[[Welcome]]Ralph Dorey, Year One Annual Progression Report 2017
[[You begin]]
This document and linked appendices serve to outline the work done over the first year of my PhD, and to track the development of the question and focus during that time. This first document provides an overview of how the relationships between different kinds of research and different kinds of practice in this Practice Based PhD have been considered, and how this consideration will feed into work planned for year 2.
[[You continue.]]Appendix 1 is a list of research works done since September 2016, this is not an exhaustive list but focuses on papers, art works and exhibitions in which the research, production or evaluation yielded particular insight. Appendix 2 is a Gantt Chart. Appendix 3 is a sample paper performed at the 2017 NU PGR Conference. Appendix 4 is a piece of fan fiction (Minkel, 2015) which functions as structural device within two performance works detailed in Appendix 1. Appendix 5 is a paper performed at the 2017 Northumbria Sunderland CDT Conference. Appendix 6 is a sample from studio journal. Appendix 7 is compiled visual and audio documentation of various works produced in this academic year. Appendix 8 is an example of one of the online games I have produced.
Don't worry, we will return to these later, but for now you keep going toward some [[notes on form.]]Appendix 1: Select survey of works from year one
''Chaotic Good: Crabhead / Collaborative Princess / Lumpy Oracle''
Gallery North, Northumbria University
02 November 2016 - 26 November 2016
//A 3 hour performance, installation and publication by the group AAS of which I am a member.//
Key terms: Collaboration, Role Playing Games, Video Games, Improvisation, Twitter Bots, Automation, Affect, Touch, Video, Drone, Cybernetics, Diagrams, Slime, Digital Interfaces.
''Green Fuzz''
Xero, Kline & Coma, London.
12 November 2016 - 04 December 2016
//A two person exhibition as collaborative project with the artist Alfie Strong.//
Key terms: Collaboration, Play, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Androids, Horror, Aliens, Video, Slime, Gender, Queer Theory, Fan Fiction, Bacteria, Digestion, Affective Labour, Non-Human subjectivities.
''The Inhuman Ecstasy of Toxic Waste''
Northumbria University PGR Conference, Newcastle
24 April 2017
//Live reading and presentation of annotated youtube video and GoogleDoc text.//
Key terms: Toxic Waste, Ethics, Cinema, Monsters, Horror, Play, Sex, Gender, Aliens, Refuse, Slime, Touch, Labour, Body Horror, Queer Theory, Abjection, Mutation, Cross Species Collaboration, Ecology, Digital Interfaces, Fan Fiction, Cybernetics.
(Note, later re-presented as single channel video with voice over at Waste: A Symposium, Birkbeck College, London, 21st September 2017, and then hosted as part of the Autumn edition of the interactive online magazine http://wormworm.org/)
''The Stand''
Online Game
26 June 2017 - Ongoing
//Text Adventure using the open source “Twine” programing language.//
Key terms: Stephen King, Horror, Fan Fiction, Digestion, Infection, Cybernetics, Ethics, Role Playing Games, Abjection, Cross Species Collaboration, Magic, Digital Interfaces, Play, Queer Theory, Labour.
''Dog-Tech 1''
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
25 July 2017
//Conference presentation consisting of spoken text and accompanying slide show of drawings.//
Key terms: Dogs, Mutation, Sex, Ethics, Infection, Rabies, Horror, Play, Stephen King, William Gibson, Cross Species Collaboration, Queer Theory, Digital Interfaces, Ecology, Cybernetics, Abjection, Waste.
''Chthonic Research Group''
Online / Baltic 39
July 2017 - Ongoing
//Expanded reading group with art researchers and practitioners using the the text “Staying With The Trouble: Making Kin in The Cthulucene” by Donna J. Haraway as a point of departure.//
Key terms: Ecology, Slime, Art, Ethics, Cross Species Collaboration, Body Horror, Dogs, Infection, Mutation, Slime, Cinema, Sex, Cybernetics, Digital Interfaces, Play, Queer Theory.
