Thank you Anne Bogart

Who (and I paraphrase) said that when you put what you value in the centre of your life, everything else falls into place.

Yes, it really is as simple as that.

25/10/10

This is my entry from yesterday's lunch hour artist experiment, which I've only just got around to typing up, but I thought somehow it feels quite relevant here, too... not entirely sure why as it was scribbled in Pret a Manger so might not totally make sense but it is what it is! Enjoy!

Oh and apologies for the weird font changes that have happened on the blog by the way, think I will just be safe and stick to the default font from now on...

25/10/10

She became obsessed with marking the passage of shadows.

The seed was sown at primary school- a class exercise where they’d stuck a tall stake in the scruffy turf of the school yard, then put a stone at the tip of where its silhouette fell each hour. The others had given up when their parents arrived and it started to rain, but she returned as often as she could, the stones becoming piles, small cairns memorialising the slipping of time.

She’d worn her older brother out with her demands of “encore!” for his ghostly shadow menagerie, crafted with contorted fingers and the angle poise lamp. “Do the elephant!” she’d cry, long after her official bed time had elapsed; “Just one more!” before the light was flicked off and she’d lie there in the dark, pressing her fingers into her sockets to conjure the charcoal shapes singed on her retinas.

Later there was a scene in Brief Encounter she couldn’t stop watching, the one where Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are about to come around the corner in the railway underpass. Their grainy forms stretch out far ahead of them, enormous, seen long before they come into view. She’d rewind...pause...play...rewind...pause... until they seemed more their shadows than themselves.

Her holiday photo albums consisted not of landmarks but their outlines, burnt on expanses of rough brickwork or sheets of concrete or sand or grass. Her Facebook friends were alarmed to click through to her party snaps where they’d see their darkened shapes pressed flat against a wall, with arms spread wide or fingers in a girl power V, shimmering under a glitter ball, each one carefully tagged.

She owned 82 sundials.

One day, when, for the umpteenth time, she had told her boyfriend he was beautiful and asked him to hold still so she could chalk him on the pavement where he stood, he had finally asked her: “Why this obsession with shadows?”

She looked up for a moment from what she was doing and raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “I’m not obsessed with shadows,” she said. “I’m scared of forgetting where the light has been.”

Create Your Own Surrealist Masterpiece

A few images of Audacious Bee's first road trip, playing at the Jam Factory in the Lyme Regis Arts Festival. A little ridiculous and totally wonderful! Most pics taken by me, unless they have me in in which case Honour probably took them! I'm mixing in a few pics of the setting as it was so lovely.

After passing the Surrealist Master quiz (featuring questions such as: 'Is this a) a pipe or b) not a pipe?') the masters took to the studio and began their work...

The Audacious Bee trailer!

Margot et margot, ready for action:

The Surrealist Masters certificates being created over a pint: 

Audacious Bee props awaiting the Surrealist masters:

Masters at work (and some other pics from the weekend): 

The Butterfly Catcher

We are accustomed to say that performance can never be accurately documented because it is a live art form: the attempt to do so, it is implied, is almost a betrayal of the art. In the process we lose the essence of what we attempt to capture.

I’ve long held this perspective on the matter- I’ve paralleled the documenter of theatre with a butterfly catcher, who grasps the material of that which he admires but crushes the fleetingness, the temporality, that makes it beautiful.

But through my nascent interest in photography, and the ‘Lunch hour artist’ project I’ve started, I’ve begun to think about performance that is created for its own documentation. Photographs taken not for their own sake- and not with the intention of being the best photograph they can be- but rather to prompt in their viewer questions about the live act of their creation. I'm trying to find a link to a collection of photographs Lise showed me, taken by a friend of hers who was working as a postwoman in Denmark- at each house she visited, she'd take a photograph through the letter box. I'll ask her for the link and post it in the comments when I find it!

Although the scenes the photographs show are interesting in and of themselves, I’m more interested in the circumstances of them being taken- the risk of being caught (and was she ever? And was she scared?); how the artist reconciled herself to the ethical issues of taking the photographs; what prompted her to take the photos in the first place... 

