December 15, 2016

5.20 am: An early start, with the intention of completing the intercessions section of tomorrow’s Advent Light service. 7.00 am: The morning moon:

8.30 am: Off to School for the final set up of today’s Art/Sound doubler. But will anyone else turn up, I wondered? ‘Ye of little faith’. A ‘goodly number’ arrived, bless ’em. There is, however, always the temptation to check-out of a module once the assessment material has been submitted (as it was, on Monday). And, this was the penultimate day of term too. The perfect storm, as it were.

11.00 am: After my two hours of lectures, I headed to the studio to begin the day’s regime of second year painting tutorials. I tried to get a sense of what the students were doing in practice-based modules other than painting. This can be a revelation (and proved to be so today). Often students fail to make a connection between their activities across mediums. (They think like Jekyll and Hyde.) So, down into steerage and into the print rooms with some of them:

I had a lunchtime meeting with Ms Backshall to discuss ‘possibilities’. 2.00 pm: Everyone turned up for tutorials today. (I was impressed by this expression of commitment to the module.) Our discussions inevitably drifted towards the protocols and expectations of the January assessment … which isn’t so far away.

By 5.15 pm, I’d seen all the third year painters and agreed, with all students, a strategy for production over the Christmas period. 5.20 pm: Homeward bound (exhausted):

6.30 pm: We were off to the Art Centre (my second jaunt this week) to see the NT Live broadcast of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land (1974). This was an intelligent and difficult play performed by exemplary actors who knew how to bring out the best in each other. Pinter’s disciplined use of language, construction of character, almost cubist disruption of continuities of thought, and ability to evoke a sense of decentred disorientation is second to none.

9.50 pm: Homeward bound (exhilarated):

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