Spark Of An Uprising

"Innovation, creativity, they need a home because the idea's we fashion are framed by the places we inhabit. We shape our buildings and then they shape us." - Adam Price

Along side the 'Thought Experiment' module another ran along side it, and essay. I found it incredibly difficult to actually start this essay, being given a choice of questions (titles) to choose from to research and write about. I found the dynamic between the freedom of the thought experiment, and the seemingly constrained restrictions of being given something to write about kind of anti-productive, and left it very late before I started to even think about it.

I realised that I was pretty pissed off with the whole idea of being given something to write about, I wanted to write about creativity, I'd been researching it since we started the degree, that's what I'm interested in, that's what I wanted to do. I couldn't work out what question my ideas would fit in, but after a lot of thought, I found myself wanting to write a semi political essay about these ideas, and how stupid it is that at this Masters Degree level, were being given a question to answer, especially after just submitting a dissertation for our BA Degree's where we had that freedom to write about what we'd been working on in our practices. I thought it was bollocks, I wanted to rebel against this.

I arranged a meeting with my pathway leader, Rob, ready to tell him all about his bollocks essay assignment. Unfortunately for Defective Dennis, the rebellious alter ego inside me, always itching to come out and start a riot, Rob is very good at talking, actually borderline hypnotic at times, it didn't take him very long to help me find a direction for my essay, taking the question 'Explore the work of two contemporary artists, makers or designers and analyse the relationship they have developed between their art or design practice and environment, place and space' which at first seems way far off what I want to talk about, but sometimes an outside perspective shines light on what's already there, Rob suggested I take the theme of creative space, the Sculpt Factory being the inspiration, and kind of working out how two different artists use their creative spaces, and how it effects their work. Sorry Dennis, maybe next time.

But the rebellious spirit inside me was still lit... But we'll come back to this.

A side module that ran along side the essay was to create a poster that reflected the main themes of the essay. I was already starting the essay way too late, with about two weeks to go until the deadline, but I also had to make a poster. I decided that the poster would just be very simple, some kind of space, maybe a photo of my shed, whatever, the essay was most important, I'd get on with that first...

Then I stopped and took a long hard look at myself in the mirror - Bollocks.

It's Ironic that my research into creativity, clouded my judgement to be creative, looking at the questions of the essay, and looking for a creative solution to the problem, it's been a huge learning curve, I looked at the word 'essay' and my creative brain turned itself off, this is what we've been trained to do through education, looking at more practical tasks as creative and essays, reports, maths etc as non creative tasks. This is a problem.

By this point, I'd already started the Explorative Research and Praxis module in the background, I'm calling my project 'Master Of Plasticine' as explained in my last post, and the whole idea is to work as a creative thinker of sorts rather than a specific artist, I want to take projects and work on them as creatively as possible, thinking differently to come up with solutions to problems, from an artists perspective, but taking on many different and new projects, jumping from one things to the next.

I want to create, its a desire that lead me to being miserable in a job I hated, bringing my misery home to my family, I quite the job and since then have done everything in my power to stay creative, it's more survival at this point..

How could I look at myself and my kids if I just bummed off an opportunity to make something creative? After quitting a job with a stable income to be creative..

I started working on the poster..

Thanks for reading, the next post will have a lot more pictures..

Adam