Someone inadvertently reminded me today that I used to refer to my PhD as Humbert Humbert refers to his story in Lolita. I always wanted to say to my examination panel, while pointing at my voluminous thesis and looking at my seductive artworks:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, look at this tangle of thorns.

A tangle of thorns it feels as I go beyond merely toying with ideas to starting building a framework, or something along those lines… Conversations help. I never realised how much of a PhD is actually sparked by other people. My acknowledgements list grows and grows; I am a grateful person and want everyone meaningful to be represented. Remainders of a Catholic upbringing, no doubt. As S–– says, why lead astray from right behaviour? What is right behaviour? Right behaviour according to whom? Morals, values and ethics (together with phantasies and desires) are back into the equation and I hope Forrester’s chapter “Rape, Seduction and Psychoanalysis” holds some pointers for me. Or maybe I will find what I am looking for in casual conversations. I joined a psychoanalysis message board on LJ but seem to be merely talking to myself there… The tangle is getting more and more knotted, the thorns start to pierce.

My desk, this morning

My files

My insipid attempts at undertanding Lacanian theory through explaining the Schemata to myself

The intensity of my last trip to Sheffield reflects the current state of my thinking. The conceptualisation of the problem is changing very rapidly and with it, both the context and the methodologies. What I thought was seduction might not be; what I was certain came from the appearance from an object might be incorrect; what I thought was going to veer towards social scientific methodologies might be an altogether philosophical problem; the amount of work I thought I would cover might only be a matter of definition.

The territory I am treading is unknown to me. The research question is asking me to go into phenomenology. What this means is that what I thought was objective and universal may be impossible. Instead, the problem is requiring an approach that looks into the relational aspects of this phenomena I shouldn’t call seduction just yet.

I am the sort of person who likes order and planning, needs to know what they are doing and where is that going to taken them. I have no idea where I am going and, if I am honest, I don’t like it. However, I think this feeling is more productive than that of control. I am thinking things I didn’t think I could think, making connections between concepts and ideas that may produce something more interesting than what carrying out an activity might. I am also exploring areas of knowledge that I either didn’t know about (Consumption Studies) or I resented due to previous patchy experience (Phenomenology).

Learning that phenomenology is not reduced to Bachelard (how erratic my knowledge is!) but that Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida are also phenomenologists gave me immense intellectual pleasure. Discovering the varied philosopher’s approaches and finding out that some of them are rigorous and systematic thinkers (they come from Kant) resolved many of my differences with them. Phenomenology also represents the link that will be able to relate my subject to something I could not satisfactorily bring into the equation before: Lacan’s concept of the Object Petit a. I had the intuition that Lacan was important to my study but often felt that my inclination was getting in the way of logic, not really making sense.

Going from one place to the other and learning how to deal with that unknown, that wilderness, is part of producing new knowledge. I am excited by the challenge that the Merleau-Ponty volume on my red desk represents. GU library seems to have a lot of resources that will help me make sense of it and thankfully, it belongs to the SCONUL network, which reconciles me with this sometimes difficult distance from Sheffield.

I am delighted to announce that the Leading Astray project will finally take place at Sheffield Hallam University. I couldn’t have hoped for a better home for it.

Although all the independent readers felt my proposal was very strong, neither Chelsea nor Central Saint Martins could offer me a place in their research degree programmes because they couldn’t find supervisors.

This is the feedback they gave me:

- I should consider doing a thesis only PhD, which, in my opinion, would go against my project as one of the problems with the field of seduction is the fact that it is so heavily theorised

- Because it is interdisciplinary neither art nor design want to own it: designers feel it is difficult for them to work with fine artists (objects with no function), fine artists feel threatened by the use of design methodologies

- The relevant visual work presented is not current. During the last 5 years, my practice has taken a more conceptual turn, focusing on sound installations and the spoken word. I decided to take a step back and revisit older works that dealt with seductive qualities of objects, as this new practice I was doing was unsuitable to explore the field

I was particularly interested in the second one as it denotes a problem, a gap in the field: if art and design is a subject area, why do artists and designers not work across disciplines?

I am disappointed because I won‚Äôt be able to start my project in October, as previously planned. CSM suggested that I speak to the ‘Design Against Crime’ project leader in order to develop the proposal to be submitted for next academic year.

I have been very shy in associated my proposal with designers, even though it is the underpinning methodology. However, I am going to try to speak to the RCA product design department and have already had a look at the Sheffield Hallam University programmes (they have an art and design research centre), which would make my commuting from Glasgow a lot easier…

The interview, or rather the proposal Viva process, was unexpected before it even started. On Monday, I received a phone call from Chelsea College of Art and Design, asking me if I would go for a interview on Wednesday. Of that very same week. I had been waiting 5 months and everything happened within 3 days. Of course I accepted.

