starting points: i really want to continue my exploration of my relationship to the landscape and gender, with identity in an irish context as an overarching frame of reference. i feel that i only touched the surface of many ideas – body and movement in relation to landscape and gender, language in relation to landscape and gender, landscape and gender in relation to image – real / ideal, moving / still, continuing to test the binary divisions associated with landscape and gender.
why does it matter? because it’s unresolved, because its full of unknowns and has the potential to surprise, because i might understand it more. why does it matter to anyone else? because landscape is steeped in gendered viewpoints and spheres of activity, because landscape is part of an irish identity, because issues around gender equality continues to be part of social discourse.
going forward: as well as continuing to explore these ideas, i also want to explore the media i use. i tend to use a lot of lens based work and i want to see how moving image (video) and still image (photography, print) relate to each other in my practice or see how they might work together, as part of the process or as part of outcomes such as installation of my work.
why explore this? because they might develop a language together that corresponds with questions i am asking about landscape and gender. because it might throw up new ways of working, because it might be full of surprises and be fun. why will that matter to anyone else? because it might engage, surprise the audience – in the subject matter, the material or the experience.
question: lots of ideas there so how and where will i begin my making? will i begin to test them all broadly and then narrow down or narrow down to begin? is last years work the broad exploration and is it now time to narrow my focus?
another questions: i feel that the reading research that i did as part of my contextual study last year really supported my practice. i focused mainly on feminist geographers but what other areas of reading and research could i look into? poets, fiction, song and music as well as personal testimonies and archives?
still another question: so for the tutorial… what do i want to get out of it? i want to discuss some of the starting points i have chosen. I want to discuss how i hope to explore media in my practice. I would like to hear suggestions about any areas I could further research that would be relevant to my work. i’d like a conversation about anything that comes to mind if only half related to these questions.
so by way of some possible answers …. some starting points.
landscape, gender, language (written, text)
landscape, gender, language (spoken, voice, sound)
text spoken backwards, text written forward
landscape, gender, image (still and moving)
2 screen work, moving image and still image work
moving image becoming a still image and vice versa
last question: am i hoping for some answers or am i hoping for more questions?
postscript: i heard o’maonlai sing live last night – voice and landscape and an underbellow of place.
post postscript: saw this in the newspaper yesterday – a quote from séan scully which seems to fit with my approach to process and following multi-strands of an idea. 
“Take the way I work on more than one series at a time. I mean, I don’t like this idea that you should hammer away at one strand of thought until it’s exhausted. I like cross-fertilisation. I’m like a farmer, managing crop rotation.” (Scully, Irish Times, 29.09.18)
oh and another question – back to why, what does it matter? its ok if i don’t know …. yet
elaine crowe 
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