My current project 2007Baby with the Bathwater
(working title)
Tuesday, 9 October 2007
I'm Alive... Virtually
EEK I'm "ALive"-my blog exists for your eyes too-Thanks Douglas. I'd better be a bit cleverer, pertinent and inspiring huh!? You're all in a seminar right now. Me as the soul lonely part-timer who lives a million miles from Wimbledon am bent over my computer in Hackney.
I have some work I should be doing but cracking this blog malarkey is my priority right now. It also does seem a marvellous place to air one's thoughts. Potentially..
It's just taken me about and hour and a half to put a picture in my profile. But I need the practice. I have a lot of technological/cultural catch-up to do- when Harriet describes her addictions to myspace and flickr etc I feel that anxiety of culture occurring without my participation-impressed that she's "in" and I ain't- when evidently SHE's feeling anxiety that she doesn't know enough either (Hope you don't mind me using use you as an example Harriet-it is to create conversation and definitely no dis.). Yeah I check out friends MySpaces and websites-but perhaps having spent too many years of editing through the night over and over my tolerance for computer o-d is limited. I love "real life" and our worship for technology seems too much like our worship for mainstream North American culture and equally destructive to our selves as living breathing fallible and interesting beings.. Yet, Of Course I can see the internet's revolutionary, life affirming, culture creating and interpolating potentialities- I just want to get the balance right- in a way I just didn't achieve before.
(pictures by Kristian Buus in 2006 taken at the Albion Pub near Broadway Market. We were all watching a film made by Emily James -middle photo-about our-an extremely mixed bag of local residents, artists and shopkeepers- occupation of Tony's ("Francesca's") Cafe in Broadway Market after Hackney Council had sold him out to a notorious local landlord)
I kicked the video access business I was running in 2003 and have since learned to dance and survived financially from freelance work I mostly gained via friends-but am only now beginnning to feel the beginnings of a sense of direction again. As somebody who decided they wanted to be a filmmaker aged 16 and did go and do that in a vast variety of ways, it has been deeply unsettling to find myself in my mid 30s with no clear direction. When one lacks a focus it is hard to find a reason to learn and imagine how much technology has changed since 2003 (and I was losing interest well before that). Having been a filmmaker I have been overtly intimate with technology from film through linear tape editing to digital editing and the internet and although FIlm and Video are obviously very social media and I a very social person, on a psychologicalemotional level I feel that damage was done. But maybe if I continue my resumed regime of Dance classes 4-6 times a week (Spending exactly the same as I did on smoking until almost exactly a year ago-eek) while learning all this new communication technology I can work out a healthy way of being a 21st century artist.
Somewhere on these explorations I hope to find out what is my "new practice". This is why I'm Lucy ShapeShifter. I went to a Live Art Bursary Talk at Arts Admin and one of the Artists' Advisers, who had known me for a number of years as a filmmaker, said "So you're shapeshifting are you Lucy?" -I actually found that rather dispiriting. It is strange how much people want to pigeonhole you in one discipline, especially in the ways that culture is currently mutating.
Do you all think that this phenomenon is changing at all?
(I'm so assuming people are reading my rambles-is this blind arrogance?)
Now I'm going to go and find out how to create live links on this page so that you can find all about the wonderful worlds of ARtsAdmin and Kristian Buus and Emily James etc etc xoxo
I have some work I should be doing but cracking this blog malarkey is my priority right now. It also does seem a marvellous place to air one's thoughts. Potentially..
It's just taken me about and hour and a half to put a picture in my profile. But I need the practice. I have a lot of technological/cultural catch-up to do- when Harriet describes her addictions to myspace and flickr etc I feel that anxiety of culture occurring without my participation-impressed that she's "in" and I ain't- when evidently SHE's feeling anxiety that she doesn't know enough either (Hope you don't mind me using use you as an example Harriet-it is to create conversation and definitely no dis.). Yeah I check out friends MySpaces and websites-but perhaps having spent too many years of editing through the night over and over my tolerance for computer o-d is limited. I love "real life" and our worship for technology seems too much like our worship for mainstream North American culture and equally destructive to our selves as living breathing fallible and interesting beings.. Yet, Of Course I can see the internet's revolutionary, life affirming, culture creating and interpolating potentialities- I just want to get the balance right- in a way I just didn't achieve before.
