Barrier of Obsession

There is just no pleasing some people. This includes teachers.

As of right now, my idea for my main piece in my senior thesis is partially installed in my studio space, as you saw from my last post. I had a progress critique today, as I won't be around tomorrow for it due to a family "emergency." (I say that loosely, which is why it is in quotes.)

My teacher wants me to frame the picture a la Barry McGee. Thing is, McGee's drawings are all different dimensions, and I'm keeping mine to an 8 x 11 format. My defense for this is that I'm borrowing from the obsessive compulsive side of my thesis, albeit it doesn't directly relate to obsessive fandom. He asked then why not do the OCD thing and put it in a grid? That's where the conspiracy theorist side of the obsession aesthetic comes into play, which involves clusters and string going all over the place until it creates a net. And back and forth with this.

It's been kind of like that between me and Jack since seminar. It's as if he doesn't understand the logic behind what I'm doing, even though the rest of the class does.

The big and annoying thing that broiled my chicken was how he wanted me to actually install the string, push pin, and post-it notes in my studio creating said web. The web acts like a symbolic barrier that is often found in fandom culture in sociological terms. But in that studio space? It would act like a hindrance. Oh, sure, I could move my desk around and maybe just do small installations here and there, as was suggested by Jack, but what if the lay out in the studio ends up being something different in the gallery space? What then? Oh no! I don't have enough string left over! I cut a string too short, and I need it longer! And worst of the worse case scenarios is that I forget why I drew a string between these two drawings or lose a post-it note between the studio and the gallery some forty feet away. Yeah, I know I'm being ridiculous, but you have to understand the logistics. It isn't that I don't want to do that now, it's the fact that the school doesn't allow enough space for me to do it in a way that would please my instructor.

The compromise that I came up with was to make a foam-core model of it. Ten by ten inches, with sewing thread being the scale representation of the yarn that would criss-cross all over the space.

Apparently that wasn't even enough for him. With a mandatory Distinction Candidacy presentation for mid-term, he wanted to know how that would help me with the documentation requirements. After all, I'm suppose to show my work at that presentation, what work survived and is documented.

Ah, see, now I have the upper hand! I took public art, and this is how they present their ideas to the committee members that want their art in a public space. They cannot create a large scale installation or sculpture to show what they are thinking the space will look like, so they make models and document those. Some even go as far as to photograph the space and photoshop in the model to give a better example. Why can't I use the scale model as part of my documentation even if the installation isn't installed yet? Public art artists do that all the time!

I won that battle, but I still left the lone critique feeling pretty much the way I did during most of seminar: confident in my idea but not in my execution.