The Autobiographical Notebook

The Autobiographical Notebook: Drifting Ecologies, Tentacular thinking and the Resilience of bearing witness to an eroding coastline.     This practice led thesis, being conducted during doctoral study at the Royal College of Art, interrogates the direct engagement between sensation and the generation of visual work, looking at the degree to which direct engagement can embed knowledge and cultural experience into the very fabric of the work. Central to the research is the autobiographical notebook of an eroding coastal village, as an investigation of place going beyond bearing witness to the destruction of nature, by nature, towards ways in which the raw dynamism of the land and human relationships with instability may lead to environmental adaption and resilience. Central to the research is the notebook as holder of constituents integral to autobiography of place, e.g. visual documentation, mapping of eroded matter deposited on the land, diagrams articulating sensory responses to sea immersions and tidal behaviours, narratives, description, data and responses forming a dialogue that slips fluidly between thinking, feeling, reflecting and proposing.