The second collaboration in the Cross-Pollination series was between Ken Kalfus, a novelist, Cindy Stockton Moore, a visual artist, and Adrienne (aka Swim Pony). This group was very project oriented; the majority of tour time was spent telling story we devised together. Consequently, I chose to focus on the process that lead us to that story and the story itself.
Here. Listen to this while you read. It’ll help you know what to feel.
What do you wanna do?
I dunno.
What do you wanna do?
(first days are funny things)
What do you do to warm up?
What are the mechanics of what you do?
What are the restrictions?
Can I try?
Did you know that the average age of a classical music audience member in 1995 was 55 years old and today it’s 75 years old? The same people have been listening to classical music for the last twenty years.
What’s gonna happen when they die?
Here.
Take this survey.
It’ll tell you what to think.
Don’t worry it opens in a new tab so you don’t lose us.
Also keep the music playing while you do it
And don’t worry. I logged on with Facebook too.
It’s secure.
Y’know what, I lied. I didn’t actually log on with Facebook. I created a password and used my e-mail.
But I’m sure it’s still secure.
Did you feel like the survey answer was true to your personality type?
….did you even take the survey?
Maybe it would be better if I drew a picture to show you what the week was like…
Here.
A. The beginning, and questions about beginnings. An empty room promising [perhaps overwhelming] possibility. Three people sitting on the wooden studio floor, knees up, notebooks open. What if…?
B.
C.
D. Laughing and weaving lies. Stealing from artist statements, personality quizzes, and the Chinese zodiac. What if we winked at the ways we try to tell each other what to think and how to feel? What if we gave the audiences a survey and then assigned them a “personality type” at random?
What’s next for you?
White. Open. Unknown.
This is the feeling I had this morning. This is the premise of this project: Starting from a totally blank canvas.
Not even a canvas. The idea that something has to be painted on. The idea of paint. The idea of having an idea to paint something at all.
Because really, where do a visual artist, a theater maker and writer and harpist logically begin if they want to try and make something together?
This morning I walked into a room with two creators I’d met only once before. I had butterflies in my stomach, big fat ones, like first day of school jitters. We started, carefully, delicately, hesitantly to… What? Carefully try to suss out exactly who the other is and what exactly we might find in this insane thing we’ll be doing.
I thought, “What have I gotten myself into?”
I thought, “I have literally no idea what is going to happen.”
I thought, “Do your best not to fall into things you already know how to do because they are easy, or familiar, or you know how to make them work.”
I thought, “This is terrifying.”
I thought, “It is really tough to know where to begin.”
I thought, “Listen.”
I thought, “Try and stay open to something you’ve never imagined before.”
It is a pace I am so thoroughly uneasy with because it is so thoroughly rare in my regular artistic life. So rare that I allow myself permission not to be in charge, not to have the active working idea, not to try and keep the energy of the room moving forward and productive. As a director, I feel myself wanting to know the answer, wanting to show people their faith in me as leader is secure, wanting to get us on track already towards where we are going.
But all this well-intentioned Midwestern productive attitude-ery also means that you can slip into taking yourself where it’s easiest to lead, rather than really waiting until the very new, very strange, very uncertain thing emerges.
And despite my fear, despite my worry that it feels like nothing is happening, after 8 hours I can see there are some things emerging.
I have put my hands on an instrument I have never touched before. I have watched an artist demonstrate his iterative process – one that normally takes acetate and photoshop and a vinyl cutting machine – on a sideways laptop screen with a piece of tracing paper, some scissors and tape. I’ve enjoyed seeing an actor confront a harpist on stage and I’ve seen that interaction photographed and then turned into a looping gif on a computer screen with a different selection of the musician’s playing as it repeats again and again and again and again and again. I’ve talked about why a video on Vine might be a meditative experience and what it would mean to create audience customize-able art.
I’ve shared a vision for a super strange, exciting and foreign line of inquiry. And despite my fears, I think it’s pretty interesting. Even if I have no idea of how to evaluate it yet. Maybe especially because of that.
