By the skinny skin of my teeth I managed to meet Pilot London’s deadline for responses to three questions;
1 How much do you think that the art world is shaped by demand?
2 Where do you feel you are in the food chain?
3 How do you keep control of your input into this system critically and/or creatively?
The team at Pilot sent these questions weeks ago and I’d put notes in my diary to remind me a couple of weeks before the deadline. Even so I left it very late. I actually got a lot from thinking about how to tackle the questions and how to respond. My answers might be brief but they’re an accurate summary of where I am right now, and interestingly they also hint at future directions.*
Question three is particularly relevant at the moment. I’ve been wrestling with how to deal with that group show that I committed to two years ago and that is now (to my mind) something quite different. Last night I emailed the curator and proposed an alternative to the piece she’s expecting. I know that part of my motivation is an attempt to regain some control. However there are also some very real practical issues around the installation of the originally proposed piece that make it less than ideal (there is only one day to install the show and I have a work commitment which I can’t afford to cancel, so I’m very limited in terms of the time I can spend installing).
The whole process has made me think about the people and organizations I work with – the experiences I’ve found enjoyable, the ones I’ve found more challenging, and the ones that shift and slide between. The really enjoyable one’s tend to be where;
• the project has an strong conceptual integrity,
• collaborators and partners have clear roles and responsibilities,
• communication is easy and open, and
• flexibility is kept in balance.
I love what I do, is it expecting too much to enjoy it too? …
* All the answers Pilot receive will be published (‘exactly as they are’) later this year, and it feels wrong to write mine here!
