A RITUAL IN THE WASTELAND.

The crunch, the crack, the hollow snag
Stumbling deserted plains with sightfully sightless stares,
Against the wind that sears and howls that dust dissolves;
We can never seem to stop those steps.
Head hidden with an enveloping dark, with eyes still open, see
Bubbling... burning... sliding... slipping... melting...
As the desert dances- letters breathing in the constant rise and fall,
Shaking the breath that cannot, will not, stop the change.
Unobtainable silence... reverberates.
Underneath the buzzing, humming muted gasps,
Rippling fires at the water's edge' the flickering house of lights.
When they've gone out, it is lost until the lights are lit again.
So I will stand at the edge of the world, and laugh
Testing rising, falling waves against the final line
Although they will always pull the sand back out to sea;
Washing infinite imprints from changing sands.
These imprints- mirrors of the footsteps of these staggered doubts,
Untold and unseen is the fear when the record ends,
Becoming another moment lost to a looking glass of sand,
When the eye closes and opens; and sees nothing.

More Ideas...

• Exploring ritual spirituality as a means of counteracting displacement... deriving a sense of hope from the 'waste land' whilst simultaneously learning how ritual can embrace spirituality, and visa versa.
• Playing with my particular metaphor of ritual process, and how it embodies a sense of transformation and change... suggesting a transcending of the wasteland, or the possibility of eventually being able to do so?
• Considering how the use of the alphabet letters incorporate a sense of play in their use of navigating the wasteland... expressions of hope and journey towards self- reconciliation? The messages they express however need changing to lighten the mood and to steer my work away from religious satire and criticism... I don't want to dictate a fear of displacement to the viewer, just to show an exploration, delibiration and then movement towards more optimistic possibilities.
• I want my rituals to embrace spirituality, but perhaps I need a sense of spirituality to embrace my rituals (an inherently my fears of displacement)
• Also perhaps need to conceptually define the mechansim of hope that will carry me on the next stop...
• Consider Sartre's 'reflective consciousness', and Heidigger's notions of the Imagination rendering us homeless, (in our sense of being and belonging) and Kant similar notion of the imagination being nomadic.
• Remeber properties of artist's works (such as Brian Dettmer and Nathan Coley) and how they use texts as objects and enable them to become something else... CONSIDER THIS IN OWN WORK... what kind of objects can they become? Will also carry on using fire as the ritualistic metaphor and medium for appropriating and transforming text... melted letters experiments... how do I further and develop these to take my project to the next level?  

POSITION STATEMENT... MARCH 2011

• Less literal literary allusion to the 'wasteland'... return to the T.S.Eliot and pick out my original instinctive choices... 
• 'Hope' and 'Wasteland' are cyclical processes... CANNOT HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER... there is always an essence of hope in the wasteland, and aspects of wasteland within our hopes...
• not continuing the idea of the letter pyre... will experiement with the laser cut quote (having letters/wax melted over and around them) on a smaller, more singular scale
• Video editing can be simple and succinct... the content holds the most visual power, and not the editiing effects...
• Also make a video consisting simply of the blurred, distorted shots [visual representation of the in- between; the wasteland]
• CONCENTRATE ON VIDEO RATHER THAN GETTING CARRIED AWAY WITH IDEAS OF INSTALLATIONS
• Sound as an integral expression of the notion of the wasteland, correlating with movement, representation of literary [T.S.Eliot] wastelands...

• IDEA OF MELTING ALPHABET LETTERS AND WAX MIXES INTO WOODEN LETTER MOLDS... CREATING MY OWN FORMULATIONS OF HOPE AND THE WASTELAND...

More melting experiments...

Tutor feedback and a new direction...

• Form a "raft" of communications to lessen isolation within the wasteland and increase a sense of hope throughout... CLOSE THE GAP!!!
• Thought as dialogue/monologue
• Less FEAR of the ritual, and more PLAY!  Alphabet letters already presenting an aspect of this... but also need to explore how I can use ritual to embody play without literalising fear, or heightening it further... N.B Ana Mendieta and her use of elemenal material and forces to explore her notion of 'earth body'...)
• Start reading Ernst Bloch 'The Principle of Hope'... Hope as human drive, and the 'Not- yet Conscious'...
• Think of the way artists such as Brian Dettmer, Martin Creed and Nathan Coley use text as a "small intervention in a world that contains so much... and also how the use of text as object enables it to become something else...
• Study T.S Eliot's 'The Waste Land' again... look at concepts of wasteland vs literal wasteland imagery (Eliot's narrative- referring at times to tension of religion, reality, fear and the imagination and issues of desolation in the modern city and the futility of existence- narrative pessimism, fear and doubt link to the Gothic/Romantic affectations of my own research and thinking)
• Notion of the 'dissolving' of language, and changing the temporal states of the wasteland... considering the "SIMULTANEITY OF ENTROPY AND GROWTH"...

 Position Statment Jan/Feb 2011:

During my ritual process experiments- which I carried out at home- I discovered (or perhaps more correctly, rediscovered) a fascination within my subconscious need to follow through and enact certain rituals as an effective defence (or preventative) against fear and doubt derived from unshakeable feelings of displacement. These rituals are inherently driven and directed by elemental forces; which in itself is highly ironic due to the unpredictable and at times uncontrollable qualities of such natural elements.

Although I experimented with a range of natural elements and environments which incorporated my notion of 'ritual in the wasteland', the burning and melting experiments proved most effective, both visually and metaphorically for my purpose... which as my work has developed, is not so much about using ritual to identify and destroy the overbearing senses of displacement, but of dissolving the resulting fear and doubt- which was paramount to the internal creation of the metaphysical wasteland- and replacing it with aspects of play and experimentation that enduce a feeling of hope within.

Essentially; a potential to reach the end of the wasteland, and to no longer feel afraid.

Concurrently, the literary hope of the alphabet letters are also changing to incorporate notions of hope, steering away from the serious, and at times rather damning biblical quotes, to dictate a fear of displacement, and finding a more spiritual literary voice or medium in which to navigate the desolation of my own internal wasteland... I want spirituality to embrace ritual; but perhaps more aptly, I need ritual to embrace spirituality (and I do not have to use the bible to do that).

Any future experiments shall play with the notion of ritual in a way that still identifies, examines and exposes fear of displacement within ritual, yet allows hope to  appear within reach beyond the images of the wasteland and its imposed mental boundaries.

As of yet I must determine whether it is the message itself, or the ritual process which embodies the transformation or change which allows the transgression from the endless displacement of the Wasteland, and to conceptually define the mechanism of hope which will make this next stop possible...