Reflective Report

BA1b • Open rotation project

Back in year 1, the moment that most defined my essence as a practitioner was the last project, the Open Rotation project. In this task we had a piece of text about Norwich and we had to come up with something using one or more of the formats of the previous rotations (publish, object, interaction and film). We had 3 weeks to complete this project. For this I combined publish and object rotations making my whole concept about my personal experience in Norwich translating it into 4 images made using lino cut. These images were about 4 objects that best described my experience here: a 2-pound coin (relating to me moving to another country), my keys (relating to reaching a first step for independence), my favourite ink pen (relating to my first year in university) and a medical object which I don’t really know the scientific name for (relating to my first bad experience here). Those images later turned into a little booklet and into 4 separate A5 prints for the final exhibition.

map

room

nua

cashews

This specific moment made me feel capable and happy. Capable of doing something that I wasn’t comfortable on doing before and happy that my project turned out to reflect me as a person and an artist, since all my projects before were about meeting deadlines and coming up with something that would fit the brief and not something that mirrored myself. Also on the other hand, a couple of weeks before starting this project I felt lost and frustrated as I didn’t know my place as an artist, I felt I wasn’t doing what I thought I liked doing and I wasn’t in the right place.

To overcome this frustration, I had a crucial conversation with one of my closest friends. I really threw myself on thinking what was I really interested in and why I chose illustration to begin with. This conversation helped me on realising what I wanted to become and do for now and the future. That was when I decided I needed to explore and find out what I really enjoyed within the subject of art.

This experience definitely opened my eyes on how to research a matter. The research to this project led me to get involved with some areas of knowledge I didn’t even know I was interested in before such as film, animation and illustration concerning environmental issues. This aspect had a great impact on me regarding ways of research and how it is key to get an artist hooked on a specific subject. I got to join my personal interests and my university projects like never before.

Analysing my experience, I’d say that in comparison to other briefs along the year, I got to understand and grow a lot. Why did I choose this moment in particular? Didn’t I get positive experiences from other projects? Most of my previous projects were about me concerned of what would I have to show, focused on quantity instead of quality, I would get frustrated a lot easier since I wasn’t doing anything for me but for the sake of doing work like a mechanical process and not and artistic development. I used to draw a thick line between personal and university work. My personal work had to do with what I enjoyed and university work had to do with coming up with intelligent subjects and outcomes reflecting the brilliance I could put into it. There were moments where I asked myself and my friends about this issue but none of them seemed to understand since their work was both (personal and university) mixed, which at the time didn’t make sense at all to me.

I got to realize they were both the same in this Open Rotation project, I got to make it about me and my experience here in Norwich. I got to research about what interested me and how could I make it connect with the brief. Before I didn’t have a link between the brief and myself but from that point on I got ask myself “What do I want to do?” and everything since then became so much easier, interesting and logical. I felt I threw myself in the project without thinking ‘Is this right?’, because it felt totally right.

What I can conclude from this moment is that there’s no line, there’s no “I should” because our research and outcomes will obviously be different, because everyone’s way of working, ideas and interests are different. There’s no formula for a brief. From that moment on I started doing “university work” as my “personal work”, blending those two together.

Now that I look back on previous tasks I had to do, I realise why I struggled so much to come up with ideas and concepts, I tried my best for them to not link up with things I liked at the time as I didn’t think of them as subjects of study but entertainment instead.

On the basis of what I learnt from this came great support on mainly research for either practical projects or writing reports. Getting immersed on a subject matter and getting inspired over and over again got me making progress on the journey and outcome of a specific project from that moment on.

I can talk about it as a turning point on my artistic journey, as frustration and feeling lost is part of rediscovering ourselves every time. I see it as a healthy breakdown now, it made me change my practise methods and productivity to a much light way of thinking, improving and developing constructive forward facing plans.