I'm currently working on writing/designing the document I want to submit, and while this blog has been really useful for me, I've found that it tends to be best for 'opening' things up rather than 'closing' them down. Obviously I'm now working on closing things down, as fabricated and unreal as that feels.

Poster for upcoming GRC. Click on it to see big... the 'abstract' should be legible? I've since rewritten the abstract for the program. It went more like this...

[abstract]
This practice-led, project-based research charts, simultaneously, my disenchantment and re-engagement with graphic design. A seismic shift in activity and perception bought about by a provocative process of disruptive reframing. Central to this research are questions about dislocation, disinterest, and reinvention. These questions are framed by an underlying desire to locate a conversation and a community of practice that has some resonance for me.

Exploring and proposing 'monstrosity' as generative metaphor - a methodology - within practice-led research, the projects, initially, provoke my own personal habits, beliefs, and expectations. Later projects, often 'outside' the research specifically, will be used as evidence of a certain level of re-engagement.

As disenchantment is common, perhaps pervasive, within professional practice, my account of this research will propose that a more general understanding of practice-led research - highly reflective, self-initiated work - is essential if graphic design is to support and sustain imaginative, innovative, and inventive practitioners. Rather than target graphic design's inability to support provocative practices, my research focuses on the potential of the individual practitioner to motivate and design a more generative and engaged practice.

DISENCHANTMENT

PROVOCATION

ENGAGEMENT

I think I was influenced by this "DDD11 exists in the shady overlap of a curious venn diagram made of two saw-toothed circles labelled BIOGRAPHY and REPETITION" from Dot Dot Dot. Following a conversation with someone last week I sat down to write something about DDD... I was interested in how I'd discovered it on my first trip to Melbourne, it'd taken me a while to 'like', and then I've recently met and hung out with Stuart (ed DDD). I thought that somehow by charting my relationship with this publication I could explain my Masters (and maybe that'll be my text for the next TNG?). Anyway I like the way the monster dissapears into the middle (of my murky venn diagram), and it's not about my own research specifically... it feels more abstract (useful). In fact this decision has been influenced by the number of people (graphic designers) I've met with lately who've all seemed very 'disenchanted'. If disenchantment isn't pervasive in professional practice then it is certainly very common.

So my current plan is that I'll 'curate' (I can't think of a better word) a bunch of texts by other people that fit into (or sit between) these ideas. And for my submission I'll generate another document to sit with this (to hold it's hand... I'll make it the same shape/size) that will be broken (fabricated) into the same sections DISENCHANTMENT/PROVOCATION/ENGAGEMENT. This text will contain the 'academic' stuff (documentation of earlier projects, personal observations, and explicit thesis) that 1. is required for a Masters, and 2. seemed inappropriate for TNG.

I'm currently trying to write a summative (conclusive) statement under each of these three headings for my penultimate review in Melbourne in 2 weeks. I'll post that here when I'm able to articulate something I'm (more or less) happy with.

I immediately liked this idea, but having thought about it over the last week I've been finding it really hard figuring out how to proceed? It seems obvious that I'd 'plan' the issue and then brief people to write about specific aspects that relate to my topic... esp people who'd been influential within it, Lisa obviously, and I was really keen to Stuart to do something. I quite liked that the briefs I would write could be considered as my thesis (in the sense that the thesis contains as many questions as answers).

Anyway I talked to Jonty, my co-editor, about this idea... and we both agreed there was a large potential for it to be 'icky'. Interestingly I think we both meant the same thing in our use of a vague and childish term... it was hard to locate, but I think it had to do with the idea that TNG would become (for an issue at least) 'academic'. I think we both like the idea that the publication can be more abstract than that... existing between definitions like that and 'real world' etc. More of a ghost...

I think I mentioned this to Cameron and Lisa when we met, but it became more apparent when considering how to package/write up my research... I have two potentially different endings I think? To be honest I feel like there's one that RMIT would like, and then there's one that The National Grid would like... my question here (and I really would like feedback!) is... are these really different? And is [1] innappropriate for TNG? Or is that just a question of the language I use? And finally, should I just go back to doing what I was going to do (thesis as a publication of/on it's own, a monstrous text constructed by me using both appropriated and original texts)?

