Email Dispatch #3 October 15, 2007

Greetings All,

We've completed the intensive theory in-class segment of the first module of my course. The route from my little room at 7 Farwell Rd. up the hill to Dartington college has grown familiar and even lovelier than the first time I walked it. My quads are growing strong from biking up the steep hill. I would arrive at 10:00 for class, winded from the uphill climb, with chilly cheeks and great expectations for the day. They were very full days and my brain began to feel simultaneously crunched and stretched at the end of the three week period from the mass quantity of new information and inquiry. My whole being was itching to begin experimenting, making, exploring, doing and putting into practice all the new ideas that I'd begun having throughout these first three weeks of the program.

Our focus has been primarily examining different methods of fieldwork within our art practice and our general working methods. We worked with a microbiologist, two visiting artists (who helped us build the radio telescope that enabled us to hear storms on Jupiter), a group facilitator (who introduced us to different methods and theories of group communication and dynamics) and an art writer who stayed with us for the entire three weeks of the module. They all answered questions, offered informative personal experiences from their lives, chats and introduced us to different theories. The authoritative, hierarchical model of education is consciously avoided in this course. While there is formal teaching time, when discussion takes place, which is often, tutors simply participate in the discussion as contributors and listeners. There is something quite refreshing about the breaking down of the hierarchical system within the classroom. And I am eager to continue investigating this method of education for my own future purposes as professor, workshop leader or art teacher. Even as a lecturer, there are things to be learned from this unique model. Notice too that I am speaking in the collective "we, our" etc. The 11 of us are now certainly a strong group with broad ranging backgrounds and experiences, both in life and art. I feel very much that my fellow-students are a resource. I am excited by the opportunity to collaborate and draw inspiration from others' perspectives and approaches to the world.

There were several intense moments for me in the last three weeks. Being in another country, albeit very western and familiar in certain ways, I felt that I was being peeled like an onion to my core and forced to look at that core honestly, openly and plainly. I've also become much more keenly aware of the affect of nationality, and borders and the affect that these things have on us as individual global citizens. I have a newfound empathy for those whose travel, mobility, and life is limited by their nationality or general life-situation. EU citizens are favored here and have funding opportunities that are unavailable to me as a US citizen. While it is a small thing and does not affect my overall wellbeing, I realized how used to complete accessibility I am, as a white middle class American. I still have no idea what it really feels like to be denied entry to a country based on the origin of a passport, but somehow through this gentle experience I woke up to the plight of many in the world today and began to feel the pain and divisiveness of political borders and the consequences to all of us as a result. "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

So now I'm experimenting and beginning my work. In a book-making flurry with my friend Becky, I began this segment by making a huge all-recycled book as a receptacle for all the research, drawings, ideas and experimentation that we will do in this period of exploration. I have begun receiving training on the technical equipment available here at the college - video cameras, sound equipment, editing software and computers, still cameras, darkroom, soft 3D and hard 3D studios with supplies and tools and the radio station which invites students to do special or regular broadcasts. There is such an amazing amount of "kit" as they call it here (equipment) available that it would be silly for me not to jump at the opportunity to learn how to use it and pick the brains of all the techies who are here to serve us students. It is incredible to have the time to do all this and yet, I have to be careful because already time has begun to "fly." I've just taken a book out from the library called Pip Pip, which addresses our confused relationship to time. It seems quite relevant as I am surrounded by the human record of the passage of time in the English landscape - evidence of literally thousands of years of stone moved from place to place, wall to wall, formation to formation juxtaposed with the time frame that I face as an international graduate student planning to finish my degree in less than a year.

I took my first walk through Dartmoor, a nearby National Park, which is owned by a prince and protected in some areas by the national trust. It is a beautiful landscape with a variety of different environments: forest, riparian, moors, tors, hills, pasture and a few towns. National Parks are different here. While they are protected, because people live almost everywhere, national parks just encompass the farmers and small towns that were there before the national trust decided to protect the area. Being up high and being out under the open sky and able, finally to see for miles into the distance was a thrill. I try not to think too much about how much the passive English sky which does not require an active relationship with it makes me miss its demanding and brilliant cousin in New Mexico. But being here and experiencing the landscape, examining it carefully and forming a relationship with it, I have strangely begun to feel more able to see the Western United States in its starkness, its wildness, its openness, its hugeness, its diversity of colors, its danger, its dryness, its harshness and its unique beauty. I've always thought the West and Southwestern US immeasurably beautiful and fascinating and my home. But living in a truly "tamed" landscape, where all large predators have been exterminated and where humans have lived continusously for nearly 10,000 years gives me new perspective and appreciation for the deep environmental, cultural, political and social implications of the unique ecological histories and current situations of these two disparate landscapes. This week I plan to return to Dartmoor with my classmate, Anna to do some preliminary observations, walking and experimenting for a project collaboration.

And so it continues.....eating well, drinking well (I happily found a locally produced hard cider without sulfites!) and digging into a year of graduate projects that promise to take me to new places both interior and exterior.

I hope that this October day finds you happy and healthy and enjoying and appreciating your connection to the environment around you.

Until next time,
Claire

P.S. For those of you interested in my British cultural tabulation, I heard "Cheerio" used for the first time the other day and I had bubble and squeak for the first time last week. I was excited in both instances.