Schedule Outline  as it unfolded: We decided to venture out. We wanted to find a stimuli to dream on the ideas that seem to be emerging today out of our conversations.1. Shingle Inn. Coffee and check in. Steve Gilligan discussion (village/wasteland/journeyman); ‘Sluts Walk’ discussion (the social and cultural implications of dress code); Butoh (the inner landscape and the external landscape);

2. GOMA: the sustainable garden; Ideas Festival Program; lunch at Tognini’s discussing potential value in gallery crawl and speakers in festival.

3. QAG and GOMA adventure: a sharing of images by Brian and Nikki. Margi attended an IDEAS talk about IPADs in education.

its time to meet up again, and we all agree to be at metroarts at 10am, saturday morning on 20th May. i meet brian in the street. he is standing waiting, and we begin to talk while we wait for nikki whose plane is late (isn’t that a rule. planes are always late).

We talk about presence and how do we help artists find a presence on stage (I am here. this is where i am. this is who i am. this is what i am doing. what if?). brian talks about a simple yet profound exercise that he uses in his classes to help dances feel capable of continuing class.  to help them journey through the awkward moments into more confident flow he asks them to gently and simply outline their bodies, starting at the crown of the head. using the fingers, coming down the sides of the head, to neck. crossing at the back of the neck. going down the back to buttock, down the back of leg around the toe back up the front of the leg, front of torso, head and top of head again. he asks them to continue to repeat that until it is habit. then they can be in the space, engaged with the space and time. this is an internal landscape, which interests me because i like to play in the external landscape. i think that as westerners we live in our head too much, and to move into the relational space quite deliberately is what i want my actors to practice. however i am thinking this would be a valuable exercise to employ first up…then moving into the relational space.

we talked about the construct that i had just read by steve gilligan  (http://stephengilligan.com/blog/blog-4/ ) taking me back to the Heroes Journey, and the  idea that there are three ways of being: we are either villagers, wastelanders or journeymen.  we dreamed this idea on, and brian was thinking that he  shifts through all of these states at different times, he observes the villagers, he then moves into the wasteland, journeying to different places, meeting different people, and returns again with stories of the villagers, and the cycle continues

i found this a beautifuil dreaming on of the constuct proposed by steve gilligan: the beaten path of the village/the falling in on despair/the transformational life of the hero.  Brian saw how the three sat with each other. We saw an image at the artgallery that seemed to reveal this idea of layers:

sculpture at QAG that seemed to resonate the construct of village/wasteland/journeyman

THREE ACTIVITIES TO STIMULATE THOUGHT:
1. Nikki built on the morning’s discussion about the Male Gaze. She found in QAG a sculptural exhibition that seemed to sum up what we were talking about:
Figure, Form and Allegory: Sculpture from the Collection

looking from the male to female form

Nikki and Brian examine the outward energy of the male form

2. The Fragmented Body: Nikki was particularly interested in this exhibition that was in the hall as we entered the space. I have cut and pasted this from GOMA site:

3.  Video installation: in the Hall of GOMA is a huge video installation. I found it disturbing, while the others found it interesting.  it was UTube excerpts of popular moments in our culture ( http://youtu.be/_OBlgSz8sSM “charlie bit my finger” video).  Nikki talked about the family in this particular clip had to move because their privacy was compromised).

4. A disturbing image that i have seen several times previously, and is now haunting me is the image by Sydney Nolan:

mrs fraser by sidney nolan

This image disturbed me (and is still) because of the juxtaposition of this with our morning conversation about The Slut Walk (http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2721208.html ).  The idea that women become carcasses. the Male Gaze. http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/faq-what-is-the-%E2%80%9Cmale-gaze%E2%80%9D/

5. Lloyd Rees:

Themes emerging:
1. what is dress and how does that represent ‘who i am becoming’. Very interested in expanding this construct, to see the line between our dress, and our home. Are they are reflection of each other? This makes me think of Nepal, and how we saw young men emerging from small huts with little comfort, yet they were emerging in a suit with a white shirt: the juxtaposition of the poverty of home, and the apparent prosperous nature of the working man image still sits inside my head. That schism interests me.
2. the journeyman, the villager and the desperateness of the wasteland, and how we journey from one to another depending.
3. after reflecting on our day i am realizing that the Lloyd Ree exhibition could be seen as a summing up of the artist’s life. beginning small, with little steps, Rees grew his art superbly. in a few minutes the myth of the artist is revealed…and the culmination of the tower left me feeling very satisfied.

