The guiding motive for a reading focus this semester, was to both deepen knowledge, and to connect these critical concepts to my own practice. In order to make these connections, a full teasing out – on paper – of the themes of my practice was paramount. I tend to keep an expanding library and thesaurus of ideas, thoughts and experiences in my head… like a personalized conceptual version of the Library of Babel (Borges). Sometimes forcing myself to resort to translations via shared signifiers just seems like a daunting draw on time and energy. This task was no exception. I wanted to take shortcuts and in the end, chose not to. Thus began what became a more involved process than I could have imagined. Cutting 3 foot strips of paper and taping them to the walls, and then onto the floors when the walls were full, I began writing, listing, drawing lines of connection. This process continued for several days: writing out the main categories of my practice, peeling away, inviting specificity in all of the ideas, themes, topics within each category; reviewing the texts, my notes on the texts and letting the relevant aspects that related to my practice also find their way onto the papers. My goal was not to make an exhaustive list of generality that incorporated every possible topic relating to my themes, just those which are important and interesting to me, now.

As this process evolved, I realized that the a recent map of my practice (generated in August 2020) was not consistent in its design. So I redesigned that, as well. Then I made animated flashcards of the main concepts, which became the word salad versions you see at the top and bottom of this page. The readings in the bibliography were then given #(concept)s linking their categorical relevance to my practice. These hashtags then became the post categories to further organize the annotated bibliography.