In March this year, just I was emerging from my medical leave after long Covid, I went on the DRIFT, a weeklong artist residency in London ran by ZU-UK’s Artistic Director Persis Jadé Maravala and her team. The day after the DRIFT, at about 8am in the morning I wrote my thoughts on the experience. I remember the time because it’s unusual for me to write that early. I wrote from the body somehow, vibrating with the effects of the week onto the page. I wrote about the DRIFT and about the piece that I developed while there, which I…
Gosh, where did the time go? Covid seems to have deleted months off the calendar and for a while we went into a time warp. Things are speeding up slowly but I’m pretty much holding my breath for round two/three/four/twenty.
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WTF is Practice Based Research
Category : ResearchDate : 2nd October 2019
It seemed apropriate, as I embark on this practice-based PhD, to pause and question in more detail what practice based means. I know what a big deal it was for me, while I was writing the research proposal, to realise that this is possible – academia is not just books, literature reviews and theories that function as pillars (but are really the meat and bones of all work), academia is also practice – doing things and figuring out new trajectories while doing them. In all honesty, I think the realisation was something more like: life is not just books and…
I was saying to my friend Ragnar that I feel like I’m on the dance floor on a night out but it’s too early and the music is not quite there yet and I wanna dance but my whole body is tense and weird and I am being unnecessarily aware of all of its micro robotic movements. That’s how the beginning of a PhD feels like. There’s (already) a big list of things to do, places to go, people to meet, things to read and write but something is slightly awkward. But it’s kinda ok because I know that on a night out, I eventually reach a point where everything in my body feels fluid AF and I’m moving to the rhythm like there’s no tomorrow and everything makes sense and it’s really intense and awesome.