We finished with the agreement of meeting at State Library Sunday morning 10am to attend some more of the ideas festival and then moving on to work in the studios.

a bowl of coffee in rehearsal

I am in rehearsal, cooking.
cooking in the kitchen
what recipes do i follow
do i model finding the recipes and then creative changes?
i can fit 14 people in my kitchen
we will cook together as we tell stories.
how will this work?

…and I talk to my colleagues, Nikki and Brian, and our facilitator Dan. We are in Eumundi for the  weekend, having an experience to challenge our way of thinking…as well we  talk about how we work.

Brian: i will watch people, i will shuffle my ipod, i will listen to music. i will stare out the windown. i will let my mind go travelling. i will walk around in circles. i will allow myself to imagine, reflect, travel rather than reflect on my body movement. i make work as a way of understanding the world, and me as well. i am morally obliged to attempt to understand why i perform.  everytime you start you start with nothing.  there are no answers just the questions for them.  as soon as you don’t have to do it, it starts to happen.

Nikki: i will listen to music. i will be alone. i will free my imagination..Music becomes like wallpaper. i like the space to attend to it…different every time. maybe on the studio floor or then follow something, like a scent.  i will lie for half an hour. i will walk for half an hour. i will read for half an hour. i will write for half an hour. i  make sense of work. if i really understood what i was doing…i know what i have, now. intention is movement.

Dan: i am in trance from the music
i need someone to listen
i articulate waht i am imagining.
my draft 1 is draft 8. its already been edited.

Margi: i need people to work. sand inbetween people can be a light.  we need to get out of our own way so that we can work

we then talk about improvisation, and one suggestion is:
Improvisation: can you remember the first meal you ever cooked? what was it? who was it for?
i cooked for my family. patty cakes. butter and sugar, flour, milk, patty cake tins…
Brian remembers anzac biscuits. Metal tray, quite heavy, rectangular tray squishing dough on the fork. whne hot and soft scoop them off…tea towel to let them cool.  the smell of anzac biscuits.
Nikki remembers sausage rolls and puff pastry.
Dan remembers chocolate dipped strawberries.

I wonder if our first cooking experience influences where we end up in relation to food?

We then go to dinner in Eumundi at the Fig Tree. we have tapas. very nice.
the things that emerged from this weekend include
1. preparation and prepping
2. hosting: quote from the cards:

At C and A. morning tea is at our big red table everyday at 11. Anyone who is around, customers included, join us. The conversation centres on the cake and biscuit plate (often made by one of us), what’s for dinner, and the lateset taste sensation.  food is always an important topic although of course we also rise to loftier topics  (Amanda Blair)

And i am reminded of pumpkin scones, something that i may cook in the show:

250 gms of Queensland Blue
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
75gms pure icing sugar sifted
40 gms butter
1 egg yolk
milk for brushing.

steam pumpkin.
15 minutes
bake 10 minutes
sieve when cool. and now this is different to regular scone recipes.

Flo Bjelke-Peterson says cook the pumpkin the night before and chill it in the fridge. Ring Kingaroy 0741627046 for more information

beat the icing sugar and the butter and then add the eggs. stir in the pumpkin. and flour or half of the flour. use rest of the flour on the board. 2cms thick. don’t twist!

did you know that the scone originates from Scotland? the earliest reference to the bread was in a scottish poem called Aeneid, in 1513.

cooking…cooking a world…cooking the word…here we are…cooking the world.

I reach for the New Yorker, its in this little B and B in Eumundi. and i read about Marina Abramovic’s Performance Art:

the body is her subject, time is her medium, and birthdays mark the moment that the performance of living officially begins

this broke my heart:

on March 30, 1988, they embarked on their last performance. she started walking the Great Wall of China from the east, where it rises in the mountains, and Ulay set off from the West, where it ends in the desert. After three months, and thousands of miles, they met in the middle, and said goodby (pg 25-26 of The New Yorker. Mar 8 2010)

She did an exhibition called “The Artist is Present”…

The sense of purpose I feel to do something heroic, legendary and transformative; to elevate viewer’s spirits and give them courage. if i can go through the door of pain to embrace life or the other side, they can to (p 24 in The New Yorker)

Rituals of Practice:
how do i protect myself
what are my performative rituals
very private thing.
between me and myself
private rituals nurture
we cannot stop the cycle
all we can do is disrupt it.
transitions…no endings
meetings and transition points…..

