So the first response has been done and sent. Created digitally, and sent by e-mail, so it only exists in a virtual sense, but that won’t be obvious to my sister. The apps I used to create the piece did not allow for movement or editing of text, and so I was forced to digitally “Tippex” mistakes, and edit with conventional-looking proofreader’s marks. Paradoxically, it looks more ‘real’ than an actually printed perfect piece of word processing.
At the start of the project, we had talked about how to work towards a coherent joint exhibition, but I hated the idea of working to a theme as a way of achieving this. This reaction is fallout from years of risk-averse, goal-orientated and highly focused legal practice. It took a good while to get rid of that mindset. I love the fact that my work now starts with a ‘something’ with no idea at all of where it might lead, and how it might be developed. But even though I rejected a joint theme, my first response was ironically about clarifying the constraints of process I would work with.
I find it fascinating that psychologically, the idea of a themed goal for me feels restrictive, whilst actual ongoing process constraints (such timings and modes of response etc.,) prompt an exhilirating feeling of open-ended creativity.
I anticipate an underlying tension developing throughout this joint work. We have agreed not to discuss the artwork save through our responses, but we both tend to read between the lines the whole time when we talk to each other, and so it is inevtiable, I think, that we will be reading possibly far to much into everything we send each other. The author may be dead in a postmodern sense, but we have too much shared history to be free of the other as author.
