Hi-de-hi!
I don’t blog enough, but I want you to know I feel guilty about it, every single day, so even if you don’t know it, anonymous internet reader, I’m always thinking of you. And Happy Valentines to you, as well.
Last week was a rather fruitless time, settling back into uni, and trying to work out where exactly my work at Bank Street is going to fit into that. Last week, I tried out devoting two days a week to Bank Street, but that didn’t really work. The piece is intense, so whole days of devotion to it tend to drain me, and don’t result in anything good, I just get sad and exhausted and have to lie down and sleep. Rubbish!
This week, instead, I’m going to be trying out short sharp blasts of it everyday – so that it’s almost like a diary of work that’s all emotional and BLAH and workshopped, made at the same time as research, and work that is structuring and designing, and then on Sundays, heading to the peace and quiet of a deserted Bank Street for a couple of hours to pull the work of the week altogether, and to try some moments of performance out in the space… need to get up and do something! Thinking is driving me mad, I want to make something people can watch!
Massive parts of this work at the minute are putting together memories from bad times and trying to find ways of representing that. I’m also going to be setting up a camera in my room in the next couple of weeks to record myself, and my behaviour in this here room. I’m an idiot, when I’m on my own, I think most people are, so I’m hoping that can bring lighter moments to the piece.
I still need to come back to my audience, a little. I’m losing sight of them, I worry. But then, I guess once you start putting together moments to be shown, you come back to the people that are watching it. Yeh? yeh. Be fine.
What have I actually told you about where the piece is at the moment? Hmm. Let me check.
Hardly anything! Useful! Right, I’ll type up some of my notes from Saturday (some of the less terrible ones. they’re still terrible, but still), tell you some things I’ll be doing this week, and then some other things I’m excited about, and then we’re done here, and you can get down to a day of all things pink and red.
Some Things I Wrote on Saturday
One of the things I find most interesting about people experiencing depression is their ability to lead a double life – one which often takes place in their bedrooms, and is hidden, and another which is shown to the world at large. That in itself is not a big statement – duh, it’s how people cope. But I still think it’s remarkable, and very interesting. As such, I want to use the piece to present depression as an exhibition, the room of the depressed performer as a piece at a museum, and the performer, is ‘performing’ their depression. Meh. Mah. Hard to express. Piece is to run from 9 – 5 on both days. Almost like depression’s a job, I suppose. Hmm. Audience as a voyeur, but an invited voyeur. Scheduled time when audience can explore room at will, but most of time, room cordoned off. Hmm. I need to visit a museum or exhibition. Bedroom must be perfect, not only an accurate representation of how a bedroom looks, but also how it feels. Performer struggles to move. Audience see performer arrive and leave. Piece needs to have dry, black humour. Communication is the second thing to be exploring with it.
Things I Want To DO this Week
Things I’m excited About
InXclusion in Leeds! (Indivisible, East Street Arts, 25th-26th April Wonderful: http://www.inxclusion.com/)
Flying Solo in Manchester! (Bryony Kimmings, Brian Lobel, Other Amazing People, Contact, February and March. A Joy http://contactmcr.com/projects/festivals/flying-solo/)
Last Saturday Live in Sheffield! (Me, Bank Street Arts, 31st March, Exciting. Sending out a call for artists this week)
Right. I’m gonna go and do some of that stuff. Or maybe sleep, cus it’s almost half two. Nonsense.
xxxxx