and we host.
we have 14 ingredients (the 14 chairs representing the body of Osiris)
we give them something that they can take away.
the ritual of food

brian was saying that this weekend was a reflection of the last one we experienced together: the landscape of families sitting around  picnicing…we walked around the lake.
and this week, there was a lake and the whole of the restaurant situated itself around the lake.

i will finish on a haiku
the theatre of home, bright colours
sunshine green bamboo shoots

well not quite
relating and growing
moving from bounded to relational
reaching for pork ribs and coriander.

if we were to perform at pullenvale
we enter the Egyptian room (lounge room)
then into kitchen
then into bedroom
then into garden

Two days ago, i decided it was time to step up to the plate so to speak. having spent the previous weekend at The Spirit House as part of this Process Project, I think two days ago: well if Mohammad wont come to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammad!
And I add another Self to my relational being: i am now a gourmet cook. No longer do i go by the label of ‘comfort food’ cook, or basic cook. i have stepped into the world of the gourmet. This world is full of people, of that i am very much aware…and every time you turn on a commercial channel there is another cookery competition. that does not phase me, no, not in the least. Always i could not be bothered with recipes. i would just create whatever. i may look at the recipe but that was all…the last two days has seen my table strewn with recipe books. i have purchased a beautiful Maggie Beer book with embroidery on the cover. it is a work of art, and the recipes are easy and delicious. a recipe such as fig and rocket salad (wash your greens (rocket, spinach and kale); cut your figs (ripe and beautiful…this is the autumn or winter fruit) loads of them; grate a fabulous cheese (like parmesan but nicer); mix balsamic vinegar and oil; and top it with Prosciutto…and it is a salad to die for. Tomato soup? onions galore, garlic, white wine, red tomatoes, pinch of sugar (to bring out the flavour of the tomatoes), salt, pepper, stock, and i added some balsamic vinegar, topped with grated parmesan. squeeze of lemon…herbs parsley, thyme, mint, basil…i added a couple more. love a lot of herbs…and zucchini fritters…grated zucchini, onions, cheese (I used goat fetta because of Bill’s dairy allergy), gluten free flour, garlic…fabulous. And today i tried, for the first time Mushroom Risotto.  Never have i cooked risotto but i did, and it was delicious: rice, stock, white wine, mushrooms, onions, grated cheese (Romano? like a parmesan)…topped with hard Italian cheese and a squeeze of lemon. Delicious.  As i cook i am thinking which dishes can i cook in my show. so far i think the tomato soup is good…will try a few recipes, and also the risotto is good…it is easy (i was so surprised) just labour intensive, and that is probably good for theatre.  so i may make my guests, my audience of 14 a tomato soup and risotto…and so now i have to practice making bread, scones, anzac biscuits, and apple/berry pie?  mmmm i am in training  and instead of hitting the road, i am hitting the mixing bowl. thank goodness my stove is fixed!!!! wish the dishwasher worked!

We are working with very different people over these three experiential weekends. The first being the landscape architect, the second being a manager of The Spirit House, a place where food and atmosphere are the selling points.The fact that The Spirit House has adjusted the way they serve food to increase revenue and to increase the punter’s experience is innovative, and i think worth stealing…how do we create a show that brings in revenue so the artists can get paid, and at the same time create an experience that is optimal experience for our audience?

and i am thinking of Home, the project i am working on presently (that could very well be my last, because I have decided it has a five year time line)…how do i glean from the Spirit House, creating an experience for my audience that is unforgettable and still viable as an economic commodity? That is a big question, and one i am not sure how to answer.

I think there is a change in our community, and it is a good one. I think younger artists have to be producers at the same time as artists, something that we were never expected to be. As a consequence the younger artists seem very aware of their material, what they can and can’t do…i so admire this.

I shall continue thinking, and when Nikki and Brian enter the conversation we can build some more. Over and out.

Daniel loyally journeys with us, drinking a thimble full of Reisling to complement the food

the lake is beautiful, all of the tables are situated around the lake with a little water feature…

another image of an eating pavilion and the lake

largest stock pot i have ever seen. this has in it a stock that has been going for many years…

these prawns were astonishing…flavours going everywhere

another wondrous experience, and how beautifully presented

A huge verandah in our Eumundi B and B

Dan, our administrator, and Eklen, the manager/owner of spirit house, and Brian contemplating the lake

