No news is good news as it were, and I have no news. A sort of dance of communications took place between myself and one of the curators, who like certain people, has a sort of ethereal relationship with e-mail.
Not everyone I can appreciate, has my obsession with e-mail, which has arisen from the fact that being constantly in and out of the house taxiing children everywhere on top of work, combined with the fact that we have no mobile reception in our village, means that the phone is more or less useless. E-mail however is my saviour, meaning that I can get my message to the person at 10 to midnight when I finally have a minute to write it but when phoning someone at that time would be just plain weird. They can then read my message at their leisure over morning coffee. Speaking to a friend though I discovered they had just withdrawn contact with someone because they found the fact that they would e-mail and never phone was just plain rude. Oh dear.
Anyway, dates to take the Re:view process forward with all three curators have progressed somewhat and July, touch wood, should see some activity. In the meantime I have been pushing forward, (gently due to a hugely busy period with three children all about to change schools), on a project which has lain dormant on my computer desk for quite some time. It is difficult to know just how much detail one should go into as I am hoping that this could ultimately evolve into quite a far-reaching project. Should it ever be exhibited, to an extent I want to ‘keep my powder dry’ as it were. My interest however lies in the complex and ambiguous world of online and off-line relationships, how they operate, evolve and intertwine with everyday life.
As part of this research I have invited (roped in) some local actors to take the online world into physical and tangible space. I have never worked with actors before and found the whole process enthralling and strangely special. I wasn’t expecting to be so moved with what they can do with just a handful of words. What I will do with footage gathered I’m not quite sure but another session will complete this stage of the project.
While all this is going on I am also in the process of working towards a film connected with Salisbury Plains and the World War I Centenary approaching next year. Invited as part of a larger project, funding has yet to be confirmed, but if we get the go-ahead this will expand into a quite a nice little chunk of work.
Writing about why video has become such a pertinent medium for me in the funding process I realised just why I find it so rewarding. Somehow when making work I am constantly searching for a lightness of touch, a process where tools merely tease out the essence of the piece with minimal intrusion into the material. Video gives me just this hands-off quality as it were, the ability to pick up materials (images or sounds) with the most delicate of tools and subtly slice and stitch them together, allowing the work to almost make itself. In a sense I am standing back, hand in hand with the viewer and watching the work evolve. Let’s hope I get the chance.
