mail art one | susanmortimer

Through out December the weather was too extreme to get into work in the studio plus there was an option to change spaces which triggered a bout of uncertainty and indecision on my part, meaning that through out December I wasn’t in the studio much at all.

That enforced exile has been useful, providing a natural period of reflection for the first six months post the MA.

I tried to use the past few months to take time and try out new ideas or re examine old ones with some new perspective gained from the course. Suspected that the first months after completing the MA would be a period of re adjustment; that it would take time for things to fall into place.

Finishing the MA I made a conscious decision to put down the video camera. There are still questions that still bothered me about using it. I feel there are issues to do with choices surrounding editing and planning shots; the implications of choice/meaning of including certain visual contents.

So I moved away from video and started by dismembering text books from research for the MA to create new text/Lost Letters a piece for the autumn issue of Mail Art One (Mail Art One faces a change of format due to the costs of producing/posting it and also to give it a shift of emphasis and hopefully free it up somewhat)this also marked a beginning to try to think about ideas for the Al-Mutanabbi Street project.

Just before christmas I became aware of Rosemary Butcher’s Critical pathways 2011 course: From Here To There:

http://www.independentdance.co.uk/what/classes/critical-pathways.php

which began me thinking again about walking as a journey and wondering if a journey necessitated movement/walking or if it could also be viewed as a chronological happening and if the act of standing might also be seen as a kind of chronological journey and think about standing as a possible starting point/context for the Al-Mutanabbi Street project.

Back in November I was working on some ideas in the studio to do with surface/building and identity, and was considering the relevance of the act of standing; of walking being made difficult or constrained. (An idea I had tried to look at in some ways during the MA).