Filling in the gaps

For example:

Some of you will know that I recently started a PhD, and that prior to that I was directing a large project called Glorious. On a CV, it looks seamless. But the reality is very different. There was (and still is in many ways) a long process of acknowledging an ending and inviting an unknown future, plenty of doubt and frustration and sadness, uncertainty and certainty vying with each other, a long process of letting go and listening carefully, of getting off the train but trying to stay on the horse, if you know what I mean. And there's something about the place where I've arrived that means I want to preserve the gaps in activity - I want to tell the actual story of how that looks and not gloss over it. Maybe because I've spent most of my life so far telling the story of what I've done - in funding applications, on CVs, through my website - in response to the heavy demand on artists (and everyone?) to document even better than we've lived. In many ways it's easy to make it all look smooth, filled-in, glossed-over, and sometimes that's a very fun exercise. And it's not that I've not enjoyed those things, I love telling the story of it all, it's a form of fiction. But something has shifted for me.

I've always valued transition moments. Moments of breakdown and questioning, even if they're hard, are the most significant and exciting moments in life. But I think what I'm trying to say is that now I want to be more public about those parts. That's some of what this blog is for me, recognising the value in being open about the transition moments. That's where change lies, in the potential to share those moments.


For example:

I've been leading a workshop in Brussels for the past week, six full days and evenings of intensely being with people, discovering, nurturing, listening, asking, being open open open to what might happen next, making a plan and letting it go. And now, in a short day, I turn around and go on holiday. And I can't think of anything more luxurious. I'm very lucky to be in this position. But this moment, this exit from the workshop, entry into the holiday, is so much more complex than it should be! I'm exhausted and emotional, and I don't know what to do with those things. The concept of holiday is actually quite complex - how do you let go of everything, just for a short amount of time, temporarily transition your whole life into something that doesn't resemble it at all, and then just at the moment you're getting used to that other thing, transition it back? It's a weird idea. I like it too - and I think it's very healthy to stop working for a while. But let's not pretend this thing is easy, just because it's nice.


For example:

I'm writing a PhD. It's part practice-based, which means that in theory I get to use my artistic practice as part of my thinking during this PhD. And I love doing it. I love the study, I love the learning, and the discussion, and the writing, and the reading. But the idea of validation is so closely related to an idea of knowing. And my expertise lies in not-knowing. So I walk around these days feeling inspired and excited and at the same time angry. Not angry specifically, like something made me angry, but carrying a kind of passionate rage under the surface. I think it's a good thing. I think it's an anger that's related to the gaps, an anger towards dominant structures, towards a general inability to recognise a different kind of literacy. It's existing in a space that's filled with the possibility of change, even if I've no idea yet exactly how or what that change might be.


For example:

During the workshop, we spent one full day in silence. We went to a museum in silence, walked back to La Bellone in silence, ate lunch in silence, and then entered our workshop space in silence and were in the space together in silence. The lunch especially was awkward, difficult for some, strange. But in that strangeness we found so much communication. Emotions were expressed that could never have been expressed in a normal speaking day, they arrived and they passed without being held up by the worry of words. A great frustration was encountered by everyone, but instead of getting stuck inside it, we had to find ways to be with it, and eventually, recognise it, let it move on, or let it be. A shift happened within the group that would otherwise not have been possible. At the end of the afternoon, on a piece of paper, one of the workshop participants wrote, "La parole est peut-être ce qui nous sépare des autres." Maybe words are what keep us apart.