As I am still unsure what my final outcome or outcomes will be, preparing the elevator pitch was a difficult task for me. Looking back on the feedback from Project Investigate, I identified ideas that were interesting and I wanted to expand more on and explore more. I also identified new ways of expressing oneself and that brought me at a bit of a crossroads, as I wasn’t sure whether to work on those more or focus on refining ideas and works from Investigate. In the end I have decided to focus on refining work, rather than experimenting with new things like performance or choreography, so as to actually be able to produce resolved works at the end of the project. I shall however keep those in mind for potential future works, as it does seem exciting, unique, personal, and interesting. 

My statement of intent

(I screwed up my first drafts and ran out of A1 paper, so had to resort to taping together A4 pieces of paper ^,^”)

The only thing I felt I was missing in my SOI was an image of how my comic draft looks like in order to visualise my idea. That would have cleared up some things, as I didn’t have time to explain the comic fully within the 1 minute of the pitch. As for the structure of my SOI, I wanted it to follow my own thought process a bit more, rather than follow more of a ‘headline – text’ structure. 

EVALUATION FEEDBACK TASKS

Following your elevator pitch you are to record, evaluate and analyse the feedback you have received. Go back to your SOI and make additions and changes in response.

I have sorted the post-it feedback into the following categories:

• encouragements
  • Thank you for the encouraging words everyone, I really appreciate it ♡ Especially the A4 puzzle comment :’)

• recommendations for other works
  • Will definitely check all of the recommendations out! 
  • Book: André Breton’s ‘Nadja’
    • The book starts with the question ‘Who am I?’, the question at the heart of my project. It’s a semi-autobiographical surrealist novel. 
  • Read: Asteryos Polyp
    • A graphic novel  by David Mazzucchelli. From Wikipedia (the most reliable source of information): “Ultimately, the book raises questions about how a person becomes who and what he is.” The style and use of colours is super appealing to me, so I will most definitely check it out! Thank you for the recommendation! (Also, I’m always open for more recommendations for graphic novels.)
  • Artist: Sophie Calle
    • This bit of biography on her certainly sparks my interest. Especially the aspect about the blurred lines between the intimate and public.

“Sophie Calle is a French artist who has exhibited extensively throughout the world since the late 1970s. Variously described as a conceptual artist, a photographer, a movie director, and even a detective, she has developed a practice that is instantly recognizable for its distinct narrative elements and frequent combination of images with text. Each of her projects can be seen as a chapter in a vast overall volume of references and echoes, in which Calle often blurs the boundaries between the intimate and the public, reality and fiction, art and life. Her work methodically orchestrates an unveiling of reality—her own and that of others—while allocating a controlled part of this reality to chance.”

From: https://www.perrotin.com/artists/Sophie_Calle/1#biography 

• recommendations/ideas for my own works
  • “Idea! Interview people around you (parents + childhood friends). Work with memories.”
    • I did think about doing that, to see how they view me and who they think I am and compare and contrast it with how I perceive myself. It is said that a different you lives inside every person. So, I think I might do that over the Christmas break when I’m back home. 
  • “Maybe collaborate with an illustrator to include in the writing”
    • I was personally planning on drawing the comic myself.
  • “Pop-up/interactive aspect?”
    • Hmmmm… interesting. I can’t really imagine how to do that, but it would add another element to my works.
  • “Let others record you”
    • Again, going back to the aspect of how other people see me as, but this time giving them the autonomy… Cool!
  • “Your comic book did look good! Can’t wait to see the refined version 🙂 Could you create physical letters and send them out to the world without any link to yourself? Post them without stamps to invented addresses?”
    • Thank you for the nice comment ♡ Oeoeoeh, I like those ideas! On the one hand I worry about involving someone who didn’t consent to be involved into my work, no matter how inconsequential it might be, as I don’t know who those letters might reach, especially as the content of those letters is meant to be personal and open. There is also a sense of… almost knowing with a fictional character. It’s not a complete stranger, just someone who cannot respond or receive the letters. The idea is certainly interesting however and might be a cool project to spread openness. It reminds me a bit of the Cameramail project by Matthew McVickar in which he sent a disposable camera around the world asking people to take a picture before sending it back to him. As for the invented addresses, I like how it gives the fictional characters almost a sense of physicality and realness. (Might steal the idea :P)

• questions
  • Who are we?? Are they coded? / Who are the main characters in your book?
    • Here I wish I included an image of the comic draft in my SOI, as it would have cleared up these questions. But the comic will be about me and my own sense of identity and what I feel like I get my sense of identity from most. 
  • How to make the work relatable? 
    • That is a tricky question and I guess a tricky question for any work that deals with the artist in question as the focal point of the work. I want to keep my own work as open as possible and pass off the questions to my audience: who are you and where do you gain your sense of identity from? During the final crit, it seemed like many people face the same questions and issues: Who are we truly? Can we be ourselves and express ourselves fully? etc. I want my works to be open to these questions and assure everyone that it’s alright to not know the answers to them fully. 