I’d like people to think about ‘The Lunch Hour Artist’ in the same way. Certainly, I hope I’ll become more familiar with my camera, and get better at taking well composed shots, but the photographs are more about the act they represent: the act of taking time to really familiarise yourself with the area in which you work, and of taking time out every day to be creative, and to reflect on questions other than those which compose your working day. A live performance created for its own documentation.

This isn’t only relevant to photography- there are other documents that gain their energy by generating questions or reflections on the ‘liveness’ they represent- an example that springs to mind immediately is Andy Field and Tim Etchells’ imaginary performances (check out Andy's Rain Events: http://lookingforastronauts.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/17-rain-events/)  - these events aren’t, and never have been, live, but imagine if they were.

No doubt this is far from revelatory, and photography academics have written much about this very topic. But from a performance perspective, it’s a departure for me, or a new understanding- that the value of ‘liveness’ does not necessarily mean existing in the here and now. I think it's a useful perspective for a performance maker to have; because we're so resistant to the idea of documentation, we tend to be rather bad at it, and do ourselves a bit of a disservice in the process. But if we accept that in the 21st century documentation is unavoidable, and acknowledge that the friction between the 'here and now' of the live event and its document might be creatively exciting- well, that could be fun, couldn't it?

THE LUNCH HOUR ARTIST

In his book How To Be An Artist (which has its title written in huge letters and is a bit embarrassing to read on the tube for that reason, by the way), Michael Atavar says:

'Art is every day... art is local to you, where you are now, in all its gritty dichotomy.'

And:

'Just do one thing today. It doesn't really matter what it is. Just do it.' (I've forgiven the fact that this is rather reminiscent of an ad by a certain major sportswear manufacturer)

And:

'The only way to make the work is to make the work.'

It's an incredibly simple formula, which is what makes it so appealing. It allows for no excuses; there is absolutely no reason why, if you call yourself an artist, you shouldn't be practicing in some way, shape or form every day. As he writes elsewhere: 'If you can't write a novel, pen haikus...' 

With this in mind, I've determined to set out on a project, which I am calling The Lunch Hour Artist, which will force me to do a small creative act every day- because, yes, I AM AN ARTIST, albeit one who works in an office during the daylight hours to earn her keep. But art is a tenacious and wily beast and can thrive in the tiniest pockets- and in light of impending funding cuts this is useful to remember. Making work with this mind set is either hopeful or defeatist; but it is something, which is better than nothing, after all.

My idea is to take a photograph every day that I am in my office in my lunch break, and write a piece of text to accompany it- it might just be a word, or a sentence. I will keep going until I have collected 100. I will, in all likelihood, publish these to a blog (watch this space).

Some of the perceived strengths of this project are:

-   I will be creating a new art work every day.
- Sometimes I get intimidated by embarking on big works, fearing that they will never be good enough/ I won't be able to give them enough. Each of the works in this series is small and unintimidating.
- My office is in the heart of an amazingly rich, diverse area of London. Every day, I come into the office, and barely escape- perhaps just running to the sandwich shop around the corner. But I am part of a community, and I believe in the importance of a relationship with a locality, even if I don't always practice it. Now I will.
- Through the work I will train myself to look at my every day environment differently.
- The project centres on photography, which makes it even less intimidating- having only acquired a decent DSLR a few weeks ago, I am under no illusions that I am a great photographer, and make no claims to be so. Which is hugely, hugely liberating. And besides, I am not taking the photos for their own sake: they are a documentation of a performance- albeit one that is created to be documented.
- I expect by making myself take a photograph every day my photography will improve, nonetheless.

Perceived weaknesses of this project are:

- NONE!

Well, except for the fact I am not thrilled I've struck upon this idea at the outset of winter, but then again I haven't actually promised I will leave the office to take the pictures- you might just get 100 pictures of my computer keyboard, or my head smashing through my computer screen...

So, in the spirit of Michael Avatar, I will start now! (Or tomorrow, anyway!)    

