TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Friday, August 1, 2008

8:18 AM
Posted by jodi rose

Well, I've survived the ISEA maelstrom, just!
Had a fantastic time, various art openings, conference talks, meetings on streets and in corridors, hundreds of australians in town. Good to have a burst of familiar faces and voices to assuage the homesickness, although I fluctuate between not wanting to leave Singapore and being totally thrilled about going back to Berlin, with a tinge of sadness at not making it back down under this time.

Still doing everything I can to make this haphazard life work, that includes careening wildly around just a little bit longer, following the syren call of those cables, wherever they take me.

Had some good constructive feedback on the installation, both positive and the critical points about image quality, size, and the use of visual elements. There's an entire lexicon of expanded cinema that I need to explore, and think through presentation and performance in that realm. One of the questions at my talk was 'didn't I feel that the sound was poetic or strong enough on it's own?' My answer is, on the contrary, I am still deeply intrigued by the sound alone, and find the purely aural incredibly satisfying. It's just that need to cross into a wider audience, give something that people who maybe don't have such a strong relationship with sound to find ways into the work - and yes, something to put in a physical space. Which has always been my weak point, hence 'conceptual sound artist'... Still, think this is the most resolved it's been yet, the placement of objects in space... had good positive feedback about the distributed nature of the piece, (spread out along 15-20m corridor), and many people enjoyed the content and format of the tiny videos and having to stroke your ear against the speakers to listen closely. I tried listening to another work through headphones, and in the space, it's still hard to cancel out all the other works, so was never going to be perfect. Somehow the mix of different sounds between pieces works well in most places too - cosmin and marie-helene's humming aurora, blends with andreas and vladimir's mongolian landscape atmosphere, while tad's robot punk gamelan orchestra rings out over everything.

Today is documenting, wrapping up process with another meeting... definitely set some interesting ideas in motion, who knows what will come of it!

Taking solace in the words of Rebecca Solnit, reading 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost' by the pool at Sarah and Kate's hotel when it all got too much last week. She talks about being lost in the most beautiful poetic way, very inspiring and reassuring:

'To lost yourself is a voluptuous surrender; lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away.'

This is very satisyfing in terms of being deep into a process that seems a long way from some final destination or certainty of any outcome:

'Leave the door open for the unknown; the door into the dark.' Quoting philosopher Meno from the Socratic dialogues: "How will you go about finding that thing, the nature of which is totally unknown to you?"

'This is the basic tactical question in life. The things we want are transformative, and we don't know, or only think that we know, what is on the other side of that transformation.

Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration... How do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territories, about becoming someone else?'

It's amazing when you can feel yourself in that state of becoming, and be somewhat aware of the choices you make, but still give up control, to a voluptuous surrender that may take unexpected paths.

Continuing with Rebecca:

'For artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or form or tale that has not yet arrived, is what must be found. It is the job of artists to open doors, and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar...
it is where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own..'

Which reminds me of a conversation I had about creativity, with Lonce and a visiting engineering professor at NUS who we ran into after a meeting with Prof. Nakatsu. The visiting prof asked wether we thought children or adults were more creative? In response to our answers, he quoted a recent book on the subject, saying that although children have access to that unlimited, 'pure' or naive imaginatoin, that to remain creative as an adult requires a far deeper level of creativity, in finding both the discipline and context to express and give form to the imagination. Interesting.

Anyway, back to getting lost 'Scientists too, live always at the edge of mystery, the boundary of the unknown... but they transform the unknown into the known, while artists get you out onto that dark sea.'

I love that. Think it's the title of my next work.
"Out onto that dark sea"

She goes on to quote Keats, 'When a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without an irritable reaching after face and reason'.

Although maybe that's a gender thing, women seem much more able to cope with the irrational and uncertain... although of course it's human to find ways towards resolution, to want to make patterns and order and sense of things.

Finally, she talks about the origins of the word 'Lost', from the ancient Norse, for disbanding your army, falling out of formation and going home 'los.'

'I worry notw that many people never disband their armies, never go beyond what they know. Advertising, alarmist news, technology, incessant busyness, and the design of public and private space, conspire to make it so...

And there is another art of being at home in the unknown, so that being in its midst isn't cause for panic or suffering, of being at home with being lost.

Being in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts'.

Well, at least I know I've got that one covered pretty thoroughly, if nothing else I'm at home with mystery, uncertainty and the unknown. Bring it on!