Unfinished MA

After deciding to finish the project I had to find everything. All the notebooks, printouts and passwords needed to piece together where I had left things. I’d found the notes from a tutorial about changing my project proposal to accommodate for a lockdown and it helped me remember the feeling that I’d had at the time: that the previous proposal was impossible and that the timepiece was the only thing that it made sense to make.

I left finding the timepiece until I had got everything else together. Unpacking the box was an intense experience. I was surprised by the strength of my feeling. Holding up the timepiece, gathered up by the day and week markers (gold and blue ring pulls) it looks bulky and feels light. It smells fusty, like an attic and the patina on the copper pattern hook feels horrible. It’s a feeling I hate.

The glinting of the aluminium makes the soft black of the yarn deeper and formless. I find it visually jarring and weirdly unknown, and I wonder if anyone else would feel like that or if it is just what it represents to me. It occurs to me that I still feel hesitant to document it, but I realise now that it is cause I don’t want to unravel it. The timepiece should be held together in a clump. It is a record of a time that was difficult and it represents the length of that time, but that length is only imposing as a whole. Unravelling the piece minimises the symbolic impact of the bulk of this time measured.

I have crocheted before this piece. The crochet piece from the Future Ruins studio on the BA was made by me imagining a monument for my nomadic people as we navigate a dystopian wasteland. The crochet pieces and live work in the degree show were also made by me, but a me who was imagining myself as someone with something to offer. They were made with confidence.

This timepiece crochet work is made by me as well, but it is a much more vulnerable piece. It feels raw and dark and imposing. There was no character or imagination game between the me that made this work, and the me that was desperately struggling in the pandemic. This is probably the most personal piece of work that I have ever made.

The futility of the situation made me turn to those same witchcraft techniques as in my degree, yet with a much greater sense of seriousness. The ritual of the timepiece helped me in a time when there was nothing left to do. I turned to a magical method to ease my fears and mark the seriousness of the time. The ritual helped get me through and the timepiece holds the discomfort. Its a witness.