The Stone Remembers

One of the most intriguing aspects of my A level Theology study- and the one that has stayed with me the longest- concerned the explanations for sightings of ghosts. This was deemed relevant because if ghosts do exist, they may constitute evidence for the existence of an afterlife, and hence, the existence of God- and so a lot of theologians and philosophers have spent a lot of time theorizing about them. No doubt their presence also served to ‘sex up’ the syllabus a little- anyway:

One account for ghost sightings speculated that it may be the case that when certain meteorological conditions combine with an extremely emotional occurrence, an episode may somehow be recorded on the stone of the buildings around it. When the same meteorological conditions recur, the scene replays itself, in ghostly form.

I love this idea, that history can have an actual presence: not physical, but no less ‘real’ than the sounds and images replayed on our television screens. The stone remembers.

It seems unbelievable, but since we know that energy is never destroyed, only transformed, what other explanations do we have for what happens to the huge emotional energy that goes into a fight with a loved one, or the grief over a death, or loving, or hating, from near or afar?

And if part of us does believe it, will we, therefore, be mindful of this in the buildings we inhabit? That they are themselves a record of what has preceded us in the space, and further, that we ourselves, with what we say and do, make our own imprint on the space: a legacy to future inhabitants.  

And will we hold séances, and channel these emotional histories, and make them manifest?

Walking home late...

Walking home late in the rain, I'm wearing big, clumpy boots and up ahead of me there's a woman walking delicately in a pair of heels. I soon catch up with her, and am just about to take over when a movement of her head makes me realise she's doing the thing I've done so often at this time of night: turned my head to try and catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of who is behind me without being too conspicuous. She thinks I'm following her.

I fall back a bit because I know the faint but unmistakable sped up heart beat at this moment, the thought: 'of course they're not following me... but what if...' But I suddenly feel really, really masculine. I feel powerful. And there's a part of me that wants to speed up again, to freak her out. I find it thrilling.

Personal Cartography

I stumbled upon these questions in Tim Etchells' Certain Fragments today. They were the starting point for Forced Entertainment's Nights in the City, which was a 'mischevious guided coach tour of Sheffield'. I wish I'd had them when we started Memory Map. I think they provide a useful starting point for thinking about space- and they suggest many similar questions in the same vein- I'm sure I'll use them elsewhere...

They asked a locally based helper on the project:

'If you had killed someone and had to dump the body where would you take it?
If you had to say goodbye to a lover where in this city would you most like to do it?
Where in the city might be the best place for a spaceship of aliens to land?'

Memory Map

I wanted to share a few pictures of a project I did recently, to add a bit of colour to this blog! Memory Map was an audioguided piece created with Bath teenagers. Listening to an MP3, audience members were guided around the city, encountering live performances that corresponded to the audio en route. The work provided an alternative perspective on the city to that offered by the typical tourist guides so prevalent in the town. It was performed in late June. I think pretty much all of these pics were taken by the lovely and talented Miss Lise Marker, my co director on the project. Enjoy!

On longing...

I was asked to write 'An Introduction to Longing' in response to the Kings of England DIY weekender I went on in August. Here's my intial draft... apologies that it returns to a couple of points I've written about recently, I wasn't intending to publish it here but thought I might as well:

I was at a short film night the other day, and one of the directors shared a great quote (I naturally forgot almost immediately who by and exactly what it was) to the effect that artists should create work without fear and without hope. The simplicity of this appealed to me, the implication being that we make our work on its own terms and for its own sake, for no other reason than that it demands to be made. It’s a rejection of the immediate gratification we’ve been brought up to expect in this country at this time, which drives us to act not for the act’s own sake but with a hope- to achieve, to be recognised, or to gain- and with a fear- of failure, of not realising our desires, of being judged and found wanting. As a mantra it demands a truth to self: we do because we do, and we are because we are, which must hold a resonance with any artist who, like me, has been brought up to worry that they won’t one day have a mortgage, or a pension. If there’s not an alternative choice, then why should we worry about it?