[the sensible academic conclusion]
1. THE MONSTROSITY OF PRACTICE-BASED RESEARCH
- the newness of practice-based research (illegitimacy)
- the hybrid/mutant nature of it (it's construction is monstrous)
- that it tends toward autobiography and narcissism
- how to negotiate this (self-awareness vs self-obsession)... learn from it, make it generative?
- how to articulate this... communicate (extract) implicit/particular/tacit knowing as explicit/abstract knowledge via personal stories and anecdotal evidence?
________________________________________________________________________

[the angry young man conclusion]
2. THE DYNAMICS/MECHANICS OF MONSTROSITY IN CREATIVE PRACTICE (imagination, innovation, and invention)
- monstrosity as a generative metaphor
- the importance of the marginal and provocative in creative practice
- locating the marginal/peripheral
- generating and sustaining the provocative

all of the above could be discussed particularly in relation to individual practice (reinvention, generative-ness), but also more abstractly in relation to the broader domain of Design (something about Design's ability to generate or sustain marginal and provocative practices [I don't think we do it as well as other creative practices... why?])
________________________________________________________________________

My penultimate review is on in 3 weeks and I really need to make a decision and get a considerable amount done before then!? I'm quite freaked out about that time frame but I'll try and reserve my anxiety for offline discussions...

I had to write a blurb about my research for a book in the weekend, and I wrote this (this is unedited and written in a rush but I thought it was worth putting up here)...

title:
MONSTROUS PARTICULARS & ABSTRACT AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

text:
I've been trying to write something about the monstrosity of practice-based research. About how much I hate it, but that, in hindsight, it's obviously been rather fruitful for me. I want to say that practice-led research tends toward autobiography, and that its inevitable that we've all become quite monstrous here - too much time spent in front of the mirror (mine have been those warped and disorienting ones you can find at Coney Island). Followed by something witty - jocuserious - about the horrific realisation that I had somehow become the object and subject of my own research. But then, of course, to articulate my point (all monsters have at least one sharp point) that only through this painful realisation - the creation of my own worst enemy, my own Mr Hyde, a self-motivated self-disruption bordering on masochistic nihilism - could I (we?) have made any progress. What kind of progress have I made? Like Victor Frankenstein's monster, mine has made me realise what's important, but unlike poor Victor and Dr Jekyll I hope I've been able to 'pull out' in time, for this is dangerous work. But sometimes things need to be destroyed to be rebuilt. And if I sound overly cynical or negative it's because I've found that the generally destructive dynamics of monstrosity - aberration, fear, illegitimacy, exaggeration, provocation, failure (you could go on but these are the ones I'm interested in) - might be rendered momentarily useful. Indeed, through the manifestation of my own cynicism - traversing my own discomfort and fear - I have, almost unconsciously, managed to re-engage with a practice/domain that I had previously all but given up on. I still think graphic design is a bit trite and banal, but that interests me now... deeply perhaps. And somehow that's all I really wanted anyway. To be more engaged by it.

I'm being brash and a little vague, so I guess I'll just propose monstrosity as a generative metaphor within practice-led learning - a strategy for extracting the implicit and the particular, and a methodology for articulating and/or negotiating the beast that will inevitably appear in explicit and abstract terms. How to write about yourself? How to negotiate the narcissism of it all? And to be honest, I want to see others suffer as I have done. If I don't I'll be skeptical about what they've gotten out of all this, that's all.

I've always had in mind a romantic vision of my thesis at the end... a cohesive grand narrative... flowing from contentious/disruptive beginning to irreverent and final end. I can't describe the anxiety that comes with the realisation that this might not be going to happen. I've spent most of the last week in a state of paralysis! Not knowing how to proceed. Stuck. Not sleeping... getting worse.

Then, riding over the Williamsburg bridge lastnight (always good for a think!), and feeling down about leaving New York, it occurred to me that, if nothing else, this was all quite appropriate! Lots of starts with no finishes, pot shots,... failure and frustration. The story of my masters. There is no cohesive grand narrative, only observations, a fragmented but loosely stiched collection of realisations about research, about graphic design, about philosophy, about creative practice, about relationships...

The 'cohesive grand narrative' I have had in mind since the beginning. What I failed to do then was modify the expected outcome based on what I've actually learnt about research and about design!? Or maybe, to be more precise, what I've learnt about 'myself' as a researcher and a designer. My thesis isn't working because I'm trying to dress a monster in academic narrative. A beginning, a middle, and an end... hypothesis, experiment, conclusion... that's not how it happened, and if anything my actual research - the projects, the failure - testifies to a certain value in working in a mode that is almost oppositional to that model.

