Hi Hayley!
So I really wanted us to do this joint blog thing, but obviously my insides have decided that today is not the day for anything other than me sort of lying in bed holding my stomach between little bursts of typing and reading (today, This Bridge Called My Back, beautiful as always, Open City by Teju Cole, a little boring, a tedious protagonist, and trying to get to the end of Black Skin White Masks – the Lose Your Mother of this weekend, I want to be done with it now. I’m also dipping in and out of a book called Imagining Home, which is about Pan Africanism – I’ve ignored it all week, convinced it would be boring, but I’m actually quite taken with it). So I thought I would write a little, then you could write a little, and though imperfect, that could form the basis of our first joint Indiegogo blog to the world on land.
I’m feeling very proud of us both this week – I know I keep saying it, but I am! From being, pretty much two strangers a fortnight ago and then two people really struggling to find a common language about a week ago to now being in a place where we are starting to work together on how we support one another as artists and as people. Forging these kinds of connections is not easy work, is not work done lightly. It has been at times a very hard process, with lots of risk, bravery, patience and vulnerability needed by both parties, but I’m feeling happy about where we are now – if a little anxious about the coming weeks – months! There is so much to do, and I think we’re partners in ambition as well as other things – as we sit together on the edge of language, knowing what we’re getting at, but not really having the signifiers to depict it, I still feel that we’re meeting in a common place.
We meet usually twice a day – sometimes just once – at 10am (tea, focaccia, donuts, smiling Luis) and then again at 4pm (tea, biscuits, amused Luis, bit of embarrassment cus he’s going to clean my messy room) – and I’m loving the questions that are coming up – from the filmic:
What are the different ways of capturing movement without moving the camera, how can the presence of people be captured without focusing on the body, can we project onto salt, how can we tell a multiplicity of stories visually?
to the practical:
What should our code of practice be when negotiating with border control and other officials, what is the best way of our working with the therapy support that we have in place, how do we set up guidelines to protect our working relationship and ourselves?
To the slightly more whimsical:
What is the place of subjectivity, solipsism and solitude in the work, what is gained and lost by the use of both film and theatre, what is it to work with the sea as an artistic material?
We are getting there. In our way, we are getting there – and I’m looking forward to being reunited with internet, with other people, with proper actual freedom (eat what we want, go where we want, not have everything so scheduled, being able to film) to actually begin to try things out, to put our planning into practice – maybe to fail, but in doing so, to learn that this is not the end of the world and to then try things another way.
Enough of me – over to you! –