THE LIST PART 2
(continued from previous post)
6. My father has to have a pacemaker fitted so will need a little time to recover before I film him taking the journey back to Hartlepool. Looks like it will be the end of the summer now.
7. Still have to film the Hartbeat boys wandering around their haunts of yesteryear. I particularly want to see where they bought their first (red) suits.
8. A very important aspect of the project is that it doesn’t just look back but forward too. For me this has always been a piece about the nature of time. Early on when I was visiting the care home residents every week, I was struck by a lady who sang all her vocal interactions. Next term I shall re-visit Brinkburn College and get some of the talented students there to sing various spoken phrases for me, so I can weave them into my soundtrack. I also want to get a little flavour of the students hopes and dreams for the future. In fact some of them are the product of Rink romances and have interwoven family connections to the ballroom.
9. Did I say? – I am commissioning a lady in America to make a doll for me. More of that later, as I want to clear it with the subject first!
10. I want to film inside one of the still standing cinemas. Many have now gone but I am particularly interested in getting into the now closed Odeon and scaring away the pigeons. I have a contact number so who knows… also one that is still open but is now, predictably, a bingo hall.
11. There is bound to be an 11 by the time I get to 10
.. and I have a definite date for my premier show in Hartlepool.
7th July to 1st September.
Seems a long way off – but I have soo much to do yet so it feels right. I do need to sort out some other gallery venues too and they programme a long way in advance of course… and I really don’t know what the response will be – but then I’m sure any of you reading this are familiar with that particular chestnut.
Even though the list still seems quite long, I am now able to start thinking more about the shape of the piece. I always had an idea of how it goes together, but if you set off in a direction not knowing what is down the road you can’t really plan that comprehensively. I carry with me what I refer to as my ‘dysfunctional tool kit’ which I adapt to the situation (one definition of the toolkit would be ‘a mindset set to expect the unexpected’).
Occasionally I have’ insight moments’ which, without wanting to sound pretentious, are just moments where the things you kind of already knew seem to focus into a clearer picture. I am not alone in this I’m sure. Anyhow I had one of these the other day. For what it’s worth it goes like this:
So there I am making a piece that I have set in my head, but circumstances and actualities have effected what I initially envisaged. That being so, I have ‘acquired’ lots of material that is within the general scope of what I’m trying to make. I can now look at that material as if it were a library given to me by someone else. I can sift through it with new eyes and make it into a cohesive whole. Like chasing paint around a canvas until it balances perhaps.
Not sure I’ve made it very clear but to me it makes a lot of sense and allows me the freedom to work in a very flexible way. Sort of like giving yourself permission to use your own work…or; in another way:
Here I am, 20 years on, having found a box of film in the attic and looking through with ‘first time’ eyes. How I now assemble it is not coloured by the history of that material’s acquisition, but by my own personal agenda brought from a different time and space.
