We missed our deadline, but I guess everyone (me included) needed a little headspace break from image production and the info text was pressing Friday night, Marnie thanks for sending it to Mel today. Here's the image and text together:
INFO
Woahmanchester (A Road Movie of Intrepid Dimensions) is a new public image series by All the Cunning Stunts[MS1] that is visible at various locations along Manchester Street in Ōtautahi/Christchurch, between the Physics Room and North Projects[MS2].Woahmanchester continues the Stunts’ intrepid and glitter-inflected journey to locate a Leading Lxdy for their upcoming debut film. As the Stunts are not entirely sure whether this Lxdy already exists or is simply yet to be imagined, they are using their extensive media relations for the Woahmanchester image series to speculate on their Leading Lxdy’s career, and search for this elusive celebrity’s multiple dimensions.The diverse community uses and multiple queerstories of Manchester Street and the surrounding area have influenced the visual and textual development of the Woahmanchester series, which happens in the Stunts’ behind-the-scenes digital studio. Interested passers-by and talent scouts alike can expect back stage passes, so stay tuned!Coming Soon! Woahmanchester (A Road Movie of Intrepid Dimensions) will be partnered with an upcoming contribution to Girls Like Us [MS3]magazine, titled F+ (A Family Genre Comedy).All the Cunning Stunts is a collective comprising of artists Liz Allan, Clare Noonan, Rachel O’Neill and Marnie Slater, who have been working together since 2010. Their work uses humour, an invitational tone and plenty of innuendo to experiment with alternative ways to imagine attraction, relationships and positionality, as well as to address mainstream representations of queer desire in popular culture and other commercial contexts.
With communications spread across email, facebook, blog, and instagram, two projects on the go and one just behind us I'm getting a little distracted from the production of the images >< So it's great that we've folded the "extensive media relations" into the mix of the stated project, because work they are.
Now, I have a suggestion to keep us from free falling into timeline disaster:
- By THIS Wednesday EU: We individually select 5 images from what we have produced and uploaded to the blog so far for both Woahmanchester and GLU. Post them with a few words to help us understand your choices/criteria.
- Then we have a couple of days to add to any/all of the selected images with new layers, text additions/subtractions, basically creating new versions, or to reshuffle selections, chat about combinations working or not, get to understand what is going to work in each context and why through the reversioning/selection process.
- We make a final selection next weekend, on the blog individually and via skype, together.
Also, I am thinking: the blog question. What are we tryin' to achieve with this?
- Unedited and Edited: Provide a background story for our images and symbols to give audience access to our research, collaborative process' and our works' intended meanings?
- Unedited authenticity, keeping it real, confusion and all: Present an open and transparent process, a DIY long form logbook of all the blog studio activities. Borges, labyrinthian, at times confessional, potentially intimate, reality tv style blog. Audience can view process but is not directly addressed?
- Edited accessibility, clarity, communicability: Give people access to a selected narrative of our research on the site, our references, key moments in the process that constructs a specific record of our process that can be read and understood by a wider group of people in a shorter amount of time. Like a video essay, informational, a more formal and direct communication, constructed for the audience?
- Do we want the audience to become interlocutors?
Rachel, you made a very generous offer to edit a selection of our posts for wider public consumption. I would like to hear more about that. I was initially thinking that an unedited version of our blog would be more in the spirit of our first and foundational work and as we enter public territory again I think it's smart to figure out an approach to our potential audience that works for us (and for them too).
Marnie and Clare, what do you want the blog to do for our practice and our audience/s? Who do you want to read it, do you want them to comment?
All of us Cunnings: Selection process in the timeframe above???!!!!! ALTERNATIVES???