Beautiful statues guide us as we journey on the path to the restaurant

i still pinch myself that i have this amazing opportunity to do ordinary things with two of Australia’s finest artists, and i wonder how that happened, and what it is that i am to glean from this unique and exquisite experience. Is it just to absorb their process? Or is there a deeper reason that I am yet to unfold? We talked about how we work, and Brian and Nikki have unique ways of being in the studio. What I remember are things like the following (passed through my own imagination):

I can stay for hours in a studio, lying on the floor; walking around and around; going out for  coffee and returning; reading articles and then lying on the floor; walking around and around; finally around 3pm i may be ready to move something on the floor…but it is a culmination of the day. i have built up to this…reading, resting, thinking, moving, thinking, reading, resting…

It is cyclical, and so i dream this on more:

the creative cycle after talking with Brian and Nikki when working solo, and dreaming it on: •Checking in: where am I on a scale of 1-10? 10 being “My Perfect Rehearsal”…Lying on the floor absorbing the space saying hello to the world of the studio; walking around and around in the studio allowing the body to find answers to questions that I don’t even know I am asking •Reading a relevant article or book, or looking at images, or doing a collage, or making an artists book, or…some physical activity that awakens the artist: multimodal depiction •Coffee break and absorbing the environment and finding links between the world outside and the world within •Selecting music that motivates, stimulates and moves me forward.  Gently physical warming into the kinesthetic channel…ImpulseTraining. Every cell is alive. Moving for ½ hour before moving onto the material that has been brewing… •Integrating reading, art making, moving, sensing, intuiting, by presenting idea on the floor to self and other •Check out, time to re enter the world

Overnight pajama parties are a source of deep exchange of ideas, a hoot, and the dreaming keeps evolving…
We worked Saturday at The Spirit House, a place of meditation, connection and food. It took a while to find the place, and we had a few hilarious wrong turns, finally ending up in the right place at the right time…kitchen talk: watching Ben cut with lightning fingers, seeing the largest vat of stock I have ever seen, the dance of the kitchen, where many people worked in the smallest of spaces. The sweet cook was ‘banished’ to the back room, where he made the desserts free from garlic and coriander. We sat on small benches and were fed several taste plates: I remember the multiple flavours exploding…glorious…”And what wine would you drink with this”… Reisling! Voila!
We wandered the gardens, bamboo thick, small lake with ducks, all the seating is outdoors, with tin roof, no walls…very Balinese. Peaceful.
We talked for a long time with the manager of the house.  His parents began the project in the early 90’s. We learned the history of the place, how it has developed and what were the dreams…if only they could.
So are dreams possible? Apparently not now, due to council regulations. Is this a little like theatre these days, with workplace health and safety?
As we watched this family create an astonishing environment, with a restaurant and a cooking school, i think about how we create theatre companies.  Because theatre is not usually a money spinner, any investment is for love, and we do not have luscious environments within which to create our work but more often little black boxes and over used studios.  We love them just the same. I sometimes feel more at home standing in a black box than at home standing in the garden.  It brings back the years of work before I moved to Brisbane, where not a week went by that I was not standing in some black box somewhere in the world.
Is our black box possibility? A way of dreaming with open eyes? Is our black box freedom from the everyday relentless rhythm of what we have created?
Perhaps.

Hello up there,Thanks for this Margi, I love the idea of ‘outside rooms’ and enlarging the spaces in which we conceive ourselves performing, to embrace the environment.

I have spent quite some time working outside responding to, working with (and sometimes ignoring) landscape,
yet of course whilst  it is familiar - it is also still vastly unknown, and my relationship to these various concepts of ‘body in landscape’ is always changing and evolving.
Like any relationship really.

Peter’s Berrinba Wetlands project impressed me in these ways:
the many dimensions and multi planar thinking involved :: layers of earth/ under and over :: vegetation and rates of growth :: mulch to protect the ground :: water as an environment and as a resource ::
fauna and wildlife corridors within and without the parkland :: transactions with human stakeholders :: the support of local community and consideration of their needs :: the fluid relationship with council :: the wishes of the
land endowment people ::  the architects and engineers and labour force ::  aesthetic considerations :: artwork and video :: the industrial corridors ::  the ongoing maintenance and upkeep ::

And then : from our perspective as users :
time and what grows and what dies away :: what returns? ::  the path itself and the time of our journey ::  the intersecting circularites of time and space
light and shade/ heat and cool :: pausing at bridges :: transition zones ::  the hidden places underneath where trolls hide
the ways we see and are seen :: the landscape is looking back at us

And then : the tiny pocket of Kemp Place
another reclamation :: a tiny haven amidst concrete flyovers :: a series of red poles planted in the ground/ another claiming
exclaiming :: declaiming