I think I also had a moment where I realized that contrary to how I feel on almost every other artistic project I work on, in trying strange, potentially crazy ideas with these two I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
I also ate a lunch of donuts and fried chicken. That was pretty good too.
At the end of the day I am tired. It is work, searching so hard across the ocean of discipline to find some common ground. But tired in a good way. In a way that makes me excited to get up tomorrow and try again.
Thanks Nick and Liz. I’m excited about more to come…
A
The latest “blind date” from Cross Pollination! Today we meet:
Muscularity mixed with grace. This was a theme that emerged in both their applications.
Whether expressed through a virtuosic solo on maracas or the twisting expertness of a trapeze act, this pairing grew partly from a sense that both acrobatics and jazz are art forms that require intense training, years of study in almost formulaic muscle memory, in order to achieve a sense of freedom and flight in the moment of performance. They are also both mediums that depend on deep trust – of the instruments/objects used to perform, of the people who join us in that performance – in order not to falter and fall.
Francois: “Through all the years of my career I have experienced the benefit of collaboration with other artists many times. This is something that I seek out in
my everyday life and constitutes an essential part of my creative process.”
Lauren has mentioned to me in the past that she is often seen as unique in her work for being a woman who acts as an acrobatic “base” or support (a position usually occupied by male performers). It strikes me that perhaps (though I will admit to having had only the first tastes of the banquet that is jazz music) it is also unique to have a percussionist as the leader of a jazz ensemble. In this way both of these creators strike me as participating in tradition while simultaneously innovating within it. It also seems as if your part in your artworks creates a kind of foundation, a ground floor on which everything else can be built.
Lauren: “I see a powerfully interdisciplinary potential in circus, as an art form that straddles genre, from dance theater to variety-hall burlesque.”
And there’s a parallel too in the way that their works re also a vehicle to express personal identity: be it in the way we are allowed to see a female body moving through the air or in the awareness of how one’s Caribbean roots can be expressed through pulsating waves of rhythm.
Pick three adjectives that describe the stuff you make:
Lauren: feminist, muscular, inventive
Francois: Unique, thoughtful, Cuban
Credit: Alan Jackman
This was a conversation that wove its way through all these things and more: Lauren talking about the way that the aesthetics of ballet are sometimes necessary in trapeze but sometimes not, Francois talking about how standard jazz improvisation has become a default that people expect but might not really strengthen the composition of the music.
Thanks to both of you!
– A
Cross Pollination Coffee Dates continue with a profile of two more amazing artists. Today we meet:
One of the things I really liked about Elizabeth’s application was her questioning of how visual media can (perhaps may need to) enrich the experience of her music. I loved this statement in particular:
“My experience as merely a musical performer and producer isn’t going to cut it anymore.”
What better attitude towards tackling collaboration between genres than this? And it’s clear in her samples that this is already an avenue of exploration. She a musician thinking about the future of her music genre and she’s created a body of work that explores how visual performance can help a modern audience interface with a classic art form. From what she shared, it looks like most of that exploration has thus far been with other live performance genres (there are some great dance clips in particular in her sample) and it made me wonder what would happen if the visual media that her music confronted wasn’t also in motion (or at least not in an obvious way)?
Similarly, I liked the way Nick is testing the way his audience’s interface with his work. He creates his images fast – drawing multiple illustrated versions of real life photos in rapid succession and then combining them into the final product. His pieces in some cases are also not simply static two-dimensional objects, but works that change with the passage of time (as in the installation at Eastern State Penitentiary) or with perspective (as in his “Into the Woods” series). And in this way he strikes me as a visual artist perfectly primed to explore a collaborator whose output is performance-based.
He included this in his application:
“I am also interested in how one medium translates into another – what is lost and what is gained, what language about process, creation and critique are shared and what is untranslatable between mediums.”
