drilling for gold

while in belper parks on tuesday, our regional catalyst from the eden project opened my thinking to placemaking.

as we stood and looked at one edge of the area we’ll use for the art walk i could see her excitement.

today i’ve done a little tentative research into placemaking to see what further i can learn.  a handy starting point is http://www.pps.org/reference/what_is_placemaking/

and i know some curators might suggest not getting too hung up on definitions.  if what i do is placemaking then i’ll need to establish my version of the term.  for a start all that i make is temporary and abstract.  quite the antithesis of the formal version. i like anthithesis so this is good.

i looked on a – n to see what i might find.  not a great deal however it did lead me to http://www.glittermouse.co.uk/placemaking-workshops.html the website of annabeth orton.  i looked with interest through her placemaking workshop evidence.

i think the pps.org page needs further reading and some consideration of how it transfers into a temporary installation.  i have seen what i do as an awaking or revisualising of an invisible place for some time.

it’s all helpful critical underpinning at a time when i’m putting the callout together for the art walk.  my hope is we get some interesting proposals  and the weekend is fun and enjoyable.

since wednesday i’ve been contemplating the success paradox.  so what do i mean by this?

the key component is the success paradox bit …. and wednesday.

wednesday was notification day for a video showing thing i’d submitted to.  i was excited the hear the news and it never came.  throughout my 12 in 14 blog this not hearing, not being selected,  simply not ….. was the majority result and i’ve had multiple relfections about this in the lead up to finishing 2014.

yesterday was a day that took me outside of my day and it seemed to give me a little extra space to contemplate the lack of response from the opportunity.

i’ve been surprised by where my thoughts sank to.

i considered in what circumstances my video was likely to be accepted and concluded that in the call out the selctors set out the boundaries for their descisions to be made.  my work fell outside of these.  this is an assumption as i have no real evidence.

the work i submitted was made with good intention, had layers of meaning within it and is part of a larger set of thoughts.

the non selection of the work could make it easy for me to take a very negative view of it.  my view of it being influenced by a group of people i have not met, do not know and certainly have not spoken to.

why would i let a group like that influence the way i think about a work i made and stand by?

cliche statement approaching … you need to be bloody minded, tough, resilient to make it in the art world.

oh look there’s nothng there about what the work is like.

again and again for me it comes down to how i see, interpret, react to and think about the world being and this being so much different from those making the opportunities.

and here’s where the recent thinking floats to the surface.

it does not mean that what i make has no value, is meaningless and makes me a failure just because i am not succesful with a submission.  i am not defined by what others think of me and my work, they are merely opinions.

yesterday as i walked round belper i felt empowered by those who had not chosen to show my work.  i felt that what i was considering, reacting to, what i express does have a place somewhere within society.

the success paradox requires me to be patient, keep optimistic, keep expressing, keep showing until such time as someone somewhere sees what i do and has that omg moment … the i have to get this shown moment … the wow this guy has an angle on this i really like as i’ve been waiting to see it or there just hasn’t been anything like it to see.

the more i fail the more i succeed.

my post today is a thinking out loud prior to making a descision.  my race isn’t with demons, if it were the thoughts would be privately published in a password protected page … the racing demons reference is a bit of a random stab back into my early 20’s.  the game was played with a pack of cards per player. i can’t for the love of me remember how to play it, just that it involved a lot of us around a very big table.

and there’s the tenuous conenction to today.

my thoughts out loud are about making up a callout and wether to engage with a national project that i’ve been put off by local thinking.

the storey is involved and to awkward to quickly unpack so i’ll have a go at a simple summary.

a local project has been usurped by a national one.  similar focuses yet different approaches to realisation.  the national one is well funded, well suported and not very well communicated about.  ours is well meaning under supported and slow to get going but i still believe in it.  problem is that the group i’m working with to evolve the local project has skipped the room and backed the national  without any real conversation about it. that might sound awful.  until yesterday i thought it was. i must add that not everyone involved in the local has skipped to the national, however because those running the national for the group were part of the local planning, it has made the local seem a little untenable.

in attempting to write an email about where i am with the national i see an opportunity to do something local.

