Today I had a really great meeting with my residency mentor, Ben. I had a chat with him about my first creative workshop exploration on Vorticism and he was really excited about some of the questions which were raised.
I had tried to change the 'shape' of the theatre space by creating a spiral of pebbles with a candle in the middle, and when my fellow workshoppers arrived I asked them to walk around the space and react to things and change things if they wanted to. It turned out that everyone was reluctant to go near the spiral or walk through it, or mess it up. When we had a chat about it, the general consensus was that it had felt like a sacred space, and slightly pagan. I thought that was an interesting response because I hadn't intended it to be that, and as we interogated it further it became clear what was being read into it. It felt pagan because I had used elemental objects (pebbles and fire) and the shape of the circle. It felt sacred because it appeared as if a lot of work and detail had gone into it. This is a little off topic for Vorticism, but fascinating anyway.
One of the major ideas we tried to explore was Pound's concept of the 'primary pigment'. We tried to find it in describing an article of clothing, and then we tried to apply those principles to two classic dance styles - the waltz and the tango. We thought we might have found it, but upon reflection I think all we have done is deconstruct it. We need to go back and rebuild it to find the 'most expressive' element. We have only found the 'basic elements'. We did a bunch of other interesting stuff too.
One of the more interesting comments which came out at the end was one person questioning whether these concepts were transferable to text. The next session will look at Pound's poetry and see if we can dive in and identify his concepts in his writing.
One of the questions I had for Ben was whether there was an ending point for these explorations. Can you go for several weeks without producing anything, or is that just wasteful and pointless. His opinion was that this undefined exploration is exactly what I should be focussing on, and in his opinion is raising some really important and interesting questions - I agree with that.
I actually think it was my fear of going into sessions without an outcome in place which made me question it. I just need to be braver about it I guess. I have to remember that one of the important goals for me this year is to allow myself to not be product oriented - to teach myself to be in it just for the exploration, and therefore be open to whatever I can find. Obviously I still have to maintain a focus and trajectory, but I don't have to find a place to stop.
One of the big parts of the discussion with Ben was about what the point of this year is for me. I decided that what I want to do is not find specific answers, but to find the questions I like to ask, and a framework to undertake the investigation engendered by those questions.
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