As I thought about the sort of mentoring I might need, I wondered if it would be possible to come at it from another angle. To talk to artists and friends whose work and selves I loved and respected about how to get to the best zero point, what Barad calls a ‘ground state’, from which we can build a better, more resilient structure. There is always a sense of doom when thinking about fashioning other ways. But I wanted to see whether looking at these things askance and with half an eye closed (rather than the habitual 5 year projections of lots of mentoring schemes) we might be able to piece together a way through.
The following extract is from a conversation with G, a filmmaker. Soon I will publish the book of these conversations and make it available to a-n members. At that point the initials will be replaced by real names so it’s less like a 19th century novel.
G so what’s the image of a community? The image that is not people sitting for a portrait? And how do you show the system? How do you show this operation? Because you can film all the houses in a place or you can film all the people but neither of those talk to how that functions or how these things could or could not… And you could also film a discussion which is one of however many discussions. But I think these are really, you know, really rich and interesting… challenges?
H I guess so, I guess so…
G or stuff…? Those are reasons why we should try to do it
H do you think?
G they’re reasons…
H that’s so optimistic! I’m the opposite (laughs). I’m just like: that’s the reason you should never get involved in anyone else’s shit!
G but then I think: that’s a really hard image
H what’s a really hard image?
G the community
H okay
G how to make an image of this thing? They are images that can be valuable because they’re very difficult. For me. Because this is what I mean; this idea of ‘difficult’
H But then do you think it’s –
G because I feel like it’s easy to make images and I feel like the tendency, as soon as you start to think about what an image is of, then suddenly you realise it’s really hard. But that’s when it also gets exciting. And that’s what I mean by this tension… it’s difficult but it’s also exciting. Like it feels like the image has purchase and then it’s exciting…
H it’s high-stakes?
G yeah and then how to make that high-stakes not terrifying and that’s what I mean… that weird play of like making it difficult but also keeping it fun
H yeah yeah
G which is this liveness of the act of filming, that liveness, that ‘oh shit, we’re doing it now? and ‘we can only do it once?’ so it’s really fun because maybe we fuck it up but…
H yeah we live it
G yes!
H yeah but the thing I was wondering about a lot when I watched the film and maybe more so the second time actually… was how… and I would think this because for me this is where co-organisation happens… I feel structures or systems are per-formed, as in they roll out as you go. So it’s the way in which we manage to be able to be with each other in terms of the care and the attention that we take with each other and how we’re able to listen or not listen. And so I was wondering when I was watching it a lot: I wonder how G and they were getting on? Were friendships formed? How did they communicate? How did they manage…? I suppose in a way, psychoanalytically, that’s the reason I’m asking about that slight tension in the voice when you say ‘go’ and you press the trigger on the camera. Because there is this… the person that says ‘go’, the person that’s pressing or holding or whatever the model of camera it is… do you know what I mean? They’re very influential and very set apart. Do you know what I mean? And I don’t think other people that you were collaborating with filmed so much, did they?
G yeah, exactly these questions are what makes the image interesting or difficult or messy. That’s what I mean when I say it was a directed collaboration, you know? Because it would be disingenuous to pretend it wasn’t. And yeah. Yeah like I shot everything you know…
