unBLOG - Sally Stenton

unBLOG

These pages are windows on the development of thoughts and ideas from the start of my research journey on the one year MRes at RCA which began on 23rd September 2019.

The design of this site enables me to disrupt the reverse linear format of a blog. The right pointing arrow connects from past to present and the left arrow backwards in time. Continue moving in one direction and it will loop, unless you are viewing this on a mobile phone, in which case scroll down from past to present.

There will be further disruption by content added to existing pages where I respond to earlier posts. Hyperlinks might be used to connect ideas e.g. if I discover that I appear to have responded to something that had not yet happened.

My primary means of recording and reflecting continues to be my physical journals which are prone to chaos. The unBLOG posts require me to extract themes and key ideas that are emerging from the tangle and to think about how I communicate them.

MORE BLOGS

Walking Aloud

Tripping over digital objects.

29.09.2019.

It matters in what vessels we choose to collect our thoughts.

Donna Haraway in ‘Staying with the Trouble’ emphasises that it matters what stories we use to tell stories. Prodding and probing the underlying assumptions hiding themselves in language and habit is an initial task in my enquiries and I start with a scepticism about the default tools and formats for the tracking of ideas.

This disruption to the default blog is an experiment and it is probably not enough, but for the time being will serve to remind me that technology is invisibly formatting my thinking processes….and to beware. When technology tries to be helpful by second guessing I might also embrace the absurd auto-corrects as a way of jumping into unexpected realms of meaning. [Time-being has just become timbering].

16.09.2019 / 1.10.2019

Rigour

When the word ‘rigour’ is spoken on its own it starts to breakdown into a soft, more fluid consistency. On its own, isolated from context it feels more malleable, ambiguous.

14.9.2019 / 1.10.2019

Residue

Smiling residue happens as paths cross. Something has changed, but it is impossible to hold onto or grasp. The residue from one moment feeds into the next. I might experiment with what residue can be and how it can be seen or represented.

4.11.19. In London smiling is rarely caused by paths crossing. There is another residue.

Why might it mean to leave digital residue?

1.11.19.

Retreat

…to pull back, step out of the affray, run away or stand back from the bombardment. A spiralling outward to look back in. A mode of resistance.

This course is not at all like a residency (or retreat). It is an assault on the mind, emotions and senses. An onslaught, that given time for recovery might provoke or inflict new configurations of thought.

But mostly it is shakes my settled mind to seek the cracks and edges where I might make something happen.

4.11.19. It is reminder of the urgency of undoing.

Trying to make a mess in a clean space

The temporary ‘clean’ studio is part of the library. It has large, heavy tables. Some are firmly fixed together and there are odd metal baskets for catching something (what?) that might fall through the deliberate gaps between the surfaces.

This clean room is the space for work that does not make a mess.

I try to make a controlled mess and my first attempt to disrupt the space is not messy at all. The room was directing me, guiding me to make something consistent with its character, ordered, white, streamlined. Only a slight deviation from the expectations of a library.

The attempt to project moving worms from the lids of my compost bin is thwarted by the bright light of the room which is triggered by a movement sensor making it impossible to switch off (without a step ladder or other device to reach the high ceiling). The use of light to create mess has been cancelled out. I need to try harder.

…..

Still inhibited by the imagined expectations of the space, of passers by and ideas of some kind of end result, I tried to be less precious, more experimental. Lifting the grids higher tangles the threads and creates precocity, heavy pieces fall (noise is messy especially in a library).

When I step into the construction I am digitised and tangled in the thread and when I try to step back I become the involuntary puppeteer, animating the diagram from the outside.

Still so subtle in the photos white grids and white walls – like an almost invisible disruption.

Undoing

I returned to dismantle the temporary installation from a fear that the precariously balanced, heavy metal grids might pose a safety risk. The undoing became a performance. As I cut threads pieces fell and the thread tangled. I rewound it as far as I could and displayed the remaining tangles as trophies on the wall – the residue of my experiments.

