Any successful creative endeavour, whether in the fields of the arts, business, science, whatever, is dependent on a practitioner having an understanding of how to get the most from available resources. Resources are diverse, and include materials such as machinery, inks, paper, screens, physical spaces and buildings, human resources such participants, collaborators, enablers, advisors and audiences, and knowledge in the form of contextual understanding, practical and thinking skills.

My resources as a photographer are very limited. My technical skills are basic and limited to the use of a digital camera in a digital environment. I do not have access to studios, printers, other cameras or camera kit, and I do not have a local network of people I can work with. I have no experience of galleries or understanding of exhibitions, no connection with people who work in them, and no idea about approaching them. I had hoped that I would begin to learn these things on this MA, but that does not appear to be on offer. An input session on ‘working with galleries’ would have been useful, but it seems to be taken for granted that I know these things already. As with so much else.

Video art, installation art, these are complex technical forms that rely on galleries and belong to the world of fine art. It would be pointless, I believe, to pursue this line of research further. Were I on an MA which, for example, provided a module in installation art, or in video art, and gave me the training and contextual and philosophical understanding of these things, then there would be a basis for learning and experimentation. But I cannot meaningfully learn about these things from books; I need discussion and input and guidance, and I am unable to find these things from peers or tutors on this MA. The resources which I would need to create video or installation art are thus out of reach, and pursuing them would be a fruitless distraction. To create a meaningful work, I must examine the resources that are available to me, work with those, and somehow bring to bear the learning that I’ve achieved over the past year. Quite where that leaves me, I have no idea, but that’s not such a bad place to be.

I know I can make an excellent film for this module’s Work In Progress Portfolio. I have everything I need to do this – I have much greater faith in myself as a filmmaker than as a photographer. I have no doubt that I can make a film which would get a good grade. But what I don’t want to do is ‘just’ make a film. I want to make a film that’s somehow relevant to my time on this course, that’s in conversation with the ongoing struggle I have with placing myself in the context of contemporary photography. I don’t need to do this, and in many ways I don’t want the hassle, but neither do I want to feel like I’ve passed up the opportunity to rethink my filmmaking in a possibly radical and productive way.