My thesis then might also be monstrous!? This realisation comes as a huge relief to me! Already I feel like I have a bunch of texts I can use/reuse, and I feel like I can 'move' about freely. But not only does this give my thesis the kick in the pants it needed, it also tells me something more about the monster... or my relationship with the idea, proof that, for me, the metaphor is indeed generative... that it acts as a foil to my often overwhelming anxiety and pessimism... and that it opens up and promotes a sense possibility from within a sense of failure... that it might actually render faliure very generative?

What do I mean by a monstrous text? Just quickly... I want to be able to write about things inside of and outside of my research. I want to be able to write about other people; Dylan, Kaleb, Stuart, Lisa, and maybe certain students. I want to be able to write in whatever style seems right to me at the time. I want to be able to be highly personal and anecdotal one day, and critical and academic the next. I want to be able to interview myself. I want to be able to write a horror story, a self-help manual, a glossary, and a letter to my girlfriend. And I want to be able to write when and where it feels right... to be able to stitch this all together at the end... like Dr Frankenstein - the monster is an exercise in editing!

That my research, and indeed that 'practice-led' research in general, tends toward auto-biography.
That Stuart Bailey's text 'On Biography' in DDD 11 points to a space, "a gap between two poles" from which the character materializes, "spectre-like".
That this text of his relates back to something Robin Kinross wrote in DDD 2 called 'The Uses of Failure'.
That SB is currently interviewing RK.
That maybe I interviewed Dylan in search for relief from talking about myself.
That when I was interviewing Dylan I wanted it to be more 'conversational', and that in doing so I ended up talking about myself.
That this made/makes me uncomfortable.
That at one point I claimed to be seeking discomfort.
That this discomfort (a la Bailey/Kinross) might be useful... where the (my) spectre materializes?
That it's peculiar to seek out one's own ghost.
That Dr Jekyll's quest for improvement through self-awareness went horribly wrong.

"Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindoos give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of the void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it."

From the introduction to Frankenstein... complete annotated text is reproduced online here.

I liked the idea that I could write this thesis in a monstrous style, half horror story - half self-help manual... kind of, Mary Shelley meets Oprah Winfrey... prophetic and evangelical, both romantic and spooky. But I'm not sure I'm a good enough writer to do that. (Oprah's website is worth checking out by the way)

One thing is clear though, the writing and production of the thesis should be seen as a 'project' within the research.

As an occasional cure for homsickness I log onto National Radio. Recently I heard an interview with Armand Leroi talking about his latest book Mutants. Armand is an evolutionary biologist with a specific interest in genetic deviation. What was most interesting to me was how what he talked about was more broadly applicable to cultural attitudes about deformity and perfection. Armand talked about how important mutations are right now in terms of pointing us to what specific genes are actually supposed to do. He spoke about how we're currently in a period of renewed interest in mutation and abnormality, but how that interest was one based on the correction, or normalisation, of such 'flaws'.

Of course he talked about the history of mutation, how early on misformed babies were assumed to be monsters or demons, and then later the freak shows of the Victorian Era (The Elephant Man in particular), which were eventually - for obvious moral reasons - what drove general interest in mutation underground.

In my thesis I want to try and negotiate/articulate my disengagement with the fundamental description of design as 'improvement'. To develop a critique of the 'cult of purity' that is pervasive in the discipline, and to justify or locate a position other to that. More than any other creative practice, I think, design (broadly) tries to base itself on what it thinks society wants/needs. It is therefore more highly susceptible to the general perceptions of the culture it plays for.

I've been watching the TV series Carnivale, which follows a travelling circus around the southwest United States during the Great Depression. Of course they have a 'Freak Show', and in one episode 'Ben' is sent out to locate 'The Lobster Boy'. Last year I watched Tod Browning's Freaks, and I have to admit that, like Diane Arbus, I've become midly fascinated by the alterations that an error in gene reproduction can cause on a human body. Following the Diane Arbus lead I've heard stories of illegal 'underground' freakshows existing in New York City well into the 1960s... but I haven't been able to find any here now. Where did they go? Is it just unethical, or don't we have mutants anymore? Are we that infected by the desire for normality that we've done away with such abnormality through science and medical technology? Yeah, kind of... Armand explains.

