Playing with the idea of taking up space in my studio as a starting point for a new work, working title: I am going to go out like a fucking meteor!

Women grow radical with age. One day an army of grey haired women may quietly take over the earth. Gloria Steinem

Reflecting on the point I’d reached before we set off travelling in mid April. New work focused on the invisibility of older women. Asking myself the question whether it could be a vehicle for a more political piece of work.

How do you think big when you’re supposed to not get in the way, not overstep your welcome, not over-shadow or intimidate? Rebecca Solnit

The thinking around this work has been growing and evolving into a performance located in the forest. The connection between older women and trees has been resonating. Trees as social beings with the analogy of ‘Mother trees’ as the glue that holds the forest together.

A true elder. Leading, commanding, dignified. Its crown deeper and more imposing than those of its neighbors. Providing shade for the younger trees below. Shedding seed evolved over centuries. Stretching its prodigious limbs where songbirds roosted and nested... This tree alone was a scaffold for diversity, fueling the cycles of the forest.
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

Zine images inspired by the throw-away process RTiiiKA shared on her Instagram. Using found images and text I had laying around in my studio. Link with Walter Benjamin’s reference to the ‘rag picker’. He used it as a metaphor for his textual methodology, scavenging and reassembling forgotten texts and histories to reveal hidden truths, offering the potential for revolutionary change.

Starting by moving in my studio and journalling about what I notice. Drawing on the framework of language and using the prompt ‘and what else?’

For something is there,
something is there when nothing is there but itself,
that is not there when anything else is…

whatever it is,
formless, yet palpable.
Very shining, very delicate.

Very rare.

Mary Oliver. Excerpt from ‘Extending the Airport Runway’

TEMPORALITY

For I want to feel in my hands the quivering and lively nerve of the now and may that nerve resist me like a restless vein. And may it rebel, that nerve of life, and may it contort and throb.
Clarice Lispector, Ãgua Viva

How do you evoke Power / Wisdom / Grounding / Connection / Courage / Possibility / Defiance / Freedom through still images?
Moving to Shaker Loop, John Adams.
Isolating body parts. From small gesture to large, open movements. Capturing these on film / in photos / in print at different scales.

LEXICON

I am going to go out like a fucking meteor! Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light and Other Essays

How do I construct a work that is more conceptual than illustrative?
What happens when you use your body to express the material quality of folding sheets, the sensation of washing, the process of thinking?
The importance of costume. Does an older women in a suit have more gravitas?
The question is, am I dancing big or am I posing big?

DISSONANCE

…the healing of our fractured selves. Kiki Smith

Reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Janina Duszejko – the story of a women in her 60s ignored by most around her.
Could words provide the framework for the piece – control / manipulation / fragility? Growth and strength vs. decay and vulnerability?
J. Brooks Bouson’s theory of ‘embodied shame’. Older women’s shame about the visible signs of ageing.
Watching Andrea Arnold’s Bird again. Transfixed by the hand held projector that Bailey uses to project on walls, on herself, materials around her. Space as canvas.

It’s hard to claim fragility and strength in equal measure but that mix is what we all are.
Real Estate, Andrea Levy.

Your Action is Your Roar

To Move