Was the Residency Productive?

Was the Residency Productive?

In the past, I’ve made my own residencies — with the assistance of my friends’ generosity of space. These self-styled residencies have always been highly focused and productive dives into a project. But this time, at my first official residency (i.e. not one I made up) I found something quite different than the ones I invented.

Funnily enough, I found this group residency not nearly as productive as ones I’ve done on my own. What with so many activities and long leisurely meals and field trips and lectures and presentations, our days were so jam packed I could barely squeeze my daily writing practice in, much less dive deeper. There was so much stimulation, so many interesting people, so much to respond to, I found it difficult to drop into the kind of quiet I need to make words into something significant. You might think this trip, this residency, had been a failure if you were measuring by productivity but it occurs to me that residencies like this one may be for something else.

People keep asking me if I had a productive time and I’m not sure how to articulate the time that I had.

Did I write pages and pages?

No. I mostly cut pages and pages. And moved things around.

And those things are actually harder to do, truth be told.

But, also, significantly, I went to a place for my art, to be with other artists, to be only an artist for a time and forget all other identities and (most) other obligations. It’s weird, I know, but the real gift of an experience like this is just to have time and space to only be an artist. You don’t have to explain the value of your art when introducing yourself, it is just accepted that you are an artist with a gift and that you came to this place to use it. We all step out of our competitive contexts to just make art for two weeks. It did feel a little like art summer camp for artists, I suppose, but most of us could use that sort of thing sometimes, I’ve come to realize.

Did I find the magic I was looking for? Not really. But magic doesn’t really LIKE to be looked for so I expect that’ll come around when I’m not expecting it. Did some stuff go wrong? Sure. But not so much to outweigh the good. I’m writing this now to try and articulate what that good is because it feels like it would be useful to put in my next residency application and whatever it is, it is obviously not productivity. (Capitalist notion — productivity. I’ve had some things to say about productivity before! And I might have a few to say in the near future, too.) But if it’s not “I got a lot of work done on my play” — what is it? Will it do anything for my career? No idea. Could do. In some intangible way. Nothing I could put a finger on.

Why raise the funds to go do something so expensive and far away?

Was it worth it?

Yes.

How so?

That’s what I’m not clear about.

I’ll make a list of things — maybe that’ll clear it up.

1. It’s a large boost to be chosen for something competitive and then to be among others who were chosen. It’s a nice atmosphere to be among a group of people all feeling lucky to be chosen.
2. To be working on a play that takes place on the island on which I was standing was very useful. It imbues the work with an atmosphere that might otherwise be missing. I got to hear my play that takes place on a hill in Crete on a hill in Crete — approximately 62 miles from where it is set.
3. It is a real gift to be surrounded by artists in other disciplines. It is an opportunity to see differently, think differently, imagine other ways of working.
4. To be in an unfamiliar artistic context means I see my own familiar context through new eyes and can appreciate my own artist practice anew.
5. There was this intense, unpredictable wind that blew for days and made me feel crazy. Trying to wrestle with a play while the wind seems like it is actively trying to drive you mad feels like a primal struggle somehow and puts some things into perspective.
6. I don’t think I realized how much of my life as an artist, I feel like I have to justify (please read this article by Andrew Simonet for more on feeling like artists have to apologize for making art) — and then I spent two weeks where making art was just a given and I felt oddly lighter.
7. For two weeks, my work really mattered. Every day someone asked me how the writing was going. One day, I told my housemates that I’d spent the afternoon killing my darlings and while they are visual artists and had not heard this expression before, they felt it instinctively. (Killing your darlings is when you cut out stuff you really love in your writing because you know it has to go for the greater good.) In my normal life, it’s rare that I feel what I do matters much but in having come all that way to work on my play, my play had to matter for a change. It’s hard to fall into that sense of futility around making art when everyone is so curious about it.
8. For a couple of weeks, I was fun. (See this previous blog about that.)
9. The willingness to jump boundaries and try new things, to cross genre and experiment was really beautifully expressed in this cohort of artists. They tried on each other’s media and forms. Every single artist was willing to read a part in my play, despite very few of them having any experience with theatre and perhaps most movingly — a large group of artists of all varieties agreed to create a dance piece with the choreographer in residence. The general atmosphere was of artists who were up for it — whatever it might be. That’s an intoxicating atmosphere.

It’s funny because it’s not like doing a show. I miss everyone I met there — but I don’t have the post show blues the way I usually do after an intense artistic experience. I’m grateful to have gone and grateful to be back and I would like to get another hug from all the people I met. I’m not sure how I’d frame what all this was for if I had to try to sum it up for my next application for a residency but I think the fact that I’m thinking about the next application suggests that there was something important to return to and it isn’t productivity.

These guys hauling concrete in these bags, with a crane from the truck, are being very productive in this beautiful place.

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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on August 9, 2023.