The unpredictable chain of activity had provoked a dialogue, a standing back from myself to notice. Reticence, doubt, inhibition pitted against a compulsion to disrupt the space. To take control by letting go of control. To make a statement and then retract it.

As a thinking process, it was the undoing that became significant.

If I need to clean my boots anyway….

4.1.20

The mud collected on my boots had begun to dry when I scraped it off. I rehydrated it and swilled it around the plastic bowl. I am thinking of combining it with bio-plastic.

One moment imprints itself on the next.

Making bio-plastic

Experiments in making bio-plastic with corn flour, vinegar and glycerine are in progress. First attempts were solid pieces and I am now trying a much diluted recipe to create thin, paper like material. I have worked out how to make little ‘plastic’ bags for collecting residue (more attempts needed to avoid holes and make sure seams are secure)

Night writing

The times when I am unable to sleep at night have been the most productive. The quiet emptiness juxtaposes the constant, frenetic motion of London, the sense of being pulled in all directions subsides. This insomnia, brought on by the stress and over stimulation of the first few months of the course was as close as I could get to to being able to think my own thoughts.

Sometimes I will write or draw in the dark, unable to see where on the page the marks are landing. Words become lost, obscure each other or arrange themselves into new and unintended meanings.

If I hesitate over a word, I cannot be sure where I am in it.

Walking in pieces of time

Walking in liminal, overlooked or forgotten spaces of time might include walking through the night.

Very short walks and very long walks

Time pieces, pieces of time

Temporal pockets

13.1.20.

Walking as an act of occupying time

My attention is under attack. This is a battle situation. I must make myself invisible to the enemy. I will deploy martial arts tactics to divert the blows to my attention, absorb the energy from the onslaught and redirect it or simply step out of the way.

Tactics: walk, breathe. If physically immobilised imagine walking. If breathe is stifled, making breathing a conscious act. Activate the lungs.

Attention self-defence

Rule 1 Note when the attention theft is occurring

Rule 2 Keep noticing

Rule 3 Divert attention

27.1.20.

Always, almost at the point of arriving

I was propelled towards the object and didn’t notice time passing.

13.2.20

The promise of impossible objects

A habit of propulsion towards impossible objects causes the time between objects of desire to be squeezed, hurried along, frowned at or denied.

Realising that the grasping of what is ahead is continually frustrated, I become aware of lost time. This overlooked time is the only time there is and so I seek ways to fully inhabit this hazy, ungraspable negative time-space.

But the time thieves use this space of lost time to steal attention to promote the impossible objectives. Double jeopardy becomes triple when the grasping mind submits to the stimuli.

4.3.20.

Indecision (night writing)

The impossibility of knowing what is the optimal thing to do next how on what basis from what perspective in consultation with whom following which guidelines with what intention with what outcome for whose benefit for how long how planned or spontaneous what feeling which justification what deceit of the mind what persuasion which influences what inertia or momentum what rhythm what following on from the previous moment and flowing into the next in which next moment

21st April 2020

Test pages for DIG. Forthcoming publication San Mei Gallery/RCA.

Zoom doodles

Drawing in parallel with another event

22.4.20

PASTE

THICK AIR

PUSHING THROUGH WATER

WELCOME NEW SKIN

WALKING

A Glass Envelope Online Residency

9th to 30th Nov 2020

A letter to self

A Glass Envelope Online Residency

9th to 30th Nov 2020

Walk No. 33

Concertina book made from ‘weights and trampolines’ painting and hapa zome technique applied to leaves and flowers collected on the walk. Walk repeated and recorded in the book.

1st December 2020

Drawing intention

It is the day after the residency and there is an opening up to possibility and positivity. I remember that when a struggle reveals itself it can resolve by becoming the art. Part of me wants to draw and part is resistant. There are numerous frustrated, aborted or deflated attempts balanced by encouraging surprises, so it is time again to watch the process and see what it might enable.