And then this! The Mermaid Girl on Oprah Winfrey. Is Oprah wanting to get the 'ol freak show started again? Naming the unfortunate child 'The Mermaid Girl' (a la 'The Lobster Boy' and 'The Elephant Man') would certainly suggest so, although in true Oprah fashion the child is referred to as a 'miracle'. I went to Oprah's site because I was interested in the aesthetics of 'self-help'... to find this there certainly makes me think I'm onto something...

although when I told Anna I'd been listening the interview with Armand Leroi, she said she'd just been sharing a cab with him in Wellington! Spooky serendipity... or a sign?

1.Problem Solving... commonly served up as a fundamental description of what designers do. I don't think Graphic Design, particularly, is 'problem solving'... any more so than deciding what to have for dinner tonight is problem solving.

2.Ambiguity... been reading an interesting paper by Bill Gaver (Et al) called "Ambiguity as a Resource for Design". It's interesting to me primarily because it disrupts (or would appear to disrupt) #1 above. Gaver's interests are in the interpretive relationship between an object, or system, and it's user... my reading of it replaces 'user' with 'designer' (I'm specifically interested in how designers engage with Design).

Gaver is attempting to offer alternatives to the very linear type of process described by 'problem solving'. There are a couple of things I wanted to mention (esp for Yoko [who's read it] and Laurene's feedback) about this in relation to my stuff... [a] the last part of the text reads like my monster manifestos, a ten point declaration for ambiguity in design. But that [b] their best examples come from an 'art' context, and the 'design' examples are weak in contrast. I guess I want to suggest that this is because (as the authors are aware) ambiguity and uncertainty aren't generally considered to useful to designers... so it's not something that's been well explored in design, as opposed to the fine arts. But also that their focus is 'product design' where the intention is generally 'usefulness'. It made me think about how examples could more easily have been pulled from Graphic Design, and that as a sub-domain of 'Design', Graphic Design is closer, more generally, to the generally more 'useless' (and retinal?) domain we call 'art'.

I've been thinking a lot lately, sparked by something Aaron said, about how much more engaging I usually find reading and talking about music. I've been thinking about the implications of teaching design in an art school, and about arguments I had last year to not separate the design department from the art school via a change in name. But it wasn't because (and I was hugely misunderstood/misinterpreted here) I wanted design to be seen as art specifically, more because I just didn't see that the distinction was useful. I thought the value of the course lay in it's fuzziness, and I think I'm starting to see that that's (partly) where my monsters have been coming from... a kind of fracture or dislocation of discourses and communities of practice. I'm not really interested in professional practice... but I'm not really interested in making art either?

1. Salvador Dali was interested in the ability of the paranoid mind to see and/or invent links and associations between things that are not obviously or rationally connected. He described his 'Paranoid-Critical Method' - essentially attempting to simulate clinical paranoid schizophrenia - as a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena".

Dali was interested how 'paranoia' enabled people to construct 'facts' that weren't necessarily true or discernable to others. More precisely he wanted to be able to enact the systematics of paranoia, where seemingly unrelated or disparate things could be put together to create new meanings, ideas, or 'facts'... untrue facts that had the potential to turn the world on its head. To 'prove' things that weren't true... to disrupt 'reality'. To be 'critical' involved being able to move in and out of the paranoid state so that it wasn't simply destructive but could be constructive.

There's an obvious link to my interest in the monster as metaphor there, and one that draws in my evolving intentions for the publication. I'm not just referring to the fact that both Jonty and I are deeply paranoid people(!)... more specifically I'm interested in that idea of unexpected 'loose' connections in relation to the content/voices... also I'd just say that, like John Ford, I'm generally more interested in fiction than fact. I guess I think all research is slightly 'paranoid' in the sense that it often becomes obsessive to a degree, and anything/everything begins to relate to your topic... that is 'paranoia' basically. So of course editing the first issue of TNG Jonty and I began to see all these 'connections'... actually that's where 'Peripheral' came from...

Despite Jonty's protests I'm still going to refer to TNG as 'Paranoid-peripheral'... I like that idea that of a kind of obsessive exploration of an edge, conspiracy theories, etc...

