Although the residency at Fabrica has officially finished and the exhibition has been taken down I anticipate that I shall continue to keep this blog going since I have a backlog of material, images and responses that deserve to be uploaded.
I will keep this going until it becomes about something else at which point it will be time to draw it to a close and maybe start a different sort of blog.
The residency has been good for me in a number of ways. It has given me the opportunity to investigate another artist's work over a sustained period in an environment of interested and committed support. I have worked with a range of people had many interesting conversations and almost like an extra bonus, I have made new work which might take me in even more new directions yet.
At times the subject matter of the banner and of the Photo Biennial has got me down and I have wanted not to think about it. At those times I have been prompted to think about those people who live directly in war zones and I have wondered how on earth they cope. We are at war but they are wars over there involving Other People and we get other Other People to go there and fight them for us.
We cannot even begin to imagine…
At the weekend I attended the Conference of the Photo Biennial the best part of which was a visit to Anthony Lam's public event at Jubilee square involving young and older people. There was a soap box for anyone to speak their mind from, a stall where you could make a banner.
Here is mine. As powerless as I often feel in the face of human idiocy I like to think that at least I can challenge hostile thoughts within myself and not pay them attention. I'm talking about hostility towards other people. We all have it in different forms and flavours. It's a bit like hearing voices, though not the kind of voices that won't shut up (they're something else entirely). Voices that come from within and would have us act less than humanly towards others.
It's not surprising in this challenging and competitive society that this hostility arises. I wonder where it goes when we refuse to give it voice?
