I want to start off by being really cheesy and dedicating this – my first post on my brand new blog, to my dearest Stevie, Sally and Ema! They have all spent a fair bit of time recently persuading me to get over myself enough to “just start… do something… ANYTHING”!!

 

I work, like lots and lots of people do, in a full time (not very well paid) job,  to support an art practice. This practice is rather unsuccessful –  in that I don’t put my work anywhere. It sits in my head, or I get something off the ground but then lack the skills to promote myself or my shows. This is not uncommon. 

 

When I am not sat around doing nothing because I fail to see the point, I am usually obsessively doing some theory on the point of performance to try and understand my compulsion to waist time and money that I don’t have, on creating unknown art… yet I can’t stop myself! I constantly think about performance, the world I am swimming through in a 9-5 daze (or in my case 8:30 – 4 daze), how to express what I feel or interpret, what I interpret (if anything) and why… what’s the point, what’s the point, what’s the point:

 

Why did someone like Nic Green decide to carry around a chair for a month and call it performance? What gave her the drive to conceive of this project, think it was a good idea, with a point to it, and carry it out? Now please don’t miss understand, I really like Nic Greens work… I like that she carried a chair around for a month EVERYWHERE she went… but why? What is it for? What does it do? What’s the point?

 

I have had it said to me that these questions are important to ask yourself, but I am finding them less so. They are stopping me from doing any work at all. This happens to me a lot. I did an MA last year and the same thing occurred… I did bugger all until the last possible moment… only then did I get over it enough to work because I would have failed if I had continued doing bugger all… no matter what theoretical spin I would have been able to put on it!

 

I no longer have the pressure of failing the £3,300 course that I spent a long time scrimping and saving for. I float. I get up, I go to work in a primary school, where I love the children and spend lots of time and energy persuading them that they would like learn to read. I travel well over an hour to get home exhausted with an empty bank account and potter. I go to bed. This is how I float. All the while thinking. And all the while I still haven’t cleaned my flat, washed my clothes, or cleaned out my pet rats (who currently stink by the way)… this is symptomatic of me. I think and struggle to do.

 

I’m not sure that this will change but I’m giving it a go. I am assured that by “just starting” things will take shape and I will understand more. I actually think that this is true which goes part way to explain my obsession with process. I strongly believe that the process is performative. It is temporal, occurs in the moment only to be discarded and undocumented if it doesn’t make the final product. Process as a form of interpretation, of understanding. blah blah blah I’m sure that this will all crop up again sooner or later so I’ll stop going on and leave it at I’m starting!