after a weekend of going wrong with time- forgetting that next weekend was the next BBeyond workshop date, not this weekend, and legging into the studio so as not to be at home like last week, hemmed into the bedroom, with familial arguments and unhappiness happening right outside the door, resulting in me trying to concentrate and perform fucking relaxing dance interludes whilst flooded with equal amounts of frustration and guilt at the sound of the friction behind the door.
Having arrived on time and gotten setup, pug extension lead and all so I would be able to sit down at my work desk with my laptop, using the extension lead to allow me to access the plugs that work as opposed to crouch on the floor, and internet seemingly working, I even had coffee. But it dawned on my eventually that I had the wrong date. And then this morning waking up in. panic trying to remember was I supposed to have a one to one zoom that I had signed up for this weekend or next weekend- it was this weekend. After an hour of panic kitchen cleaning and organising and pancake making and kids mediating and rushing to be ready for 10 o clock and checking and of course the zoom was for 11 o clock, I made it.
Great to have talked with Dominic and was uplifting for me. Was very interesting talking about what is being an artist- and how we seek validating spaces and environments to put our work in. The power of community so as to have a group to show your work to. This can help validate it for a start, if the other validating pathways are not available. Try making work in public sphere, in a shop, in a gallery. Different spaces. Being an artist is making work. Work might never be seen. Making it makes you an artist.
I spoke a bit about work I’ve made- Dominic reminded me there’s a potential foundation of existing work I can build on and reference. We are not inventing this- theres a whole body of performance works out there to access and reference. You are not on your own. Also, when you make a piece of work, it opens up a ton of questions and contexts that you might feel you have to follow up on all of. You don’t. Your job is to light the place up with your work. Follow or develop some of them if you feel it’s right. For ex, with Night crawl. Continue to look at crawling and the semiotics of crawling.
He mentioned it’s ok to do things that are NOT hard. It doesn’t aways have to be physically difficult for example. Ye an artist’s job is to push agains the perameters and ask question but sometimes it can be stuff that comes naturally, that feels easy. I mentioned that flipping tyres or crawling IS easy, compared to sitting with something or dancing on a zoom workshop :)
PHD advice- you have to use the language of academic discourse. look up google scholar and read papers on performance and the ethic of morality in public spaces, performance and neurology, spend time reading this to see where you would place your proposal argument.
