I’m writing this whilst hiding away with suspected COVID. My tests have been unreliable so far but I’m staying indoors besides. Last time I caught COVID it brought my Ulcerative Colitis symptoms out of remission- and aggressively- so I’m understandably concerned about getting it a second time around (albeit having had multiple booster jabs now, which I hope will help). Last time I was also dealing with a lot of stress, which is usually a trigger for flares, so the fact that I’m in a slightly less stressful place now has certainly meant that whilst my guts are unreliable at the best of times, the more serious symptoms have thankfully been in remission. I wrote about my last COVID & flare experience here, if you want to read about such things.
I had a couple of days annual leave from my day job this week: I’d planned 3 uninterrupted studio days, plus a long overdue visit to a friend up north. Both of these aren’t possible now, which is disappointing, but thankfully I’m feeling OK enough to continue with more screen-based work away from the studio, and not feel too stressed about being off work sick. Since my big flare up last year during my residency at Sussex University, I’ve been working on not only acknowledging and accepting that I am disabled, but also making changes to how I work and live that better fit my strengths, skills and abilities. In a capitalist society, we place a lot of value on productivity, income-generation and newness. Everyone suffers under these rules, and any artist knows how easy it is to hop on instagram and see that other artists are Doing More Than You And Deserve More Success.
A big part of my recent Arts Council funding budget was to develop some of my digital skills and learn new ones- namely Blender at Media Training, Premier Pro with brill artist/teacher Phoebe Cunningham and After Effects, coming up in January. Being able to make more screen-based work is a way for my practice to become more accessible- to myself as well as to others. As a chronically ill person, I am often low on energy and sometimes not able to leave the house, especially during a flare which can last weeks and sometimes months. Knowing that I am developing skills to create new works that can be transferred into a space digitally (eg: emailing a film piece that can be projected, etc) makes me feel much less isolated from the art world. I am able to rearrange all the meetings I had for the next week on Zoom, and attend an online art webinar too, and I’m grateful that these options are more readily available (but only once *everyone* experienced being stuck at home, not just long term sick and disabled people...but that’s an essay for another time perhaps.)
Earlier this month, (during Disability History Month, FFS) the T*ry party continued their long-term attacks on disabled people by announcing they planned to cut benefits because “they can just get jobs working from home now”. I honestly don’t know where to start with this. I’m fairly certain the majority of my substack readers will already be as angry about this as I am so I don’t need to explain why. Of course, we know that the T*ries only value human lives when they are profitable. I don’t think its a case of them not understanding the very real structural issues that need to be resolved in order for disabled people that may be able to work to gain access to skills, equipment, training etc. They want us dead. I really do think it’s that simple.
Under this government its increasingly hard to not feel the weight of your own burden if you’re not continually producing and consuming, so when I was recently introduced to ‘Notes from the Underground’ by RA Walden, it was great to read something so empowering and cathartic. You can buy a copy here and support the artist.
Time
I attended a hybrid conference led by Dance Umbrella, called ‘Reworking Rhythms’. Whilst this was an event that focused on access and inclusion in dance, there was a long discussion on time, and specifically on how different groups of people experience it. The panel itself was diverse and informal, and between them they discussed the existence of ‘Black-time’, ‘Queer-time’ and ‘Crip-time’. When it comes to inclusion, variations of time are what is needed to include varied groups.
I’ve always found the concept of non-linear time exciting- I love time travel films and Star trek episodes with time anomaly plots are often my favourite ones- but after this conference I started thinking about it in less fictional terms. The simple fact is, when you are disabled you often cannot do as much, and sometimes nothing at all. Time starts working very differently. Additionally, as can be the case with myself and many of my disabled friends, during rare periods of having energy, we will cram too much in, in an attempt to ‘make up for lost time’. In hyper-focus mode, I know I can do more than others can in a short space of time, but I can’t switch that mode on and off, and I will likely suffer the consequences of it later (mainly that people can perceive my ‘fast-mode’ to be my standard, and expect it every time).
