Thoughts

Well I'm not sure why I choose this picture to start us off but I'm in it and so is the Archive of exile and I think there are some similarities. For one it's a great title and I was wondering if a title could be our "Holding form" for the project. It clearly works for me as it has allowed me to start thinking about language again in a new way - it's made me reconsider things. The problem I suppose with using words as a holding form for a collaborative project is they carry different meanings for different people and as we continue to expand and build on these definitions we leave other people behind. I am not sure but from my involvement I think this happened a bit with Archive of exile - people used it to an extent as a starting point but in the end the "Potency" of the words drew so many feeling and thoughts from people when they first heard it that it was hard not to see the work as in some ways not achieving the aspiration of the projects title.

So what do I think about langauge as Talisman apart from really struggling to spell language I have only just statrted to properly engage with it. I am concerned that the work on the ground will not relate to the research, I'm concerned that the project is starting to look messy. I value this mess but can only stand so much of it. I suppose we need just enough Mess to make things interesting but not so much that we loose everything which could be of value.

I'm really interested in structures and we seem to have evolved a structure which re-in-forces the barriers between areas of knowledge. As you said when we had lunch there is nothing more desk based and academic than a literature review. I suppose the question is then why do the work on the ground - we can't bring the two areas of knowledge together just by running two parallel projects - We have constructed the problems of the project within it's structure - in a way we have "Planned to fail." The only way forward I can see is to fundamentally and knowingly subvert the structure.

I'm not sure how to do this but when we were in school the other day we all wrote poems- here is mine - I was strangely proud of it.

Walking down haugh road
Up top past the open gate
Which used to lead out
Cross the fields to Riley's house
Jumping dikes
Flying kites
Making inventions to ease the way
Floating sticks in the dikes
Tripping over the curb
Falling on the move
Forgetting my head which wasn't screwed on
A bad workman blaming his tools
A stitch in time- enjoy the trip
The open road-a minors house
A Pit filled with space
The coal all burnt
save it, they used to say -
they didnt
clunk click
Every trip, wake up
And smell the mustard
The fields are dry and empty
The games all played
Willy and shaylo have gone home
slackly and Mucklys bikes are tippers
All roads which lead to Rome
Lead the guilty home.


Sent from my iPad

But it made me wonder if we could all come together in a "Creative form" perhaps we could play with the historical novel or a poetry anthology or the short story or verbatim theatre or something which provides a space for the different aspects of the project to meet. I think we are back to the idea of Holding Form- and this brings me back to the potent title - it needs some kind of space to grow and this needs to be shared across the project in some way.