July has come to Berlin, but somehow it's spring again.
I've long maintained that spring is the most confused season. It's a great season, but it also has no idea whether it's still winter, maybe it's kind of summery, or both on the same day. Quoting Edna St. Vincent Millay,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
That's also a pretty accurate description of how I work in the studio - like an idiot, babbling and strewing scraps of paper all over the table.
Since my last newsletter I've written three blog posts:
I wrote a bit in my last newsletter about showing work online. I'm still working towards that goal but it's clear that I won't get there in one step. Instead it'll be a series of drafts, each doing part of what I'm aiming for, falling short in some respects, and ideally pointing me in a previously unconsidered direction. It's a form of "learning in public". The draft I've shared functions more like a visual essay than an exhibition, and the research into the collage elements is limited. I needed to give myself a cut-off point in the research, otherwise I'd still be deep in the stacks. I'm pleased with how it worked out, but I also have a lot of notes for myself. I see lots of room for improvement both in the interactivity and the content. Have a look, let me know what you think.
And if you know any curators/exhibition designers who are doing similar (or dissimilar but interesting) work, get in touch!
If you follow me on Instagram, which for a while was my main social media network, you'll note that I'm not particularly active there lately. I'm not sure what I'm looking for in social media right now, but I can say with certainty that I'm not finding it. I currently have active accounts on (as far as I can remember) Instagram, Cara, Mastodon, Bluesky, Are.na, Pinterest, Substack, Threads, Farcaster...maybe a few other places. "Active" here means that I've not deleted my account, which I did on both Facebook and Twitter years ago, regardless of how often I look at it. All of these networks are cool in their own way, but none of them are really making me happy. Blame entshittification, blame US politics, blame European politics, blame me for following the wrong people...wherever the blame lies, they're not places that get me excited any longer.
What I'm excited about now is email. Yeah, a ridiculous statement, but a true one. It's a handful of newsletters that are consistently bringing me things worth reading and thinking about.
A side note on Substack, I subscribe to individual newsletters and read them, not on the Substack site or in my email client, but in a "read later" application. After using Instapaper since launch, I switched a couple years back to Reader, an application that syncs with Readwise, a note taking/syncing/collecting service. Readwise/Reader is an amazing tool if you do any sort of "2nd brain" or "Digital Garden" type note taking. Reading newsletters in Reader gives me a stripped down reading experience that works well for me. Highly interactive websites, which I love and like I'm trying to build for my exhibition project, do break when brought into Reader, so it doesn't work for everything. Then again, what does? All that's to say, despite Substack's efforts to become more like a social network, the way I use it, it's just one more newsletter publisher.
My fondness for newsletters and email makes me both excited to write more, and aware of how I'm not primarily a writer. And that's fine, but explains why I'm great at starting these, but much less great at finishing and sending them. Still, I foresee this newsletter and my blog as being the main ways I share my work going forward. I'm surely going to try whatever the next social media thing is, I may even post on Threads again (gasp), but I don't know that I have a robust "social media strategy" in my future.
"I'm not sure what I'm looking for in social media..."
Going back to my earlier statement, "I'm not sure what I'm looking for in social media..." it's worth spending some time with that and figuring out what I want. Maybe that'll be another blog post.
Friends, we've just crossed 1,000 words, which is plenty for someone who really just wants to make pictures all day long. If you've thoughts, ideas, criticism, etc. don't be shy about sending it my way.
I'll leave you with four things I've read recently:
This article about a photographer documenting suitcases from a now-closed mental hospital in New York sparked so many ideas for how I can more interestingly and responsibly share the papers and documents I'm finding for my collage work.
“The suitcases, Williams said, provided only a tiny glimpse into the lives of their owners. A hint. He felt that much of the emotional force experienced by viewers came from the viewers themselves. Because the suitcases function like art, he said, they spark imaginative, empathic responses in those who look at them. And this is why they function so fruitfully as source material…”
Culture, Digested: The PhD in Creativity
“The United States didn’t want artists. Artists were unpredictable, politically undesirable, and socially unacceptable. But what it did want was the aura of greatness and specialness that artists had, and it wanted to bestow those traits on workers in technology, advertising, and science who were more socially and politically aligned with its own goals. And that could be accomplished with the word “creativity.””
Research as Leisure Activity
“The idea of **research as leisure activity** has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest...It seems to describe a life where it’s just *fun* to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on ideas.”
Regarding this article, not long before I read this I had started reading out loud to myself when reading German. It feels strange, but I think it's helping my mouth catch up with my brain, as my German gets better but still has plenty of room for improvement.
Until approximately the tenth century, when the practice of silent reading expanded thanks to the invention of punctuation, reading was synonymous with reading aloud...Reading aloud is a distinctive cognitive process, more complex than simply reading silently, speaking, or listening.
Thanks again friends. I’ll see you in a month (maybe sooner).
Is it spring again or have we skipped ahead to autumn??