rethinking my work right now (in pandemic)

today I had to rethink everything and make a to do list (I am not a planner) because it was getting overwhelming, I feel like there's a lot of things I'm thinking about at the same time (new/old ideas come and go) and I'm constantly forgetting them, and so far I've been making lists but it's not very effective cause the lists are always shifting. mind maps work much better for me I realised, and I can abstractly place where I think those ideas are in my head. and to draw connections from one branch to another.

anyway, I was rethinking what these little experimentations and works are building up to, because although I won't always have a 'degree show' to work towards in the future, sometimes thinking about the practice overall will help you gain an anchor, and that has been helpful to me now because I had so many random little ideas that could grow infinitely in any direction from this point, and I had no idea how to navigate them, so with this thought process it helped me tease out my direction, I started from (top left) 'in this pandemic' and then deviated from there... I had thee different aspects I'm thinking about right now, e.g. outer space and trains (heterotopias) and abandoned places (like in this pandemic) and I'm starting to see how it all connects together, sort of. and then I looked at all these ideas realising I'm just making observations of these aspects, so in a sense I'm kind of documenting in my own way (?) (which is what I've been doing all along but) and then I thought about the dystopian sci-fi idea that dan mentioned in his provocations (which was brilliant) and thought about this 'pandemic planet' as a fictional universe (yet it's not) sort of like an in-between, almost-real or almost-unreal space (like how it feels in this time) (or like heterotopias) with a hint of overbearing danger you're constantly trying to ignore or on the run from (whilst staying stationary).

my attempt at a to do list whilst thinking about deadlines 

my head was exploding before making that mindmap. 

(I'm really enjoying putting dates on some drawings/texts now. it gives a certainty to the whole t
hing. and even though the date doesn't really mean anything to me in general, maybe some day
 I can look back and find significance in that time stamping.)

this 'fictional universe' thing made me think of Charles Avery's practice, where he makes these documentations of his imagined world. I thought I could do something similar here, except this world is almost real because I'm living it. kind of capturing the strangeness of the planet right now and how it always has been whilst thinking about 'time passing'. I also liked his work because whilst his sculptures are chilling, he does a lot of drawings and texts as well and I want to look at those for inspiration. with navigating digital drawing I'm realising the infinite freedom I never felt before whilst using physical mediums.

https://www.inglebygallery.com/artists/27-charles-avery/overview/'In 2004, Charles Avery embarked on what will be a lifelong project titled The Islanders: a painstakingly detailed description of a fictional world that functions in parallel to our own universe, realised in drawing, painting, sculpture and text. These large-scale, narrative drawings and sculptural installations question our ideas about the nature of time, place and being.'

https://grimmgallery.com/artists/charles-avery/
'Since 2004, the Scottish artist Charles Avery (1973, Oban, UK) has dedicated himself to the invention of an imaginary island, new corners of which he continues to chart through drawings, sculptures, texts, ephemera and (more rarely) 16mm animations and live incursions into our own world. Known only as ‘the Island’, Avery’s wave-lapped realm is not only a vividly realised fiction, teeming with sights both strange and strangely familiar.'

this 'strange and strangely familiar' is definitely speaking to the blurred line I want to walk on, except leaning more on the familiar, perhaps 'familiarly strange'...

I'm going to make another post in detail with notes from this interview because it was really insightful:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000g43y a BBC interview [ writer Lavinia Greenlaw meets Charles Avery - Only Artists ]