Also, in the background somewhere, I really like the idea of claiming Salvador Dali within your lineage. I like the fact that Le Corbusier hated him (and vice versa I believe). I like the spooky (intangible) romance of Surrealism as opposed to the functional romance of Modernism. I want to believe in magic,... I'm not interested in demystifying design, rather I'd like to re-mystify it... for myself anyway. I think as far as aspirations go that one can be called 'marginal' (peripheral)?

I'd like TNG to be a place where I can invite others to take part in that.

I also wrote this in the editorial:

I think it would be really interesting if graphic design could look at itself in relation to music, rather than architecture or industrial design. Then we wouldn't have to talk about problem solving, and we could talk about resonance instead.

and this:

I wanted to write something called 'Grid Theory' for this first issue. Something huge and evangelical, but ultimately compact and entirely self-contained (paranoid), like Manhattan. Anyway I ended up living in Brooklyn (peripheral) and obviously I never wrote it.

...

I hope Jonty doesn't mind me putting these images up here, but since writing that previous manifesto I've been flat out working on The National Grid. We're aiming at getting it to print on Monday, and it's been a lot more work than I'd naively imagined. It's been a really enjoyable process though... but I'll come back to that, sort of... (this should possibly be two different posts but I'm sure they're related somehow?)

Anyway last night I was talking with Laurene about where I'm at and what I'm up to. She asked what I meant about the 'shedding the monstrous skin' bit in the manifesto, which lead to an interesting discussion about 'coming out' of the Masters... the idea that the methodology I've engaged (reflective practice) has been quite horrific and I've begun to see myself as a monster... but now how to pull out of that (to not "remain monstrous too long") and through the exegesis look at what I got out of being (or attempting to be) monstrous, how it's changed/affected my practice, and how that might be framed/pitched as a 'contribution to the field'. Emilie also has mentioned my need to tie things down... actually she suggested the 'structure' that she saw here. Which is very useful I think... to know what your research looks like to someone from outside.

I guess I'm beginning to quite like the monster though... but maybe I'm thinking of it as a caricature these days and it's more fun than painful perhaps? I definitely want to do the 'Design Wolf studio visits'... I think that'd totally f*cking rock... or the documentation would anyway. But you see what I mean?

Anyway back to The National Grid and an observation I made while attempting to write my part of the editorial for this first issue... I wrote this:

"This whole endeavor really, is the result of us being at a bit of a loose-end. Neither of us were very good at being real graphic designers, I mean we could 'design' ok, but all that other stuff; time, money, people skills? Why we both ended up in education I guess. But we're not entirely happy there either, and we've often joked around about our best students being unemployable. After dinner with Peter and Stuart I Googled them and I found that interview with Stuart where he mentions something about finding an escape route out of design, whereas I think for us this project has been more about finding a way back in."

I don't know if that'll end up in the publication, esp the bit about 'dinner'? I recently freaked out when I realised that The National Grid was looking and feeling very similar to Dot Dot Dot. That's happened quite unconsciously, Jonty and I have looked at it and talked about it a lot... Jonty didn't care as much as I did, and maybe I'm over reacting. Anyway I thought that way in/way out difference 'thing' was important/interesting. I really like Stuart's writing, a lot of what he says resonates with me in the same way as a lot of music I like does... in the way that makes you go, "Damn I wish I'd played/said that". I enjoy his cynicism and I see that DDD is actually very English now, much more than it is Dutch. Rather than try and explain what I mean about the 'ways in/ways out' I thought I'd just copy parts of the interview in here (it's from Speak Up by the way)... and let it explain itself, it seems pretty obvious... my point being that I think we're talking about the same thing (only he says it really well). What I most like is seeing someone put something you felt so succinctly and perfectly... like dinner's always 'nicer' when somebody else has cooked it for you.

Talks about coming from the Netherlands to New York partly because he felt there was no depth there... interesting because I've felt the other way, like coming here was a mistake and that I should have gone to Europe.

"I'm also looking for an escape route from graphic design, which I'm guessing I'm forcing myself into finding... an instinctive phrase; a reflex rather than a plan... sick of hearing myself saying it and trying to work out what it means in practical terms. It's exactly the same as spending two years complaining about wanting to leave Amsterdam. Eventually something gives way and you do it. Geography or work, it's the same thing. Again luckily, I have Dot Dot Dot to work this out with.... you can find a more defined mapping of this disenchantment with graphic design by observing how the magazine has changed."