Hey Liz, thanks for this. Sharp! I am commenting also to alert the other stunts to this post -- I did not get it as a new post email, so maybe you all did not either? Same goes for my 'read' of If+ published today. xxM
ReplyDeleteFor the blog, to be as concise as I can: I think it would work like an extreme kind of artist talk or studio visit for interested public. And I think because we are geographically so far away, it gives us a chance to share our process with people who would be interested in the project or how we work -- and this is particularly pertinent for a public project in Christchurch because, from conversations with Mel, it seems that a lot of artists who were working in the city are now based in other places, meaning students or younger artists don't always have easy access to the working processes of others. I don't feel any embarrassment or whatnot about what is on the blog, or any need to edit or remove parts. Because I think sharing all of this is part of what makes it a great compliment to a public project. We received such great feedback about the lightbox blog, which indicates for me that there could be an appetite for a similar, unedited workbook exposé for this project. There is no specific, process narrative that I feel a public should 'get' to understand the work, I see publishing the blog as having quite a different role, one that is much more connected to other ways that queer and feminist communities use the Internet -- in terms of an intimacy and community that happens across geographies, etc because of the possibilities of the Internet. So, yes, I think the blog should be open for comments.
ReplyDeleteBut, I also don't want to force anything that you all might be unsure of.
I also feel we have a decent bunch of work to do finish the images for this work, so I would suggest that if there is a decision to select blog posts, that we hold off on this at least until the images go to print.
Hi Liz and Marnie - thanks for your posts today!
ReplyDeleteI'm happy with the proposed change to the schedule here for image selection and tweaking toward finalising the works. I certainly needed a little time after our flourish of image-making and super ready to get back amongst it!
In terms of blog, a little about myself…as you know I'm either a hard-out abstract thinker (if a brick falls in the forest…) or a practical bricks-are-heavy-no-shit type, with sometimes a poetic flourish in between... er, and a bit of RO thinking aloud and the occasional stubborn nostril flare! Bless.
I didn't suggest we edit the blog. My thoughts are either we make the blog public as is, or not at all, depending on what our collective thoughts are on the benefit of the blog being made public. Because there are several projects woven into this blog it could be confusing to an outsider without an explanatory text or something. I think Marnie proposed one options would be to take the If+Trust posts off and put them onto our private workspace blog? I think I’d be more keen to keep everything here and include a text that explains the blog is a time-capsule of our process over the last six months or so. I did propose a non-blog alternative. If there ain't a good alternative then it becomes clear what the choices are. The only alternative I came up with was selecting things from the blog - image and text - for publication on Instagram.
My abstract/practical/poetic selves are feeling more at home with the prospect of the blog being made public than an Instagram alternative. While this discussion itself is really important (go us!), we agreed to make the blog public right at the beginning of the project so the blog is the project in a way, like the central nervous system. We are able to change our mind about anything at any point, though I’d be uncomfortable dismissing the blog at this late stage without having solid raisins.
So at present, I’m 90% leaning toward making the blog public with some kind of text that explains the projects, time period and process it covers. Perhaps we even reflect a little on the place of blogs in our practice in the text, or we formalise our thinking for the next project?
In a way the other side of this discussion relates to our collective process and decision making. We’re shining some light on our collective habits and assumptions as well as our desired freedoms and improvisations.
Good things to do. A little pressurised too, in the midst of so much work for chch and GLU.
I’d be keen to take the pulse of our collective decision-making and working process - maybe post these projects! We’ve been working together for almost six years now and while we regularly discuss our process maybe we need a forum that happens outside of a specific project, that we look back over all our projects so far and talk about what worked well, what didn’t, how the solutions we came up with have been working, what roles we tend to take on the collective and any frustrations we’ve hit, worked through or happily tangle with etc. Maybe we need to keep up our Annual stunts hui, and maybe every few years we make sure we focus on general stunt matters outside of specific projects? Is this too bureaucratic?
Either way, things to put on our discussion agenda:
Do we do a blog for each project and make it public, is it an AtCS thing? What responsibilities does a blog entail? What do we strive for in a blog and how do we measure it’s value, success, relevance? What are the blog alternatives? Do they interest us as much?
At the mid-point of a project do we need to more consciously look back over decisions made at the beginning of the project and assess the initial decisions?
Why am I so terrible at flirting?
What is a solid raisin?
