Awake early.
A short pep talk from Claire on the phone last night who said: when in doubt, draw. So I’ve had a few thoughts about that.
I figured that rather than try to sleep with building work noises outside, I’d try and articulate to myself, once again, why it is that I’m here.
1. Reality TV has a bad name among many. But the idea of trying to make art, in the context of a reality TV show, is interesting, because TV is what people watch – me included. Reality TV is a massive part of our culture – there is never a shortage of people who want to appear on them (even when they are cynically set up to make people look daft or silly). It has to be a medium worth exploring.
2. Lithuania is an interesting country. On the one hand, it’s very old – with a huge medieval history – and on the other, it’s very young, only around 17 years since independence from the soviet union.
The nation is ambitious, energetic, and it’s changing rapidly. Guidebooks published even just two years ago have proved pretty out-of-date with regard to changes in some aspects of culture. There’s a manufacturing base, an educated workforce and there’s money. Not evenly spread of course, but it’s there. There maybe 50% discount signs in the Armani shop window, with an international recession on, but the point is, there IS an Armani shop window.
The Contemporary Arts Centre is a classy building that shows work that has been carefully chosen and curated with care.
3. There’s an academic programme of lectures – which could be really interesting.
Given that my own emerging practice is about trying to express an optimism for the future and the connections that we all share, it’s not a bad place to spend time thinking about that.
Time to make another cup of tea. Who knows how it’ll go today but hey, if it goes badly, it’s only a reality TV show. I’ll live to tell the tale.
