Meeting up in Hertford with a London friend is always a good feeling. Sharing my experience of living in Hertford and my practice here is particularly liberating, especially to be outside of London but having Londoner's here with me, encouraging them to leave London to see a performance practice. I guess this in its self challenges both London and Hertford.
We meet and spend the first part of the day chatting as usual over coffee at cafe Nero (my new favourite early morning haunt in Hertford -see earlier blog). we talk a lot about Jenny's work and it feels good not to jump straight into my work.
We eventually reach the gallery and enter the residency space, deciding to look at the work first before filming. Jenny was impressed and very excited by the space. The first visitor I have had in two weeks that has reacted like this, apart from Rita who loved the straw. I felt happy I was exposing this to her and it lifted me and gave me confidence with what I had done. I talked through the space and played the footage I had been working with. Mainly the video of me chatting about everything from the first week.
It was refreshing to enter the space at an alternative time and day. Up till know I always enter the space between 9 and 10 each morning and leave between 5 and 6. Entering the space mid afternoon, allowed me to see the work more objectively. I'm not sure if this was because Jenny was with me but it allowed me distance from what I had done.
We watched the footage of me chatting to camera, discussing my anxieties, the residency, my ideas etc...This time however becoming interested in the gestures and actions rather than what was being said. The text was irrelevant really, what was interesting was my animation- facial expression, hand gesture, smile/not smile and eye contact. After discussing this further it became apparent that the footage actually contained a lot of material, but it needed to be broken down, each gesture existing on its own, possibly playing with the authenticity of the gesture? Watching further footage I played Jenny the performance I did to a small audience two Saturdays ago, firstly she was amazed how long it was- or that I made my audience sit for so long! but also how brave it was to expose so much at such an early stage. Looking back at this again it became clearer to me which elements were working and which were not. It was certainly repetitive at times and defiantly too long. It also seemed to skip certain concerns of mine, rather than tackle them, it was a little to comfy, and needed to be more dynamic. Like the video I have decided to also break this performance down into smaller elements to work with and construct into a smaller performance.
The skate park filming later today as truly amazing! And so liberating. I have to tell you the story.
We get to the skate park after discussing the work and planning the video shoot. Earlier this week whilst passing past the park, trying to build up enough balls to carryout the performance I bump into a student, who also rides at the park. I tell him that I'm hoping to film later this week and how he thought it would go down with the others there. He recommended that I would be fine as long as I avoided the 'tracksuits'. So as Jen and I approach the skate park we see a lack of skaters/riders and notice the 'Tracksuits'. So we take a deep breath and walk over regardless to check out the shape of the skate park. Immediately we are heckled, are you the council? Are you the Mercury? ( Jen had decided on the way there she would put on her ID page from work, to give an air of authority to our business). We answer saying no, but that we are making an advert and looking to work with skaters/riders (they were clearly not that, a lack of board or bike confirmed that). They informed us that all the skaters were having a smoke and would back soon, among other larger fueled comments and chat. We decided to approach 4 guys with BMX bikes sitting on the grass and asked them if they would mind skating for us. They were extremely nice and more than happy to. The next thing I know I'm standing in the middle of the skate park doing my moves with riders riding around me, consistently, relaying to ensure an uninterrupted circling an it felt amazing. even the tracksuits shut up for it! I had done it, the idea that had been in my thoughts for so long, had become reality, and Jen was right I would have never been able to do it alone, it was a big risk. We brought the riders a coke and chocolate bar and took their e-mails promising to send them the footage. I also realised however much you work solo, there will always been times when others are needed. I guess I was so caught up in making the residency solo, I had actually been to a certain extent fairly strict on myself in terms of sharing the work and gaining feedback.
Jen and I when onto to have a beer, and I talked through my writing with her. As someone who has known me a long time she commented on the development of my writing for performance and I guess I kind of agree. i have started to see the possibilities writing contains, where as before I used it fairly practically. this feels exciting and currently the work and performance seems as though it will be fairly text based.
This evening i am left with an air of excitement, thrilled at the footage and the realisation f the skate park performance, and liberated by the feedback from Jen and the exposing of the work to date. I feel ready for the weekend and look forward to this last week in which I can focus on pulling the work together and constructing the performance and video works. I hope to spend some time re-filming the gesture footage and planning the space for visitors at the weekend. I think some TV monitors may be needed!
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