Things are definitely moving forward! Conversations of collaborations, forming art groups and proposals! Very exciting! 

Tomorrow is the final day of the show and the work will then be taken down.




I have felt unbalanced during the past week - I seem to have lost my bearings, I can no longer detect north. This has surprised me greatly but a good friend warned me this could happen; recognising this is the key.




I made some curtains this weekend for our lounge, we want to put our house on the market and move to Devon, but the process of making the curtains bored me intensely. I am struggling to grasp the life I pursued before. The weather is not helping...rain, rain and more rain. Everything feels damp and appears grey.




It is however, wonderful to be with my husband and three children again and to not have my degree dominating our time.




My brother and his wife visited my work, as did my parents. Having that support cannot be expressed in words. I am most grateful.




I now have to look forward. I am excited by this though intimidated. Time has been spent with some very special people and I don't think I have realised how big a role they have played. Perhaps this is impinging on me now. This is how my life has always been...a constant flow of chapters...or perhaps books. Each book contains different circumstances and different persons...no two books come together. This book could be closing but that is my choice...I am tired of closing books and starting again...perhaps this book will remain open for a little longer.

I need a studio!


Comments  reference my work in the degree show.


a beautiful and thought provoking piece


mesmerising


stunning 


cool


beautifully considered


interesting and graphic

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/in-the-best-possible-taste-grayson-perry/4od#3364319

A frightening but cleverly directed series!

Have been reading The Future of the Past; The Loss of Knowledge in the Age of Information by Alexander Stille....a REALLY interesting read!

...wow, Manchester looks great for MA Visual Anthropology also...!

I have been further considering the idea of MA study, and questioning, what were the higher points of my degree study? After some consideration I feel the answer to this has been the research (through lectures, reading, documentaries, related talks) and questioning, and the opportunity to think. I am a thinker, observer and a questioner, as I discovered while writing my Dissertation, Critical Commentary. Translating/interpreting these thoughts into art has been interesting but has sat slightly lower in interest than the research. 


I have often wished for a greater background in anthropology. It is anthropology that I am now considering advancing into. 


Where to study? Goldsmiths offer a couple of courses in this field - interestingly Visual Anthropology which practices predominately in video.  They also offer Anthropology and Cultural Politics which sounds really interesting. Although I imagine highly competitive to get into, if I were successful, perhaps the part time option  may be a possibility. I am of course considering this for sometime in the future when the children are off doing their own things! The crutial thing is that I continue reading and keep up with my filming and editing skills.


Bristol also offers Social Anthropology which again looks so interesting.


Hmmm, food for thought!

This is crazy!


Wide awake and not falling asleep before 02:45hrs??? 


Following 3 years of study, the studying has become, quote Marx, "...the opium.." to my life!


Haha, well not literally, but I am finding it very difficult to slow down...my mind is a constant chunder, chunder, chunder.

As humans we feel an involvement with the possession and responsibility of planet Earth. 

We crave to prevent the destruction of the Earth and its species. 

We battle to apply the brakes on evolution.

Much evolving is occurring through mans increasing technologies. 

Can we allow ourselves to consider the Earth and Man's technologies as a marriage and thus, as beautiful?

My Degree Show piece for my Fine Art BA (Hons) Degree at Plymouth University 2012.

sub/supra iii/pioneer by Mandy Beall

The more I consider the thinking of Zizec and now Nye the more I I believe that since day dot, the day man first walked on this Earth, nature has ceased to exist. From the moment the technology of communication began to the first beast that was slain, congested and skinned  for clothing, warmth and shelter, unnatural, unprogrammed, genetically modified events occured.


We live in a world of constant modification. Some we are conditioned to consider as good and some less so.

I am currently reading David E Nye's, Technology Matters, Questions to Live With. (Borrowing it from Plymouth University Library so must get myself a copy!)


A very interesting and appropriate chapter to my current work (now known as sub/supra iii/pioneer), Sustainable Abundance, or Ecological Crisis. 


He relates to J.B Jackson (one of the founders in Landscape Studies) whom I have previously mentioned and comments, 


'Landscape is not natural; it is cultural. It is not static; it is part of an evolving set of economic and social relationships. Landscapes are part of the infrastructure of existence, and they are inseparable from the technologies that people have used to shape land and to shape their vision. People continually put the land to new uses, and what appears to be natural to one generation is often the struggle during a previous generation. Some of the apparently wild moors beloved of hikers in Britain were once thickly forested. In other parts of England and Scotland, land owners evicted small farmers during the period of enclosure, creating a countryside that visitors now take to be "natural"........Almost everywhere, the appearence of the land is the result of an interregional interplay between agriculture, industry, and leisure activities. Technologies also affect the air, which carry traces of smoke, microscopic particles, pollen, carbon monoxide and the dust raised by travel.'


D.E.Nye (2006:88-89)


The Mit Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England




............and washing machines possibly distribute plastic fibres into the sea!!!!

Foucalt's heterotopias are intriguing me!

Landscape as defined by J B Jackson...


'A composition of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve as infrastructure or background for our collective existence' 


John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven, Conn.; Yale University Press, 1984), 8. cited by David E Nye, Technologies of Landscape From Reaping to Recycling, (University of Massachusettes Press, 1999)

Evaluation complete, looking back at initial proposal. It's funny how you think you know the way the work will go, but at the end of the day it can go anywhere. I am pleased with the work though disappointed I didn't have greater opportunities to further the work in the Marine Science Lab. I think this was explored too late in the year and the department had too large a work load. I am gratefeul for the small opportunity I was given though.


As the Degree draws to an end, with the final assess on Thursday, I feel it is time to move on. I am looking forward to allowing myself to begin seeing again. It was lovely to visit the beach with my family at the weekend and to relax while being there. I was able to be at one with my family as supposed to being obsessed with seeking inspiration and matter.


MA studies? Perhaps one day. I loved my first year of the degree and the weekly lectures. Those I have missed throughout the second and third year. I felt my brain expand within that first year!


Now I look forward to spending the summer with my family with a trip to the north west coast of Holland in August...I look forward to foraging new material there.

The evaluation goes on! Think I am heading somewhere with it now....