and then what happened?

i may continue to write about things i learned at reckless for a while. probably because some of the works will take a while to sink in*

one that came to mind early on, perhaps even before the workshop started, was my new slogan for 2012: and then what happens? i don’t recall making a specific one for 2011, but it was tied up with not having a day job. 

anyway, i realised that i’m not so great at thinking through an idea to its true end. like, i have a good idea and can imagine the final ‘image’ of it, but the reality of my ideas and their execution is that the ‘image’ is really only the first part of the experience and sometimes i forget to think about the rest of it.

say i decided it’d be awesome to set up an installation in which people DO stuff. well i imagine all the details of the room – lighting, costume, action, person shuts the door, ta-da! but after that, someone has to open the door, reset the room and make sure that the instructions for the audience actually work. and i often forget about that stuff until the last minute. having gaffed it up in small ways during the workshop, i’ve vowed to take some time in a project to think like a production manager and make sure that the actual end of the work gets seen to. like when the last piece is taken out of the building and the work is safely stored in a warehouse, or something.

i don’t know if i’m quite explaining it, but i just wanted to share it all with you anyway. perhaps as a confessional. perhaps to get a witness. and make it ‘real’. 

and something along with that resolve is also a reminder that i can make meaningful work about things that matter when i start with what matters to me. musicians i like often talk about the personal being political and i have been able to see how it works with them, but it wasn’t until i saw my own interests and experience being extended and expanded that i could see how it pertained to me too.

as i write, i’m currently waiting for some funding apples to fall from trees (could those with connections to christopher hitchens please ask him to orchestrate a little luck for me, please?), and quite a lot of that funding is to develop new works, or extend works currently in the early stages of development. i’m hoping to bring into those new works a deeper consideration and perhaps a more serious or formal process for developing my own works. this year it was quite haphazard – dependant on residency projects and a bit reactionary – coming back from europe and the early stages of figuring out how to actually manage my practice.

in that time i feel like i learned from my peers and elders how to put some space around my work a bit. interestingly a lot of them are from performance backgrounds and seem to have a good sense of time-planning that i have pinched from. not that i won’t give myself time to respond to works immediately, but next year i’m hoping to bring more measure into my time. 

and then what happened?

*guffaw! in-joke!  i made a work in which i got people to stick their heads in a sink full of  water)