But after a demanding day of teaching and being observed, I felt utterly unprepared. The night before, after a surname misspelling problems, I finally received the invitation letter. A presentation of my work wasn’t mentioned and at 10.30 the night before I threw a few archival images into a PowerPoint and played around with different orders. Starck, Man Ray and Vicky were there to assure me I did not dream all these seduction.

When I got there, they were running late. One of the interviewers had to come from Oxford and was very delayed. I welcomed the cup of coffee in the student canteen. Jordan’s book on designing pleasurable products would help me to focus. When I was asked to go up, they sat me on a chair outside the interview room, while they discussed my proposal and agreed questions. The worse thing was that I could hear bits of sentences I did not want to:

…history… and psychology… but she… no, she… I think she… interesting but I don’t understand… I can’t quite get… and psychology… she…

I missed all the important bits and was getting fearful that perhaps they did not understand what I wanted to do. I finally met them. I had done the supervisors course with one of the interviewers two years ago and that interviewer wasn’t kind to me or to my proposed research, perhaps because they themselves are a member of staff doing a PhD. A PhD I had scrutinised on previous occasions.

I thought the interview was going to revolve around research competence and my ability to undertake what I was proposing. Instead, everything was about what I was proposing. I started with context and question. Why did I want to do a PhD? Because I wanted to propose different models to approach the study of seduction in Fine Art, as all the previous models start from a tautological standpoint. I wasn’t as articulate as I hoped. It is difficult to talk about one wants to do when that is an unknown quantity. I tried to lay out my methods very clearly and methodically and my interest in the interface between art and design provoked 2 opposed reactions.

Within 10 minutes, I felt I had won one of the interviewers over whereas the other one was even further away from me. The latter comes from a belief that the creative process is unique and can’t be scrutinised. It is the outcome, the artifact and its influences that can be scrutinised. I was proposing to make objects and give them to a focus group that would then tear them apart and make me change aspects of my practice. The former had to come into my rescue and ask me if I thought of Art as a cultural product, which, for the purposes of my research, I do.

I am not sure if intellectual rigours gets someone a place in a course, but considering the time I had to prepare and the fact that the interview resembled an exam, I couldn’t have done better. For the first time, my research felt like a problem rather than a crystallized piece of writing. I am grateful to my students who put me on a enquiring mode the day before, when I presented a text in our Drawing Reading Group. As I was going out, the kind interviewer asked me to leave my details and my funding application on the research office. He then asked me if I knew the work of Neil Cummings, which I vaguely did and liked. That afternoon, looking at his online CV, I found out he lectures at Chelsea. Thinking that they were assigning me a supervisor was a very nice omen.

This Reasearch Log has been a bit quiet recently, but there has been a lot of internal activity. My research and my PhD application are at a point where I need to be careful about what I disclose. Talking to Malcolm, he advised me to discuss the question with any research vultures interested, but to avoid saying anything about how am I going to do try to solve the problems. At the moment, methodology is precisely the area I am looking at, hence the silence.

Rhed got a very clear sense that the anxiety about teaching research degree students without having a research degree, specified in profile 2, were not going to be fully resolved by doing a PGCert in Teaching and Learning.

Although this will help to give me some context of pedagogical theory and, through knowledge and peer experience, will strengthen my actual delivery practice, I won’t be able to be satisfied until I have gone through the whole process myself.

In a way, I was very glad Rhed pointed this out. I was great to hear it from someone else. I am applying to do a PhD next October as a career move. I want to be a researcher but I anso want to improve my professional teaching practice, being able to relate to students from a position of having the experience. The people I have talked to about this all think that I am doing it because of the subject or because I have an inclination to write academically. This is only part of my decision and having someone notice how important a PhD will be and how it will enhance my teaching was indeed very rewarding.

I applied to Central Saint Martins in December and I am currently writing my AHRB Doctoral Award application. This has already changed the way I teach some of the sessions of the training programme (more confidence, first hand examples I can relate to, real problems encountered rather than those I have read about or seen in other students). It ias evident the benefits a PhD will have in my job.

Both Leonora and Rhed pointed out the quality of the writing in the profile statement. This was very encouraging as I will be looking at producing a 60,000-word thesis for my PhD and, English not being my first language, I feel a little intimidated. I did spend a lot of time articulating the text for the profile 2 of the PGCert course. I teach the session on proposal writing and I place a lot of emphasis of quality, trying to avoid obscure theses and papers that will only be read by academics. I really want to produce a good PhD where people from outside the field can relate to the writing and which, perhaps, can be published into a book. I was very pleased with their comments and felt as if all the hard work with the Oxford English Dictionary. and the Thesaurus wasn’t in vain.

[Note to self: read more Barthes, who writes beautifully in an academic way]