it ain't nothing without you...

'Art isn't what you make, but what you make happen'
- Jeremy Deller

When working on participatory projects, the challenge always is to know how much information to impart to the participants. Saying too much can result in diminished creative input from the group. So how do you get the most from the participants? How do you best capitalise on their creative ambitions while also managing artistic control over the piece? How do you make on the spot decisions when exploring new creative ideas? These are some of the questions I asked myself during the Delve Deeper Intensive with Helen Carnac and Laïla Diallo last month at Siobhan Davies.

Choreographers by nature of their work are likely to be more familiar with this than other artists. I was most impressed with Laïla’s delivery of various tasks she set to the group: economical, measured, open ended.  It prevented us from ‘end-gaming’ what the outcome would be and helped us embrace the unexpected while also valuing the minutiae of whatever we were doing.

A large part of my installation in the Make Believe exhibition at Nottingham Castle, separate from the weaving between trees (see previous post), involved using fencing pins in the lawn, as you would pins in a lace pillow, to produce ‘lace’ around the grounds of the castle.

To prepare for this I practiced various stitches in the studio on an actual lace pillow and drew up a pattern to follow when making the work on site.  However as soon as we started, the pattern had to be scrapped. The action of working the sisal twine using custom made bobbins to cover the grounds lead me to rework the pattern I had and make up new stitches as we worked our way across the lawn.  What guided me through this was allowing the participants to find their own way of working with the materials and each other. This improvised method, based on set manoeuvres, proved the best way of making the ‘lace’ in the end.

It’s nice to think that with a different group, the outcome would have been very different, and without anyone, the piece could not have been realized at all.

confessions of a hoarder

As I am unpacking materials and objects used during Independent Dance’s intensive workshops Sharing Making Moving at Siobhan Davies Studios last well, I have also started unpacking some of the ideas and questions prompted by the these.

One is the question of how sustainable can my practice be given I have a studio full to the brim with stuff and yet I keep producing more things (see website and dailymades) while also bringing in fresh supplies of materials to work with from regular foraging excursions?  I own up to it, I have a big problem on my hands: I accumulate stuff at an alarming rate without being able to throw anything away.

Working with Dancers last week, I’ve realised one thing I love about dance is its economy; the body is the material and steps, routine, choreographic sequences need only be stored in one’s head.  In this lies the answer to my problem I reckon.

One of the participants made a record of what she had made by dancing her object as means of sketching it.  How could these movements describe accurately anything about the making of her object I thought, the physicality of its materials, its outer appearance?  How could the same thing be made again from a simple set of movements?

Myriam said her movements were instructions on how to work with the materials.  Her interest when making was to have the materials balance and the shape of the final outcome was of secondary importance to her.  The way she moved described this task.  As for the exact object being made again from her ‘danced’ instructions, she was not worried about that.  Why do anything twice anyway, what would be the point of this she told me.

So here is the answer to my problem: rather than keep all that I make, I should record what I produce as a set of instructions.  These could be rehearsed and memorised, or written down as task cards, or both.  Each time an object is made, it will be like making it for the first time.  It’ll be an exercise in improvisation rather than repetition. Performing the instructions might be a good substitute for the object of course, but that is a whole other question…

Object probably don’t matter in the end, ideas do, and ideas are meaningless without actions.  Content and meaning for me reveals itself through process, and this means moving as well as making. All going well, my next blog (written from a newly spacious studio, of course) will be titled ‘confessions of a dancer’.

spinning up and down
ending with a leap