- Venue
- backlit gallery nottingham
- Location
- East Midlands
museums at night has been going for a few years now and offers an opportunity to see a museum space in a slightly different context. to spice this october evening up a little the organisation behind it put up as a prize the chance to work with tuner prize winning artist gillian wearing.
through a voting process i don’t understand backlit and gillian wearing were matched together. this success has been put down to this rather wonderful video produced by the wonderful people at backlit…
i don’t really understand the jump from spoken selfie to shy convention other than gillian wearing is shy and a previous work was informed by the concept of karaoke.
i’m shy.
convention places were made available by a selection process using an online survey format. as a prospective participant we asked to provide details of our shyness and talk abit about things we love. part of wearing’s work had added in the detail of “love” as a theme to work with.
as a suitably shy person i was selected to take part in the convention which was to take the form of confidence building and writing workshops in the afternoon prior to performing what i’d written in front of the museums at night audience. like some of the other participants i didn;t really take on board what this would mean on the day of the event.
being shy often means being in a state as a result of being somewhere needing to do something. the afternoon workshops began after a quiet period of eating and polite conversation. first up was a what i’ll call a circle of hello. i hate these group situations where i tell everyone my name and what i do and somehthing about me as i do it so infreqently. the rather wonderful woman leading the circle was calm and warm and showed empathy for those participating in the room.
i spoke to several people later about how i discovered in the activity after the circle that i became more confident when i was moving around. in wearing’s work there was clearly an intention of making an afternoon that would give the participants insite into their shyness, at least that’s how i saw the intent of the work.
there was little time to review and reflect about what was happening during the afternoon. during the first break i chose to be on my own as i was processing some quite full on emotions developed as a result of the first confidence and writing workshops. within some of the participants i noticed small groups who knew each other prior to the convention.
after the break i had to stand out of part of the next confidence workshop as it involved repeating actions. maybe because of the love theme or simply because of the warm generous nature of the workshop leaders, the workshops amde me feel safe and secure and it was ok do what i needed and i felt there was no right way and no wrong way. these factors all playing a part in the slow process to understand and go beyond both confidence and shyness.
the convention had a very diverse range of shyness. i liked this as it gave the group an interesting dynamic and as well as processing my own shy reaction to the afternoon i could witness the outward manner in which others coped with their own version of being shy.
the last part of the afternoon was the pinancle of my fast heart beat experiences of which there were several. after a second writing workshop we were all offered the chance to get up on the stage and perform to the convention the peice we had written that afternoon. the wait was long for my turn. what i’d written had evolved after my emotionally driven break time. i performed something quite abstract and involved movement. i didn’t need to use a microphone and i could see everyone in the room.
as i walked to the stage i worked at chanelling the nervous energy into my physical self.
what then happened was something i felt really good about. i delivered what i’d written, managed to find pauses and had eye contact with several people in the room. i would later go onto to learn that the stretching oneself for the first time is the key to being able to repeat the action for subsequent times with less anxiety.
with the afternoon workshops complete the staff of backlit readied the space for the evening personal karaoke session. i entered a raffle not knowing at the time that this was to arrive at the performance schedule. i readied myself for the evening and found somewhere comfortable to watch the performances.
into the night we went, lots of people, laughter, smiles and anticipation. the gorgeous rosemary (from the video) was hosting the event and she had a dry sense of humour that developed over the course of the evening. it was very funny and very engaging. one by one the shy convention delegates made their way to the stage. we watched many wonderful performances, all with a theme of love. some of the hardcore shy performers took advantage of the curtain and performed behind it. there were even some performances by members of the audience, two of these stuck out for me and of those two, one was the final performance by a woman who sang a song what she had wrote. it was unaccompanied and rather wonderful.
what of my effort ? i enjoyed the afternoon version more but most importantly i managed to wait calmly right until the final 5 performers to make my rendition and i felt calm and relaxed during the wait.
my participation in the shy convention has subsequently surprised some of my friends “i didn’t think of you as being shy” has been a reaction. the convention made time and space for me to lower the effort of fronting out my shyness in a safe place. i saw delegates with much more crippling shyness make huge advances in the afternoon and their efforts did not go unnoticed by the workshop leaders. i’d love to make something of a grand gesture about how wearing’s work adds to our cultural landscape by the embracing of shy ness … but i’m shy …