It’s a pretty neat summation of the point at which I’ve recently found myself in my own creative practice. After graduating from drama school with a decent degree, I spent a year trying to make it as an artist. What did make it mean? Simply, to be able to make work, and to support myself doing it. In this quest, I wasn’t entirely unsuccessful; through a combination of writing commissions and teaching in drama schools and youth theatres, I managed to make ends meet. But the constant pressure to make work that I thought would meet the criteria of the funders and the ongoing battle with my overdraft proved overwhelming for a young artist still innocent in the brutal ways of the arts economy. I gave up and got myself a day job, because it turns out publicising theatre is a lot better paid than making it...

Two years later, I’m over that first shock, and back to making work again, but this time, purely because I want to make it. Of course I care what the powers that be think of my work- after all how many artists have you ever met not driven to some extent by ego?- but I’m not making the work for them. I am making it because it fascinates me, and because, I feel, I can’t not. It’s not created entirely without fear, and it’s not created entirely without hope, but it certainly has a lot less of either.

At the same time, I’m conscious that allowing myself to work ‘without fear and without hope’ feels, sometimes, like a bit of a betrayal of my community- and one of the conversations that began this document did identify artists as a ‘marginalised community’. On the cusp of funding cuts and a greater demand than ever in my lifetime to justify the value of the arts, I’m aware it’s never been more important to project our sense of ourselves as artists beyond the realms of the work itself: to articulate our hopes and our fears loudly, abruptly, and in inappropriate places. To get political.

So I took up the challenge to participate in this articulation of longings, in spite of my battle wounds from the past. The location was well chosen. Over three hours from the mad theatrical market that is the Edinburgh Festival, from whence most of us had come, somewhere in the depths of a forest, we found ourselves in a space beyond the clutches of mobile phone reception, where the only sounds were the gentle chug of the generator and the crackle of the wood burning stove. A place where, if we were ever going to truly listening to our longings, they had a pretty good chance of being heard.

This collection of writings intends to communicate what we discovered together that weekend, and the journey we began.  I don’t think we necessarily defined a shared understanding of what longing might mean, but in my notes from the weekend I’ve scribbled down in huge letters ‘TAKE THIS LOOOOOONGING’, and I think the clue to the word’s meaning lies in the name. Your longing will be with you for a long time; in fact it will probably be with you for a lifetime. Sometimes the component parts might be small- a bit of money, a bit of space, a bit of time, a bit of an opportunity were all mentioned in the depths of forest- but they all connect to something bigger, a desire related to a sense of self, that it is this that drives me. I long therefore I am.

But significantly, what I discovered through the process (and perhaps more important than the longings themselves) was how to listen to my longings again.     

So, if like me, you find the voice of your longings is easily drowned, follow these five easy steps:

1)      Find a quiet place to listen. Better if it’s in the countryside, better if there’s no mobile reception or wi fi. Pick somewhere where you can stretch your legs and stretch your eyes. A wood burning stove powered hot tub is not entirely necessary- a large table, pens and paper probably are.

2)      Find some sympathetic people to take along with you. You may find it easier to talk frankly with strangers,  but either way they must be people with whom you have a sense of be- longing: this is about identifying yourself with a community and figuring out what, collectively, you want and need.

3)      Talk. And listen. Walk, cook together, chop logs, drink wine, talk some more. Talk beyond the point of exhausting the subject. And listen.

4)      When you discover your longings, declare them, write them down, tattoo them to yourself if that’s what you need to do to stop yourself from forgetting them.

5)      Keep your longings close to you- somewhere where you can’t ignore them. Keep them in your sights, and give chase.  

Paradoxically, I think a lot of great art work is borne out of frustrated longings. It may be that part of the journey of understanding our longings is coming to terms with the fact that the true value of them may be the struggle to reach them. Part of me suspects that my true, deep longings are like the soap bubbles and the butterflies: beautiful and mysterious as they float just out of my grasp, but bound to fade as soon as I touch them. And at risk of a slight betrayal of my community again, there’s something perversely thrilling about belonging to a world that’s so vulnerable, shifting and uncomfortable.

