Post Industrial Revolution Gdansk residency

i have been doing a lot of thinking since coming home, mainly about residencies. so i thought i would try and formulate some sort of collection of thinking about it all & then thought this would be the best place for that.

for me being away from home on a residency is a big deal for several reasons. the main one is that i have kids, saying that it has got easier as i now have a partner who is brave enough to have a go at wearing my hat, plus, the youngest is nearly 15, the middle one is 18 and the biggest is at uni. the other thing is i have never been away from home for a month, (home being the house and its south london surburban surroundings, always lived in the same town, in my day few went to uni or even college, i left school at 16 and got a job) let alone the children. i have been on a couple of residencies/art related journeys but they were all less than 2weeks.

i was really worried that i would get unbearably homesick so i think i tried to help matters by blocking the melancholy out and replacing it with action & fags. i didnt stay still for long and smoked alot.

my making and thoughts about making were more focused, there were few distractions, living outside the town meant we did not party hard, card playing with voka was the evening persuit. we were met with a full itinery of important things to see, which meant that we gained a full understanding of the history and the city. the frustrating thing wasrelying on others to do the talking bit. once i had found a man with a boat who knew another man with a boat that he was willing to loan me, i was off. so from that point of view the logistics of making were the same as at home. it felt as though i was living there tho, the routine was strong.

i think the difference is the bit when you return. i left gdansk the day after the pv, so it was a quick change of location and pace. i suppose that happens after most openings, after that rush to install but then the change of place made it more acute. for me, returning was a toughie. evryone at home had coped (there were a few fallouts but they would have happened anyways, its normal teenage stuff), i had coped too. there was no way i could convey all that had happened and how i i had felt, the same goes for them. so it feels like there is this shared void. it also feels so remote, the month of may, like it was not real, tho it was, so is june real? i feel very divided. there is part of me that wants to flee, not that i will til the youngest has left school, but i have an urge. there is also the oddness that occurs when friends or acquaintances ask about how my trip went. explaining how i converted a row boat into a ship with cardboard, string & gaffa, was towed for an hour around gdansk shipyard island, playing solidarity songs whilst being filmed. how i took a fishing bouy on a 850km trip to its home using public transport, and then did a ‘turn’ singing – it feels a bit odd. its not what people do in bromley. however i have noticed that a lot of people in bromley do complain very loudly about their jobs & bosses, they seem to be following me around and doing this – at the train station whilst on the mobile, yelling from their houses with open doors whilst i am walking past and even my partner, who now has his own hat on, has been very vocal this week. so i am taking it as a sign to not overthink the oddness, not to run away from the place, but perhaps just to stick to residencies of less than a month. for now at least.

the editing took a bit of playing with until i was happy with it, and it ended up being more than rushed. usually i take a couple of weeks, at least, to get to a happy place with it but because of the time it took to organise the boat end of things i had 4days to play. i had a take1 version that worked projected on the cube but it came down to the pv day for me to to get to the final version and at 3o’clock realised that the disc burned was take1. i figured out in the emergency taxi back to the house to pick up the mac what had happened in the dvd burning programme, and hurridly created a finalfinal version that worked, at 18.01, the pv started at 18.00!

this frantic stuff slightly took my mind off my performance. i had written new lyrics relavent to gdansk and the shipyard to the tune of shipbuilding by elvis costello, for some reason i told the curators of this. which resulted in them asking me to sing it at the pv. for some reason i cannot now resist rising to a challenge. now i do not regard myself as a performance artist, more like a performative video maker, and have never sung/performed live infront any sort of audience and if i do it at home there are complaints. so matt learnt the tune and we wangled a guitar, we practised twice and let it loose at the pv. matt was great i apparently was in a different key. i did not die and the audience didnt throw things. stefanski – the equivilent of billy bragg of the shipyard – sang an old solidarity song to a new tune, and then did a couple more which made me forget about my hash of things.

im back home now, but my head is still in gdansk.

so since the voyage ive been editing photos, and video. i had a bit of a side project going, i found a fishermans bouy on the beach and took a series of photos with me holding it. the bouy had a number KUZ 45, relating to the fishing boat that it belonged to, so i found out where the fishing port was from an old sailor fella at the marina and i took it back to where it had come from. this involved 2buses and 3trains, plus assistance for the photo taking. it took about 5andahalf hours there and back but it was worth it. we were greeted by a torrential downpour and a friend of the guy who owned the bouy/boat who just happened to be passing, he phoned his friend to collect it but he was outta town, so we left it with the security guard and went and ate rollmops til the return train came.

i got the prints today, im really happy with them.

spent all day editing video yesterday. and then did a new version this morning, still gotta burn the disc but the original version works ok and the sound is at the right level so i shall finish off tonight.

we all have an artists talk this evening, which i shall need a beer for. it will be a bit odd, i think, without the work being there and before the opening. we will see.

so we did it

today i was towed around the shipyard island on my cardboard ship, and didn’t sink. there was a bit of a dodgy bit where i was relaxing and taking in the amazing view, going past all the massive ships n cranes and decided to take a photo with my phone, at which point it got a bit choppy and the ship took on some water. so after that my phone stayed in my pocket and i bailed out with my shoe. we made it for a full lap of the shipyard island intact.

hoorah

for the last week wifi internet has been hard to come by in the wyspa office so i have been leaving my computer at the house, hence no blogging. but i now have 5mins and the use of someoneelses pc.

i have a row boat in the project space and have almost turned it into a ship. just waiting on 2more rolls of gaffa to make it more attached. so whilst i am waiting i am gonna make a ship name of more cardboard to stick on, statek pomnik – monument ship. i hope to make the film this saturday, tho the boat fella is now not answering the phone.

things on a personal level have turned a bit tricky, i have the most incredible wisdom tooth infection for which i went to the dentist and got antibiotics for, but it feels worse today + there has been a huge row at home with kids n partner so i am spending most of my evening on the phone being diplomatic.

i feel ill & guilty.