James’ PhD project made it clear to me how practice and theory can work together within an academic context. For example, the way James attempted to establish 4 key points for para fiction, which he then attempted to represent, almost test, through practice (Ben Evans James, 2022) was a great insight into how one might go about structuring a final major project. I also appreciated his honesty in discussing how the film ended up being less valuable than the exhibition, even though it ended up being a successful piece in the “real world” (Ben Evans James, 2022). This showed how making a successful piece on its own might not necessarily contribute to the larger theoretical aspect of a research project.
I was further surprised by the fact that James’ project “only” consisted of a few larger projects, rather than lots of smaller ones. It made complete sense (as making films and exhibitions takes a long time), yet when imagining my own project I have pictured lots of smaller projects coming together, almost as a collection of studies. James’ project made me wonder wether I could rather focus on building 2-3 larger pieces in order to thoroughly demonstrate and reflect on any chosen theories.
Referring back to my initial ideas from last week, I think all of them would fit within a theorised making context. I also think theorised making seems like the best choice for in regard to my interests, as I’m really hoping to do a lot of practice and experimentation for this last project of the course.
Although I don’t think I’ll be doing a studio oriented report for this project, it was incredibly useful to hear Dudson’s insights into Hawraf’s internal and external documents. Although it’s not currently in my plans, starting my own practice one day does sound tempting, and as a lover of structure I really appreciates the Hawraf archive, which I also used a lot for the Studio and Entrepreneurship module.