Process-based art-making is traditionally disseminated through displaying the remnants, detritus, tracings, photographs and other forms of documentation. But if the process is the emphasis, or the point of art-making, then doesn't it stand to reason that the process should be made explicit in the moment? Of course, writing is a reflective practice, and therefore cannot be considered within the parameters of what constitutes real time. As a way of undoing the tidy package of documentational exhibition that often, through circumnavigating a particular aspect or editing out the things that don't make sense, I am less interested in providing a nice sum-up, like I thought I started documenting this is public art. Now that I look back, the Alternative Methodologies class I was taking at the time, had already seeped into my psyche, and in the ever important re-read, I see already my interest in blogging in the moment, not editing out the difficulties in case they should make me look bad.
Instead, this blog, at this point is defined by me as a space for communal reflection on the process as it happens, not in real-time, but in incremental time. It is my hypothesis that if the process is the focus because its parameters ultimately determine how the work manifests (its material form), then the incremental time needs to be in the forefront, not just assumed within the methods; the messy bits, the moments when decisions are made in response to those messy bits, are integral to the process because they are ways reacting to the life of the work.