(pictures by Kristian Buus in 2006 taken at the Albion Pub near Broadway Market. We were all watching a film made by Emily James -middle photo-about our-an extremely mixed bag of local residents, artists and shopkeepers- occupation of Tony's ("Francesca's") Cafe in Broadway Market after Hackney Council had sold him out to a notorious local landlord)
I kicked the video access business I was running in 2003 and have since learned to dance and survived financially from freelance work I mostly gained via friends-but am only now beginnning to feel the beginnings of a sense of direction again. As somebody who decided they wanted to be a filmmaker aged 16 and did go and do that in a vast variety of ways, it has been deeply unsettling to find myself in my mid 30s with no clear direction. When one lacks a focus it is hard to find a reason to learn and imagine how much technology has changed since 2003 (and I was losing interest well before that). Having been a filmmaker I have been overtly intimate with technology from film through linear tape editing to digital editing and the internet and although FIlm and Video are obviously very social media and I a very social person, on a psychologicalemotional level I feel that damage was done. But maybe if I continue my resumed regime of Dance classes 4-6 times a week (Spending exactly the same as I did on smoking until almost exactly a year ago-eek) while learning all this new communication technology I can work out a healthy way of being a 21st century artist.
Somewhere on these explorations I hope to find out what is my "new practice". This is why I'm Lucy ShapeShifter. I went to a Live Art Bursary Talk at Arts Admin and one of the Artists' Advisers, who had known me for a number of years as a filmmaker, said "So you're shapeshifting are you Lucy?" -I actually found that rather dispiriting. It is strange how much people want to pigeonhole you in one discipline, especially in the ways that culture is currently mutating.
Do you all think that this phenomenon is changing at all?
(I'm so assuming people are reading my rambles-is this blind arrogance?)
Now I'm going to go and find out how to create live links on this page so that you can find all about the wonderful worlds of ARtsAdmin and Kristian Buus and Emily James etc etc xoxo
Monday, 8 October 2007
Stupendous Chicken
Hi, I'm back. it took longer than I thought
The chicken was stupendous
(cartoon by David)
cooking and culture
I added honey which I don't normally do-also had with it a dish of courgettes, garlic, mint, lemon, dates and almonds that was kind of stupendous (also caramelised carrots, roast potato and raw tomatoes with red onion if you're interested).I've been watching music oriented movies (Punk:ATtitude, the Miles Davis Story, Sonic Outlaws and Born to Boogie and reading performance books. I still cannot get over the fact that what I do anyway for fun is my school work. I am going to start making lists of what I read and watch and experience on the blog. I feel sort of overwhelmed to have started school. Keeping myself very much to myself 'cos I'm in such inarticulate hyperdrive "in company".
Walter Benjamin's "One Way Street" is a must-read- I bet you've already read it. I feel like he's a new friend, but unfortunately he killed himself in 1940- poor man was a German Jew in his 20s and 30s in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany. Some commentators have the unempathetic audacity to describe him as "triste".
The 20th century can be also most noted for mass exterminations of clever people: Discuss..
I just read New's blog and as well as now trying to figure out how to put music on my blog amd thinking that my response to "Art" is very opposite to his- mine all heart, a little head-hence I don't know if it's appropriate or not to post what I cooked last night on this blog. Or to post this picture- I saw in a gallery window in my neighbourhood a photograph of an old neighbourhood of mine and thought it wouldbe fun to photograph the old next to the new- just then my friend Paul walked up and waved. I don't know if that's interesting or not. I suppose I wonder where life ends and art begins or if it matters. "RealLife Interventions" are what I think I'm most interested in at the mo. That's why I'm at school- My brain wants into the experience- hopefully we can teach each other-as those lazy ol' tutors keep telling us to do. (joke-I know they're not lazy). Also obviously having a good conceptual line and groovy presentation is how to go about getting paid in today's world. N'est-pas..
I think this is also why I was a bit negative about the whole blog concept- aware of my verbal diorrhaea I really don't like to be a bore- I welcome all criticism and advice xoxoxo
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Tentative Beginning
So impressed was I with the blogs so far created I have felt inspired to join in. Temporarily put off by technological flummoxation of uploading (I've been willfully anti-technology during times of rapid change-eek), I'm off to bung a chicken in the oven and run a few errands then I'll return to challenge aht 2007 style. Hope you're all having wicked weekends. email or text me if you read this.. if you wanna..
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