Happy birthday dear Project Me!
Happy birthday to you!
So my blog turns 16 and can now consent …
Joking a side reflecting on not just the last year but the last 16 brings up a range of thoughts and feelings. Today isn’t just an anniversary but also the last day of the show at Uppsala Art Museum – another ’coming of age’ of sorts … and a very nice ’welcome to Uppsala’.
Things are shifting … literally! This week I will move out of the studio/workshop in Enköping – there is a lot to ’shift’. It is important for me to acknowledge the mix emotions around the move, to acknowledge what can easily be an overly sentimental … and even detrimental … attachment to things that have had their time. I guess I long for eternity and feel disappointment, loss, even some kind of personal failure when things do not endure … if only I had been better then the studio in Enköping could have been better and I wouldn’t be leaving. And at the same time I recognise that I need(ed) something more in order to progress. It is rather egotistical to think I single-handedly could have … should have! … made Enköping a hub for contemporary art! I did my best, and together with Klas we established a studio where ten local artists had affordable spaces. That I now want something more does not diminish our achievement, nor should I hold myself back for the sake of an old idea of who I am and what I need.
The Enköping studio, and Glitter Ball, got me to where I am today and will always be part of my story.
Why do I feel so awkward about making progress?
Why do I feel so awkward about letting go?
Perhaps it/they have something to do with a sense of security … that weird sense of security that artists need to feel for them to be able to delve in the uncertainty that is essential to make work. An artist friend recently sent me the link to great Radio 3 Essay In the Bottom of the Well by Margaret Heffernan. In 14 minutes Heffernan says so much that resonates and re-assures, she reflects on visual, theatrical and writing practices, and presents what I interpret as an amazingly succinct case for arts funding – how else might artists (across the disciplines) have the possibility of embracing the uncertainty that is vital in the creative process – the not knowingness that is essential in the production of new knowledge.
Tomorrow I am making an application to participate in a group show at a former (seventeenth century) industrial development north of here. The application alone is exciting and challenging – making me both reflect and project … looking back at what I have done and at the same time looking forward to what I want to do. The theme for the show is ’knowledge and knowing’. At first I had difficulty thinking how my current practice relates to the theme – applicants are asked to explain the relevance of their work to the theme. Over the week and in conversations with another artist friend I came to realise that the recent shifts in my approach to making are very close to the theme. Through doing … through making … I am working out how I come to know something … how I produce knowledge … I am investigating the artist’s (this artist’s!) process as ways of knowing.
