Hangout: 1 April 2020

I met up with the OCA group this morning online.

Hazel and Rob talked about the difficulties of progressing with SYP now that we are all in lockdown and everything has been shut. Both are in a kind of limbo and I look forward to seeing how they find ways to do what they need to do through these extremely challenging times.

I discussed where I was with the zine and how BOW A4 had taken a slight back seat for a while. Some useful questions were asked and they will be helpful to document as my answers summarise where I’m at and what the work is attempting to explore.

1. I mentioned I was planning to order 50 copies of the zine and try to sell them as I need to find ways to bring in some kind of income. As we were discussing SYP, it became clear I was inadvertently tackling elements of that module (see item 2). I had looked at some callouts – Inside Out are doing one but you get paid £80 only – and that’s if they choose your work. They might not even choose mine. This way, all the profits come back to me. Since people are keen to help artists and self-employed people at this time, I hope I am not being unrealistic about people buying them. I had asked for a quote for 25 as that seemed a manageable amount to sell but when the figures came back it just seemed more sensible and economical to order 50. Of course, if we had access to a normal uni print room we might all do this much more economically but I am very impressed with ExWhyZed so far.
2. I talked about how pleased I was with tutor Jayne’s comments – ‘Your zine content and layout does a great job of presenting complex ideas in a creative way that’s both sophisticated and accessible’ (TV Padlet, 2020) because that was my intention exactly. To make something accessible that would stand the biggest chance of being sold while also managing to maintain something of my (complex) underlying themes (an SYP discussion point apparently). It’s why I went with this black and white aesthetic which people without PhDs in photography enjoy.
3. I suggested a cost of £7 – we all agreed £7.50 would be a good figure to cover postage and the cost of the proof.
4. Doug asked me a very good question which I need to be able to answer clearly and succinctly. How does the zine fit with the overall BOW work?
   My answer –
   i. The zine includes creative writing and image. It was only after Ruth was so encouraging about the writing when initially submitting A2 that I had the confidence to pursue a creative writing/image path. So this is the first step in that direction. (see an earlier post about how I came to use these particular images with this writing.) Also – this article about ‘art writing’ will be useful to reference in my submission, especially with the later project.
   ii. The underlying themes feed both works, the zine (A2) and the book (A4/5) – i.e. systems change as seen through linguistic and image signification/structural reality. I hope the statement at the back of the zine hints at this – also on my website
   iii. I was glad when Michael pointed out how relevant this was to the current situation – I explained, that is why I am not rushing to make work about COVID-19. There is a lot of noise and it just seems for me the best thing to do is try to stay focused on my work and keep going, let the world filter through as I always do. I am already making work about systems change, morphology, the chaos – autopoiesis. There is a really good and relevant passage in Capra’s Systems View of Life which describes how systems do this – I will make some time to find it and post here later.
5. Rob has offered to help me figure how to get the sales facility up and running on my site which I am grateful for. I think I might need to upgrade my Squarespace subscription though.

The zine arrived while I was on the hangout. I’m so glad I ordered a proof for more reasons than just checking out the tone. I will discuss these in a separate post. Tomorrow’s ‘me’ time will be about making tonal adjustments to a few images and moving some text about.

I was really grateful for everyone’s support and hope to have this all and running very soon.

Doug suggested writing a blog about this with link to sales for the OCA – good idea!