With this in mind, I’ve had to become more honest with myself about what time means to me. How long things take to do. When this comes to my practice, this means I maybe have one project in me a year. At best. Acknowledging this has allowed me to slow down and apply much less pressure on myself. As someone said in the panel discussion, “it takes the time that it takes”. I’ve scribbled this on my studio wall to remind me!:
I recently visited the Turner Prize, which is down here in Sussex this year, and this particular piece by Ghislaine Leung, ‘Hours’ stood out for other time-based reasons. A large grid shows all the hours in a week, with black squares showing the amount of hours available to the artist for studio time:
Here’s some words on the aforementioned productivity struggle I found from Leung:
“Whatever projection you have about how you should be working as an artist is definitely an internal one. It’s about understanding how the material conditions of your situation have consequences. ‘I have to function in a way that goes against my hormones, that makes it seem like I’m always the same.’ ‘It won’t work if I don’t work 16 hours a day.’ This is my default way of seeing things; then there is my inability to be able to work on the same terms as that fantasy. Maybe it’s not working because you work 16 hours a day. Maybe there is fear of the point of internality or reflection that space might produce. I want to understand the inactive forms of life; it’s not necessarily best that you are always in the visible, active form of production. It’s about not operating on the basis of external validation…
…I have dependents, friends, family, outside the parameter of my artist identity. Do I think of my daughter as a limitation? She’s not a limitation, she’s my life. I don’t want to – politically, emotionally, psychologically – see this as a limitation.”
In the studio
Speaking of studio time, here’s what I have been up to in mine recently:
I’ve been continuing my research into conducive materials for my organs series, and during some pretty chaotic and messy casting tests, rediscovered my love for alginate. Alginate is a commonly used material for creating moulds, but the material is actually really great as a material in itself. It holds water for a long time, has a texture I can only describe as uncooked halloumi cheese and provides the possibility to make some delightful and sometimes hyper-real organic shapes. Once it starts to dry out, it almost returns to its original seaweed form.
Silica-free alginate is a natural polymer material extracted from brown algae: its biodegradable and can be composted, so is preferable for this process for me. Coincidentally, algae also happens to be the lifeform that moss evolved from, as I found out recently whilst reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s lovely book ‘Gathering Moss’, a book that, as well as opening up the fascinating world of mosses, also reminds us to slow down, take our time and notice the importance of the smaller things around us.
I found some moss in our studio entrance (it gets pretty damp in there) and created another piece of music with it. This one feels nice in the brain:
Gallery visits
Last week I was fortunate enough to catch a favourite artist of mine, Sin Wai Kin, in conversation with Planningtorock at the Barbican: two non-binary artists ‘manifesting alternate realities’, who also spoke a lot about Time. Wai Kin also has an exhibition at Soft Opening in London which I managed to see, entitled ‘Portraits’. The main room shows a series of video portraits of the artist embodying different identities, referencing historical artworks and characters from Peking opera. In the adjoining room, painted a bright Chroma green (the green used for ‘green screen’ in visual effects) are the wigs worn in each video portrait displayed on jesmonite busts. I loved seeing this breaking of the fourth wall as part of the exhibition, acknowledging the audience in the ‘performance’ of gendered identities
I was also able to visit IMT Gallery nearby, which has group exhibition ‘Nothing Pure’ currently showing) and WIP space in Walthamstow, for ‘Welcome to Ratcatcher’s Song and Dance Plague Band of Good Dogs’ by Dale Holmes…which I was lucky to catch!
A few extra photos from the immense El Anatsui installation at Tate Modern, and Barbara Walker and Jesse Darling at the Turner Prize, Towner Gallery. I’ve been a Jesse Darling fan for some time now, and would love to see them win, but Barbara Walkers’ work could be a winner also.
Thanks for reading.
K.
News from the biome
As always, news about things people around me are up to:
Resources + Links
https://phoebecunningham.co.uk/
https://danceumbrella.co.uk/event/panel-discussion-reworking-rhythms/
https://rawalden.com/Notes-From-The-Underlands
https://www.frieze.com/article/ghislaine-leung-column-238
https://www.waterstones.com/book/gathering-moss/robin-wall-kimmerer//9780141997629
https://www.softopening.london/