Feeling inspired and even a little intimidated by the breadth and depth of yesterday evening’s presentations. The evident scale of imagination and the commitment to practice led me once more to wonder how long I can continue as artist and educator. I think that the difficulty is the ’and’ rather than either ’artist’ or ’educator’. Currently I am trying to be two distinct things at the same time – or at least in the same week (and by currently I mean in my day-to-day life in Sweden). I want to change this and I feel that I am on the way to doing so – this residency being a part of that change. That is perhaps why already the experience of being here seems so important. I am being reminded of what being an artist is.
I am writing these sentences to make sense of my jumbled thoughts and almost as soon as a sentence begins to form in my mind and on the page I start to edit it – consciously re-writing from (and in) a positive position. I say page, but I am typing on my laptop and the words on the screen. The delete key erases the words. If I were writing in pen on paper I would cross the words out and there would be visible traces of how I am shifting things. On screen is the result of thinking and writing rather than the process of thinking and writing. I rarely if ever use the strike-through function that sits quietly beside the b, i, and u functions – what is a keyboard shortcut for strike-through? The others I know by heart.
The morning’s workshop, the second with John, made me realise how result driven I am. The task is to create a game and I feel myself wanting to see things take shape … things are not taking shape. As a participant … collaborator(?) … how much to I voice my needs, how do I find a place for my needs in the evolving collaboration, how much do I let go of my needs? What is my contribution, and what is my contribution’s relation to other contributions?
I made two very concrete contributions/suggestions: the game should incorporate as much as possible, and each of us should ask a friend/contact to send us an instruction. We now have 20 instructions that range from the abstract to the specific.
What do I take from yesterday – both the workshop and the presentations? The importance of acknowledging process … truth to process … truth of process … truth in process(?).
The residency is not what I expected. Not that I (we) had received any information about what it would be. Perhaps that is why I found myself reflecting on previous residential artistic experiences even if they were not exactly residencies. I am here and I am doing things. I am doing this with other artists … I am spending all my time, 24 hours a day, with other artists.
Yesterday we started composing two lists: joys, and frustrations. I wrote ’the company of other artists’ on the joys list. I think that we held back in our contributions to these lists, perhaps they came too early in the process. I know that I could have said more but held back as I did not want to speak more than anyone else – perhaps we all did that. This week’s guest workshop leader, who is very clear that he does not want to be referred to as an ’expert’ (the word that that the residency hosts Kapsars and Laura used in their brief email about the programme), is John and his theme is ’games’. The three-day workshop is about making a game. Much of the first day was spent playing the board game that John and a friend of his made where the aim is for players to work together to establish an arts venue. It had been a long time since I played a board game, and even longer since I played one with other adults. We stopped playing in the late afternoon.
After dinner Kaspars asked us to help with kitting out the room that would become our kitchen. He had spent Monday evening hooking up a sink to the water supply in the bathroom next door. Now it was time to move the fridge, tables, induction plates, ceramic plates and other crockery, cutlery, cooking pots and utensils from his studio. Dinner that evening had been made by Lidija and Fenu in the common kitchen on the third floor, but we ate it at tables carried to the soon-to-be-kitchen on the fourth floor. Kristjan and I had realised the challenge of cooking for a large group in the common kitchen at lunch time when we could only use one cooking ring and a rather modest pot to make soup for the ten of us. After moving things we set about putting hooks in the ceiling so that lamps could be hung over the cooking benches and the long table. Throughout these activities there was much discussion about the tasks, about the day, about tomorrow.
Does is matter what I am/we are doing? Or is the doing, the process of doing, the important thing at this stage of the process, project, residency? Another strand of the residency is about collaborating … on the first day Kaspars talked about learning through doing … don’t black holes swallow up everything … indiscriminately? …
I am paying attention to my reactions, my challenges, my way of being, my willingness to be open, … my joy in the company of other artists.
Experience walking exercise. Three of us had an hour and a half outside to collect five experiences, we had to do it without speaking. Listening to the instructions (?) immediately reminded me of previous performance projects – specifically the one that became Frozen Progress (2001). It was both comfortingly familiar and a reminder of how distant such projects and ways of working have become. It awakened something in me about physicality, or perhaps the absence of physicality in my current practice … something to note.
