It’s been two weeks since I worked in Enköping – I have three working days remaining (in the last week of July) before my sabbatical starts. This time away is time-in-lieu for working full-time most of June. Even after the first few days I noticed a huge change in how I feel – everything seemed so much more appealing and far less harduos. I have been at the studio a lot … doing what I think of as settling in … preparing myself for being here full-time after the summer. It’s pretty quiet here – usually just three of four of us around. It’s so nice having time to eat lunch together on the balcony, last week we went for an ’after work’ (veggie) burger and drink at a pop-up summer cafe a short cycle ride away.
Yesterday evening I watched a short YouTube video about the ’signs of burnout’. I immediately recognised my employed self – especially in the emotional exhaustion – the sense that one is very very close to simply not being able to cope or deal with things. I am smart enough to know that self-diagnosis based on one YouTube film is hardly a medical assessment that one can rely one … however it certainly gave me pause … cause … to think. Have/had things gotten so bad at Enköping that I was a hair’s breadth away from burnout … emotional collapse? I think that they have/had. I don’t need to go in to detail here, but I do want to acknowledge to myself that my sabbatical is more than a period in which to focus on my own practice – it is a necessary stage in extraditing myself from an unhealthy situation.
I am slowly slowly and very pleasantly gathering my materials and thoughts in preparation for the two upcoming train station installations. On the way home last night I picked up the parcel of ’flag holders’ that I had ordered. I have to say that they look far better than I had expected. I am always sceptical when ordering something on the internet – especially something from an unknown supplier. Today I am going to the hardware/diy store to get dowelling and paint to make the flag poles. I’m looking forward to getting on with that task … it’s so nice to know that I can spend a couple of days making a good job of it.
The list of things to do … to catch up with … is ever increasing, however it doesn’t seem so daunting as it did when I was working for the council. Then it seemed positively threatening … which in both physical and mental ways it was. Now things such as updating my website, updating my mailinglist, meeting with the new administrator and project leader at the artists’ club, re-writing parts of the club’s operating manual(?), registering my works bought by local authorities and national arts organisations (for which I will receive a small annual ’rights’ payment), and sorting out the materials and tools that I bought here when I left the studio in Enköping in February, seem like natural parts of my working week – things to to be interwoven with the making and playing that takes place at the studio – rather than things that take time from, or even completely prevent, the making and the playing.
Having time to exercise (in the last two weeks) is also having a positive impact on my wellbeing. I am someone who really needs quite demanding physical exercise to feel good. I am very pleased to have time and space for that in my week now … getting fit for my sabbatical!
It’s so nice to be here at the studio having been to the gym – the start of my day feels wonderfully familiar … or rather like a very welcome return to my preferred routine after several weeks … a month and a half or so … of an other way of being – working almost full-time in Enköping and having other activities that have kept me away from both the studio and the gym. It’s no news to me that both these places are necessary for my physical and mental well being, and while the various events – installing shows, openings, running workshops, taking down shows, meetings at the artists’ club – have been, for the most, enjoyable in themselves the combination of them with extra days of my ’bread’ job have lead to me feeling somewhat less than my best … somewhat frustrated and irritated, and not at home in my own body.
Now that I think about it things have been pretty hectic since March – when the deadline for proofreading the Supermarket art fair catalogue and magazine when fast approaching. Then came the final preparations for the Meetings programme, the fair itself (mid May), followed by the making and installing of the first of the three train station commissions (which I took down yesterday after it’s four week run).