And this is almost to the letter the initial spark that caused me to create the Cross Pollination program in the first place. I had just finished a conversation with a peer artist, a modern dancer, and thought:
“Wow. Their starting point, their sense of narrative, the frames with which they view their work are SO different, even though theater and dance are so similar in most ways. What would it mean if I had to make performance for an audience in the way a visual artist does? What about if that person had to think of their ‘static’ object as moving through time and space?”
In our meeting it was quickly clear that all three of us are solid in our current artistic methodologies but really interested in the possibility for what can happen when we aren’t just stuck in our rehearsal room, studio, or practice hall. Both had previous experiences that they shared working with a person outside of our discipline – for example Nick with a performer in creating that Into the Woods series, Liz in an avid search to combine visual components like dance into her performances – and discovered a totally new kind of thing based on the collaboration.
Pick three adjectives that describe the stuff you make:
Liz: Alive, Multi-Discipline, Engaging
Nick: Graphic, Uncomplicated, Funny
This trio also seemed interested in figuring out how to make our work interesting and useful to current audiences by hooking people in with something novel – glow in the dark paint in Nick’s illustrations, a shadow play with Liz’s music, involving the audience more directly as a character in mine. That we all are intrigued by the way that we need to make sure our work isn’t just for our peers but for a lot of different people feels really ripe. We also talked about trying to really stretch ourselves past the limitations of our current ideas of collaboration. I came away really interested in getting performance (theater, music) to unseat the idea of theater as a time-based performance and think more like a visual artist – with a sense a presentation that can be interacted with in lots of ways.
At one point we were talking about the satisfaction with trying a totally new form – me taking up the piano, Liz talking about the feeling of playing recorder for the first time and Nick saying he’s always wanted to try his hand at the banjo. Nick joked that our residency time could be employed making a “band” out of these and I said, “You joke, but what if?”
And though we all laughed at the thought, I bet if I proposed it, I bet they’d be willing to try it out.
Which I think is a really great sign.
– A
Today you’ll meet the first two of the 30 Cross Pollination finalists. I’ll share a bit about both their initial applications and the conversation I had with them this past Monday.
Nora Gibson (ballet choreography, video, still image)It was obvious to all of us on the reader panel that this is what both of your artworks have in common: a deep interest and exploration in kinetic exploration and how that functions through time. How interesting might it be then to give two artists who’ve studied these elements via different means a chance to share their research.
Brad: As a multi-discipline artist, I frequently generate inspiration through combining disparate media types, and the juxtaposition of incongruous ideas.
Dancing equations…
There was a way in which the bodies in the dance samples that Nora presented were abstracted, almost mechanical, as if the human beings had become manifestations of forces. Everything about the presentation of the two dancers in “Divergent Iteration” (a name by the way that could be the title of one of Bradley’s pieces) from the shifting lights to the static and ping of the soundtrack emphasize the way these bodies function like two interconnected vectors pushing and pulling each other in response to constantly shifting stimuli. And in Solo Phase, there was a similar kind of algorithmic exploration of a single dancer layered over top her self in time.
Pick three adjectives that describe the stuff you make
Nora: formal, spatial, beautiful
Brad: compelling, complex, humorous
Brad’s piece Tetra-Cycling
That simplicity, grace and wistfulness of the single dancer split into two, rotating around herself in Nora’s pieces felt like the same kind of engrossing pull we felt look at Bradley’s “Tetra-Cycling” sculpture. And when I first saw Bradley’s sculpture “The Sway of Public Opinion” I couldn’t get over the way this combination of metal pieces added up to something so human, something so familiar. The combination of rotation and undulation of this work felt like dance.
Also, every single one of the readers is crazy about Mechanicards. This one in particular blows my mind.
There was also something exciting about the fact that both of you also have interests and talents in other mediums: Nora’s in video and still image clearly weaving its way into her performance practice and Bradley’s astonishing whole second career in music. Nora’s still images of her dancers with links to these works on video pasted onto walls and newspaper boxes gave a sense that the dance could have an infinite audience. Brad’s exploration into moving theatrical sets similarly changes the kind of audiences that are able to view his works.
