ADMA 2023-2024

In my research I experiment with boundaries and different diaristic approaches within my practice of drawing, presentations and writing to question and challenge patriarchal society.

Dear you,

I hope you are doing well. Are you also so tired of all this rain? I heard someone on the news saying that the potato harvest is in danger. The tubers rot on the fields. And cows will give less milk this autumn. Too little to graze on the soaked lands. How different from the beginning of this schoolyear, don’t you think? Remember how summer folded beyond itself till somewhere in October? You asked me how this year of art and research has been. You can find my answer here, although it will also appear on the website of our program.

As you probably do remember, we started this adma-year under a clear blue sky. At the time I had accompanied myself with a research question whether an artistic practice embedded in the format of a diary could challenge, or, at least, question dominant discourses of power in contemporary society. My hypothesis was that a diary-like artistic representation of the personal and the anecdotical, of the trivial and the mundane, could challenge nothing less than patriarchy itself (or should I say himself?). In order to do so, my initial, and pretty much only plan was to make drawings on a daily basis. I would draw whatever I came across along the anecdotical way. And, in doing so, it was my strategy to reveal the personal as being very political. Then, hopefully, at the end of the year I would have a collection of drawings which, in a yet unpredictable way, would prove both the relevance and urgency of my research.

But, as is often the case, things turned out slightly differently.

It is now the end of the schoolyear and I do have a collection of colorful drawings. And, yes, they often refer to the very personal or anecdotical.

This one, for example:

It refers to red car lights on the highway in the dark. For weeks during winter this has been the last image I saw every night before I finally fell asleep.

And there are these two:

I like to call them politics of cleaning. Or, now that I think about it, with the elections coming up on Sunday: cleaning of politics could also be a suitable title, don’t you think? (Do you already know who you are going to vote for? I am still in doubt.) As you can see, the daily drawing plan went reasonably according to itself, but, as the year moved on, it became clear that other strategies were needed.

The classes in adma, we call them sessions, are besides very interesting, also quite intensive. There is a lot of talking and sharing to be done: about the research, the methodologies, the theory, the practice. I was not very used to that before I came here. Also, from day one, I felt a bit uncomfortable with the heavy sounds coming from discourse and dominant and ideology and patriarchy, all words from my own research question. (This discomfort often reveals itself as a jumpy inner giggle, always ready to inconveniently burst out from somewhere between my stomach and my heart. Isn’t that strange?)

Anyway, besides my struggle with composing a theoretical soundtrack full of heavy sounding words to roll with my practice and research, I think I was also very much in search of some lightness between the ongoing events in a very serious and heavy weighing world. Trying not to loose sight of the aim of my research, I eventually discovered ways to work with and around the material I was given this year (a lot!) without having to face an internal (or should I say internalized?) giggling discomfort.

Merely by accident, I found out that I actually enjoy presenting my research process and I like talking about it. I also found that I could make a narrative out of it and that I could compose a story with intertwinings of theory, practice and personal anecdotes and thoughts. And that I could do this with humor and still be very serious about my research and its intentions. And that this is something I can share with an audience that could enjoy it too.

A bit later I found out that I can do something similar with writing, as you hopefully get a glimpse of here. (Do you? You can let me know. If you feel like it. I would like that.)

I am still experimenting with boundaries and different diaristic approaches within drawing, presentation and writing in order to see what I can do within my research of questioning , well, patriarchal society (-internalized giggle somewhere between stomach and heart-) So, it seems that, throughout this past schoolyear both my research and practice have been simultaneously expanding as well as deepening in ways and directions I could never foresee during those first days of the schoolyear in the borrowed warmth of October. How do you remember those days? And the time ever since? Do you also feel, despite everything that has been, also something has been lost?

I am writing you now, at the threshold of summer, in between two showers of rain (all this rain) wondering whether my research meets its outcome or its urgency in this broken world. You’ll be the judge of that, my dear you. And for that, I send you my love.

Sincerely,
An-Marie