Identity: The d&ad

I've decided to start using these blog pages to continue the more formal research methods of the MA and the 'Lunderbach' pages will form the basis of my professional practice. I may well end up merging both sides but will use this blog to begin my write ups.

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Notes from Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, Madan Sarup, Edinburgh University Press.

'There are talks and discussions on the meanings of home and place, displacement, migrations and Diasporas. Distinctions are made between immigrants, economic migrants, refugees and exiles. There is also a great deal of interest in the self, subjectivity, and in recent developments in the theory of the subject. how does one represent oneself? There is talk about different personalities. identity can be displaced: it can be hybrid or multiple. It can be constituted through community: family, region, the nation state...'pp1.

'While writing I often think of home. it is usually assumed that a sense of place, or belonging, gives a person stability. But what makes a place home? Is it wherever your family is, where you have been brought up? The children of many migrants not sure where they belong. where is home? Is it where your parents are buried? Is home the place from where you have been displaced or where you are now? Is home where your mother lives? And, then, we speak of 'home from home'. I am moved by the phenomenological question 'Are you at home in the world?'...pp1/2

'But what are we to make of homesickness? In Freud's fascinating essay 'The Uncanny', he remarks that the fantasy of being buried alive induces the feeling of uncanny strangeness, accompanied by a certain lasciviousness - the fantasy, I mean of intra-uterine existence'. He continues: 'It often happens that neurotic men declare that they feel there is something uncanny about the female genital organs. This unheimliche place, however, is the entrance to the former Heim of all human beings, to the place where each one of us lived once upon a time and in the beginning. there is a joke saying that 'Love is homesickness'. (1). pp2/3

Final report

MA Report.

Studio

I occupy a space within an artist's co-operative based in North lincolnshire which is shared with twelve other artists. The building comprises of eleven artists studios, thirteen creative industry units, two galleriesa craft gallery, an auditorium, sculpture garden and coffee shop. the building is a converted rope making factory which closed in 1989 bringing an end to its two hundred year history in the industry. although the studio isn't my sole creative base, it is the place where i am able to bring ideas, thoughts, concepts and experiences to fruition.

'The house shelters day dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. thought and experience are not the only things that sanction values. The values that belong to day dreaming mark humanity in its depths.' 1.

The space allows me to dream alone. Life today is in a constant state of flux, there are many distractions - cul de sacs which can halt the act of productive creativity. the day to day need to earn money, checking emails, spending time with the family, reading the tabloids, broadsheets, bus journeys, trips by car, phone calls, watching TV as a form of escapism all combine to limit the available time devoted to art. it can make one appearto be living life in a state of constant flux, without a centre, a world submerged in information overload.

The studio, the room with the four white walls becomes my sanctuary. In her book, 'A Room Of One's Own', Virginia Woolf makes the point that '...a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.' 2. This is a sentiment that I employ in my creative practice. There is an inclination towards keeping the space relatively uncluttered and clean, somewhere comfortable, a place of leisure, an environment that is incomparable to other spaces that I occupy anywhere else in my life. When i close the door I imagine that there is no history, no future...simply 'now time'.

Research Methods: Journal

The following pages form the journal element of my research methods. I have selected four passages from the following areas to examine in more detail. They are as follows:

1. Phenomenology.

2. Marxism.

3. Feminism.

4. Postmodernism.

I have highlighted the passages in bold, using bullet points in which to discuss and cross reference with a variety of quotations and personal commentary.

I have also included information gleaned from the lecture series and my own follow up research. The contents of this journal is worth up to 30% also cross references my written report and bibliography which is worth up to a further 70% including bibliography and references.