In Doubt

Whilst i seek?certainty, and speak with confidence, the reality is that my work operates in cycles of? illusion and self doubt. At times, things converge: ideas take shape, and i find certainty. At times i inhabit that space for a while. And then, i tend to dive out of it.

Other times my work becomes so fragmented, divergent, exploratory, and curious, that i begin to lose hold of the threads. This is a vulnerable time: i come to doubt myself and my ideas. Whilst i resist it, i may swim back to?certainty, or at the very least the safety of the crowd. At others, i find the bravery to drift – typically only able to do so because i operate in the arms of a tolerant community.

Partly this is due to the things i am interested in: my work explores the Social Age, but the Social Age may not exist. And if it even does, it’s probably not yet been fully manifest. And even if it were, nobody asked me to take a look at it.

My work exists in this context, and explores this context, and hence it makes it up as it goes along, and consumes what it makes up.

By necessity, such an exploration considers what may be, more so than what is, even if i always try to grind it back down to the practical.

If there are any constants in my work, they probably relate to?boundaries?(i often describe my work as taking place at the?intersection of systems), to structures and gradients of?power, to space and sense making, to the delusion and movement of crowds, to the underlying social currencies and mystical fabrication of our realities, to the perils of certainty, to the gap between what we need and what we believe.

I think sometimes i think i have certainty when in fact i am deluded or simply wrong. At others, i find simplicity but bury it, and myself, in new ideas.

Overall it works, but it can be exhausting: after a dozen years of this, i recognise the signs. I start to doubt where i am going, i become fractured in my thinking, and i try to push on because sometimes, at those moments, something snaps into focus, provided you can hold or stretch your doubt far enough. Sometimes i feel that i am making up the language that i must speak with: writing is part of that process.

Starting the doctorate this year has only exacerbated these feelings: it is inherently self reflective, and it’s hard to both look within and forge forwards!

I often share that the only constant in my work is in my ability to be wrong, at least in the detail, but i still maintain the direction of travel: if we are not moving towards a new certainty, we are at the very least departing the legacy one. And sometimes, to find the edges, we have to get lost.

I find comfort in the fact that i do not think people judge my work too harshly because of this context, or at the very least they are too polite to say if they do.

A little doubt, of self and system, is probably a good thing.