''Creature of Havoc''
SERF, Leeds and Online
15 September 2017 - 24 September 2017
//Performance and solo exhibition at SERF project space Leeds and online platforms.//
Key terms: Ecology, Slime, Dogs, Ethics, Cross Species Collaboration, Video Games, Cybernetics, Queer Theory, Affect, Abjection, Mutation, Cinema, Play, Improvisation, Horror, Performance, Infection, Digital Interfaces, Fan Fiction.
''TFW: The Formless Wastes''
Res. Gallery, London
24 September 2017 - 14 October 2017
//Performance and installation as the first phase of the group exhibition, “Janusware”, curated by Lucy Sames.//
Key terms: Play, Role Playing Games, Cinema, Video Games, Sex, Gender, Queer Theory, Affect, Improvisation, Horror, Animals, Cross Species Collaboration, Ecology, Infection, Fan Fiction, Digital Interfaces, Performance, Dogs.
''Note:''
In addition, I served on the organisational committee for the 2017 Northumbria-Sunderland CDT Conference, and have also organised a panel on feminist horror with support of the AHRC Cohort Development Fund which is due to take place on 13 October 2017.
Back to [[the start]].You can advance to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XRWeZN-sQ-yVwX6k4kwzWl6U9wEut9vxnm29WcuzzyA/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Gantt Chart</a>
or you can return to [[the start]].You can carry on to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXrQ_YJ2444" target="_blank">The Inhuman Ecstasy of Toxic Waste</a> which is a youTube video with a script linked in the description.
Otherwise, you can return to [[the start]].
This is the paper to be read at the 2017 CDT Conference and it is titled <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/14ENIEAiqaj5lfrbkKjkcng4ccrPeGo8jBRvv7hH0t78/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Dog-Tech 1</a>.
You can also return to [[the start]].This is a link to the live google doc where I am currently writing on a performance and installation work where a number of new approaches were made. I maintain a discipline of only examining a project when I have completed at least one project subsequently in order to maintain distance and to not let the process of analyses disrupt my studio work which relies on not overly examining the desire to try things.
Advance for the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p-3az7VIStsXfnTAsnSoJkJ6XZA0di7uyDsl2ZcZndE/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Creature of Havoc Journal</a>
or retreat to [[the start]].
Here is a link to some
<a href="https://imgur.com/a/41Aib" target="_blank">sample images</a> of work from the last 12 months.
You can also return to [[the start]].<a href="http://philome.la/RetchinBtchFace/refu" target="_blank">click to start an interactive fiction</a>
or return to [[the start]].Notes on form:
One of the most pressing areas for consideration in this first year has been how the areas of “thesis” and “practice” inform, merge and birth hybrids in this practice based PhD. This area has become particularly active with recent precedent for interrogating the division, and the form of each element in recently completed Practice Based PhDs especially where text is a written, spoken or embodied part of practice (Liston, 2017; Stupart, 2017). This document takes the form of interactive fiction written in the open access coding language of Twine. The decision to do this is made by my research into forms of non-linear writing, the use of hypertext by artists such as Keith Piper and Porpentine Charity Heartscape and contemporary online communities who have adopted this system as a means of art making.
From here, it would be good to talk about the development of the research question, and so you head [[toward that.]]This first year has necessitated a refining of the central questions of this PhD, significantly at project approval stage which yielded the following:
//~How does a reversal of horror offer means of countering a Majoritarian subjectivity?//
//~How does knowledge which includes affect and sensation function as a shared resource?//
//~In what context does play offer an alternative to the labour/leisure dichotomy?//
//~How does collective play create a molecular culture which challenges external narratives?//
//~How can art practice be understood in terms of play?//
These areas of focus remain, and are used to maintain discipline within a research that already crosses a number of boundaries of queer studies, art practice, performance, politics and so on. Since Project Approval I have worked to contain the question that this PhD pursues into something more concise, and while its words need rigorous definititions I am working at present on [[the following:]]//“How does the subject of horror, waste and the abject become a play-site for art practice?”//
It was clear from the beginning of the PhD that defining concepts, especially “horror” and “play”, would be a significant element of this research and the continued work toward these definition is being foregrounded in the second year. Likewise a current focus is on establishing and defining this area which is the overlap between the subject of horror, waste and the abject, and the development of a written and practice-based language to deal with this. Another area of language which has become important to the project and will be focused on in year two is establishing a terminology for art practice existing in relation to the internet. As both the practice element of this work uses online tools such as hosting and social media platforms, and the theoretical side is informed by the cultural forms that it has proliferated it has become clear that this needs to be accounted for. Popular terms such as “internet aware” (Beard 2008) and “post internet” (Wallace 2014) have shown that while there is an obvious need to and intent to theorise how art has changed through the widespread integration of the internet, a clear consensus is still far from coming.
Next, you examine [[the title.]]Another area of the language for this PhD which has been in development over this year is the title. This will continue to be refined over this year as the above terms are made more concrete but at present the title ''“Horrific Waste Play: The Mucosal Instability of an Art Practice after the internet”'' conveys the scope of this enquiry, however inelegantly.
Finally the term “mucosal” in the title refers to the work of Luce Irigaray, whose thought I first encountered in February this year while preparing my paper for Northumbria University’s PGR Conference. Patricia MacCormack’s writing around Irigaray and H.P. Lovecraft have provided a lot of conceptual tools for thinking through art practice which is bodily, re-claims horror and proliferates in waste spaces(MacCormack, 2016). The figure of “mucous”, has allowed me to express the key features of the art practice this PhD is concerned with as it resonates with the difference of bodies, the non-human, with abjection, waste, sensation, gender, interconnectivity and multiplicity. It aso provides a lens through which to consider the recent tendency in art towards depicting and using slime-like materials, such as the work of Heather Barnett, Jenna Sutela, and Gary Zhexi Zhang.
You continue to something that looks much like [[the start]].The information presented in this document and the examples attached are done so to convey the progress made in so far in the PhD and to indicate how the broad scope at the start has been narrowed towards a specific area and an original contribution to knowledge. As already stated, the relationship between thesis and practice is central to this, with the immediate focus for the second year being how these two operate and which forms will contribute most to the inquiry.
Now there is time to head to [[the bibliography.]]
Or to:
[[Appendix 1]] //List of Research Works//
[[Appendix 2]] //The Gantt Chart//
[[Appendix 3]] //The Inhuman Ecstasy of Toxic Waste//
[[Appendix 4]] //A sample of fan fiction//
[[Appendix 5]] //A paper delivered at the 2017 CDT Conference//
[[Appendix 6]] //My journal for Creature of Havoc, currently live and being written as documentation arrives//
[[Appendix 7]] //An imagur album of sample works from the last 12 months//
[[Appendix 8]] //An example of the interactive fiction I have been producing//
To you can also go back to the very first page of this document which was called the [[prelude]].This is a piece of my fan fiction work that I am using as part of live performances. It is called <a href="https://bananagh0st.deviantart.com/art/Keepers-Diary-697488244" target="_blank">The Keeper's Diary</a>
You can also return to [[the start]].Bibliography
Beard, T. (2008 26–3). Interview with Guthrie Lonergan. Retrieved September 24, 2017, from http://rhizome.org/editorial/2008/mar/26/interview-with-guthrie-lonergan/
Liston, K. (2017, September). Link Zone: an exploration of the sensation of knowledge through a practice of art and writing. Northumbria, Newcastle.
MacCormack, P. (2016). LOVECRAFT’S COSMIC ETHICS. In The Age of Lovecraft(pp. 199–214). University of Minnesota Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1b9x1f3.15
Minkel, E. (2015 21–10). What is fanfiction, anyway? Retrieved September 24, 2017, from https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2015/10/what-fanfiction-anyway
Stupart, L. (2017, February 28). Becoming Object: Positioning a Feminist Art Practice (doctoral). Goldsmiths, University of London. Retrieved from http://research.gold.ac.uk/20117/
Wallace, I. (2014 18–3). What Is Post-Internet Art? Understanding the Revolutionary New Art Movement. Retrieved September 24, 2017, from http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/trend_report/post_internet_art-52138
Back to [[the start]].