Interview at the Walsall Gallery went pretty well. Fantastic building. Beautiful floor. Jon and I had a tough pitch to make though. Building a residency programme that has it’s origin on a responsive footing leaves the field of play completely open. We literally don’t know what we’ll be finding.
But that’s how we want it.
The last couple of years have seen us collaborate on an increasing number of projects that involve coming blind to a situation, and creating a site specific response. An unexplored site is an uncertain thing, but an unexplored population is even more so. Who knows what they’re going to do? All we know is that we will use what we find as a starting point and let it grow form there. We both find that exhilarating, scary as hell, but also a way of preventing us from imposing too much of ourselves onto the initial stages of the work..
Working like that, we get more of a call-and-response situation, and something that stays fresh throughout. But, like I said, it does make it very hard to pitch. How do you propose something that you have no plan for? We opted for a discussion on our previous working methods, and the ethics for doing such work..
As it happens, we didn’t get the commission, which was a big shame. We both feel this is an exciting project and I guess we’ll just have to take it elsewhere! Onwards and upwards. The Occasional Collective will appear again.
