Change of focus.

I 'pitched' an idea to my tutor today as to what I propose on researching and producing photographic art as a response to, over the next uni year. In really narrowed down terms I'm looking at the craving of stability and control in life. Something that I myself have had trouble with for along time. Now, when I say pitched what I actually mean is, as soon as I sat down at the desk I tripped over just about every sentence and word I had to say ending up in babbling stuff nervously to him in a pretty confusing way. Amazingly though he understood what I was trying to say and was very very helpful in helping me try to get to grips with what I'm looking to research as best he could.

Last year my project was focusing on the seizures of Epilepsy and looking at the truly unique experience that a person goes through when they experience a seizure and how close you can get to sharing this experience with someone who has never experienced anything like it. Revealing and visualising a moment that is invisible. Gosh it's hard to explain. Here is my Artist Statement from the project which may throw a little more light on what I was aiming towards if it interests you. Anyway it was all very personal which I am completely fine with I mean lets face it seizures aren't exactly something that can easily be hidden. But given that the whole Epilepsy diagnosis thing was so very fresh and such a steep and life altering learning curve at that time (it still is...) it was very hard to not have ANY escape from the fact with it being part of life and part of study. 

This year I am still looking at the effects of Epilepsy but not in such a predominant way. It will be part of a slightly broader project. I want to look into the idea of people craving stability and control in their lives. Using myself and my personal earlier life events and aspects to highlight and gain ideas from. Epilepsy is unavoidably the bass line to my new work focus. It's such a huge part of my life now it would be silly to try and ignore it when I'm working on looking into the idea of people craving stability and control in life. After today I have realised that without it's constant presence in my life recently I would not have began to really think about earlier events in my life which have now become something I want to investigate further and use to create work from. This summer being a real eye opener into my current life's state. I barely stayed in one place for more than a week. Even when I did manage to ground myself in one place for about two weeks... seizures landed me in hospital. Shows how little control I do have. I won't go to far into these 'events' right now but it very basically involves being bounced in between people and place from a very young age. How it led to my becoming so used to surroundings constantly shifting and changing that I now get almost uncomfortable when I stay somewhere for too long. Resulting in me actively organising my life so I am almost constantly on the move. 

I am aware that I'm rambling on a bit. I need to get my idea's straight before I can make any real sense. It was a really good tutorial though and I feel like I'm already in a strong position in terms of immediately carrying out research and beginning to create work.

So with what said I'm going to carry on my tradition of shifting myself to another place for a while and hop on a train to Devon in the morning. Better get some sleep.