THE MORE YOU THINK ABOUT IT THE BIGGER IT GETS

Thinking back simply about the studio time (on Sun 20th)…  my experience of working in the room and conceiving a ’sensory experience’ for Margi and Brian was as much about what was outside the room as the space inside.
I was drawn to the windows as frames for the many layers of texture and movement, colour and reflection happening outside.
In response to the qualities that had emerged for me on our saturday excursion, I wanted to draw your attention to as many ways to perceive that space (inside and outside) as possible.
one thing i wanted to do but didn’t/couldn’t were :
creating light reflections on the ceiling (eg with a bowl of water , but you need direct sunlight for that i think)… or creating subtle changes of light
(there was more to say, but this is where i paused…)

28th March.. to resume in another place…
In mid March I spent 7 days on a Body/Landscape workshop in Central Victoria with (Amsterdam based) Body Weather practitioner Frank van der Ven.
Lots of walking (our walking became slower and quieter as the week went on) and some wonderful ways of looking and changing perception - not just of the outside environment, but also of the inside spaces of the body.
I thought about our reflections on landscape architecture and the dramatic impact of light and shade and our relationship to the path… strongly sensing gravity and how the variations in ground surface affect stability…
reading the landscape at the same time as ‘falling’ into it… sensing trees and rocks ‘in place’ and the time that they occupy stretching forward and backward… sensing my own place in that time, my specific weight and density,
the layers of me, stretching back and forward in time and space… remembering that i am also formed and shaped by the forces of gravity, of heat, of light, wind, water…
sometimes when i move these days i am aware of all this geological and cultural history, like the earth’s strata, playing itself out through this weathered body…

n x

This weekend was my first ImpulseTraining workshop for the year. ImpulseTraining is a postmodern acting/life training that I have devised over the last ten years. This year I  teach on Sundays at Pullenvale, a leafy acreage suburb in Brisbane.  We work 10am  till 1pm, followed by lunch and then a ‘by-invitation’  complimentary generative writing/performance session 1-5pm for emerging writers/contemporary performers.Yesterday, as a direct result of our (PP) generative session last weekend,  we used the garden to perform.  This was something we had talked about, however because of heat, rain etc had always remained inside (except some evenings).

Each participant was invited to find a space anywhere on the 4.5 acres, either inside or out, to perform their improvisation, based on scores created earlier in the day.  They were invited to allow the space to impact on the work.  They had 30 minutes to create the work.

The results were very strong and made clear to me how important space is, and how space can actually dictate hugely the content as well as process of the work.  I think that this was deeply emphasized in the Process Project when the three of us went to three different spaces to create a reflection on the day with Peter (landscape gardener) and we came up with such different products.  Space influenced us enormously.

Because of this, i was encouraged to commit to a changed emphasis on space in ImpulseTraining.  This idea has been growing for several years, yet it obviously needed a stimuli to get it going. We have been talking about open performance spaces here in Pullenvale, yet this was the first time we had actually used the various ‘outside rooms’.  Jung would call this syncronicity.

We will continue to develop these ideas, and we are now planning to have a Pullenvale Performance in June.  I want to deeply thank all four of you: Liz, Dan, Nikki and Brian for being such a vibrant team.  The Process Project is having a direct impact on my work.

Sunday was a rich and challenging day, with things happening for all of us.
10 am we meet at Metro Arts.  Dan goes to sit in the meeting room ready to move us into the studios. We suggest the Board Room (air conditioning its 34 degrees and its only morning) so we plonk ourselves in the Board Room and drink water and ‘check in’.  We reflect on yesterday, our time with Peter, and what stood out for us today. We all retained different images, different experiences, and all of us will be blogging individually, but to get the ball rolling I will reflect on what I recalled…it was the paths. they were built up, so they were there to last. I call the park “The Park of Paths”.  The other thing that sticks out for me is the talking circle, the stones too far away to really talk (unlike the talking circle at the State Library) but it is a shrine, rather than a practical place to sit…and it is a shrine because i call it a shrine.  For Nikki (and she will talk about this I am sure) it was the body of water, which reminded her of the insides of the body…and for Brian, it was that moment of disappearance.  You are there, and then you are gone.  These primary responses came across quite strongly in our three performative pieces that we pulled together in 1 hour or so…Brian inhabited the Basement, Nikki went to 4.2 on the fourth floor, and I stayed in the Board Room.I decided to pull out my things that i had brought (books that i had put in my trolley, art supplies and my large black book) and allow them to talk to me.  I wrote (no planning, no thinking as such, just writing.  This is what I wrote:

Throughout the delivery MBA moves through the landscape of Performative Character to Pedestrian Character.  She is playing with Breath, her relationship to breath, her breath’s relationship to audience, the audience’s breath. This is her new direction in research: what is her relationship to breath in her work, her life?”