• suggestions for further research
  • “I want to see the friction between confidentiality & publication of work. All the best ♡”
    • Me too, commenter, me too. A fascinating dichotomy that I hadn’t even really thought about before. 
  • More research.
    • Succinct and to the point. But more research into what, commenter?
  • “Explore relatable complexities(?) in emotional & social human aspects”
    • As I understood this comment, it’s about shared personal experiences from various aspects of life. Discussing what was meant in this post-it note with Nayana, she recommended I read ‘The Argonauts’. 

Please read the following subject area categories. Select one or more category and use it to reconsider your SOI from a new perspective:

Audience

Who will be my audience and how can I reach them? Those are good questions indeed and not something I had considered before, really. I imagined my audience to be quite broad, but I also know that not one work can reach everyone or appeal to everyone.

The comic I imagine will be put in the publication for Project 6, whatever format or medium that publication will take. I also considered posting it on Instagram to reach a wider audience. While the comic is about me and my own sense of identity, I do want to pass the question onto the audience: what defines you? The way my personal memories, interests, and experiences made me, those same aspects apply to everyone else.

On the other hand, the letters I write to a fictional character aren’t meant to be read by anyone. How can I appeal to an audience that I reject? How can I even show that work to my audience? And how will they perceive my work as: alienating? Obscure?

Thinking about audience, it does make me wonder what the whole point of my outcomes will be. Why should my sense of self, my interests, and my feelings matter to other people? Do they even matter? I want to believe they do, even just a bit. Telling each other about our own experiences is what shapes the world and connects us to others. It’s how we learn and grow. Telling stories is what shaped our societies and cultures. It’s practically ingrained in our being human. Empathy goes a long way, in my opinion, too.

Write a list of tasks and research that you need to follow up on over the Christmas break.

• Finish my practitioner essay draft
• Draw the refined version of the comic (digitally using Photoshop)
• Do some web research into the notion of the self for the essay/article for this project
  • Decide on whether I want to write an essay or article

Time-Plan: Using the template provided in the SOI handout draft a working time-plan to manage your time effectively. 

It was incredibly hard for me to make a time plan, as I have not concretely decided what my final outcomes will be, so it’s hard to plan for something you’re not sure of. I shall work on this over the Christmas break.

Overall, this was an interesting task and does put the work I need to do in perspective. I’m curious how my SOI shall change and develop over time and what it can say about my own way of working.

Anyways, I wish y’all a Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year! ^ω^ The past half year has been incredibly exhilarating, challenging, and just straight up fun. Here’s to a new year full of that! And good luck with your work too! ❄️

The Cartoon Museum was very nice. Perhaps I should consider volunteering there once?

My problem with choosing a practitioner for my essay is that I for one have commitment issues and am bad at making decisions. But also, I would like to write my essay about someone that relates to my practice for stage 2. And that is the crux of my predicament: I don’t know what to do. 

Also an issue with comic book artists and writers is that, unless they are indie/alternative comic artists and writers, they usually work under a bigger company (DC/Marvel/Vertigo, etc.). One can wonder about how much creative freedom they have under said companies (especially for emerging artists). And also, does the work they produce under said companies contribute to their wider oeuvre? Or can they be classified as a means to provide food on the table? The flip side of a big publisher is that works published via them can have a wider reach and can be thus more accessible and well-known. What I’m trying to say is: I am having a hard time picking a practitioner for my essay, even when narrowing the topic down to comics.

And I guess another complication is the fact that a lot of comics have a different artist and writer. Does one talk about the art or the story? Both elements are crucial in a comic book and are very interconnected. The writer needs to relay their ideas well to an artist and the artist needs to realise those ideas in the form of drawings. But the writer also needs to leave space for the artist to flourish, both metaphorically, as well as physically. 

The UK Comics Laureate exists. The first person to receive it was Dave Gibbons who is the artist of Alan Moore’s The Watchmen. Honestly, I couldn’t think of anyone better suited to be the first Laureate holder. His work is so famous and influential and etc. The Watchmen especially was a famous and medium shaping work that, along with The Dark Knight, shifted the perception of comics, and especially superhero comics, from childish to something serious and worth artistic merits. 

The second was Charlie Adlard, artist of The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman. He himself described feeling not particularly worthy of the title in a sense, but did advocate for comics as a form of literature for children with dyslexia as his own son is dyslexic. 

The current holder of the laureate is Hannah Berry. I hadn’t heard of her before this, but I got her debut graphic novel Britten and Brühlightly and it is a stunning piece of work. A noir detective story starring a depressed man in a midlife crisis feeling the weight of the lives he has ruined on his shoulders stronger than ever taking up a case in the hopes of at last not break someone’s heart. The amount of work that must have been put into writing and painting the comic is highly impressive! I am curious to check out more of her work, especially Likestock.