I have been working at least 150% if not more so it’s no wonder that I am looking forward to taking time out from my 50% job. Some weeks it has felt that I have been working more than 200% – eight hour days at the council, two or three hours each evening for either the artists’ club or with various projects, and work/events (installing, openings, meetings) at the weekends too. It’s just not sustainable! Being single there’s no-one around to share the cooking with, to take care of the laundry and/or shopping … I won’t even mention the cleaning …, or to just be there giving that unspoken but very necessary love and support. I became very aware of this when I snapped and ranted at my dear friend K. She made an unfortunate turn of phrase to reflect on my lack of Instagram posts. After I very nearly broke down and cried while rattling off how much I was doing and have been dealing with … and how dare she tell me that I’m not doing enough … should be doing more … I realised that things have gotten very out of hand. We spoke the subsequent day – both of us apologised and then talked things through. I am usually a very calm … too calm? … person and I can count on one hand the number of occasions when I have been triggered and lost control. Those moments are always of course a breaking point and a very obvious sign that things have gotten way out of kilter and that tensions have been building unregulated. So now I know just how bad things have become, and it makes me even more confident in my decision to take a year out from the job with the council – a source of many diverse frustrations, irritations, disappointments, … if only I could run things like the art summer-school all year … how different things would be!
So a day at the studio! A day of sorting and ordering (in ’both’[?] senses of the word – putting things in order and also ordering some materials). There are various boxes and bags lying about on the floor – traces of workshops and projects/shows that were hastily left on flying visits here after busy days elsewhere. There is also a small stack of paperwork that I brought with me from home – things that need filing … sorting and ordering by another name … project notes, contacts, invoices (hopefully already paid), copies of texts. One of my aims for the coming weeks is to get on top of much of the administration and paperwork that has been left to it’s own devices for too long. I think of such things as ’structures for freedom’ … an appropriation of a much admired phrase that I learned at least 30 years ago in a dance workshop in Edinburgh … knowing that I have ’all’ (there aren’t that many!) the project contracts filed in date order and that they can be easily located is the kind of (physical) structure that creates a (mental) freedom for me.
This evening I should have been meeting an artist form the artists’ club to talk through some of the recent turbulent events. He has just asked to postpone until one evening next week – his daughter is making a surprise visit this weekend. I am very happy to postpone … it means that I can take my time and enjoy my day here without looking at the clock … I am pretty sure that I will end up playing with materials into the evening … I picked up some great upholstery fringing at a charity shop on the outskirts of Arboga yesterday …
It was frustrating not to have time to write when I have felt the need to write over the past week. I have to believe that anything truly meaningful will re-emerge in my thoughts … at the moment though I cannot recall what seemed to urgent … I just remember that there were things that I wanted to record here as part of the process of working through them.
Departures and Arrivals: Arboga, opened on Friday – though the work has been in plain sight since it was installed the week before. I was … I always am … anxious before the opening … before meeting the people who commissioned the project, before seeing Kajsa again and her colleagues from the cultural department. Everyone was very complimentary about the work, and there were interesting discussions around flags, making, public art, and materiality. I think that when it is time to go back and de-install I will arrive early and have some time with the piece on my own – I haven’t had this yet. I think that I make some sketches of the work … that might be a way to better understand it … to understand it as an artwork … to spend time with it as an artist … to create some critical distance(?).
The workshop on Wednesday prior to the opening was good fun! Ten fantastic friendly, engaged, lively (in their own ways!) children … young teenagers … tweenagers … made their own flags. Each one was unique, some bold and simple, others intricate and colourful. It felt different from the workshops that I run as the arts education worker for Enköping. Maybe because the participants are familiar with each other, but even when I have run workshops for youth clubs in Enköping it has never felt so enjoyable and so appreciated. Everyone was genuinely eager to be there and to make something … and that enabled me to be a better artist/educator. The two staff members who were there were fantastic too and perhaps the atmosphere in the room was a credit to them. I would not hesitate to accept if I was asked to do another workshop there.
Other people’s approval is so very important to me … if I am honest then it is probably more important to me than my own feelings about a work or a workshop. Receiving such positive feedback about the installation and the workshop enables me to appreciate them too. And I am excited about getting on with preparing for the other two installations … just three full-time weeks at Enköping to get through before that can happen!
