So it appears that I have taken a sabbatical from my blog! Thats a shame as its been an eventful month or two. As ever my non productivity has correlated with a very minor heartache (which I have made major because histrionics are a fundamental part of my personality.) But now thats over I’m sure I will regain my focus and start churning out some more writing as I have not produced nearly enough recently.
Two weeks ago I went to London and had an initial meeting about my MA application with Lisa Blackman at Goldsmiths. I warmed instantly to Lisa and feel that she will make a really great supervisor for someone like me who tends to need a lot of encouragement! Lisa said she is interested in supervising me, but that the proposal needs some work. I took this quite well as I can also see lots of room for improvement. I think the bad news is that it needs a total rewrite… implying that January is going to be a busy month for yours truly! I’ve been out of academia for the past five years so its not surprising that I need some pointers from Lisa to get my application really on track. I have been asked to consider issues around Affect, which has been a really trendy topic academically this year. Lisa also suggested I think about archives and how artists are producing alternative archives of mental health symptoms, particularly in performance. I find this second point really interesting as it tallies with some of my fascinations around the role of social media and how individuals use these media to create their own personal archives, particularly around things like internet suicides. These alternative archives can be viewed as a counterpoint to conventional archives of mental health symptoms such as medical records created by doctors and hospitals. It allows the patient to archive and articulate independently outside of mainstream medicine and also brings mental health symptoms to a more public audience. Lots of potential to consider…..
I’m off to London for another interview at The London Consortium on Thursday. I am more nervous about this one as it will be more formal, but I have earmarked the next two days for reading and pondering….
Today however, I have to go to town and return a £200 pair of shoes (I clearly can’t afford) that I decided to buy myself as conciliation for the afore mentioned minor heartache. Does anyone else find it utterly bizarre how much a little stirring of the loins can cloud one’s judgement? Or maybe I’m just too sensitive?
