After sharing the previous blog where I reflect on topics and subjects I aim to explore in my extended essay, and looking at the references I will discuss in A2: Literature Review, I have had some useful comments from other students which include helpful sites as well as suggestions of writers and practitioners. I will add to this page as more arrive.
- A guide to writing a critical review (as opposed to a literature review):
https://xerte.ucreative.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=93#item0_PG1549360927916
- Another note that fellow students have reminded me of: The literature review is not an essay. (Yet, it should still be written as well it can be.)
Work I might find useful
- I mention in my blog that I want to begin to tackle Deleuze. A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari has been recommended as a good start. I have looked at a couple of videos in the meantime. And immediately thought, Oh! this is related to Systems; and to how a linear Cartesian understanding of existence is being usurped by a picture of a networked reality, and the end of the Triangle of Being, replaced by a less hierarchical system. Therefore it will inform knowledge already embedded most notably from a System’s View of Life, Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi, 2014 (Kindle)
- Charlotte Cotton’s Photography is Magic 2015/16 Exhibtion and essays, which I have downloaded. There is an optimism in this show and, I believe the essays, which might act as a counter to Elkins’ darkness. Cotton also talks about ‘post-disciplinary art’ which sounds very much like ‘multidisciplinary’ as discussed by Capra.
- Comments via email:
A few thoughts in response to a quick read …I wonder whether Michael Fried’s “Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before” might be a work worth looking at for a ‘counter view’. He’s a good old modernist (though you yourself say, in passing, that “intention is key”
).You also say …So the poor old still photograph has a great deal to compete with.I might, if being contrary, argue that we still get an enormous amount of our information (and, perhaps, unconsciously, our perception of reality) from still visual images – even if they’re sometimes flashing by us momentarily. I’m not sure – are you looking to argue that the moving image has a closer relationship with reality; or that we humans regard it as more ‘real’; or that there’s more of it so it’s more influential on our perception of ‘reality’; or possibly something else or a combination (
)? Are you, maybe, looking to understand (justify ) your own focus on the moving image?Maybe (just ‘maybe’, not definitely) you will need to focus your attention somewhere? Be it still or moving image, the contextual scope – selfie/holiday video/online newsreel/archive photo/celebrity publicity/Jeff Wall artwork/feature film/indie documentary/magazine ad shot – is huge, and that list could go on and on and on.Hope that’s useful – fascinating stuff, as always.I replied (edited):
…. really useful. These discussions help me to see what holes I’m leaving and there are as usual many! Fried has been suggested to me before although I think in … 50 key writers on Photography. I shall take another look.
Do be contrary – it helps. I like how you have differentiated what I might be arguing (I must be honest, I do not know yet!)
I agree – I may need to focus my attention – it is such a very big topic and thank you for your suggestions. Super useful.
Here I add:
Am I looking to justify my own focus is a very good question and if so, I think I need to avoid doing so – I don’t need to justify it, do I? But I am more interested in using whatever form works to make the point – whatever the point might be. At the moment, I think I am trying to suggest that the momentous revolution we are living through now, moving from analogue to digital, is part of and exists in a feedback loop that is about something far more fundamental, a complete overthrow of logocentrism which dates back really far; and is probably well-served by fewer fixed boundaries between forms because the boundaries across reality are currently disintegrating while at the same time being redrawn. This view of mine is taken from far away and is not about the current decade or generation although this is a pivotal moment.
- Some great feedback which includes potentially relevant quotes for me to look up and consider:
Something pops out at me which is that photography has been seen as this special medium, better and more real than what came before. And we have since realised that it has its limitations to capturing reality which has released an explosion of creativity that undermines its original intent. Does a loss of faith in the mediums initially perceived presentation of truth ultimately liberate it or condemn it?
Similarly the accessibility of photography through smartphones etc has democratised the medium which creates new causalities. Photography may become artisan again (analogue already is) when it is replaced by another medium. Is it a familiar cycle in all mediums? (Yes, so agree with this which is why the current obsession with alternative processes irritates me. It’s so predictable.)
Quotes (google the bits below)
- Richard Serra – “Art is not democratic”
- John Tagg – “More significantly, perhaps, if a piece of equipment was made available, then the necessary knowledges were not.” (Tagg, 1988, p.17).
- Nicholas Bourriaud – “An artwork is a dot on a line.” (Bourriaud, 2002, p.21). In reference to linear art history. Do we repeat history
- “Otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities. but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist.” (Bourriaud, 2002, p.13). Have we chosen to live in a constructed reality?
Overall I think you have a lot of interesting enquiries. Try to narrow down a central idea or interest, not too many because I know the word count fills up fast. It doesn’t have to be a direct relation to your BoW. My tutor said you can’t resolve everything in 5,000 words. (Good point!) So you want to leave room to enquire in other tangents potentially in the future.
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