Can't Face the office

Can't Face The Office

I had this idea to do this as a massive billboard - just to show how much bureacrats suck

but then i realised how much of my Phd is presently unwritten

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My brain at the moment is made from prridge.

I've had a completely useless day.
so useless I even painted my nails.
fuck o fuck

I'm stuck in pink trakkies and pink uggies with mint frost nail polish.

Still using pencil on the brows - post schapelle shaving.

I don't think I know who I am anymore..........

I've been interviewing models and teachers for the tome that will be.
PArt of me thinks it must be exciting. I keep telling people "God! this is so exciting!" and they say "Wow! that's so exciting - are you going to publish a book on this?"

"Yes" I say. "thats why I've enrolled at uni - so I can be paid to write the book I want to write".

Oh fuck. What book?

I've set myself a target of 2 papers by the end of the year. I have to have one as a work in progress in 4 weeks.

what was it on?

as an undergrad - a 5000 word essay felt like a piece of piss. No. thats a lie. It never did.
Well it hasn't changed.
bugger.

And I don't want to read anything, or think hard about stuff.
or put words together.
And interviewing people is really hard.

Most people watch television and trat interview situations like some sort of talk show. So it ends up as a cat and mouse and I'm meant to be Jana Wendt.
fuck.
I'm like andrew denton at best (bespectacled with a flat head)

Certainly not cut out for interview stuff - If people don't want to talk about things, why should I make them do it?

and am I somehow being 'wrong' if I dont' ask the same poeple the same questions?

and whats the point?

why don't i just write my memoirs? (coz its so boring I haven't even written it yet).

I'm thinking maybe focus groups could work.

I hate using the phone, but not many models use the internet.

anyway I thought I'd write some paper on the "paradoxical' role of textiles in the practice sof nude modelling. so far I haven't found anything even slightly interesting on this score at all.

some models use a robe - and are quite attached to their robes while others couldn't give a shit. Models are also pretty blase about the hair thing........... some shave, some don't, mostl people trat it as a non issue.

I need to read "journal of mundane behaviours" for inspiration. The every day is important. small things can reveal big issues.....

I try to think of Bourdieu - but he has become way too suspicially trendy of late. If read 3 aspirational academic blogs whihch quote the big Pierre.
Jesus christ.

Big Pierre - knew of the link between academia and activism - because he was an activist AND an academic. Like he hung around lecture theatres AND rallies - and so waas entitled to discuss both.

ONe thing that makes me turn silent as I swallow my spew is listening to my esteemed colleagues ernestly discuss their own critical conscioussness as acticist academics.
what?
Hah!
I ain't NEVER seen any of them at any sort of political protest (rally, meeting, online petition, offline petition or anything that don't look good on a CV), and I dont think any of them are members of the NTEU - and I'm not sure if any of them have even spent extended tim on the dole!
Critiques of 'the left' from the safety of the sandstone tower are pretty abstract - and pretty irrelevant to actual activists........ or the right wing fuckers that fuck things up.

I'm blithering. I'll stop talking about others.

Academia is not activism. Its a nice little career path for clever wordsmiths.
Its beats the fuck out of life modelling - at least for social prestige.
It certainly beats the fuck out of the Public Service (for sustainable delusions of intellectual autonomy - tho some people don't even have that as students.......so wots the point?)

I think there is a way that a person can be a socially conscious academic, and even an activist academic. but it does not involve writing eloquent essays on social ills and how to think of them in more rhizomatic terms.

It involves forming networks with other marginalised interlopers (like women and the great WC)

It means - getting involved in campaigns for preserving the autonomy and working conditions of white collar workers insteadof sucking corporate cock.


It also involves teaching in a manner that is inclusive, transparent and equips people with the intellectual tools to CHALLENGE academia.
This may involve teaching outside of the academy - and or doing unpaid work for community or activist groups.

It aslo involves doing research - that is just not about translating (and exploiting) the experiences and knowledges of reasearch subjects - in whihc to build our own expertise in an innovative research area, but err.........

.....yeah - well this is the bit I'm having trouble with.

I try not to forget where I come from, and how I was treated as a subservient, mute, casual employee, and to realise that what seperates from from my former fragile economic existance is a very thin veil of fate. (It's called an APA award).

I earned my stripes as a model by working HARD (30 hour weeks) for 3 years, and by being involved in a models union - where we all tried to negotiate better conditions. So I am i a privileged position to write as a model and to present a dialogue with (rahter than an interrogation of) other models.

I think the informal knoweldges and experiences of models are fascinating and interesting - and should be included in academic discourses about observation, voyeurism, objectification, obscenity - because they are related to actual experiences.........

I know from experience that many artists models do interrogate their own practice and experiences - I remember the conversations had on the phone, on the dias- in coffee breaks at institutions - and they (arguably) surpassed a lot of the blather about objectification and "the gaze" that I read in art journals and tomes on feminist theory.

But its hard - in a critical milieu -where what I'm tyring to write about - opens up as a big fat lacuna. The life class in the twentieth century barely exists. The lives of models exist - but not descriptions of what they do or did in the studio/classroom/podium.

Someone - was also describing life drawings - as essentially pointless. They aren't interesting to look at, work from or to frame and sell. (and where people do that -they invariable look kitsch). Most artists and almost all students throw out most if not all their life drawings.
So why bother?

For me - the pointlessness is an attraction. the ephemera of every day culturla activities - dancing, singing, (karaoke), coversation, drawing - or any activities that don't generate some sort of commodifiable product - are sites of resistance ....... so why then do I want to pick apart such a site - and leave it open for the vultures of information management????