Between the Wednesday workshop and the Friday opening was a Thursday in the north of Uppland starting to install my pieces in the five person group show that opens in a couple of weeks on the old Lövstabruk estate. I thought that we were all going to begin installing that day but after meeting up and discussing where individual pieces might be three of the others revealed that they didn’t have their work with them, and the fourth needed to do some more on-site filming (in the estate’s old library), so I had the Grand Store to myself for the day. I set about hanging Lek. The first time that I installed it I had a specific and predetermined pattern for the individual batons from which the lengths of videotape hang. This time I relied on intuition and instinct … and I am pleased with the result. The work is adapted to the room’s architecture … dominant ceiling joists and a series of pillars are embraced and incorporated. These existing structures create new apertures and sight-lines in and through the work … which will provide glimpses of the other artists’ works when they are installed. I am very intrigued and excited to see how this works. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to see the piece alone in the space before it will be joined by the works of four other artists.
On the Saturday after the Opening in Arboga I returned to Lövstabruk to install my other works there. Once again I was there on my own – the others are installing this coming weekend when I am working in Enköping. I am rather glad that they weren’t there as I was not being my most effective … my tiredness was showing. I spent the morning hanging Nocturne with much going up and down between the first, second and third floors – the work hangs from the third floor to second floor (both of which are off-limits to the public), and is seen from the first floor – the exhibition floor. It was only once the work was carefully installed – much time was spent ensuring that the motor unit was installed as level as possible to prevent undue and uneven strain – that I saw that the temporary joist that I had built would be much more discrete if rotated 90 degrees. So after lunch I took everything down and re-constructed everything in a north – south rather than an east – west orientation. Thankfully that went a little quicker than the morning’s work – I had worked out most of the challenges though there were of course some new things to take into account. Writing now I realise that I could have made a significant improvement to a particular aspect of the piece … I don’t have time to return and make it … I wish that I hadn’t thought of it was now, I wish that I had though of it on Saturday or even in the preceding weeks! Again a sign of my tiredness and having too much to think about.
Perhaps I should start to keep installation notes for individual works … especially now that I am regularly starting to show pieces more than once. Doing so would feel very grown-up and professional!
I haven’t really had time to catch breath since returning from Supermarket. Today I have to start tackling those not absolutely urgent things that are fast approaching urgency … or perhaps that odd state where if things aren’t done within a certain window they become … odd in themselves … not exactly irrelevant or inappropriate rather slightly passed their best before date. The moderators’ feedback questionnaire is a case in point – it never becomes completely irrelevant but I feel that it becomes something else with each passing day. Not only is a good way for me to hear a little of how the moderators feel about the their meeting and the meeting programme in general, it is also a nice way to thank them again for their vital contribution to Supermarket. I also want to spend some time doing my own evaluation! Some of that will happen this afternoon when I have a call with Pam from Juxtapose.
With everything that has been going on: making the first of three train-station installations, making a presentation at Västerås Art Museum, arranging interviews for the administrator’s post at the artists’ club, doing my best to deal with a clash of personalities at the artists’ club that threatened to disband the management committee, finalising and preparing for the summer holiday activities programme in Enköping, I can’t say that I haven’t had time to think … but I have had to focus on doing – which perhaps is no bad thing.
Installing yesterday was a good experience … and I am pleasantly surprised with a particular aspect of the work that I had not anticipated – it feels a little uneasy to admit that, I would prefer to claim that everything was thought through and carefully considered. The piece is not what I would call site-specific in that the components of the installation could be shown elsewhere … hopefully they will be! … nor do they have a relevance to just that particular place. However placing objects in a room in such a way that the room is activated … animated … introduces new aspects to the work. The vacant ’unit’ in Arboga train station and bus terminal is dominated by straight lines and angles. It is not usual in this however introducing the large soft and curving artworks makes a stark contrast to the hard and stiff the architecture and draws attention to it. It is the extent of the curves that I had not anticipated – with weight of two tightly woven sheets producing considerably more bowing than I had imagined. Had I had time to test the pieces in the studio I might have been less surprised but I would more than likely have been more nervous … or even tried to find alternative poles. As it is I think that the piece is stronger for being what it is … for challenging the order and discipline of the space … for softening it up. I could go so far as to say that the piece is far more queer than I had imagined with it would be … and for that I am very pleasantly surprised. More than surprised … I am inspired and pleased that I worked with the materials rather than with my idea of what the work would … should … be. The piece is the result of what happened between me, the materials, and the room – and that I find is very exciting.
