tweak' to my art and end up going to very bed late after many 'last tweaks'). However, it was actually a very entertaining, useful, and fast moving conversation.

We spent most of the time talking about Open Casket and the 'final show' (poor JK seems to have given correcting me now (I am such a dick!)). 

We talked about:

• How I can source some materials e.g. the base at CSM or nearby
• We talked about the format of the 'base' and I stressed that I don't think it's a coffin - I don't want the loaded iconography of a coffin, and I am also thinking of this as more akin to a museum display than a funeral or grave
• How I should be able to have a space to make simple items on-site on the first day, although we both acknowledged that this was a RISK and that I would need a plan B. It's also good to be aware that the space will quickly fill up with artworks awaiting hanging, and that the general area will be shared with MA Contemporary Photography. There is a darker corner away from the main space that I could potentially use (and which might be a great place to display the finished piece, although I didn't say that bit!). I stressed that any work I would do on-site would likely be only simple casting
• We talk about performance, and JK suggested thinking about it separately from the logistics of making, and considering the value/meaning of it as a stand-alone activity. He also suggested that leading on from that, consider if that changed the nature of the performance I would give. I think this is great food for thought... My instinct is that performance should NOT be an element of the work, as I think absence is an important part of the piece
• Leading on from this, we briefly discussed the fact that the absence of a body was significant, and I talked about my love of Antony Gormley's work
• We talked briefly about how the work has come to summarise a lot of my MA, intentionally incorporating and referencing other pieces and techniques that I have used, and we touched on how performance might be added to that, but also how I might reference my preferred form of performance: participatory art - perhaps as a way to bring change to the piece over the life-time of the show.

More broadly, we talked about my thoughts on the purpose of art. JK asked specifically about the purpose of Open Casket, and whether it is for me, or for others? Is it an act of catharsis? I struggled to articulate my thoughts on this - I think I have a sense of it, but it's hard to put into words, which maybe suggests I need to think more. I said I thought it was easier to explain if we separated motivation from purpose - I said that for me, the PURPOSE of the work is not necessarily the MOTIVATION for producing it. In this case, the motivation is intrinsic (it feels like the right thing to create as an ironic summary of my experience) but the purpose could be more extrinsic - I think it is 'for' other people. I said it's purpose was to record my own experience of 'dying' and in doing so, to act as a memento mori for other people - I observed that a lot of my thinking is around the value of confronting death, and the inspiration for life that could bring.

Leading on from this, we talked about my motivation as being both authentic and ironic. I said that I had come to believe it's hard to know my own intent at times - I believe the piece to be motivated by irony, but I suspect the irony to be a 'shield' to allow me to share something intensely authentic and raw. We talked briefly about the paradox of feigned inauthenticity being a way to access deeper levels of authenticity.

We talked about 'Holey Face' and how JK found it quite disturbing and trypophobia-inducing. I said that I was thinking i have 'trypophilia' as I seem to love adding holes to my work. I talked about Roz's shells and the idea of hidden spaces inside them. I said I have an obsession with hidden spaces, and had a realisation that it links to my obsession with the 'secret life' of spaces - the idea that they exist when you can't see them and have their own 'secret life'. I talked about how it relates somehow to the null-point and the idea of spaces with potential - rooms just before you enter them, vaults and tunnels sealed off and forgotten, public spaces with nobody in them...

Finally we talked about AI and JK's thinking about Hulme and 'ideas' vs 'impressions'. JK suggested that might be somehow related to how AI thinks vs how people think. I gave an opinion that even if AI is 'just maths', if it behaves indistinguishably from a thinking being, how could we assert that it doesn't think? Especially as so little is understood about how we think - which could turn out to be just as 'mechanical'. I said that my experience is that everyone is looking for some 'special spark' that humans have but AI doesn't, but that I thought it was mysticism and fear. I opined that artists cared that their art was made by thinking/feeling beings, that most people did not... And on that cheerless thought, we parted company! :)