Nora: In collaboration, I’ve witnessed my work simultaneously becoming more “itself,” AND becoming radically something else
A picture from Nora’s application
What’s exciting about this combo is that we have Nora turning humans into stunning mathematical equation machines and Bradley who manages to take inanimate gears and forces and create living balletic motion.
When we met up in person my first impressions were that these were two artists who were open and receptive to a sense of experimentation and play. They WANT what Cross Pollination is about and they are so excited to try something new.
We talked a lot about embracing failure and how risk is a huge aspect of what creates real artistic growth. We talked about where the initial conceptions and research of our artistic products happen – for Nora and I in our rehearsal spaces and for Brad mostly in his head – and how that interplays with execution and precision of outcome. They also both really resonated with the idea that I talked about of looking at the frame around your process – seeing if you can uncover the tacit assumptions in how you make things to really see if you can question everything about how you make.
Artistic engineering
I know I really want to see Brad’s making of a sculpture in real time. That he was an engineer and has to have such a precise sense of creation methodology is really interesting. And when Nora talked how she approaches creating choreography as a long series of tiny research projects I felt a real kinship in the sense of building up little pieces one at a time and then assembling them into a cohesive narrative whole.
Cheers Nora and Brad! Thanks for an awesome meeting. – A
Is there anything lamer than quoting a David Foster Wallace commencement address to help make a point about artistic awareness?
Probably not.
Which I guess means I’m going to do one super lame thing today. And right after, do something else that’s super not-lame to counterbalance.
Ready for that quote?
“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water?’
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes,
‘What the hell is water?!’
The point of the fish story is that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about…
– David Foster Wallace
As artists, working in different genres, sometimes in sub-sets of genres, sub-sets of sub-sets of genres and so on, there are lots of givens about how we work that we take for granted. There are times when the way our work is made seems so self evident that it is almost as natural as breathing the air around us.
Sometimes our working methods can be like the water.
One of the greatest gifts that came from my time a few years back as a Live Arts LAB fellow was to have the chance to talk to my fellow fellows who were dancers. There were more than a couple sessions as a group where it actually blew my mind a little to learn that some of the assumptions I make about creating were totally different than theirs. Things that I take for granted were sometimes just not part of the conversation these other amazing artists were engaging with. Sometimes things were the same but employed in different ways. Sometimes the focus and priority were radically different.
There were times these conversations reinforced my assumptions about art, made me that much more sure in why I did things the way I did. Other times it inspired me to shift my own process and just try what it would mean to create without certain conventions about narrative or structure or audience responsibility. In all cases, these conversations made me more aware of the water around me. Gave me choice about what kind of givens I was swimming in.
I finished that LAB period thinking:
“Wow. If the creative process for two mediums that are almost identical in most aspects can be so different and thought provoking, what would it mean to have this conversation with creators who are even less alike?”
And also:
“Can a visual artist teach a singer something about music? Can a chef give a dancer a chance to unseat their idea of what it means to move? Can a light designer change the way a writer thinks about their words?”
And then finally:
“I really want to find out the answer.”
And luckily, thanks to the Knight Arts Challenge, I found a means to do just that. The result is something I’m calling Cross Pollination. It’s a project that actively seeks a way to dump water all over the floor. It’s a chance to explore without the pressure of a full performance or product. It’s a chance to get paid (and reasonably well, I might add) to open up one’s horizons and cross breed with another artist. It’s a chance to find some crazy mutt hybrid mash up that the world has never seen before. It’s a chance to find out more about the water you’re swimming in.
And I’m so so so excited to begin.
Want more details? Click below. It’s all in there…
And if you ever need to quickly get to that application without searching the blog just CLICK HERE!
And of course a HUGE thank you to the John S. and James L Knight Foundation for making this amazing project happen.
Enjoy!
– Adrienne
swimpony.org 