Art
I am earning 2 Art Credits for:
Developing Craft
Making all my things has been such good practice to continue making things.
Making LEAR helped me develop my directorial skills, lighting designs, my choreography, and my ability to have a vision and translate it onto a stage. It also helped develop my art-text skills while writing the script.
On the topic of art-texts, the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE manual created some really great places for me to be developing. First off, it helped me edit my work, part of my artistic process has always been just vomiting out as much material as possible, and then assembling it in different ways until I like it. There was so much stuff in the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE manual that I really liked, but let go of in service of the bigger piece. Because it is a book it also has a material aspect, I have made a few hand bound copies of the manual at different stages, to see what it will look like in the end. I have found the ways of binding, construction, and glueing that work best for me.
BOUNDLESS has helped me develop a very technical craft, radio broadcasting, which is comfortingly similar to lighting design, as well as practice working with others, and working within structures and time constraints.
DEEP AEROBICS helped me continue to refine my leadership skills in an art setting, as did LEAR rehearsals. This is one of my favorite skills. Preparing to lead a workshop or class is deeply satisfying to me, because I show up ready: I have music, I know what I want to do, I know generally what I want to say. But it’s not a play, I don't have to follow my plan to a T, because I am the leader I can change the trajectory of workshop or class as I go along based on the people involved and how/what they are doing. This is definitely something that I want to continue doing in the future.
I’m never going to stop developing.
Performing, Presenting, Producing
I’ve made so much work. I made LEAR. I make BOUNDLESS every week. I organised and taught DEEP AEROBICS. I made the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE manual. I made LIFE AS PERFORMANCE retrospective. I made A Body, A Body. I performed with Hannah Satterlee at the Puppets in Education showcase. I will perform in Enter the Void by Toby Macnutt before I graduate. That is just the stuff I know off the top of my head.
This is an area where I excel. I can make lots of work, and perform often, and I love it. It makes me feel comfortable, it makes me feel seen.
Connecting
In mid December I received an email from a musician, Yann Novak, whose email list I ended up on because I once bought a song. (Note that I discovered Novak last year while scrolling aimlessly through the experimental new releases section of bandcamp.) This email was announcing a new collection of songs created by artists from around the world. One name stood out to me, Marc Kate, because I knew who he was. Marc Kate is the creator of the music podcast Why We Listen, which I began listening to because Miguel Gutierrez was a guest in one episode.
This was a strange experience, because it formed a small arc of connections, where I the viewer/consumer connected the two ends. It seemed crazy, so unlikely that stuff that I am interacting with would connect to itself so cleanly. And yet this is not the first time this has happened. I had a similar experience last year while reading Artificial Hells, where I was reading a page and I was suddenly confronted with the realization that I knew who each of the people was, even though on every preceding page I needed to google nearly everyone to understand the book.
Amy and Sayward would say that it isn’t as crazy as it seems. Because I’m looking at a very particular kind of thing and serendipity isn’t as uncommon as you think it is.
I was surprised by where the connections appeared this semester. When I began this year I had a few different studies, the most removed of which being science and social studies, and while science stayed pretty removed, social studies bled into my art. The queerness that I was studying ended up being what we made BOUNDLESS about, and because I was thinking so much about these things, they carried over into works like the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE writings, and retrospective.
I have always looked at connections as a place to explore serenity, or coincidence, so here is my moment of that from this semester:
When I was in NYC to see Angels, I had a night where I planned to just hang out with Nathan Chan, who I was staying with. We decided to go see a show at La Mama titled Seagullmachine (created by The Assembly). This was a combination of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov and Hamletmachine by Heiner Muller, which I read last semester on a fluke, because it was included in a book of adaptations of Shakespeare that I bought for LEAR. At dinner Nathan and I had been talking about absurd costumes and their role in performance, and how we both love them, and then halfway through Seagullmachine we were all ushered into a new space which was filled with ridiculous costumes, which the audience helped the actors get into. It was a very serendipitous moment, in which I saw how the things that I was exploring conceptually were leading straight into the things I was experiencing.
Responding
I have responded to Angels in America, the Fever Ray concert, QUEERS READ THIS, and more on my blog.
Part of being a director at festival was writing feedback on all the shows we watched, so I responded to the 6 other shows all in one day, it was kinda crazy. The big takeaway from that was responding with my first impressions, not the deeply thought out responses that I have for things like Angels - which are rooted in things I’ve read or talked about beforehand.
This is definitely something that I have had a hard time documenting in a meaningful way for all of my pilot career. My big takeaway is that while responding is better when I care, I can do it about anything. With the concepts of LIFE AS PERFORMANCE in my life I can respond to lots of things as art, so responding has become less about conventional artwork and more about my experience of it all.