So, I’m going to end this introduction by offering my own twist on that half remembered quote from the film night, and suggest a particular strategy to longing that may be useful to the artist in this moment, and that’s to long without fear, and without hope. Which is to say: don’t be afraid to long for the impossible.

On the cusp of autumn...

Because it's starting to feel autumnal, and because his new book's out soon, I had to share this- the first paragraph of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Just sensational...

'The Madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat.'

The Promise...

I'm developing a piece at the moment with Honour for Theatre Souk and the Lyme Regis Arts Festival. It's a one on one performance piece dealing with authenticity in the relationship between performer and artist. It's a very experimental piece for me, firstly because I am performing in it- something I haven't done in years!- and secondly because I think the ethics of the piece are pretty troubling, and I don't usually make works that I'd consider to be ethically problematic- even though many of the works that I've found most stimulating over the years have dwelt in this realm. I am also not entirely convinced it's going to be very good... but it's part of the personal development journey I'm going on the moment to allow myself to make work that I think might not be great- as long as it interests me! I went to a short film night the other night and one of the directors came up with a rather brilliant quote, which I have of course forgotten, along with who said it, but it was something to the effect that an artist should create work without fear and without hope. Which seems a little cynical, but rather apt for where I am on my personal creative journey- my intent, at present, being to make the work on its own terms, without any higher motive- or restraint.

Anyway, my purpose with this blog was to reflect on why I am making this piece. Here are some thoughts that correspond to the promises I made to myself in a previous post.

What do I want to learn about myself?

How much I am willing to put at stake personally in the name of art. Whether performing is something I'm interested in/ at ease with. Where my ethical boundaries lie in the work I make.

What do I want to learn about theatre?

What are the ethical boundaries and responsibilities in the relationship between artist and audience member. Where does 'art' end and 'truth' begin?

What do I want to learn about the world?

Who do we trust and why do we trust? What makes a person a stranger? What is our responsibility to a stranger? How honest are we in everyday life and how much do we construct our own character?

What does the introduction of money do to a relationship? What are the factors in a relationship that disrupt the usual social norms?

  

Capturing a moment...

I came across this in Milan Kundera's Immortality today. It describes a character who has just had her portrait taken at random by a hotel photographer:

'Even though she wasn't in any real danger, she could not rid herself of anxiety because one second of her life would remain torn out of the course of time and some stupid coincidence would make it come back to haunt her like the badly buried dead.'

It elucidiated for me the somewhat troubled relationship I've had with photography for a long time. As a young backpacker I took barely any photos of my travels: it was my suspicion that those who religiously snapped away were compromising their experiences by being more interested in documenting than having. More recently (and particularly with the advent of Facebook), it's occurred to me that the events in my life that have been documented on camera are now much, much clearer in my memory, and in fact seem more 'real', or particular, than other events. I remember the details of specific moments that would otherwise have long ago been lost in the mists of time. It's quite perturbing to be so enthral to a camera.

Further it seems that the still image has this power to capture a moment and pin it down even more than film; perhaps its the fact that we tend to return to photos more frequently, but it may also be to do with the way a still image can capture the real specifics of a gesture, an expression, a moment of activity- we observe details that would rush past us on a film.

As an undergraduate I worked with New York performance maker Joseph Shahadi, who developed a technique of interviewing people about a subject they were passionate about whilst photographing them in quick fire succession. Stripped of the interview, the images remained, a series of portraits of people, unposed, and moved by their passions. They played out like flicker books, jumpy, stilted, but somehow managing to capture the play of emotion in their subject's faces and gestures in a way film doesn't seem able to.

Returning to this is a challenge to myself to play with the still image more in my work. I am interested in the power of Joe's technique as a rehearsal tool when developing verbatim work. He also says he is 'interested in the slippage between physical presence and photographic images'. This has parallels with some of the points of playfulness in the audio work I'm developing, particularly as I move into doing more stuff with binaurual recording- I'm interested in the spine tingling, ghostly sense of a physical presence that can be created and how this jars with reality.

The character in Kundera's novel is afraid of never being able to escape this particular moment of her life- conversely, photography's success is perhaps rooted in people's fear of losing a moment; we want to collect a bank of moments that can be resurrected at the flick of a page or the click of a button. This observation is a starting point- for something!

