19/11 Suzie Howell Talk
I am writing notes throughout the guest lecture & in response to it so these might be rough. But I forgot that this is the best way to make the most of lectures, rather than listening and regurgitating at the end.
materiality of the studio space - taking things into a separate dimension
In the room, in the conversations & in myself there is a lot if what I would identify as fear. But perhaps the people who deliver it, outside of myself, have no idea or no influence over the fact that I am reading fear into it. Perhaps what it was when it was sent out, was excitement, enjoyment, and hope. I can feel the change even when I open my mind to the idea of it.
Using it as a way of processing, thoughts. It makes sense, because things naturally grow out from themselves, repeat, contain and are contained in fractals of themselves. So processing will always lead to, and contain, more processing.
How could I apply this? Paying attention to some of the things I am drawn to doing. Welding, because I am drawn to the philosophical act of welding. What do I want to weld, and to what? I want to hold things together in permanence. But I want to retain the ability to separate things again too, I want a material that goes both ways.
Introducing colour because I want to philosophically ‘colour in’. To play in the way that children play. Why is that?
Distance (2019- Ongoing)
Exhibited at GLUE
Panic and time, two feelings that have come up more and more for me while I have been exploring the past/ present.
I can definitely relate to this discomfort with being. It is the reason I wanted at one stage to call this project ‘all of us are struggling to be here’. I understand so completely in this moment. Maybe that is why I am here, today, feeling a bit pushed and stretched by the experience of time.
‘Creating your own landscape’
I am really interested in this! I love the idea (I am not sure that this is what she meant though) of taking both colour and film images in places so you can put the two together again. Or more aptly maybe, mixing together different landscapes, the ongoing present of colour, and the stuck past of black and white.
The words of Louis Stopforth
Rearranging and twisting the possibilities of the single image, she aims to search for something closer to reality.’
Is this the relationship of colour and black and white?
Colour is an ongoing present. It must be and experiment (like the rust is) is must stay alive and fresh.
The black and white images are a structural thing which can be chipped away at, tuned into a more and more perfect form (for carrying the weight around it)
A bowl of tears to drink from (?)
Like in a dream, the thing you are running after, always out of reach. Like running on a hamster wheel. Certainty in life is something you do, not something you grasp.
Going back into the GLUE spirit. I think it is easy to get lost, I have been lost hoping that I will do one thing which buys me a ticket to go through the eye of the needle and out into the separate world which only exists through that validation. It is absolute bullshit, I know that. Whatever I am doing is what I am doing, if I decide that it hits a wall if nobody else saves it, it will. If I decide that it will leave the ground and carry me through the rest of my life, it will. There’s no magic in it, that is just the way things work.
I think some tension exists in many aspects of life, like career and art stuff, that doesn’t exist at all in my family life and relationships. Recognising that alone, means shedding light on the whole thing. I behave in a way with my partner and my family that guarantees- to the extent that I am able- a nurturing environment for those relationships. I do that because there is no question in my mind about those aspects of my life. I want only one thing, and that is to do the best thing I can to help them grow. So what about everything else? Why is it hard to have the same intention?