We climbed, walked, jumped, and danced through a rambling abandoned building almost immediately next to the one in which we are staying. It was playful – like being a child again – there were lots of tests. Testing how we communicated and checked in with each other – more eye contact than usual. Testing the ground – keeping my weight on my back foot and testing the burnt, charred, uncertain ground ahead with my front foot. Testing materials, dropping debris into dark holes that evidently had water at the bottom, whirling plastic tubes around above our heads, touching the velvety dampness of fungi. A large room, the only room where the ceiling was intact, and which was almost entirely dark – the windows had been bricked up, became a nightclub when Fenu shone his torch up through the perforated tile that Aina had found. We danced on the broken glass and I was transported back to nights out in Edinburgh and London … the lyric “stilettos on broken bottles” going through my head. How many times have I found myself becoming emotional and teary on dance-floors ’dancing on my own’ since John died?
Reflecting on the five experiences that we had collected we were unanimous that the most intense was the three of us jumping in synch forward and back on the fire damaged roof … jump forward with both feet and jump back as soon as you feel the roof beneath your feet, did we feel the roof move? Jump again. It moved. Did we hear something? Jump again. And again … again … we definitely heard something and felt something that time. We acknowledge with danger of what we are doing with spontaneous laughter. We stand where we are on the roof directly above a wall – safe ground. The laughter subsides, we turn to the left and in single file walk to the left where we one up one clamber down burnt roofing into the body of the building.
Earlier and in a few sentences about our motivations for being on the residency I had said that I want to re-connect with my artist’s soul – to ’let the crazy out’. The afternoon’s exercise was a very good way to start to doing just that. To pay attention to the people and materials around me, to be in the moment, to test, and to play, to do things for the sake of doing them, to learn and experience by doing. To be present.
Within minutes of arriving I was sitting in the shared kitchen at a table in lively conversation with others artists finishing their late breakfast and drinking strong coffee. Two other artists were sitting at another table, some others were at the hotplates and sink on the large island that is dwarfed by the expanse of the room. I felt immediately welcome and ’at home’.
Three of the artists had arrived from Berlin on Thursday, two to play at a concert on Friday, the other to see the art/residency centre. One of them will stay for the residency the other two left early this morning. Another artist is from Iceland, he arrived yesterday and spent last night in the room where I will be staying. He is also on the residency so is moving to another room … I have no idea why Kaspars (who runs the programme) added this move but I am starting to get the idea that he likes to be a little mysterious.
Other than the dates, and a very last minute email confirming that bedclothes and a towel were provided I have received no information about the residency programme. Walking around the old town in the afternoon with two artists – one from Berlin and one who arrived from Ireland – it became apparent that their email questions about the residency had been ’non-answered’: there would be no-days off, and the content would be revealed when everyone was here.
We wandered not exactly aimlessly around the town, one of the artists has been here often but not on the residency, and they guided us through the street towards the river pointing out traces of the medieval city as well as the soviet occupation, and even the peaceful protests that lead to the Baltic countries liberation. The city is amazing. I have never been somewhere with such a range of architecture, nor such contrast between abandoned and modern or restored buildings.
The building we are staying in is the 1970s extension to a soviet military facility from the 50s. From my windows I can see the vacant 50s building through the silver birches that are now bare. My room is about 6 by 9 meters – I paced it out. That’s 54 square meters just for sleeping, my new apartment in Uppsala is 53 square meters in total! Of course it is not just for sleeping, I am sitting here at a simple table writing now and hope to do so frequently if not daily over the course of the residency.
Yesterday was a long day, I woke at 1.30am to finish packing and catch the 3.15 night bus to the airport. The flight was only one hour and we can’t have been more than 20 passengers. By the time we got back after dinner out, the concert and a drink it was midnight. This morning I went for a run by the lake here, now I have showered and it’s approaching time to meet up with everyone in the kitchen for breakfast.
I have the feeling that I need to be here more than I knew when I made my application.
Arlanda airport – waiting for the plane to Riga where I am on a three week “experimental art” residency – I have no idea what to expect!
I am excited to be embarking on my first proper residency – other ’residencies’ have been self initiated, this is an established programme that I applied for. I even received a small project grant from my local council – where I have taken leave from my job as arts educator to do the residency.
I find myself thinking back to the Goat Island summer school that I attended in 1996. Maybe because I am travelling with clothes – warm clothes as I have been warned that it’s cold in Riga, and in the old factory/industrial building where we will be living and working – a sketchbook, computer and camera, but no materials, which is how I arrived in Glasgow for that project. The summer school was performance based so perhaps I will find myself making performance/live work on the residency. I know that we (six international artists) will be be doing somethings collaboratively, that there are some guest workshop leaders, and after reading an email earlier this morning I know that there will be some outdoor activities.
It is probably a good thing that the last few weeks (months) have been so intense, I have not had time to overthink what I might be doing. I am excited to see what happens!
Blackholes residencies
