Working through the work part 1

In the first few days, when I was thinking about how to make a peice that had no impact on the environment, I wrote a handful of poems called 'Possible Performances'. I used some card from the recycling bin which happened to be programs for a previous performance event at I-Park.

This is the one that brought me out of the idealist position of not touching the landscape and into the beginning of the work that I'm making now.

I started cutting the word 'leaves' into the leaves.

But how to cut a tree without hurting it?
Mason, the grounds keeper and I have had a few conversations about the ways I could cut into leaves and bark and without killing the leaves branches or trees. Caterpillars were also very instructive in thinking about this - they never eat an entire leaf, they take a small amount from many leaves. So I reduced the scale of my text to the same dimensions of the holes left my caterpillars and would only cut 1 leaf out of each sprig of 5.

Interestingly, the caterpillars started collaborating on the work by nibbling away at my texts - its a delightful surprise.

At this stage of the development, the main problem was that I didn't want this to just be a concrete poem - the word 'leaves' on actual leaves. I wanted the word leaves not just to be a plural noun but also the verb - to leave. And I wanted 'absence' to be used as a material and as a conceptual investigation.

It needed more layers, more components. This isn't the right text, but it was a process of teaching myself how to cut into the bark and a way of maybe introducing more text that could draw out other meanings of 'leaves'.

The work is very subtle and requires the viewer to spend time discovering the piece in the tree. So I have created 6 viewing spots inside the canopy of the tree, so the viewer can have an individual experience of locating and being with the work and the tree. Funnily enough when I began the work I kept loosing it. I'd go off to lunch, come back, and I couldnt find it. Clearly it was too subtle. Now I'm thinking about a marker in the ground that quietly shows the viewer where to stand so at least they are given a chance of locating the text on leaves and branches. This was my practice marker.

After these small components came together I asked another artists to come and look at the work. This turned out to be invaluable not just for the critical exchange but also because she was able to point out that the ground which my tree canopy covered was carpeted with poison ivy.

So there are many issues to resolve, but its invigorating to be thinking through and around new work.

Without clocks - a list.

Before she gets out of bed, she looks at the length of the shadow of the house on the lawn

If it’s short, she’s over slept

If it’s long, she takes her time

I leave my bedroom door open at night,

when there are sufficient people in the kitchen, making enough noise to wake me up,

it’s time to get up

The boiling brewing stewing filtering and later warming of coffee in the morning

takes a convoluted but necessary amount of time

If Tanya is in the kitchen it’s after 9 in the morning

When Jacob steams out the funky smells in the kitchen with herbs and spices cut from the garden its time for dinner

When Brad is around he

constructs

organises

and tells time what to do

Ralph, he understands the desire for a just little bit more time

So in the day if I’m considering trees, time is only the shadows moving

If I’m sweaty and bothered by the sun it’s probably lunchtime

When I’m in my tree up, time stays outside

When I’m reading, time is measured by the increments of pages

When I’m drifting around the pond in a canoe in darkness or daylight,

time

is the sky passing

When the generator starts

It has been an approximate hour of stillness

When the sound of the generator stops

ah h h h h     h   h

it’s been approximately an hour of full frontal white noise.

When Masons car dusts up the drive its somethime around 8ish,

but he brings with him speed and action and so time goes faster when he arrives:

Mary walks all day with time ticking ticking ticking ticking and work that grows faster than thought

Misa’s material has taken its own sweet time to grow into itself

ready for her picking

Nuno see’s time passing from the distant view of a son turning 1

Somewhere else

Jillian and Paul roar and rage all night long at the presence of time but in the daylight Paul panics at time

lost

(Jillian’s time is experienced by the poison passing through her veins)

Sylvie and Mirelle have secret inner knowledge of time,

their clocks know when and how to be where and how they need to be

Pedro knows that 5 hours of shopping takes much much much more time than 5 hours working or drinking wine

Javier’s time is carefully conserved in his phone. One amongst us that savours talk like sound and time and spends it with consideration.

Kim c  o  o  l  s and knows time

Noa moves in time

When our energy is fading, it’s either beer or coffee o’clock.

That particular reading of time understood by needs is confusing.

Every

single

time

that we are deep in contagious and collaborative laughing

time

understands it’s home is not with us

Experiments into the landscape

One of my first concerns about making work in this place was - how to work in the environment in a way that wasn't plonking down an object, or adding anything to what was already here, or marking the land in a way that was intrusive. I wanted it to be gentle and sensitive to the space and kept switching my thinking from 'doing something in the landscape' to having 'the landscape do something to me'. I would be the page rather than the other way around. I also got a little bit obsessed thinking that the main action of art making/viewing is looking, and looking might be a material to work with here.

One project I began was performance drawings on my body. I would stand and look at a plant. Whilst looking only at the plant I would draw it on my body.

It wasn't so successful but it had the beginnings of possibilities and could maybe become something at another time. But after 2 days I knew it wasn't the thing I was looking for.

Storm Dancing

After the storm

The anticipation of the hurricane mirrored my waiting, listening and watching for potential new work which I could make here. It’s heavy and thick and exciting and potentially disastrous. Today the sky was clear/my mind was clear. I wanted to get going. But we had been without power and water for over 24 hours and the forecast was that it would be at least a week to get it back on again. Our post-disaster situation was this: the back-up generator for the fridge had overheated and stopped working, the bath tub of water we had filled in preparation had been slowly draining through the day and nothing was left, the toilets were being taped off as more and more of them were getting blocked, the dishes pots pans and cutlery which we had left outside over night to get washed by the rain, remained unrained upon, we had not washed for a few days and all 13 of us had spent the better part of 24 hours in the kitchen – it felt communal, it was the centre of entertainment but in the brightness of day every surface was grimy greasy filthy, smelly, and disorganised.

We needed to clean, sort, categorise, and plan our post-disaster situation, one day of high-drama was an exotic experience, a week of filthy place and self was unpleasant. In particular we needed to work out how to get water and how to get power but very specifically how to get coffee, how to get the dishes and us clean and what to do about the toilets?

Which is how I found myself at this day spa.

We were the Collecting water for the toilets committee and after having scavenged amongst 8 industrial sized rubbish bins for drippy mouldy but potentially still useful plastic bottles, we were rewarded with a purifying cleansing swim in the river. After which we went home and sorted out our new dish washing system.

Post hurricane postcard

I am sending you this post-Hurricane postcards as a homage to conceptual artist On Kawara, who once sent a series of postcards to his art dealer stating the time/date and this message: “I am still alive.”

Time unknown, date unknown  “I am still alive and kicking.”

P.S No Power. No water. Lots of art. So much laughter.

My Hurricane has a name.

Irene.

In my head tapes I keep singing the Dixies Midnight Runners song "Come on Eileen". Of course I sing "Come on Irene" but i just googled the lyrics to see if I could do something entertaining with them and its about something that I wasn't aware of, so I'll leave the musical appropriation it in my headtapes. 

Is it on your news? There's a hurricane heading my way - yes a cyclone. New York has shut down it's entire subway system and bus service and evacuated residence from certain area. I'm about 10 min from New London and we are getting ready.

actually Im still 24 hr drawing but around me they are preparing:

filling sinks/baths/bottles with water

finding flash lights

charging anything that plugs in

writing out emergency numbers

getting beds for everyone in the main house

opening the basement door.

In preparation I have told two darling French ladies to take the list of residence names to the basement and find me if I'm not in the basement before they lock the doors. It took me 24 hours to get out of Oz, I don't want to be whipped back there by a hurricane.