What I have been doing

Sewing

I've been doing an inordinately large amount of sewing. Changing buttons here, cutting a new collar there. There is a tight black dress I am deciding the hem on - a couple of centimeters means the oh-so-subtle difference between slutty and sexy. One of two shows planned in the second half of the year will definitely be about clothes, I think. The other will be about muteness and silence. Which subject for which show, that's the question. It's all about timing. They are not very far apart. I will have to let things cook a little longer. We are only in the tracking stage in terms of hunting muses - the full-speed chase is a way off.


Writing

I have been writing and writing, singing for my supper. It's getting a little easier. But I haven't read anything fun in a long while. It's probably time for another dose of Patrick O'Brian. Leavemealone *mumbles*, I know I am lowbrow I am proud of it.


Listening to Chinese and Malay radio

The past elections really hammered home the importance of language for me. How in a different language something takes on an entirely different... texture. To tell you I love you in Chinese, what a door to a paralell world we might live in. So when I say a show about silence and muteness, I mean that I think I want to use sign language, or other types of communication that are not written or verbal. A progression of How To Talk to Strangers. More strategies. Yes.


Thinking about economics

If the capitalist mainstay is 'Minimum investment, maximum profit', then if we are thinking about resisting capitalism, should we think 'Maximum effort, minimum change'? This isn't new. Francis Alys talks about it in one of his interviews, and his 2002 work 'When Faith Moves Mountains' is underpinned by this idea. 'I guess today political correctness has been replaced by economic correctness', he said, when asked about criticism he received for orchestrating an ostensibly 'useless' gesture (moving a sand mountain one foot to the left) that required immense labour from hundreds of volunteers. There's a really interesting exhibition of Cuban artists called States of Exchange in London at the moment that looks specifically at economics. I like the show alot. Precisely the sort of utilitarian discourse that is needed right now. I wish one of the Biennales would have this as the curatorial brief. We need more strategies and ways of imagining to combat the numbing effects of global consumerism. John Berger also refers to this again and again in Hold Everything Dear.