METRON has begun. Alun’s video, RUN is compelling and beautiful. the room is filled with the scent of crushed rosemary and the sound of his footfall followed by the beat of the stone pestle and mortar that i am using to crush the herbs in my first performance MINE.
we had some enthusiastic response from the small but mainly informed audience who came yesterday. RUN is holding peoples’ attention and deserves to be screened in better conditions. my first performance, MINE is engaging people and prompting conversations and reflections.
the space is suitable for the experimental nature of the work but otherwise a massively distracting space – a functional community space. there were other distractions as well. there are other artists showing elsewhere in the building – this is taking place during an annual Oxford open studio event called Artweeks – who were lovely and friendly and a lot of jolly chatting and cake-eating was done. which was fun but i think that for day Two we need to make sure that for some of the time Alun and i can talk together about what we have made and where we want to take the work next. we have set up a working studio environment in the space alongside the exhibited works and we want to be able to use it to make other works.
having seen Alun’s video yesterday and how well my actions and images worked in response to it i think that it is possible that as the days go on he and i may find areas of activity – possible drawing and sound – where we may be able to make a collaborative piece of work.
he clearly has the facility that i have – maybe all artists have – of being able to engage in conversation, or to be doing something quite functional and yet parallel to it still be engaged conceptually with his work. i saw yesterday how he is able to ‘shift gear’ quickly and step into the right head-space to affect his work, make changes to it, make new things. it is not an easy thing to do and i suspect is a habit we have both developed as we have to work and tend all the other bits of our lives whilst ensuring the oxygen supply to the creative and imaginative parts of ourselves is not cut off.
useful though a skill like that is, nonetheless it is essential for our work – especially as we have both produced such sensitive and well wrought pieces, that we take the time to reflect and exchange ideas and see if we can really use this opportunity for both of us to make something, because of our collaboration, that we would not otherwise have done.
Yesterday, Day One, I was certainly in a strange state of mind. Initially I was uncertain about the work ‘RUN’, more uncertain than I’ve ever been about new work. That’s perhaps not surprising given that it’s the first new work I’ve shown in public since 2003, and that it’s form and content are radically different to anything I’ve done before.
Inspired by Clare and the idea of performance and workshopping throughout the two weekends, I was much more open to the notion of continuing to work over this period. Being present in the space, initially only as an invigilator, but increasingly as a practitioner, gives me the chance to evalutate my own work, and other people’s relationship to it, over a period of time. I don’t have to be so precious over the final edit, and can see it more as a work in progress. The film itself is only an edit from a long long period of running, so is drawn much more directly from my own life than anything else I’ve ever done. I think seeing Clare at work and hearing and reading her ideas has opened me up to the idea that our lives are the source of our work.
It’s always been process that’s been of most interest to me, but at the same time, I’ve always loved the kind of feedback that a slice of this process, or a distillation of this process into a ‘finished work’, can elicit.
You know, once you start writing it does get easier! It’s quite a new process to me, I’ve only kept travel journals in the past, which are more full of dietary problems than I hope this blog will be. More recently I kept a running blog, where I was incredibly careful to talk only about running, and remove all traces of personality. As a result it must be very very tedious to read!
I’m now sitting in the exhibition on Sunday 12.30pm, awaiting the first visitor on what is a really really wet day.