the focus of the projects is energy and the domestic use of it.  my stance on the local project was to make opportunities to get people together to do something light hearted and intentionally fun.  the message of energy usage being buried deep within the fun intent of the activity.  the national project has taken a stance of competition and racing, ie there will be a winner.  information is very thin on the ground but what i do know is that the race requires one to sign up for it and in return we recive things we do to gain points.  the points are not collected individually, they go towards the team that one is in.  the project will last for six months.

the way i neard of the national project left me smarting, i really don’t know wether to be involved.

this morning i have made a break through.

blogs at the moment are a medium that i feel a lot more comfortable with.  possibly the support of the an blogs account on twitter or the forth coming anton hecht  film … i really don’t know.  there is a shift to be more confident about using a blog.  it is after all a way of expressing myself … as a painting or sculpture is.

so rather than get huffy and talk myself into a corner over the way the national project trampled on the energy of the local project i see an opportunity to sign up to the national project and keep a blog about doing it under the banner of the local project.

as i think about beginning the national project i project local negativity towards it and i see i need to give it some space to be itself and to journey the path to discover what it is.  this way i can keep the local project going while learning from the national.

it’s not very neat despite the engineers being involved.

my person centric, subtler making friends approach is still my preferred way of working.  the outcomes are slower, difficult to measure and quantify but i believe it to be a way to benefit those who will engage with it.

in other plans today i’ve been considering what to say in the upcoming artist callout i need to create for the art walk and recording sonic components to go with the visual components created yesterday.

this mutiple project thinking approach suits me as i loose objectivity in my creativity if i stay too long with one thing.  it’s like the longer a session becomes the less creative i become.  that sounds like i am able to manage my tiredness.

it might be as simlple as that !

i’ve been holed up with a cold over the weekend and today am really pleased to be feeling better.

i’ve celebrated this by getting my arduino out and playing some more. today it’s been with a 7 segment led display.  this is an array of 7 leds arranged in a meaningful manner.  i found some code and hacked it and got cameras out to film what i’d made.  i’ll record some sounds and edit et viola ! another video made by me :)

i’m also feeling good today as my 4 week night school course bean last night.  i worked at stopping myself getting freaked out by the new ness of the situation and reminded myself it was something i knew a little about and i was going along to learn some more.  i’ve begun a private reflective journal about the course.

something else i did yesterday was to evolve a personal blog begun in 2009.  it’s now on it’s third title and i’ll use it to be a companion to this blog.

over the weekend i wondered if this blog on a-n wasn’t actually the place to write about personal life events, even though ultimately it’s all part of the same thing = me.   i have a safeguard now in the drilling companion.

i reflected over night about something i wrote yesterday.  the overall form for an stallation that i am currently programming the guts of the idea.  it’s connected to adding to the chaos, after what collings said back in september about his paintings with briggs being a slow working out of order from chaos.

so this morning i picked up a pen, it was the first thing to hand and started to make so marks.  why oh why do i forget that drawing an idea makes it real !!

something i’ve noticed in making the drawing is i’ve let go of the technical thing of how it will be made.  after all these years i get why the technician isn’t as important as the ideas person.  the artist is the ideas person.  the idea is what it’s about.

this morning was adrenalin filled.  i get a buzz from completing the words to submit to things.

ummm … i need to reflect on that.  i get a buzz from compiling words to things that i feel i start a chance of.  now  … later i’ve returned to levitity and begin the process of waiting.

waiting this week gives me a chance to catch up with bdo darts from lakeside.  i’ve watched the fitton vs norris match.  if you’ve not seen it yet it’s well worth watching.  in fitton i see someone who has a confidence compromise senario that as an artist i often feel too.

fitton has the skill to make high scores and hit the doubles when required yet he still has a part of his psyche that stops him truely being himself … really letting go and believing in his ability.  coincidentally he is of a similar age to me too.  it starts a train of thought about how in the sixties the adults might have been having an amazing liberated time but for those born at that time there was still quite a lot unpacking going on from the previous 20 post war years.  it’s a total speculation on my part, there might be an academic somewhere interested enough in researching it.  i think to do so they would be born in my generation and be looking to prove a theory.  the good thing is that the unpacking has completed in the most part and in the current generation i beleive that the confidence compromise senario has wained.  just look at the youngsters playing in the world championship this week for an indicator.