As part of my Co-MISSION residency at Links Hall I am working to engage my process more transparently through the tools of social media. I admit I’m finding that really difficult: to share something that isn’t “done” or “polished” or to “give away” the “secrets” of the work...to reveal the material of the work before it is whole.
I ask myself where this compulsion developed...in capitalist marketing techniques. To secret away my “product”. To build anticipation for the grand reveal. To get you, my audience to buy into me as a practitioner.
It’s not healthy, harvesting your attention, stringing myself along waiting to culminate, like giving us both artistic blue b*lls...
It’s not ethical: hiding away the labor of this process, when the endpoint could be erased for any number of reasons—including a global pandemic that has claimed more than two and a half million lives (at least)...
It’s not a sustainable terms of engagement: to bear the fruit of my labor and the labor of collaborators or co-conspirators without taking in each leaf, each branch, each trunk, and each root that made the fruit bloom.
It’s unrealistic to presume things operate so linearly.
While I give us all the grace to move away from SM (which is totally operating under those same systems, and further violently shadow banning Black creators, creators of color, queer creators, and creators in general) I’m giving myself the grace to share this fucking screenshot of a video I made in the studio this week that may never make it “into the work” but is teaching me something on my way to nowhere.
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Cover Image Description: Three unique, yet similar copies of Elliot stand adjacent. Their left arm and leg are internally rotated and bent angularly. Their right side is long and arm reaches out of frame. They look toward the right of the frame quickly enough to send their bleach blonde hair into a kinetic spray. A stark white background is contrasted by the long, sleeveless red dress they’re wearing, tied in a knot at the bottom, between their legs.
This was written on the traditional lands of the Kiikaapoi, Myaamia, Očeti Šakowiŋ, and Peoria peoples. What is this?
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