SHE BEGINS:

I love you forever i love you for always as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be

I love you forever i love you for always as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be

I love you forever I love you for always as long as I’m living my mummy you’ll be  (source children’s book “I love you forever)

The Tree of Stars

Yesterday all four of us (Nikki, Brian, Dan and Margi) met up with Peter to journey with him through two of his projects. We hired a red bullet, piled in and tore down to Logan, to a wetland/parkland that had been planned and built by Peter’s landscape company. some of the photos are below.  we walked these walks, crossed these bridges, heat rising, children’s voices, silver eagle keeping a safe eye over the theatrical space, neat, tidy and new. but not so new: “how did you find out about this park” I say to one of the little girls playing on the path “i’ve come here since i was a baby” was the reply…it has always been and always will be it seems:

wide paths took us through the wet lands

The paths were wide, enough to accommodate multiple users (bikes, prams, skateboards, joggers) and they wound around, very organic, reflecting the round edge of the body of water (is it called a lake, a pond, a dam, a river…)

we stop and look below on each bridge we cross, and looked below. brian insisted it was cooler standing on the bridge

Peter was very happy to talk about everything, and we noticed he liked to weed along the pathway when the weeds were of an outrageous size…what impacted me on this show and tell was the paths, so wide and solid made of concrete…Peter added that 1km of path had to be dug up and re done because the workers messed up…1km of track is a long way, and there are about 8.5km of paths throughout this place…it is almost a study of paths, and i am thrown to Robert Frost’s poem:

Two roads diverge in a yellow wood
and sorry i could not travel both
and be one traveller, long i stood
and looked down one as far as i could
to where it bent in the undergrowth.

the tree that heals itself

Paths, healing…lead me to Buddhist philosophy…paths lead to choices…paths lead to adventure and not knowing. as we walked the paths, we did not know where they would take us but we did know that such an expensive path could not take us too many places!

we are working together again today at Metroarts…

Hello everyone: i am practicing adding links so here are two links we all know!!!!!! metro had a fabulous launch Wednesday night that i could not attend but here is a bit of a peep see!!!!!! go to my facebook page and see liz and dan!!!!!!!! its posted on my home page.
www.metroarts.com.au www.4change.com.au so it is thursday, and dan and liz and margi are sitting in a restaurant around from metro arts having a meeting.
It takes half an hour to find a suitable stop. we try three places on the river (oh, this is nice, lets try here) and then we leave, all private parties!!!!!!!!and we go back to where we began…just around the corner from metro

so we order some tapas and a drink and talked about process project.
where is it going?
what do we need to do now?

so we are thinking:
1. all of us need to get onto this blog so we can all contribute: ask an adolescent how to do it if it is difficult.
2. we are going to have fun times together it seems: we are on the hybrid path!!!!!!  we think a Chef in her kitchen could be  a good idea to visit;  we could ask Brenda the owner of  Mondos and see if she will allow us in!  Mondos is a very popular organic restaurant in West End. Fabulous food!
3. We go to the great forests and meet with the wombats! well, we may not be able to fly to Tasmania but we will be able to go somewhere either near Nikki or near us here in Brisbane.
Nature is the greatest advocate of hybridity! lets copy her!
4. Any more suggestions?
5. Nikki we did not discuss this, but to save you always having to come here, perhaps we could also go there?  Just a thought. Trying to think creatively how to keep us moving forward when we all have outrageous schedules. Any suggestions?
6. The culmination of this work is June, 2011.   i have suggested  either early June or late June. What is that like for you both?

well i have tried to upload photos of the evening,  and they are rejecting so something about the site may be not working right now.
will upload them tomorrow.

ok, come on. lets start the blog!!!!!!!!!!
Call to Arms!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cheers to all of you
and thank you Metro for taking us out for tapas and a glass of bubbly.  very kind!!!!!!!

margi
PS. here is our address for our blogpage

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=116670625304647151&postID=588083896331743658

thinking of process.
thinking of making art.
thinking of the artist and where that artist sits in the middle of their own life.i saw Boiling Point last night, a young threesome of choreographers. they moved powerfully, and they walked up a wall, many times
they defied gravity
how do we as artists
defy gravity
those objects, people, ideas, beliefs that pull us to the floor?