"I've tried to explain elsewhere how I don't really see graphic design as deserving of being treated as an independent, navel-gazing discipline. It exists entirely in relation to other subjects.... I suspect what I'm really against is what that term "graphic design" has come to represent, i.e. synonymous with business cards, logos, identities and advertising, and, again simply put, those are things I'm just not interested in."

"I think what I do, and what the other people I work with do, is confusing, because it's difficult to place."

"So when I say I'm after an escape route from "graphic design", it's from a "graphic design" defined by those quotation marks, from the self-imposed limitations of what that implies (the self-important "industry" or "profession", its awards and profiles and self-justifying theories...) ... It doesn't start out being a big deal, it only becomes a big deal when a third party - it could equally be a student or a critic - turns it into a big deal."

"That's part of my problem with writing around graphic design: it uses such grand, revolutionary, pompous rhetoric, and in most cases they just don't fit the subject matter. I guess it's because that sort of rhetoric - ideologies, systems, strategies, which seems to ape the language of war and social change - comes from a particular sort of art or architecture writing. When it gets filtered to graphic design, which is mostly everyday and ephemeral, it just doesn't fit right. I find it a bit embarrassing..." [link to the manifesto and evangelism... The Rev. Holden Gunn]

"Although it's true that I've always collaborated on maybe 80% of the work, those collaborations were never planned. I think it's a combination of insecurity and boredom, or to turn those around, it's about the strength of working alongside someone, both confirming or criticizing each other.... You get to places you wouldn't on your own. Will wrote to me recently that a real conversation is one where you genuinely don't know what the other person is going to say next..."

"Well, "choose" is too strong. I know I keep picking at your questions like this, but I think it's important to convey the vagueness with which these things occur..." [I like his vagueness... one of the things that resonates]...
"The clarity only comes in retrospect. At the time they happen without anyone really noticing,..." [noticing in retrospect]

[on working with Will(?)]... "We spent an evening playing each other completely different kinds of music, then decided we should write something together precisely because we were so apparently incompatible"... "The two best pieces of work of anything we've both done are the ones we made together, for precisely the reason that they could have never been made individually. I'm a big believer in those “third ways”, in qualities you can't quite isolate."
..."In Dot Dot Dot 8, Kodwo Eshun wrote: "How fragile it is to form a group, any kind of group. How delicate the task of creating the conditions for a shared belief are." and so it's true: we're on the point of collapse most of the time. " [link to The Grand Saloon... into my enjoying The National Grid project]

"... it's always on the basis of friendships" ... "I made the book Appendix with Ryan Gander, for instance, because we met and got drunk... argued for about eighteen months... The key factor was the trust that all our arguing was leading to a better result."

[on teaching writing] "I'd decided to stop teaching graphic design, partly through feeling a bit uncomfortable teaching something I had doubts about, as expressed above. I realized that what I'd ended up doing after a few years was largely trying to teach writing—I mean in the sense of "designing writing"—disguised as graphic design. That’s fine in itself; I think it's a useful and relevant aspect, and everyone was always cetainly interested..."

"I always relate these things to music, so it's like thinking what's the second album going to be after the rough debut; more studio time, more pressure, bigger egos, drink problems, etc. "

"attempting to convey the more abstract qualities: the vibration, the after-effect, the unexplainable (rather than the inexplicable). In a way it's doomed to failure, but interesting failure. I anticipate ending up with something else altogether, nothing to do with what you were aiming for in the first place. It's about setting up certain conditions to make sure you get lost." [this could have been in my manifesto, re. peripheral!?]

1. The monster is our alter-ego
2. The monster resides in us all
3. A manifestation of our anxieties
4. A sense of impending doom.
5. The monster is primarily concerned with itself.
6. Self preservation.
7. Feeding it's own needs
8. It has no interest in saving the world.
9. In fact it believes that the world must be undone/destroyed to be saved.
10. And that this can only ever really be done on a personal level.
11. So you could say it's concerned with 'self-improvement'.
12. The monster is certainly self-obsessed.
13. It is not narcissistic though, as it's reflective foci are primarily it's flaws.

