In 2014 I made a little artist's book about the dilemmas of making a living as an artist. It was not an edited book, nor was it objective or serious. It was more like a bleeeeaaahhhh! But many of the artists that I know really liked and appreciated the book for the way it explored the dilemmas and voiced what was generally a shared experience.
The book had actually been a development of past cartooning/graphic projects that I had made, but I think it took a turn in trying to describe experience in a more documentary manner.
Since then I have worked on four other projects along a similar vein which seek to share experience but also work as process models, in that whilst making the sketches and text, I am developing the work. The story is not in my head ready to be laid out, it is a work that sorts itself as it goes, more like art practice than writing.
One of these projects has been to sketch the ideas and theories that I have about my public art research as I am thinking and researching. These sketches are shown on this page and then on the rest of this site, they are slotted into my writing where appropriate. The sketches become small vignettes into my thought process and they also show things which are difficult to write about. They are not research itself but ways of thinking about research and ideas. They are also very subjective and linked deeply to my own views. Nor are they articulate, but more playful in visualising how things might be.
They are also at first sketched on odd bits of paper, envelopes or in an old diary which i am using to write down notes, thoughts, memories and ideas about my research. Particularly the diary sketches which include notes from the diary when I used it, remind us that art practice, particularly in public space is usually delineated and constricted by calendar time. It has to be finished at a particular time and often works within the working week.
I am unsure how and if these sketches will be used as part of an exegesis or commentary but they are important tools for my thinking and I have enjoyed them. So I will continue to use them as tools.
The sketches could be viewed as a type of autoethnography in that they record the writers thinking and experiences which though not objective are nonetheless valuable in providing insights for the reader/viewer about the other research conducted.
The sketches if viewed as autoethnography, can show the artist/researcher's experience and understanding of the intersection between theory, research, documentation and practice. Documenting the action,the thoughts, the things that happen, often not explicitly able to be recorded as fact, relies on giving value to the autobiographical. Insights that the artist has about the involvement of community as makers may not be realised by the community participants or the commissioners of artworks, these may only be noticed or thought about by the artist who works between the theory, community participants and other stakeholders.
Ellis, Adams and Bochner, (2011) describe autoethnography as both a process and a product. The process of recording the autoethnography produces reflective thoughts and ideas which further develops the process, and the product is the document produced, be it visual, text based, audio etc.
In this position the artist experiences instances that may not be able to be discovered, realised or recorded by other means. Though it is subjective in nature and emotional, the autoethnographical content of the artist's experience provides a valuable key to answering some of these research questions.
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Below: some of the diagrams are shown with their caption text beneath them if they have some.
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This diagram demonstrates an idea about the relationship between aesthetics and process. We cannot say that each community engaged project will automatically veer towards process over aesthetics, but that all of the projects bounce around in between. Whilst the artist might guess at the specific relationship that process and aesthetics will have to their project, if the community are involved as makers in the project, it is a fluid value and outcome. Different aspects will pull the project at different times towards each value. And then where the artwork finishes, its value as a process and as an aesthetic object will be critiqued differently by each viewer anyway.
I am always reminded of this when thinking about a particular project that I did, where in the end I had to radically change the design to accommodate and extra 200 artworks. It was a fantastic thing to get 200 more participants into the project, but where to fit them in the design. Where I had hoped for space, there was none. But very often someone will comment that it was one of the most beautiful projects that I made. I still hanker for the space, and can't look at the work from someone else's or a fresh point of view. But I was very happy with the process and that was what was most important to me.
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what research might look like
I'm imagining I might do a thousand of these drawings.
This one is about a movement from the right to the left side and there is a lot of writing in the middle there.
Because on the right we have doing a lot of reading to see what has been written and forming our ideas about the situation, alongside continuing to make art, but in all genres of public art practice and I say this because I am thinking at the moment that all of the genres (street art, grafitti, large commissioned public artwork, community artwork in public space, ephemeral artwork made by communities, artists solo practices in public space) are related. So it means that its good to have experienced them and to know the issues involved in each one, in order to be able to understand where permanent public art with community members as makers, actually sits in the field. Then also there is observing and documenting/ Recording experiences and documenting what is written and said about the genres.
As we move towards the final thesis and creative component which is to the left we are writing about the relationship between the literature and the documentation and knowledge through experience of the genres. Then we are doing the reality, making models of how it could be, doing the art practice and interviews and writing up our words (exegesis).
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Other links to works by the artist that could be seen as autoethnographic.
*please note, the below works are published under my maiden name Debbie Harman
*these pdf files are quite large because they contain drawings. Check the file size and consider your download capacity if necessary.
I Don't think you know who I am!:An Approach to Making a Career/living as an artist
download the pdf: https://app.box.com/s/nmqqocs1y8m62vjarqm0
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Rabbit hole
The autoenthnogrpahy in rabbit hole points to the difference between documenting the scene with drawings and the actual experiences of a participant. In this text, the drawings could be seen as representing an objective view (perhaps a surface view that is seen) and the text providing another layer of information which is subjective to the author's experience.
download the pdf:
https://app.box.com/s/1u0ravh7v1wzyyfi04bggo064xwb6p14
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