The balloon and cactus piece – entitled This Is What Happens – is evolving. The latest change, which took place this evening, was influenced by a nine-year-old girl. The child in question, who is the neighbour of Kimi (my friend and fellow Fine Art 3rd Year), asked whether I was blowing up the balloons until one popped. I have, in fact, been timing each balloon-inflating session to last five minutes, taking place at semi-regular intervals throughout the day. However, I was very taken with the idea of allowing the popping to dictate how long I added balloons for, so from that point on I made that my system, instead of the egg timer. I like the unpredictability this adds – I don’t know, when I start each session, whether I will be adding 1 balloon or 100. During the course of the evening, I also began allowing the popping of the balloons to decide when I start each session: I inflate and add balloons until the first ‘pop’, then sit and wait until the next pop, which is my cue to begin the next session. I will try doing either one or two hour stints at this (basically, try one hour and if that’s not too much, continue to two hours). It’s become a lot more interesting already, just in one evening, as the volume of balloons has increased more rapidly, so the movement has become a lot more dramatic. It has heightened the atmosphere in the space, especially in terms of the rubbery sounds caused by the balloons moving against each other.
Today was the first time the exhibition had been open since Saturday, so I was able to get a couple of day’s rest over the weekend – the performative aspect of my work meaning that I’ve needed to be there as much as possible. Despite the two days I’d had off, I was still exhausted today, so I was relieved to find out, after returning my back-up work to my space this morning for the external examiners, that we were not meant to be in the studios from then until 4pm, so I was able to go home and catch up on some much needed sleep. We have to be in tomorrow morning to meet the external examiners, and then the exhibition continues until the end of Friday. When I’m not inflating balloons or waiting for them to pop, I’m gradually working my way around the exhibition, having a proper look at everyone else’s work.
