NO IMAGE

Today I was writing the last section of my thesis. This doesn't mean I am nearly finished because there are large chunks I still have to sort out, even though I know what I am going to say and I have the references. This stuff is basically 'artspeak', it feels like second nature so I tend not to focus on it enough. Providing the cross-disciplinary and now cross-cultural background has demanded more effort and time.

My research to date has reached a conclusion and I need to get my thoughts down. Not having to back up what I am saying with quotes from other people allowed the words to flow - at last I can give my opinion freely, because I have done all of the groundwork. These words have been threatening to cascade out of me over a period of years now but I have been holding them back because I needed to get on with the main body of the text.

I am not sure how much of what I wrote today will be suitable for inclusion in my findings because I may have gone beyond my initial research objectives. But it felt good anyway, and it will appear somewhere, even if it's just in my blog. The entire document has blown out again to 48,000 words, and I may have to cull heavily.

I realised today that for the past 6 years I have been on an amazing journey. The practical part of it has been the process of researching and writing a thesis. But the thesis is also about another journey that ran parallel, one of self discovery, deeper psychological insights and spiritual epiphanies. It has been massive - life changing. For me this is the essence of art practice as research. Life and art, life and knowledge, knowledge and art are not separate.

I am constantly aware of this massive thing in my life, more so lately as I near the finish line. It is still possible that something may prevent me from finally submitting it and I would be devastated. Regardless, the journey has done it's work and I have landed somewhere beyond the image. But that may take another thesis to fully articulate. This is an extract from the earlier part of the thesis.

Working with imagery and the imagination alters perception and changes consciousness. Laszlo says that 'when consciousness is in an altered state, the brain seems to function in a mode in which information that does not fit the commonsense conception of the world is not repressed'. He adds that in contrast, 'ordinary waking consciousness is a strict censor'. (Laszlo, 2004: 99) I work with images[1] because they offer me a way to circumvent the censor. As a consequence they have had a significant role in the development of my own consciousness. They have allowed me to explore new ideas and alternative realities beyond the barriers imposed by the physical body, consensual reality or the rationalist, logical thinking that still dominates the way in which Western culture approaches knowledge in the twenty-first century.

[1] Images are a visual phenomena that allow us to perceive and interpret the world but are also ideas that we explore through imaginative thought.