a whole week in one

Friday the 31st Oct Returning from a weekend in Melbourne and moving into the Arts Company inc in Portland late Monday afternoon; this week has been a blip, it escaped me. After a luxurious 3 or 4 days pretty much off, I found it hard to get back into my work, especially with a performance looming and the discovery that I couldn’t get hold of a projector during the week to try work out on. Tuesday was a bit of a nothing day, I spent hours laboriously bleaching 35mm film and stapeling it to worksheets. The plan is to distribute the worksheets through out town, people then go on a walk or visit a favourite place, collect things then paint draw and stick things onto the film strips to represent their relationship with the landscape. The worksheets have been placed in the shop, post office and pub. If people don’t pick them up I think I will start handing them out! I'm also doing a similar workshop at the school on Monday. On Wednesday I drove up to Balmoral to check out the old jail (or gaol, as its spelt over here) where I will be performing on Saturday evening. I seem to spend a lot of time driving here, distance is a massive factor in life- people will travel much further to do/see things/people, I think just because its such a big, vast place you have to. I have got used to this quite quickly, I think from having been here before, but it is pretty tiring. Hour after hour of long straight roads and scrubby landscape, ducking and weaving the odd kangaroo, whilst drifting off to the ABC. The jail is small, with two cells and sits on top of a hill which leads down to a beautifull reed layden river. The performance will be a work in progress really, just a good opertunity to have a play with my work infront of an audoence for a change. I haven't planned what will happen, but will take a selection of video/film/text work, the typewriter and 16 mm projector. I would of like to do something durational, but I have a horrible cold/fever and don't think I could handle it, but I don’t have a time limit so will see what happens in the moment. I met up with Jo Grant the Arts Officer for this area on Thursday, which was useful although someone had said I was having problemns with the community in Dartmoor- which was little worrying as that’s not true! People haven't been as forward as I would of liked, but that’s definetly not something I consider an issue and the people I have been in contact with have been wonderful. Jo has a similar interest in generating/placing contemporary arts in rural/regional environments, this is an afrea im thinking about writing my dissation on…perhaps, she also put me in contact with two local artist/writers. I spent the evening back at Mumbannar hall with Tracey interviewing people. Some really great stories came out, many of which were pretty entertaining but also gave me a lot of cultural insight. Friday was a little more busy and eventfull than I anticipated. I managed to organise a sewing group that will meet on Thursday's at the café (starting Thursday the 13th, as I'm filming with tracey agin all next thrusday), and have some interest! Yey! I also borrowed some manuals form Ricky who is the kind of union man I think for mill/green triangle stuff- I find it hard to remember exactly what everyone does! A very boring read but great for generating text, works well over the pine needles 16 mm film- a reflection on the mill closure, and the earth being peoples livelyhood here. I also had a visit from ABC radio who were in town doing a story about the mill closure/local community etc. It s been a bizzare time to be here. It has been good talking to the local press and constantly meeting people I don’t know, its making me much more capable of talking about my practice and articulating clearly my thoughts and intensions. I read my proposal yesterday and really couldn’t believe I had written it- I must have used the computer thesaurus a lot, because it was starngley written, didn’t really sound like my voice and had some bizarre choices of words! After the interview it was the pub for some food, where I left a box of film worksheets, a little box of business type cards saying 'take me for a walk', and handed over the super 8 camera and instructions explaining the chienese whispers film. The Chinese whispers film basically asks people to point and shoot 10 seconds of film to show there relationship with the local landscape/environment/earth, then pass the camera on to someone else. I calculated there should be enough film for 18 people, so each person ticks a number and the 18th person hopefully returns the camera to me. I'm hoping the animosity of this will ancorage people to get involved- mainly I hope I get the camera and a finished film back?! The pub was the pre 'High- Vis Ball' (a bit of a party for the community after the mill closure) food stop. The ball was well worth going to, definetly interesting research listening to peoples thoughts and the language used surrounding the whole thing. A good place to say hello to people, although I did feel like an outsider- but I am! The video here is the 16 mm pine needles film with text generated from safety manuals given to me by Ricky the mill guy.