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...