14. The monster is a 'getting-worse' so things can get better.
15. A bad dream
16. The monster is transitional
17. We can all become monstrous in moments of transformation and change
18. The monster is marginal, but we prefer the term 'peripheral'.
19. Of course you can't focus on the peripheral, and the monster can only be seen, or documented, in hindsight.
20. Often accidentally (you only see it when the film's developed for instance)
21. It 'becomes' through an intense process of reflection
22. Too long spent in front of the mirror
23. It is there all the time in the things we don't normally notice.
24. It is seeing ourselves in places we wouldn't normally think to look
25. In the shadows, in the wardrobe, under the bed.
26. The edge of everyday.

27. The monster is all loose-ends and bad connections
28. You don't know what to do with it/yourself at the time
29. It is all questions and no answers
30. The monster can never be satiated
31. It is extremely frustrated
32. The cause of it's anger and destructive impulses
33. But it is rich with complexity and possibility
34. Which can never be adequately articulated
35. Never finished, whole, or complete

36. It is always on the move
37. Travelling
38. El Dorado

39. The monster, like the werewolf, will come and go.
40. To remain monstrous too long is to risk death
45. On awakening we can begin to try to understand our monstrous selves.
46. Attempting to articulate that which we have destroyed
47. To begin to negotiate our newly disrupted, and more complex world
48. The monster leaves us with a sense of the peripheral
49. Dwelling in the borderlands of the place we knew too well
50. We are reinvented, reinvigorated,and we have work to do.

I guess I feel like I haven't really cleared anything up with this.
... just stated things I already know. Actually Lisa keeps pointing out to me though that I always hate what I've done, but am able to come back to it in a couple of months and appreciate it... realise, in hindsight, that I did get something from it. Which I actually reference in the manifesto... hmmm...

I guess I worry that calling your research 'monstrous' of course becomes a good excuse for not having to clear anything up... but I have to find something to say. And if I keep going down this road I'm going to need to be able to articulate much more precisely how and why the monstrous metaphor has been, or is, generative. I think 'if' I approach the manifesto again I need to write it differently... rather than a series of short statements, maybe choose particular terms and try and explain them. (Jonty and I are trying to do the editorial for The National Grid like that, so that could be an interesting crossover perhaps?)

Also designing it felt unnecessary, now that it's not really about formal outcomes in particular... which I kind of felt good about. One thing I think I've figured out recently is that my masters should never have been so focused on 'making' (process/artefact), because that wasn't really my problem... my 'problem' was everything else that was going on around the making (peripheral interactions)... that meant that I wasn't finding the making very interesting.

Having said all that though I have played around with designing this manifesto this morning...

I was thinking about turning it into another poster I could stick up around Brooklyn, but I'm not sure now? I don't like the way it looks... but I didn't spend much time on it... all I really wanted to do was try putting the photos with it. I do like the fact that in the bottom image you can see that I've just been putting on the make-up...

I don't know, this feels like something else now... and like I say, maybe it is a skin you shed? Or is it just me hating everything I make? And yeah I see that that is somehow relevant, but I still feel sick in my stomach...

Any feedback on this very much appreciated!

That's me and that's my friend George. She's a graphic designer too, and we used to work together in Wellington. A while after I moved to Christchurch George moved to New York. I stayed with her for my first couple of months here and obviously we ended up talking about design a bit... I hope she doesn't mind me saying this here, but she hates her job. Pretty quickly after I arrived I began to see George as a good potential test case for my (admittedly vague) ideas about a 'generative practice'... the idea that my search to reinvent/reinvigorate my own practice might translate into something useful for someone else. The question I think this image poses is "how the hell is this guy gonna be helping anyone?"...

I think the minister character is a lot easier to figure out which is maybe why I haven't done him yet? Me as a monster, however, seems more problematic... and I guess more interesting. Actually doing this photo shoot of myself last week really regenerated my interest in the monstrous manifestoes... I think partly because I kind of scared myself. Attempting to locate this figure as beneficient!?

I guess all the talk about the perhipheral/marginal got me re-excited about the monstrous again too. Actually also my conversation with Yoko via her blog. I want to sit down and write another manifesto around the idea of the practitioner/me being the monster... I said I'd do this ages ago and then kind of lost interest, but it seems to make sense now. I've even been wondering if the minister figure could be combined with the monster... The Rev. Wolf?

As for George...? Stay tuned...