Driving back in the glorious evening sun these thoughts began to take form, writing them here is clarifying them and helping me understand the relationship between those three elements: the artist, the material, the location.
There were some comic(?) moments yesterday, such as when Kajsa (the wonderfully helpful, enthusiastic, and charming arts officer) and I returned from the library with a significantly higher ladder than the modest step-ladder that I could fit in my car. We discovered a plumber replacing radiator pipes exactly where I had decided one piece should be placed and very close to where I need to be to install another. I busied myself with other pieces and decided that I would only become anxious if it looked as though the plumbing work would not be finished that day. Not long after that cleaners turned up to clean with windows – something that was definitely necessary. They worked very efficiently though it felt like the wrong time to be laying out and pressing the sheets as they dashed about with buckets of filthy water. I had imagined being the space alone, not having to take other people into consideration as I moved around with four meter poles and ironed pieces of clean white fabric (each approximately 3 x 2.4 meters) on the floor. I am glad that I didn’t get over concerned, the inside of the windows were soon clean and dry, and the plumber was suddenly packing up and cleaning after himself. Everyone was friendly … in some way I enjoyed those few hours being there with other professionals who were also just getting on their work.
Exhibition information in Swedish
Supermarket is an amazing event … what struck me most this year are the opportunities that it offers … perhaps I am particularity alert to this as my sabbatical year fast approaches … as I think about the direction of my own practice. My fourth year as Meetings coordinator and I became very aware of how I am seen as part of the Supermarket team – or perhaps … and also … how I see myself as part of that team. I have been a part of the team since 2012 when I started doing a little proofreading but having an exhibitor facing role is still relatively new … and starting the year that the pandemic struck was a peculiar way to (non)begin. Perhaps this year is … was … the first … most obviously … truly … confidently …post pandemic year. Perhaps people, by which I mean the artists, curators, organisers, are (un)consciously once more confident to engage with each other – literally and metaphorically. The collective individual protectionism(?) … reservation(?) … isolation (?) … confusion and uncertainty of the pandemic years is perhaps subsiding and we are letting ourselves be open and close to others again – close to each other rather than closed to each other – what a difference a ’d’ makes.
Sitting here now I realise that my being able to almost all of the meetings has of course shifted my perception of the programme. It also enabled me to be more focussed on each meeting … to be present … and without wishing to sound too egotistical … I wonder if that had an impact. The meetings are quite intimate – that’s the intention – but perhaps expecting people, both the moderator and the participants, to be so intimate with strangers is asking too much too quickly … perhaps my constant presence … my being a visible and real representative of Supermarket … provided a safe … productive … necessary context (?) [or something] for the conversations. I received many complements on my hosting … my making people feel welcome … perhaps that, in the context of the meetings, … is more useful … valuable … meaningful … than the quantity of meetings. One good well cared for meeting is better than two less well cared for meetings. Could … does … my being able to pay … give … attention to the meeting make it better?
I think that even if I have the option of two meeting rooms next year that I will only programme one. The other can be ’spontaneously’ booked – the development of something that John mentioned in discussing ’un-conferences’.
It has been, without a doubt, my best Supermarket. Not only did the meetings go well but I truly enjoyed myself – I met fantastic interesting dynamic people who make amazing things happen … I didn’t just meet them – I had time for them … and perhaps I allowed myself to feel that I was one of them … that I am part of the Supermarket family.
