Feeling pretty exhausted after Saturday’s performance, i had a day off Sunday.
Monday, and back into full, busy and intense routines of working again. It was the first day of Lisa Torell’s “Urban Spaces” workshop. What was i expecting? To put myself into someone else’s hands and to enjoy being navigated, to work with others and have dialogues reminiscent of Art School crits. There are 10 participants and Lisa asked us to identify some “non places” in which to work. Edwina, who lives in Riihimaki spoke about an abandoned area underneath the fly-over so Lisa set us some parameters around the site to focus us. The three words that we have to think about and make work in response to are:
Time, Moment and Routine
I spent some time walking around the area, but wanted to sit down and go through notes in my sketchbook, extracting words that had previously been useful; crossover, touching, separating, joining, crack, crease, cut…
I didn’t realise it at the time, but i had settled in my non-place here. A grassy mound linking the two stretches of road, with no real purpose. I liked sitting here because i could see activity on both of the roads and have always liked it when two cars, one on the lower road, and one on the fly over cross the bridge at the same moment.
I was also aware of a clunking sound made by cars driving over a strip of metal on the bridge, this reminded my of my line drawing performance, where the join in my perspex created a new sound for the pencil to score over.
The nature of the workshop lends itself to performance because we have a very short time to work in, and limited materials. Today, Tuesday is the day for resolving some of these ideas, and we have until 2pm to work, and then will present something to the group. So far i have two ideas:
Moment: recreate my line drawing on the pavement of the bridge, over the fracture in the surface. (on paper, or directly onto the pavement?)
Routine: Running up and down the bridge, left to right, right to left for 1 hour – the same amount of time that i spent on Saturday’s performance. Running is a routine for many people, it helps me get mentally into the right place to make work, and like the drawing, it has a physical and exhausting effect on my body.
I thought that “Time” would be the easiest word to work with, but i still don’t have an idea for this word. Perhaps its too big? We have alot of time today to work on our thoughts, so something should come.
We are meeting at 10am and have a new text to read, Lisa said that we should think about the beginning and end of a work, which is something that i have been thinking about in relation to my line drawing, especially performance.
