I was having trouble with the projectors this morning and stood there for a minute wondering what on earth I was doing, and whether it was actually all nonsense after all. Sometimes I spend too long fixed on the technicalities of a project at the exclusion of all else, and the excitement of the thing disintegrates quite quickly into the sum of its parts.
Loping around listlessly on the internet afterwards trying to make the disintegration go away, I found a link to curator Tom Trevatt’s review of this blog for the a-n ‘choice blog’ section. And neatly, it made the disintegration go away.
Reading Tom’s perspective has been restorative. It snapped back into focus the elements of the project that engross me: the attempt to catch time, the superfluity of the resulting drawing or text, and the attempt to write out of the pen and into the pen at the same time, even if the pen and the camera sometimes have to do one another’s work. The image of the line being ‘drawn forth’ is particularly satisfying, as though the line were there all along in advance of being written. It reminds me of a conversation I had in the Project Space one afternoon about the line seeming thread-like, existing independently of the writing that shaped it. Though unlike thread it’s gone the moment the writing passes through it. Keeping time, and never letting it collect.
In my hour of loping, thank you Tom, you done good. Tom’s review is here:
(and here’s a very brief video from the studio today)