Hey Stunts. There are some things to respond to Mel about (from previous emails and her most-recent one today):
ReplyDelete- Images to show prospective sites to get them on board (I propose that I bundle together some of our working images, and give them to Mel as drafts to indicate what the images might look and feel like)
- Mel wants to be able to distribute an invite/map by March 18 showing sites. This will depend on what she can secure, for sure, and our abilities to confirm what we want. These are the sites we have talked about so far: Physics Room Stairwell, Phantom framed poster spaces; Community Gardens' Fence; Red Cross window; Dairy; North Projects' gate. That is a minimum of 6 images. Can I go ahead and confirm these with Mel?
- Mel thinks that the vinyl people need the files for print on MONDAY MARCH 14. This would be the images for: Community Gardens Fence, Red Cross window and North Projects' gate. Is this possible for us and Clare, how would file prep work for you on this timeline?
- Mel has also asked for a poster for Pride. This would be cool, and I think we could repeat the poster we make for the P Room staircase. What do you all think?
http://woahmanchesterstreet.blogspot.nl/2016/02/i-need-to-spatialize-wink.html
ReplyDeleteI feelthink we should work with this selection! I think it is an amazing group of images. Thank you Marnie! Clare, darling, I am here for you in whatever way possible to help with file prep, and support a call for realistic workload, please lettuce know what you're feelingthinking on this one!
Then we see what the site says via Mel...
Ps I am so happy we are working within the queer time of Pride xx
I also like Liz's suggestion of working with Marnie's spatialize-wink selection - it's hella handsome! It's quite a tight deadline for file prep - Clare also here with the latest-ish photoshop.
ReplyDeleteYes to - minimum of 6 images. Can I go ahead and confirm these with Mel?
Poster for Pride is great - same as P Room staircase sounds good to me. Also excited to be within the queer time of Pride - I will get back in touch with Agender and the Women's centre shortly too, plus Audrey and Amelia.
xxxR
Soo.. Monday seems right to prepare these images by. Can we ask Mel to push to mid week? I'm working on rescheduling a Sunday commitment. Currently I can devote Friday morning, all day Saturday, and all day Monday on doing print files. The other days I am working. Co-stunt-help with searching and gathering the images on Dropbox would be one thing, and I will have a think on other aspects to help with. In the meantime Marnie can you ask for deadline extension till Wednesday am nz time?
ReplyDeleteHey Clare and Stunts. I just sent an epic email to Mel, that includes a request for an extension on that deadline. Check it! If I have missed or miss-represented anything, please update Mel or me and I will correct. Kisses. M
ReplyDeleteI tried a little test on the top of the blog for a place that we can add a description. Take a look. I think the position is perfect -- super clear. The only thing is that we have a maximum of 500 characters, which is just under 100 words I think.
ReplyDeleteHey All, I am trying to figure out why the post emails are not working. And I am thinking that it might have something to do with GOOGLE-NESS. Rachel, would it be possible for you to change your profile from blogger to google+? https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/41375
ReplyDeleteALSO, FB?: "////Exclusive: The Stunts are werking hard in the digital studio to bring our show to the South of the South, sneaky pre-press preview below..." #Physics Room #Christchurch Pride #North Projects #Leading LXdy
ReplyDelete??
You mean with a link to the P Room site?! Nice! Also, hashtags need to be all one word, lower case. And I would add #otautahi. xxxM
ReplyDeleteHey All. I have drafted a short text for the blog, as a practice to see what it would look like, etc. It is under the title at the top of the blog. I am experience some overwhelmed feelings in relation to the production deadlines (and I am not even making the files!), so I am going to hold off on thinking about the blog until at least the Wednesday deadline is done. In case anybody wants to have a go with the trail text though, this is how you get there, from the menu at the top right:
ReplyDeleteDesign > Settings > then click on the edit hyperlink at the end of the description text.
Hey Marnie I just made a few adjustments to the text. Yes let's have headspace for discussion later, it's looking good atm with all the recent posting...
ReplyDeleteHahhaha! Perfect!
ReplyDeleteNice work. I like it a lot. Will have a ponder, though don't imagine many if any changes.
ReplyDelete