Thursday, December 24, 2009

In transit en route

Yep it's midnight - actually 12.01 where I am, so officially Christmas day. I'm in Brisbane for a couple of weeks on my way back to Thailand. After a year of not-much-art making I'm spending a week doing theatre/performancy things at Woodford then heading further tropical north to work on a collaborative project in the little art haven of Compeung.

My trip resolution is to keep a diary - something I didn't do on the last trip and have found that video footage just isn't the same as written notes, collected scraps and sketchy drawings. The bits of stuff accumulated in a book have a special function for me - they have a different relationship to memory than the digitally generated images that fill our lives, their materiality, fragmentary nature and objectness provides me with a connection to place and experience. They generate ideas, they inspire new directions...

As well as a physical diary I'll try reviving this blog and incorporating it into my exponential note making habit.

So trip highlights so far: swimming at Safety Beach just north of Coffs Harbour yesterday at 6am, standing in the ocean listening to the roar of the cicadas over the sound of the waves, the amazing limey smell of the bush walking back from the beach, the birds, heat, humidity and rain...

2 comments:

byrd said...

Apropos of digital notes/memory today i just realised why i prefer free-drawing a large image to projecting. Its something to do with the observance required at the first. Whereas a project image needs a reference/map, it isn't really known.(or properly known).Recorded notes are equally unfiltered and so in a way unknown.

ellis hutch said...

Nice thoughts byrd, I'll have to show you my mountain drawings - that is drawing with chalk on a mountainside - well a hillside really, but mountain sounds more poetic...