as senior (?) surely not
artists (not you two, but me, yes, i am in that category. you both are still in mid career…that sounds a whole lot better)

i wish to do something:
ok
i will say it
i want (and have always wanted)
to work with nurturing people
and i do
i have a wonderful collaborator
i have wonderful students
and wonderful young artists with whom i work on a semi regular basis (depending on their writing motivation)

i do have what i have dreamed of.

and i want to say this: i did not realize that i had it.
i have always wanted ‘a company’: but how does one do that if one is not living in the eastern part of Europe (where you can live well as an artist!

but in a wonderful weird way i do: they just aren’t at the same place at the same time.
thats all.
and if we think of Quantum Physics. that is possible!

as i write this, i am eating blue cheese, poppyseed crackers, hot salami and a beautifully soft red wine.
my dog is sitting at my feet. he was run over yesterday. he survived. we always do. life’s like that.

margi

Recently, I have just been involved, and will continue to be involved, in a writing project with three young emerging writers.  we meet on a Saturday afternoon at my lounge studio in  Pullenvale, a converted lounge room.  The writers (including myself) use multimodal artforms to access story.  This is not a fast process necessarily, though once the idea takes hold, nothing can stop it.  the works that they are developing are all related to grief, loss and/or identity.  Powerful stuff and it is a privilege to nurture them. They present their newly created works at the end of the afternoon, and we discuss what we felt, saw and dreamed.
Good stuff.margi

hi everyone,
i am thinking continually about the importance of process over product, and have some articles that may be interesting for you to read so i will attach one of them when i alert you to this post.
i’m sitting in Boys, a great coffee shop at QUT urban village (what does that mean, an urban village) Kelvin Grove. It is a lovely piece of home, with Luke and Chris making standout coffees and i just tasted some remarkable poached eggs and tomatoes. so needless to say i am feeling comfortable and cared for.  someone at the next table only ate one of his eggs, and that old expression that i was brought up with, and perhaps you also  heard (expressions have a habit of being multigenerational), “what about all the starving people in China….[or wherever] and that throws me into overwhelmingness.  why are we so lucky? and i know that we often laugh when we are reminded of that famous book, but why are we the lucky country?so that is where i am right this minute. processing food.  but also processing language.  i have been lecturing this year, as you know, and i have had some powerful interactions with students of late, where there is a little bit of irritation (perhaps) with their grades.  Words  such as “perplexing”, “that is just insulting” and expressions like “would i get a higher mark if i thought like you”.(please remember these are now out of context)..and this makes me  wonder about the power of words.

How do we mark papers and still sit in the process realm: that it is the journey, not the mark? how can a I communicate to so many students at the same time and get it “right”…impossible perhaps? but that is the task i have set for myself, (that is one of my process projects!) committing to sending articles on a very regular basis, to keep the channels of communication open and growing, continuing to stay connected in the hope that we will grow very fine collaborative therapists.

i am, right now, thinking that the old fashioned way has got it right:
No overt involvement.
Just turn up.
Then no one gets hurt.

but what a dull as dishwater world that could become.

any thoughts?

the last few days have been quite something…
went to the acropolis yesterday morning to admire the giant marble structures - on high in the white bright light that still gleams from the height of classical civilisation… then wandered (somewhat overwhelmed and full of kind spirit) into the grimy downtown area of Athens toward the national archeological museum
my companion J then got robbed/pick pocketed (lost her purse and all her cards) on the metro and we ended up in a police station that was indescribably bleak
- dark narrow stairways, locked rooms and we got an up close glimpse through a door into
an interrogation room where about 10 foreign/Gypsy/Indian apparently drugged up guys were variously lying on the floor or edgily pacing the room/ punching the air
with cops bringing in plastic bags full of ‘evidence’.
everyone smoking smoking.
wild!!! i wish i’d filmed it!
it was a glimpse into Hades
needless to say they couldn’t help us.
(all sorted now, with some drama)

then later in the evening there we were again back with the gods in the brand new acropolis museum
the acropolis and the new acropolis museum make a compelling double act.
we were in the museum at night and the fragmented marble bodies float in tableau against the glass with the theatrically lit acropolis as a backdrop.
achingly beautiful.
seeing the elegant towering caryatids close up from 360 degrees in the museum a delicious experience… braided hair down their backs

this morning at the Cycladic museum we saw an exhibition of very early figures, pottery and ornament from the Danube region dating back to 5-6,000 BC.
truly breathtaking, sophisticated simplicity. beautiful geometric designs and small animals and models of houses. the care, the detail and their scale does make me gasp and swoon with delight.

