I have found it difficult to pin down what my coursework this term has been about. While I have definitely gained (some) clarity in my written work as I’ve progressed, I have found it challenging to pin down whether or not my visual work enacts these written aims.
I actively chose to engage with screen-printing as a medium – I have always loved the physical aspect of the process, which has become increasingly relevant to the ideas I’ve been working with. It has been wonderfully productive, alternating between the written work, the mental, verbal and written probing of positions and beliefs, and the completely different mindset of the print studio: exposing, cutting, scanning, washing, moving, pulling ink etc. The two processes have fed off each other.
There is obviously a powerful political/activist history to screen printing. While I haven’t exactly engaged with all aspects of this, there’s definitely been something about slowness, about labour as care, and about the physicality of the space that has felt appropriate for activist aims. As I discussed previously in relation to Uzma Rizvi – going slowly can be a way of resisting capitalist insistences on productivity; time can become something radical when it is framed as “time for” rather than “time spent”. The Care Collective’s Care Manifesto, and the amazing work done by Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike, who are campaigning for a Care Income demonstrate that care too can be radical. Certainly, I am seeing more and more people theorising that the way out of the climate crisis depends on more than a shift in politics, but a deep shift in culture and values, and a global resurgence in empathy and compassion. One such person is Phoebe Tickell, whose excellent blog post seems to have summed up my position this term better than I ever could myself!
As an activist and scientist, I spent a lot of my time moving amongst groups of people who seemed to have a very clear grasp on what they believed, but in a time of greater access to information and an explosion in the number of choices we have it becomes harder to cling onto a simple story. Perhaps it’s time to accept that an increasingly complex world we need to adapt to more nuanced stories and resist the urge to hone in on the one that is the most black-or-white. This is vital for two reasons: to prevent and reverse ecological destruction and climate change and to re-establish the role of community, empathy and cooperation amongst humanity.
There’s also a community element to screen printing – throughout this term I’ve been in the building more, getting to know the academic printmaking community, and sharing and exchanging ideas and expertise. It has the potential to be hugely social, collaborative, and connect movements through outreach and support. In the Extinction Rebellion Art Factory we share our space, resources and skills with other movements, allowing them to create work in our space, or learn what’s needed to get set up on their own.
My position has shifted across the project to accommodate this community aspect more. In my writing, I have been moving towards platforming and allyship as a bigger part of my practice. I am trying to act upon convictions I’ve held from the start that all my ideas and positions are unfinished, constantly changing and still being formed, and that my voice is maybe not the one that needs to be heard. Well-meaning privileged white people, even with the best intentions, make mistakes all the time. So I have been starting to ask: how do I bring other voices in, how do I learn more, how do I make that learning part of my work?
It has also been important to me to find my angle, my points of connection with the issues, for example finding local anchors for distant issues. Concerns over cultural appropriation, exploitation and othering have made me uncomfortable using some of the material and stories about issues to which I have no personal connection, especially when dealing with an issue of such violence and trauma. Navigating my way through the connections between this particular story and my own activism, and repeatedly retracing the journey that brought me here has been really important. Eventually I have found points to reconnect with other activists, and create new knowledge through the form of interviews. Doing this alongside starting Unknown Quantities has reminded me about the value of publication, and how writing can be used as a way of platforming other people.
Throughout this process I’ve not really been fully convinced there was a strong connection between my physical work and my written work – in particular that my visual work has enacted the position I have taken in my written work. However these connections have become stronger week on week. Part of this has been seeking to close the gap between my uni work and my activism, and trying to find ways to connect my uni work to “the real world”. What’s more, I am still excited by the visual potential in the forms I’ve explored – while I have tried to move past the simple equation of visual complexity with complexity of meaning, there’s something quite exciting about the busyness and layering and irreversibility of the printed animations I’ve been making, and in the way the meaning changes when their temporality is tampered with.
Moving past this idea of visualising complexity, I have been complexifying the making process, i.e. divorcing the making, or de-situating the making from the dominant system of power – if you make work using the same techniques, institutions and voices, the flaws and limitations in what you say will be the same.
There are several avenues I could explore from here:
- continuing to explore visual complexity, and if/how it can be used to communicate complex subjects.
- Complexifying the making process – bringing in more voices, collaborating, platforming, challenging the very systems and institutions that we make work from
- What does it mean to visualise complexity? To visualise things that aren’t data-based or quantifiable?
Just as I’ve reached the stage where reaching out to others (via interviews) for their knowledge and expertise on the second point, on this last point too I need to seek out help. I’ve got this sense that maybe it’s all a waste of time – surely I’m repeating other people’s labour Is it possible, or is it a pipe dream? Have other designers tried and failed and learned their lessons? Or are there examples of success I’ve yet to track down. I will start by talking to Clive Russell of design studio This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll, designer and co-founder of Extinction Rebellion. I will read Ramon Tajeda’s Diagrams of Power, and maybe email him. I will research more into Kate Raworth, and how she came up with the doughnut diagram that is her proposed model for a new economic system in her 2017 book, Doughnut Economics. I will continue to have conversations with a wide range of activists and designers, and maybe (hopefully) document these conversations as I go. I will continue attending the weekly Against The Grain lectures, and reach out to the wonderful lecturers who explore the most fascinating and complex intersections of design, history and social and environmental justice.
I will continue to actively work out more ways in which I can use my practice to platform and support others. I will question if my current visual forms are the most appropriate for these aims.