The residency is not what I expected. Not that I (we) had received any information about what it would be. Perhaps that is why I found myself reflecting on previous residential artistic experiences even if they were not exactly residencies. I am here and I am doing things. I am doing this with other artists … I am spending all my time, 24 hours a day, with other artists.
Yesterday we started composing two lists: joys, and frustrations. I wrote ’the company of other artists’ on the joys list. I think that we held back in our contributions to these lists, perhaps they came too early in the process. I know that I could have said more but held back as I did not want to speak more than anyone else – perhaps we all did that. This week’s guest workshop leader, who is very clear that he does not want to be referred to as an ’expert’ (the word that that the residency hosts Kapsars and Laura used in their brief email about the programme), is John and his theme is ’games’. The three-day workshop is about making a game. Much of the first day was spent playing the board game that John and a friend of his made where the aim is for players to work together to establish an arts venue. It had been a long time since I played a board game, and even longer since I played one with other adults. We stopped playing in the late afternoon.
After dinner Kaspars asked us to help with kitting out the room that would become our kitchen. He had spent Monday evening hooking up a sink to the water supply in the bathroom next door. Now it was time to move the fridge, tables, induction plates, ceramic plates and other crockery, cutlery, cooking pots and utensils from his studio. Dinner that evening had been made by Lidija and Fenu in the common kitchen on the third floor, but we ate it at tables carried to the soon-to-be-kitchen on the fourth floor. Kristjan and I had realised the challenge of cooking for a large group in the common kitchen at lunch time when we could only use one cooking ring and a rather modest pot to make soup for the ten of us. After moving things we set about putting hooks in the ceiling so that lamps could be hung over the cooking benches and the long table. Throughout these activities there was much discussion about the tasks, about the day, about tomorrow.
Does is matter what I am/we are doing? Or is the doing, the process of doing, the important thing at this stage of the process, project, residency? Another strand of the residency is about collaborating … on the first day Kaspars talked about learning through doing … don’t black holes swallow up everything … indiscriminately? …
I am paying attention to my reactions, my challenges, my way of being, my willingness to be open, … my joy in the company of other artists.
