If this blog had any readers (which it doesn`t), and a comments section (it doesn`t), there would be questions now: Warum schreibst du auf Englisch? Why does your blog have footnotes??
To answer the unasked question first: this blog`s only purpose is getting myself to write, tricking myself into writing. I spent the last few weeks attempting to begin writing my paper for the diploma and never progressing beyond a first paragraph, losing my focus in a sea of details: font, font size, page numbers, headers and subtitles, formatting footnotes, creating an index, and a bibliography, an appendix of images, etc.
Using the blog format deceives my mind, forcing it into writing mode. As for using English, writing in English comes more naturally. After thirty-plus years in jobs that required me to write in English my mind associates writing with English. At the end I will run it through Deepl and create a German version, something i have done often when supposed to write in German. And the footnotes? Those are needed for the paper.
That explained, I will pick up where i left yesterday, with progress on the life-size figure I work on as my diploma project in sculpture. As mentioned yesterday, I began the work a few weeks ago, creating an armature using flexible cable ducts and lengths of electrical cable. The idea was to create volume without unnecessary weight. This armature I padded with shredded paper wrapped in newspaper, using masking tape and finally book pages glued on with wallpaper size to create a basic form (see figure 1 in the appendix).
After drying, I realized the whole shape was too bulky, which led to considerations of subconscious proprioception, and obvious discrepancies between how large I feel my body is, as opposed to how it looks to the outside observer, and also the objective facts of the measurements of my own body that I had taken. So I cut the torso open and removed parts of the material beneath the current "skin", an outer layer of book pages, to reduce the volume of the shoulders, breasts, stomach, upper back, lower back and buttocks. Afterwards I closed the cuts and shaped the figure anew, by wrapping it tightly with painters masking tape, which allowed me to compress the shape as I worked and to immediately check the achieved result without drying time.
When I sit in the dark of my garden and attempt to feel the shape of my body, the torso feels bulky. Broad shoulders, a very wide back, large breasts and ample tummy rolls. Hips and legs are narrow, buttocks almost non-existent: I feel my hipbones where they connect with the hard garden furniture. In the dark it feels like the torso is out of proportion to the lower sections of the body. Thighs, lower legs, ankles and feet feel far away, progressively smaller the further distant they are from my head. My head does not exist, I cannot sense it. When I try, a mental image of a huge balloon shape emerges, doughy and bloated. It is similar with my arms: the feel detached. But my hands are close to my core.
This is not born out by the photographs and measurements I took of myself. Another thought emerges: is this to be a self-portrait, shaped by my inner perception of my body shape? Or a figure true to measurements, objective fact? Or a self-image, an inner "selfie" warped by my self-perception made tangible, as selfies are warped --mainstreamed and "beautified" by some inner software in my phone`s camera as soon as the phone detects a human shape? Making the shape of the figure less bulky was an intuitive decision, a direct response to looking at it. But where did this response originate?
One thing is clear to me though: the finished work will not be a statue (3), but a figure (4). Language is funny there. Statue, with its close association of statuesque, a descriptor people have used to describe me, no doubt in an attempt to be polite, and static (5), as is in unchanging, not moving or reacting is not a description suited to my work. Whereas figure implies shape to me, an organic, evolving form, shrouded by incomplete perception.
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(3) statue in British English (ˈstætju) noun. A wooden, stone, metal, plaster, or other kind of sculpture of a human or animal figure, usually life-size or larger. Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers. Word origin C14: via Old French from Latin statua, from statuere to set up; compare statute https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/statue last visited 08/11/2025
(4) You refer to someone that you can see as a figure when you cannot see them clearly or when you are describing them. Synonyms: outline, form, shape, shadow. In art, a figure is a person in a drawing or a painting, or a statue of a person. Example: ...a life-size bronze figure of a brooding, hooded woman. Synonyms: representation, image, likeness https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/figure last visited 08/11/2025
(5) Static (stætɪk), adjective. Something that is static does not move or change. Synonyms: stationary, still, motionless, fixed. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/static last visited 08/11/2025