Hello everyone,i absolutely know i am talking to no one out there, but it is still lots of fun to think about process especially when we are involved in making work. i will make sure i send you this link by email.

right now terror sits quite closely to me because i am in the middle of writing an autoethnographic performance about the therapist/artist and i am terrified that it will not be a useful piece of work for others to witness; yet i think if we start with such a premise we will not get very far in creating work.

this weekend i was in byron at a resort: it was Bill’s management christmas party, and we stayed in a place that has remarkable waterways, and we can walk on the boardwalk for what seems like kilometres looking at exquisite water lillies, tall tall trees, the Byron surf nothing-beats-it; and of course good quality champagne.

Here are two signs that were along the path that you may resonate with:

“Life can only take place in the present moment. if we lose the present moment we lose live”

What do you think?
I am so not wanting to lose the present moment,

Warmest
Margi

I am reflecting on when we met for that 12 hour stint where we played in the studio and then in the gallery and finally at the Stanford HOtel.  This was before Julia Gillard was elected prime minister. we saw her in the bar and left her along.This was the image that Brian loved, at Bondi Beach, and the artist removed the swimmers so you could only witness the water currents moving.  then Nikki took an image of the real bondi beach and sent it to us.  Nicki also wrote this:

ps… whilst i have your attention
i keep thinking about that video image you led us to at GOMA Brian
the invisible bodies moving through water.  and then i read this:
in an introduction to George Bataille’s   Cradle of Humanity - Prehistoric Art and Culture :

‘Bataille’s ruminations on the passage from animal to man proceed by denials and negations, rejections in turn of animal, self, and world, only to return him to his point of departure,
his brute, contingent, material animality. an experience of existence as oblivion, of life lived like water in water. This new world of animality is animate, sacred, a world of holy things.’
(Stuart Kendall)

i loved finding that - life lived like water in water ….

and then Dan wrote this:


Hi Everyone!

Apologies for the delayed silence. I had this email sent to you last week but it was screened for profanity. Yikes! I am being censored! So after nearly a month-and-a-bit after our meeting in June, I thought I’d distill what I heard/ observed into a bit of a plan with some clear actions for you to respond to me with. After speaking with Liz, I am taking on the role of Project Coordinator. So I’ll be your go-to person on all things Afternoon.

Proviso
So just to revisit what we’re actually doing. We’re looking at an:
* Exploration of hybrid performance …
* with Windows into the process along the way
* And an involvement beyond the 3 of you (cue young practitioners – not necessarily artistic)

Why you were chosen?
* Because you are career-long independents!
* Because you champion partnerships and collaborations with people younger than yourselves!
* Because you have remained contemporary!

Outlay of Project (based on your meeting):
* 3 more face-to-face meetings comprised of all of you where you will each “experience” another skill or form that is not widely considered “artistic”.

Like Nikki’s archaeology/ archival story – if you remember that. And you will all have this experience TOGETHER (as requested). So as opposed to partnering with  a young person, you’ll all encounter a younger person working in a field that is not your own for a day of creative and artistic stimulation! Perhaps drawing links between their process and yours or something about their practice and yours. It may horseriding. It may be diving. It may be engineering. It may be stamp collecting. You guys get to choose!

* 1 final intensive weekend
Similar to the first, we’ll have a final show and tell of what you’ve learnt about yourself, your process and each other at the end of the journey. It doesn’t need to be performative (but it certainly can be) but something quite informal and lovely. The exact shape of this will become known – I am confident!

* Windows
The windows then can be a Tumblr or a Blog that we set up for you. The only obligation you have to this electronic space is to post something every month – of course, you can certainly exceed this! This online portal will then be taken “public” half way through the project so people can see what you’ve been up to!

If we’re all in agreeance about the above, I can provide the next step which will be about choosing fields and locking down dates!

What do we think?

And so we journey, all of us totally involved in our own research and performance, yet at the same time still in some weird and wondrous way connected…or is that just me?

some more images from the library that may remind us of what we loved:

here is Brian and Nikki having a look at some of the very strong images at GOMA. June, 2010.
So we will get together again soon, and meanwhile will continue to record the unfolding.

hello you guys i sent an invitation to you then couldn’t find the link again but i have now
so please get on the blog and spill your beans,
m