“Work. Keep digging your well.
Don’t think about getting off from work
Water is in there somewhere
Submit to a daily practice
Your loyalty to that
Is a ring on the door
Keep knocking and the joy inside
Will eventually open a window
And look out to see who’s there
From The Sunrise Ruby – Jalaluddin Rumi
Sometimes you have to dig deep to find the water. For many years I have made work which has been been sparked by my own personal narratives – as a starting platform for a dialogue and a bridge for the public to bring in their own narratives into the work, sometimes anonymously, through objects or texts and latterly, by performing them with me.
I hadn’t taken this approach to this project as from the start there have been a lot of other, often contrasting voices in and around the project. I had tried to find other, less subjectively-based ways of creating a framework for an interactive piece about encounters with walls, borders or barriers in relation to conflict, place, identity and collective memory. Initially it began as an idea for a textile installation, with elements of performance and digital input.
A lot has happened and shifted, both in conversation with my collaborators on past research and our upcoming workshops as well as considerations of the agendas and views of interested partners -and of course funders – but somehow it got more and more complicated. I needed clarity and simplicity but couldn’t find it. So this was a good moment for a residency at Blast Theory (especially as this one, though I don’t live far away, came with a room, so I could individuate from my family – at least for chunks – during the stay and wake up writing rather than preparing for the school run)
Having the space, rigorous and effervescent mentoring from Matt Adams – and opportunity to see and learn how Blast Theory keeps it fresh, productive and manages the immense amount of moving parts required to create work that is always pushing boundaries gave me a sense of need to focus right down. To seek simplicity and find what excites me, what creates momentum to get this project off the ground as the lead artist and what is a natural progression for my own practice, the place where I can best use what I am good at? Where am I in all this? Also, being in such a welcoming context here in Portslade where there is a genuine desire to help me succeed at what I came to do and a reflecting back of the qualities of my previous work when I started to doubt my current direction, has been a real gift.
I’m always interested in taking a multi-dimensional view of any subject – in this case, how a wall / barrier can be both physical, psychological, emotional and mental. I did this with my last major project Burning the Books, so stories about financial global injustice were recited in performances alongside stories of personal, financial but also ’emotional’ debts perceived to be owed to family members. This happened because when I started talking about debt to people they talked back about so much more than finance. So this gave me the permission and scope to paint a fuller, deeply human picture of how debt as a construct affects the way we perceive and relate to ourselves , others and society. So I came to realise that I am in fact following on from this approach and developing it and that – in the way the narrating and deconstruction of my own story of debt was the trigger for the content of the project across so many locations, the starter feed for this stage of this project needs once again to be located in my own subjectivity, my own stories my narrative voice. So I am step one.
One of the most striking aspects of touring the Book of Debts (the first time I had ever toured) was the very different narrative space of each book in response to site and how audiences sat and listened to my / our performing of them in such a broad range of contexts, from war museum to club night to town square but with equal focus … and the prism through which they re-evaluated their own view of what debt is and questioned its power and, in some cases, its legitimacy.
I want to create this kind of collective listening and questioning again, but in any location and not necessarily collectively – from alone at night in bed, in transit anywhere in the world, to inside an installation to perhaps co-performing the narratives in public contexts. So using a App as the core platform makes total sense and gives it space to grow, as the Book of Debts did. By the tour we had filled the book with over 1000 stories.
Also, as I have learned here, apps can be buried in almost anything and thanks to blast theory I now know more what it takes to make one and why it’s important to take it step by tiny step, testing the narrative carefully as you go.
I’ve been reworking the summary of the project as its what we need to communicate to future hosts and contributors what we are doing. I think I am probably on my 20th iteration of the project description over the last year, but it feels much closer now.
So…this project is: An App which immerses you in a vivid set of interactive audio stories ; human encounters with walls, borders, the invisible barriers between people and those within the human self. And, more importantly, with what lies beyond them.
Be a stranger in transit on a bench at Tehran airport, or at a kitchen table in Belfast. Hear tales of fear overcome in the dead of night, acts of conflict transformation between former perpetrators and victims – or imagined reunions with estranged siblings.
An intimate, provocative and poetic lens on how the human desire to overcome barriers is often stronger than the power to uphold them – and the tension between these. You are also invited to contribute your own narrative in response to what you hear, as the project grows globally.
(The App will eventually form the basis of a touring installation and programme of dialogue and debate).
It took me weeks to see as legitimate and get down to writing my own personal experiences relevant to the project; the impeded crossing of a border in Iran in 1998, facing a wall of silence with an estranged family member, and a recurring dream of a wall from my childhood – only the first of which I have finished and tested out, the others are in progress and I plan to Finish this week).
Once I had written, recorded and sent out to 15 people the first narrative – written into the second person to overtly invite the listener to step inside my skin as far as they wanted to – and tested it out, I got back almost unanimous positive responses, with some constructive comments on the balance between how much controlled interactivity (through pauses and questions and positioning of the listener) enhances or obstructs the flow of the narrative and a whole list of similar stories from the listeners which were triggered by the narrative. I am making adjustments and there will be a second round of testing.
Also, when I explained how the work would be presented, the test group understood what I was talking about pretty quickly, which wasn’t the case a few months ago. I have been reassured by many conversations here – and with other artists – that this process of working with the unknown and just how long it can actually take to articulate what you are trying to do to others (or even to yourself ) as you, as Matt puts it, are ‘trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat” – is the mark of an interesting project. And that feeling like you don’t know what you are doing in the development stage is a necessary element in creating something new, rather than repeating yourself. I had forgotten that this time around, I should tattoo it on my arm.
Over the last fortnight as I worked my narrative and tested it out, I felt the electric current of something heading in the right direction. I have also asked Craig and Maria, who will be collaborating on the workshops, to write one of their own and have a shortlist of specific people to approach who I have met through this project over the last year or who have participated in the tests, to see if they will be interviewed for – or willing to write or co-write – one of the initial set of starter narratives to have for the prototype by the end of this R +D period. These are carefully chosen to reflect the different levels of narratives to which participants in the workshops and beyond might respond and echo back their own stories. I won’t say much more because I don’t want to spoil the surprise of the contrasting content of some of these stories, but I am excited at having found the form, more specific content and a new set of processes for moving it all on and taking my work across another border into the unknown!
Thank you Blast Theory. And Happy 25th Birthday.
By the way, I’ll be in conversation about this and my other related work at INIVA in London on May 19th, details here.
