With Tempting Failure fast approaching I’ve been making a start on the bits and pieces we need for the performance.
Performing as ‘SSoCial’, Sally Lemsford and I first met last year at Twycross Zoo and finding many startling similarities in themes of our work have been developing ‘Cicatrix Macula’ off and on over the past year. In the course of development the twists and turns of what and how have encompassed so many things it is hard to know where we started and where we end. I think at the moment we are still somewhere in the middle as in our heads this is the first of a series of works which will be developing as they go.
That we are to finally perform it is both thrilling and terrifying. I think I need an extra big bag to wear on my head for this one.
The trouble with plans formulated in the mind is that the logistics are never as easy as first imagined. Practicalities such as gravity and transport have a tricky way of scuppering the most ingenious of ideas. However do not worry, it will be a wild party. Please come along – there will be jelly – though at the moment, no promise of cake.
http://www.thomasjohnbacon.com/2013/02/tempting-failure-tickets-now-on-sale.html
This week I have managed to prioritise stuff that isn’t URGENT but that is what I NEED to do.
In the hunt for some materials in my storeroom I found an embarrassing number of ‘unfinisheds’.
For my own sanity THIS HAS GOT TO STOP! I am forever teetering on the brink of ‘unresolved’. I fear this may be a form of cowardice. A lack of commitment to self. Or is it purely the fickelty of a flittering mind?
The dilemma of urgency is always the same. Mad rush to get something finished for an ‘event’ or ‘opportunity’ then when (for whatever reason) this urgency disappears, the work is put aside in favour of next emergency.
NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE.
I am going to work on this until it is complete. Whatever.
So with that momentous (and long overdue) decision accomplished, a sense of freedom descended. In this happy state, several fortuitous ideas developed of a more reflective and personal nature that would have been overlooked had I rushed the work through as intended.
I am realising that it is vital to grant yourself time to allow things to develop properly and instinctively, even when ‘making’ something with a conceptual basis – it is only doing this that will reveal depths and continuity to a body of work. In the daily rush of life – this seems to be an almost obscene indulgence but it is really a basic need. One that I need to indulge.
So much for making my boat go faster this week – my poor little vessel has been tied up to moorings and filled with bickering children. (don’t you just love’em)
HOWEVER
Making good grounds (in planning at least) with details for collaborative performance with Sally Lemsford at ‘Tempting Failure’ in Bristol in April.
YOU MUST ALL COME!
Many interesting things are coming out of our skype conversations – I have now decided to make a magical carpet and have put a big order in for large brooms (you’re interested now – admit it).
Last week I was frantically trying to finish my SUPERHERO COSTUME (ALL IN ONE) to make a short film so that I could apply for the Poolside opportunity at the Bluecoat gallery in April. Sadly I now find that I am booked to make animal noses that day and can no longer apply. In the interests of not having wasted my time here is an image from a bit of film footage I took in readiness for my application.
Hooray! it’s friday! As I’m finding with most things in my life – this is a double edged sword.
GOOD I can lure my horrible children off the computer with the promise of TV (mean mummy that I am, I only let them watch on Fridays) and reclaim it as my own
BAD After a couple of weeks break, normal service has been resumed….. #FridayFail. Yes, it’s another rejection letter with a feedback refusal.
I am currently in a funny position – I seem to only be able to make a success from failure. This is as stupid and impossible as it seems. And this in itself I find both amusing and frustrating.
Like INVASION a failed artwork which was successfully chosen for ‘Artefacts of Failure’ at Derby Quad, a performative collaboration (SSoCiaL) which Sally Lemsford and I have been working on for months has finally been successful. We will be at ‘Tempting Failure’ in Bristol in April.
http://www.thomasjohnbacon.com/2013/02/tempting-fa…
Failure, it seems, is my lucky word.
Several years ago I made a work which was a ‘chindogu’ – something which by it’s essence negates the purpose for it’s creation. I have made several of these since but the first is a set of pre-counted worry beads with a bell on the end. I mention this only in that it is a peculiar object to create in that both has purpose and is pointless.
By being successful at failure does this mean I no longer can be?
Failure surely is essential to my practice. If in addressing the duality of an abject object I am then successful this would jeopardize my work so that it could no longer genuinely continue.
Perhaps I have finally found the space in between. It is an un/happy place to be.
