Process
The way in which we create work has come into focus for me at the moment. Because I am in the ‘spotlight’ so to speak by my hosts, I feel that I should have work to show them. They have nothing tangible to see for this collaboration so far. So it has made me think about how I create work. I find that a huge amount of preparation goes on, especially in my head. Then comes the gathering stage, where all the components are created. Then and only then does it start to come together. Usually in the last few days or even hours. I think a theatre background is the reason why. All elements only coming together for the performance, the installation. Creating a blog is also hard as part of the creation process is to remain invisible, maybe so as to not spoil the illusion when it appears!
After posting I went on to read Jane Boyer’s latest entry and indirectly she made me remember an incident this week. At a meeting with my arts officer, she kept refering to my work as ‘conceptual’. Do you know, I work so much in isolation that it hadn’t really occurred to me as being that obvious. She also refered to how I translate work and present it in a different way – that much I’d realised. My Brechtian belief in alienation wasn’t for nothing…
A series of blastings and filming them. Not all good ‘blasts’, not all worth filming but somewhere in the middle…
The quarry manager calls them ‘shot blasts’.
Stood waiting for a blast, the siren blaring, I ask what the holes surrounding us are. ‘They’re the shot blast holes’ – at this point I realise I can’t see where everyone else is and for a tiny moment I panic – the walkie talkie crackles – ‘yes, ready to blast’. We watch the side of an artificial cliff opposite collapse. They are next Monday’s holes ready for profiling. The mounds remind me of pale eastern spices or salt. Next Monday they will be gone and I will have filmed it.
