TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

VIEWING ALL POSTS FOR: NOVEMBER 2010

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

9:06 PM
Posted by jodi rose

I can hardly stand to be in my skin tonight. You know when the desire to change things in your life gets so intense? That you want to take drastic action just to make something happen. Trying to stay peaceful.

I miss this. The intimacy of writing. Knowing that somewhere, another person is reading your thoughts. I used to be surprised when a friend commented on something I had written - 'how on earth did you know that?' I'd ask myself. 'You wrote it in your blog, remember?' they'd reply - since I have the opposite of a poker face. Ah. That's right, a public place.

A lovely artist I met when he gave an arduino workshop here in Berlin even quoted me to myself. From a rant I had once about the disappointment of media art. How the words are so rarely matched by the experience. He said it had informed his entire art practice. My god. The responsibility. Still, we're collaborating now, on the bridge models with sound that I've been wanting to make for ages. He's an absolute genius with making things and has a nice approach to the objectness of objects. I must do those sketches. Tried to get my head around illustrator but it eluded me. Guess I'm still a post-media artist after all.

Just as I was wondering 'where did all the people in my life go?', the phone rang and lovely Miss Sasha was calling me from quilt making in her kitchen to confirm out breakfast date tomorrow. There are so many beautiful friends around but people come and go so often in this city, or you work together and the project finishes, or you just don't make time to meet.

I'm seriously tired of my emotional life taking place through skype, facebook and youtube. Really. Enough. What am I, fifteen? Although I was chatting to a friend who started a wildly successful online presentation company, and he told me at a meeting recently in San Francisco, he found himself sitting with all these high level tech dudes, showing each other their favourite cool stuff on youtube. And the Guggenheim Museum just had a call for youtube videos in a show.
Anyway, I digress. Embodied would be preferable.

Maybe it's time to resurrect the confessional blog. I still plan to create a wildly coherent and fabulous web presence - collecting together all the traces of activity from the past few years that somehow evaporate in the relentless pace of cranking out the art projects.
But for tonight, I can only work with what I have.

That's the thing with life, I guess. However much you may want to make that leap of faith, and totally reinvent yourself - unless you're going to disappear to the other side of the world (oh wait, already done that!) then you need to start with where you are. Hell.

There was a point to this; Ah yes, that's right.
I need to ask for some guidance. Wherever it comes from is absolutely fine. Any form, any shape. Please, whatever you've got I'll take it. Thought it was 'an agent' that I need, but really it's even more essential than that. Having stripped my life back to this point, I kind of need to know what on earth to do next?

Give it your best shot, universe! Guide me, please.

Monday, November 22, 2010

3:03 PM
Posted by jodi rose

In between April - November?

Glitchen, Sonic Exquisite Corpse created for SoundFjord Sonic Arts Gallery, London, UK

Musique du Pont Volant stereo remix in Re(SOUND) Hunt Gallery Webster University, St Louis, USA

Norse Bridge Apocalypse exhibited in Dragonfly Ambient Arts Festival, Falköping SE

Musique du Pont Volant stereo remix at emergeandsee Festival, Stattbad Wedding, Berlin, DE

TRACES - Transcultural Research Artist Curator Exchange Series, program supported by the European Commission for Culture and Education
Co-Curator & Co-Editor with Transcultures, Mons, BE

coming up in Barcelona - a work in the exhibition:
Inauguración ¨Exposición ¨Borrón y Cuenta Nueva¨
Taller ¨El Lavadero¨
Calle Sant Rafael 14

Opening 2nd December 20:30

Monday, November 22, 2010

2:52 PM
Posted by jodi rose

Hi. It's been a while.
Took three attempts to remember the login address.
Only two for the password.

So, where have I been and what's my excuse?

Well, let's just say that last project nearly killed me.
Recurring dream of faking my own suicide off a bridge. Decided it was probably best to take some time off. Think about life, what the hell was I doing with it and where do I go next...

That took most of the summer. Not sure how it turned into late November. Still have no plan.

Perhaps I should to mention at this point that there was also positive feedback to the Bridgeland caper. Someone told me it was their favourite event in the festival. My wonderful musician Guy said this person is hard to please and very critical; so it wasn't just ego-stroking. Perhaps if the build-up hadn't been for anything more than a very strange and esoteric experience of bridge music, it wouldn't have disappointed. Still, the curators were all begging to have one of our bridge team's gold ribbon 'Bridgeland' ribbons to take home. Anyway, I must learn not to take criticism to heart. "Weigh your publicity, don't read it", that's what they say.

Additionally that you're well and truly sunk when you start to believe your own hype. The trouble is, I don't think it's possible to live the mega-fabulous life that somehow I create in the fictional version of myself.

And by fictional I mean 'very lightly fictionalised' as in 'none of the names have been changed to protect the guilty' and I'd like to claim this was all a lie, or at least partially invented but then I never did quite get the hang of fiction...

It's that see-through face of mine. You can read it like a book. Coming back to the point of this entry. Or re-entry. You see, I've been not-trying to write a book for, oh at least the last five years. I manage a few chapters now and then; but the trouble with a memoir based on your actual life as you're living it is - where the hell is the end? I mean, I can't wait until I die to start the story. I didn't find love and get married on a bridge. I didn't jump. There hasn't been a climactic break-through where I've reached the penultimate bridge and created the global symphony. And yet.

Still there is a tale to tell. So this morning - oh, ok this afternoon for the pedantic amongst you - finds me lying in bed (I got up, had a bath and in despair at trying to get dressed collapsed back in front of the internet) researching which literary agent would best resonate with my work. Since the whole - well I've had this crazy life and written a lot but it's far from coherent and as for a manuscript, umm well I write best to a deadline thing - might be a little off-putting for most agents. I have found a deliciously digital savvy branch of the profession in New York - now the question is which version of the many attempts to get my freeform rambling into some kind of coherence will I pull together and to whom shall I send it?

I've finally realised that unless I write the letter and send the query, it's highly unlikely that any one of these fabulous professionals will stumble across the adventures of bridge girl and invite me to join them.

So, deep breath, I hereby make this my public declaration - by the end of this week I solemnly promise to have collated enough written material to form a decent fifth draft and emailed the query.

I'll keep you posted....