I am earning 2 Art Credits for:
Developing Craft
Making all my things has been such good practice to continue making things.
Making LEAR helped me develop my directorial skills, lighting designs, my choreography, and my ability to have a vision and translate it onto a stage. It also helped develop my art-text skills while writing the script.
On the topic of art-texts, the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE manual created some really great places for me to be developing. First off, it helped me edit my work, part of my artistic process has always been just vomiting out as much material as possible, and then assembling it in different ways until I like it. There was so much stuff in the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE manual that I really liked, but let go of in service of the bigger piece. Because it is a book it also has a material aspect, I have made a few hand bound copies of the manual at different stages, to see what it will look like in the end. I have found the ways of binding, construction, and glueing that work best for me.
BOUNDLESS has helped me develop a very technical craft, radio broadcasting, which is comfortingly similar to lighting design, as well as practice working with others, and working within structures and time constraints.
DEEP AEROBICS helped me continue to refine my leadership skills in an art setting, as did LEAR rehearsals. This is one of my favorite skills. Preparing to lead a workshop or class is deeply satisfying to me, because I show up ready: I have music, I know what I want to do, I know generally what I want to say. But it’s not a play, I don't have to follow my plan to a T, because I am the leader I can change the trajectory of workshop or class as I go along based on the people involved and how/what they are doing. This is definitely something that I want to continue doing in the future.
I’m never going to stop developing.
Performing, Presenting, Producing
I’ve made so much work. I made LEAR. I make BOUNDLESS every week. I organised and taught DEEP AEROBICS. I made the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE manual. I made LIFE AS PERFORMANCE retrospective. I made A Body, A Body. I performed with Hannah Satterlee at the Puppets in Education showcase. I will perform in Enter the Void by Toby Macnutt before I graduate. That is just the stuff I know off the top of my head.
This is an area where I excel. I can make lots of work, and perform often, and I love it. It makes me feel comfortable, it makes me feel seen.
Connecting
In mid December I received an email from a musician, Yann Novak, whose email list I ended up on because I once bought a song. (Note that I discovered Novak last year while scrolling aimlessly through the experimental new releases section of bandcamp.) This email was announcing a new collection of songs created by artists from around the world. One name stood out to me, Marc Kate, because I knew who he was. Marc Kate is the creator of the music podcast Why We Listen, which I began listening to because Miguel Gutierrez was a guest in one episode.
This was a strange experience, because it formed a small arc of connections, where I the viewer/consumer connected the two ends. It seemed crazy, so unlikely that stuff that I am interacting with would connect to itself so cleanly. And yet this is not the first time this has happened. I had a similar experience last year while reading Artificial Hells, where I was reading a page and I was suddenly confronted with the realization that I knew who each of the people was, even though on every preceding page I needed to google nearly everyone to understand the book.
Amy and Sayward would say that it isn’t as crazy as it seems. Because I’m looking at a very particular kind of thing and serendipity isn’t as uncommon as you think it is.
I was surprised by where the connections appeared this semester. When I began this year I had a few different studies, the most removed of which being science and social studies, and while science stayed pretty removed, social studies bled into my art. The queerness that I was studying ended up being what we made BOUNDLESS about, and because I was thinking so much about these things, they carried over into works like the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE writings, and retrospective.
I have always looked at connections as a place to explore serenity, or coincidence, so here is my moment of that from this semester:
When I was in NYC to see Angels, I had a night where I planned to just hang out with Nathan Chan, who I was staying with. We decided to go see a show at La Mama titled Seagullmachine (created by The Assembly). This was a combination of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov and Hamletmachine by Heiner Muller, which I read last semester on a fluke, because it was included in a book of adaptations of Shakespeare that I bought for LEAR. At dinner Nathan and I had been talking about absurd costumes and their role in performance, and how we both love them, and then halfway through Seagullmachine we were all ushered into a new space which was filled with ridiculous costumes, which the audience helped the actors get into. It was a very serendipitous moment, in which I saw how the things that I was exploring conceptually were leading straight into the things I was experiencing.
Responding
I have responded to Angels in America, the Fever Ray concert, QUEERS READ THIS, and more on my blog.
Part of being a director at festival was writing feedback on all the shows we watched, so I responded to the 6 other shows all in one day, it was kinda crazy. The big takeaway from that was responding with my first impressions, not the deeply thought out responses that I have for things like Angels - which are rooted in things I’ve read or talked about beforehand.
This is definitely something that I have had a hard time documenting in a meaningful way for all of my pilot career. My big takeaway is that while responding is better when I care, I can do it about anything. With the concepts of LIFE AS PERFORMANCE in my life I can respond to lots of things as art, so responding has become less about conventional artwork and more about my experience of it all.