PROMISES

At a time of creative rebirth, a list of promises to myself to help me overcome the hurdles at which I've fallen in the past:

1) I will not be afraid of failure.
2) I will do the things that scare me.
3) I will only make work that I genuinely care about.
4) I will not let a lack of resources stop me.
5) I will make the time.
6) I will not try to be the artist I am not.
7) I will experiment.
8) I will invest in myself as an artist.
9) I will prioritise my art.
10) I will be honest.

I may well add to these going forward, but they are a departure point!

The Leap of Faith

I've just got back from the Kings of England DIY weekender, and one of the things we were talking about a lot was audiences: what is our responsibility to them? And to a lesser extent: what is their responsibility to us?

I don't think artists tend to be very keen on the idea that the audience has a responsibility to us: we are giving them a gift, or a service, and it is up to them how they consume it. We can't demand a particular reaction to our work, and it's true that my favourite work caters for the audience's personal, individual response- after all, theatre is a live artform, and if it can't encompass the audience's presence its pretty meaningless for them to be there at all. It's so uncomfortable when a performance rests on the audience playing a specific role that feels unnatural, or the expected reaction doesn't materialise, and the show begins to die on its arse like a bad stand up comedy gig.

But theatre has always been, in some sense, an act of complicity with the audience: it has asked them to suspend their disbelief or take the leap of faith- to play along with the actors when they declare a flimsy set to be a forest or to trust them when they tell us Jocasta is dead. There is a beauty in this- that the performance cannot happen without the audience's willingness- that the fact it is happening at all rests in this faith in the artist, and the artist's trust that the audience will have this faith.

I've been giving this a lot of thought in relation to the audio guided projects I've been making, which to some extent rest on the audience's willingness to follow specific instructions, which opens up some troubling ethical questions. I undertook Melanie Wilson and Duncan Speakman's audio guide making day at Forest Fringe a couple of weeks ago, and the little scratch piece I made with my group rested on the audience experiencing most it with their eyes closed, until near the end when they opened their eyes and were confronted with an imaged that jarred with the image that had been created by the audio. We discussed blindfolding the audience but decided not to; there was a danger but also a real joy in the fact that the piece could only work if they wanted it to, if they trusted us when we asked them to close their eyes and keep them closed.

This reflects bigger questions that I have about my audio guide work: why should the audience follow the path I set for them or look where I ask them to? Perhaps the answer lies in the leap of faith: the audience doesn't have to, but we are inviting them to- because this can only happen if we're in it together.

The choice not to blindfold the audience worked about 50% of the time, and I think the experience of this 50% was richer for it. The other 50% opened their eyes too soon, and the illusion was destroyed. After all, keeping your eyes closed in a public space as strangers move around you is a very trusting thing to do. What we forgot is that trust is something that needs to be earned: that we can't expect it, unquestioned, of our audiences. So let's have the fragile moments, the times when the audience could chose to make the edifice come crumbling down, but only after we have got to know- and trust-one another.

Beginning....

I have a lot of thoughts. Mostly I forget them pretty quickly- my memory is terrible. So I thought it might be handy to write them down: to prevent me from forgetting, and also to force myself to give themselves more form.

The truth is I am writing this for me; it's just that the blog format strikes me as a better way to do it than in a ratty old diary I keep tucked away under my bed, which I am liable to leave on a tube or spill something on- besides, my hand writing is terrible.

I'm also going to keep it pretty raw: I'm the queen of censoring my own writing, and my concern for the elegance of a turn of phrase could easily overwhelm the content, could, in fact, stop me from writing at all.

So, it will probably be badly written, and I'm more interested in pleasing myself than you. Not terribly promising, is it? However, if you do feel you have it in you to scan over my thoughts and offer feedback, I will be exceptionally grateful. Ultimately this is about me finding my way to being an artist again; I'm going to take some risks, I'm going to experiment, and as far as possible, I'm going to write about it here. If you can help me be better, or at least more thoughtful in my work, I will love you for it.