I was also thinking of doing the performance again. And how parts of it could be public, with other parts alone i the forest again.
I liked the idea of the life-sized bread mannequin. It would have to have some kind of wood? skeleton. And the bread baked around it. It would probably mould. But it would be great to have it in the performance as well as in an installation sense.
Giving out tarot cards seems like an apt approach at performance that is simple enough?
I want to go back to my midterm presentation and remind me what the “ambition” was.
-Produce dissonance in normative systems
-Turn to oblivious, playful, banal and organic means of performance
-Offer alternative positions on a rural queer identity through a queer, playful, abstract and disruptive narrative.
Narrative? What does that mean? Does a narrative need a medium? In my mind its a film immediately but thats too direct.
My medium at midterms was video. And I did enjoy that. I feel like I somehow created a snapshot of the whole project and now I am a bit lost with how to continue...
Whats the narrative from the performance aspects to the digital ideas to the bread matroskas and the peeling away of layers? Breaking bread like ruinology.
I wrote this into my notes:
“These structures are not ruined but they were shaped to become; ruins.”
I also had this fever dream of starting my final presentation fully mute and in my costume for the first minute or so - let’s keep a tab on that.
I am questioning this project.
Questioning what’s at the core of it again. And if finding the core is just another exercise in make-belief (as with identity).
Why am I so obsessed with finding identity, I already established there is no kernel of it probably or at least it is always performed in the way we interlocute with the world.
Am I just a pathetic victim of a mobile class? Middle-class enough to be an academic that can move about space chosing their bubble wisely and having chosen one that is most comfortable while leaving behind true grit and character-building experience out of comfort? Or lack of compassion or backbone?
Would not a well-intentioned project work at that area of dissonance without shying away from it through shy abstraction and bookish artspeak?
Is it a project about me, me, me only?
I feel like I am hunting these inklings around, making them jump and dance in little rituals, posing them to be aesthetically pleasing and validate my artistic practice through outside approval?
Have I still not found what this is actually tackling? Or do I still believe that any bigger systemic issue is not worth tackling in a designey way because we can’t change anything anyhow?
Where does aim to create a productive dissonance come from and would I really gain from it?
And am i really creating a dissonance if I am just performing it in safe circley, dissecting it and using it for aesthetic and academic purposes; while in the spaces it would practically emerge I am too shy to engage in it really?
Am I just gutless, too craven?
Questions I so eagerly tried to avoid framing avoidance as intuitive practice? Laziness guised as a defiant form of creation?
I kind of keep coming back to the question of narrative? What story I want to tell and then my mind tells me immediately that I don’t have any because I had it too good or took reality in too naively to remember.
And then if convincing me otherwise it circles back to being a project about how I gave myself the egocentric permission to craft a narrative out of my own existence, without anyone else in mind.
All this theory talks about things that did speak to me strongly in a way but bridging that gap is hard and I do believe it cannot be bridged linearly; meaning: theory -> work of art
I hold this personal belief that a work of art should be theorised on and not the other way around but that other way around was what I’ve been taught and might be the smarter way?
Can I really think this reading will influence my work in a magical way without me doing much or is that laziness again?
I sat on a swing just now, a little past midnight chainsmoking two cigarettes after not being able to not smoke, so I went out and got cigarettes from the vending machine.
The playground was just around the corner but I never went before and now it feels melodramatic and nostalgic already knowing I will move out of this place in a month or so.
It’s like there is this underlying fear that I will finish a project and it will have been made for me, by me. Which tragically I don’t think is that worth it at all.
Who will feel anything from this if I can barely make myself feel any certain way about it?
I think; people will feel drawn towards my experience, feel represented in it somewhere but then again is trusting that enough?
What the hell why is this bread man running there again? Again again the same old stuff just not tied to any phony big systemic issue anymore just me me me?
Should I film cars of queer people on the countryside?