These are sum mushrooms I collected in October it was my best find ever I was very excited. it's funny as I'd been looking for the picture all day as I knew I had it and wanted to use it to illustrate some writing about mushrooms and networks. They are Ceps and they are easy to recognise, they don't really look like much else and the things they look like are not poisonous , although the bitter Boleat is bitter.
When I was at art college a friend of mine made a film call "I'm not a doctor but I recognise this" I don't know why I thought opf that but it is something about how we present. I wrote about it on the final report thing we did with Amanda Ravetz the fact that the line of practice seemed very clear from the inside but as we step into the shoes of others it could appear as a dogs breakfast. The seamless appears as the shoehorn.
Anyway I found the epiphany email - one of the kids had minimized it. It's funny cos I really thought you had ignored it and I had said something bad or obvious but infact I'd not sent it. It's good because I've read this blog a bit today and it is very good in places and I like having the thinking in one space. So here is the email
I have just walked the dog and had a kind of epiphany about the Poly which is probably one of those things we realised ages ago but it feels like something I have been working towards in my head - you already might be there but all the reflecting on Ruskin has pushed me a bit further.
Basically the Poly is becoming Kate and Steve but it allows us or could allow us to pull together all the different strands of our work and make this work better but what is different to Kate and Steve is it can shape shift to accommodate stuff which before we have seen as separate - your work at Nottingham - my work at the University - the schools stuff and it is this which is the clever thing- we need to work on making it hold together properly we don't fit things in we make them fit. This sort of happened when I said the work on the Imagine project could be a Poly inspired wider world artist thing but this was a problem as it predates the Poly when it was organised so it becomes retrospective. The studio project is part of the Poly in my head but we had to go to Castlefield as we needed to have a legally constituted organisation but it still fits.
When you suggested we went for the Sheffield Hallam job as the Poly I said we didn't stand much of a chance and you were best to go for it as an individual but perhaps the poly could start to define itself in different ways so in two years we could apply for a job like that.
If I go back to the initial meeting with Clare I said I'd like us to get the chance to work together more and be asked to do things and it was a collaborative practice but maybe it's more about the polytechnic been a place which can hold our difference and sameness and allow us to work apart and together but it be somehow connected and generative and all build and grow stuff for each other. So Kate and Steve turn into the Poly and the poly is more holistic and we focus on it and try and make things fit and each have our bits together and our strengths and think about it when we take on work and apply for things - so the Ruskin project gets us to be more proactive in building and growing things rather than responding to briefs and calls. As I write this it all seems really familiar and not really an epithany but the epiphany bit I suppose is about the fact that the poly allows us to make sense of the bits of work we do independently or at least offers a way to reframe this work. I say this mainly because the work I do independently doesn't feel as good or real as the work we do together and it would be good to somehow bring it all together in one place.
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