I’ve finished the goal I set myself last post and re-evaluated my work from the perspective of my research paper on the mutability of the gaze. To the casual observer, it might seem like little shifted but for me it’s been a key step that’s resulted in some difficult pieces of a puzzle finally dropping into place.
The end result — its physical manifestation — has been a form of editing and tidying up of my thoughts and my website. My research paper now no longer refers to the work of Annette Messager but talks in broad terms about impacts on reflection, photographs and images, all things key to my practice. I consciously decided not to discuss specific pieces of my work in the revised paper and have heavily condensed the end results. The introduction and end thoughts appear in their entirety but each different viewing perspective is condensed down to a simple statement — one that can be expanded to full detail if the reader wishes. To my mind, this is much more user friendly — one can understand the general gist of what I’m saying and drill down further into any areas of interest.
I’ve revised what I say about individual pieces of my work in line with this, and they now talk less about gender stereotypes in favour of saying more about the general mutability of the gaze.
I realise my research paper is essentially a general enquiry into specific factors that influence the gaze — a fact-finding mission allowing me to better understand what takes place when looking. One could ask, why bother — what I’ve written doesn’t provide any substantial solutions? However, I see it as a quest to better comprehend the world around me so I can better understand myself. The paper could be taken forward into a number of different research areas but, currently, there are no burning questions I wish to develop, so at the moment the paper is an end in itself.
