As a student, an artist and a person, my broadest aim is to make sense of the world around me and express my responses to it. I attempt to gain perspective by looking at history and speculating on the culmulative moments that brought us into this vast, confusing postmodern existence. Our intimidating present with its rigid social orders and illusive technologies further motivates me to make sense of it through connections to the past, knowledge and even fiction.
In Zeros + Ones, Sadie Plant explores the history of textiles and spotlights Ada Lovelace's historic contribution to computing through collaboration with Charles Babbage amongst other writers and inventors. As typewriters, calculators and information processors became embedded in predominantly female workplaces, a culture grew, and this lattice of connections became known as the net. (Plant, 1997)
My interests span the internet, textiles and fashion, coding and creative tech, as well as class, particularly Western working class and underclasses. I have concerns regarding underrepresentation of the working class in the creative arts. There is also a general reluctance to grasp creative technology, too. Sam Aaron, Research Associate at the Cambridge University Digital Technology Group, and live code performer encourages everyone to learn coding, just as they learn to read and write; not to become a professional writer, but because it is an incredibly useful skill.
As I approach the second week of the module, I lay sick in bed with a classic case of the freshers' flu. I'm reflecting on the encouraging feedback I have received from my tutors.
This evening I started watching a documentary on BBC iPlayer Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture presented by Alastair Sooke. This has sent me on a miriad of paths, looking at the work of Henry Moore and Jacob Epstein. My line of enquiry has drawn me into learning more about their backgrounds. A quick Wikipedia search reveals Moore as the son of a under-manager within a colliery, who encouraged Moore to avoid working in the mines, which seems unusual but nonetheless understandable. Even my father encouraged me to follow in his footsteps and become a butcher. This to me is a common trait of working-class families, which is important for me to identify now as I am beginning to ask, what makes someone working class now, and why do people often reject the label despite fulfilling the criteria? This information also links back to the miners, Jeremy Deller's work and the Pitmen Painters, which is exciting as an ecology of ideas.
As discussed in Romancing the Stone, Moore's work was celebrated for it's beauty and comforting humanism, despite the difficult themes concerning the cold war and nuclear threat. It was employed to these lighter means in the Festival of Britain in 1951. There is a seed of an idea here which I wish to explore. Some may consider working-class to follow a system set out to them by the middle and upper classes. Work for their businesses, rent their houses, rely on social housing and benefits. Be seen, not heard. Working class artists upset this standard by expressing a critical stance. It feels that the British institutions chose to ignore Moore's critical ideas in favour of the pride in his pop-star status and value as a British artist making beautiful work.
I also discovered that Jacob Epstein's model for St Michael's Victory over the Devil (1958) was his daughter's