We just finished the second day of the second week - its ten at night - with an intense group conversation on relationships with artists. A subject that we have somehow not given any attention to during the past ten days. Quite ironically I think.
Some hillarious anecdotes surfaced - and some tragic ones. Yvette spoke about the difficulty of working with artists with no physical addresses nor telephone numbers and Andrew once desperately bartered artwork for a curated show with a sixpack of beers.
Before supper a decidedly unbalanced game of soccer was played with kids on the island. Big curators pushed small children around on the field, but they got their asses kicked by the motley crew of little ones. Cindy got whacked on the ear. Its still red and half the size of her head. Storm had a beer and occasionally shrieked half heartedly "go team, go team". Joseph permanently damaged his inner thighs.
The formal sessions were fun too. Everyone had to present their projects after yesterdays proposal writing exercise. Some intense feedback ensued - the thread throughout the day were the brutal honesty with which everyone critiqued each others work.
Stacy Hardy presented an intense paper on education processes - which were really interesting and off the wall. She packed in concepts and ideas, peppered with really interesting obsevations and appropriate expletives. Its great hearing such strong convictions and opinions being expressed - on a subject, education, that is usually tacked on most art projects as an afterthought. She urged the enthralled audience to think about educational possibilities at the inception of their projects.
Brendon Bell-Roberts, a very busy guy, presented on his art publishing experience. Getting him to the island proved a logistical nightmare. I will one day write a book. Urgent calls to the director of the RIM finally got access to a later ferry, as Brendon has an important meeting earlier in the day and could not rock up at 7:30 am.
Virginia MacKenny gave a well-oiled talk on basic priniciples of writing media releases and curatorial statements. A 'nuts and bolts' presentation that went down really well, with very usefull 'how to' tips. She's bright. An exercise was set late in the afternoon, and I expected a riot to errupt from a very tired and exhausted group. Only Rita stormed out.
After a while everyone regrouped, strangely energised and all eagerly read back their five line media releases. And here came the brutally honest feedback. No one held back, nor from presenting, nor from criticising. I liked the maturity of everyone and also the honesty with which this was handled. Mavis I think, offered an interesting and rounded reading of her project.
Supper included, unusually on this particular island menu, rice and stewy stuff. I am finally gaining weight, after 34 years of unsuccesfull dieting.
Ps. The documenting teams are useless. They have not blogged a single line for two days. Only Abdul, but he's blogbefok.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment