Section 1

Art as a way to explore being alive

I think that since I was about twenty, what I have been interested in is using art as a way of paying attention.

to try to really look
to try and really listen
to lose oneself in an endless moment of becoming

at first I was interested in music
I was a musician
I had many ideas about how the music should be and how it should go

I prepared and planned what I would do and what I wanted to happen

I wanted to use sound to talk about feelings and relationships
I wanted to use sound to tell a story

one day when I was performing I went beyond telling a story
I went beyond following my plans and intentions
I went beyond the music, the instrument, my body, and my mind
I disappeared

there were no words
no objects
no concepts
and there was no time

I reappeared

but what had happened?

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi describes this situation as a state of Flow. he says that when skill level and challenge level compliment each other our sense of self disappears our sense of time is transformed our actions start to feel effortless

my experience was just like this and although it is pleasurable to lose yourself in activity for its own sake I wanted to go further

I didn't want this situation to remain as just a pleasurable by-product of how I engaged with art

I found that I wanted to use art making as a framework
I began using art as a way to create a stable base

for looking
for listening
for moving

art making became a way to watch myself paying attention

Section 2

Thinking through the materials

making is an unfolding process
it is a process of opening out, of surprise

we are dancing with time and materiality

materials have a life of their own which we enter into when we engage with them

I think I'm more interested in processes than in any kind of final outcome

I want to set things in motion and watch them unfold

I find pleasure, surprise, and deeper understandings in observing the complexities of how different elements interact

art is a ball of simultaneous questions and answers problems and solutions bound together in continuous motion never fully resolved

Paul Klee was right when he said that if making becomes a demonstration, the idea is dead

he wrote in his sketchbooks:

“what is good is form as movement, as action, as active form”
“what is bad is form as immobility, as an end, as something that has been tolerated and got rid of”

“what is good is form-giving. what is bad is form”
“form is the end, death. form-giving is movement, action”
“form-giving is life”

at some point a form becomes a demonstration of an idea

unfolding form as movement is making as thinking

it is thinking through the materials

Section 3

To make a kind of silence

we hear the movement of bodies and materials
of chaotic ephemeral processes
of emergent drifting energies
sound from just over the horizon

my art is based on waiting

waiting as a way to mitigate decisions based on liking or not liking

waiting as a way of creating a space for the emergence of the unintended or unimagined

my work creates sound for an audience, but a core intention is not to create sound for an audience

in a regular musical situation body, breath, instrument, musical work, and performance context are organised in order to deliver musical content to an audience

the sound tells a story

what if we invert that structure?

performance context, musical work, instrument creating a framework
focused by breath and body
functioning as a structure to focus attention

a structure which aims to place a participant in a bottomless space
a nothingness
a now space

… ‘I’ disappears …

time disappears

everything disappears

it reappears

it disappears again

I focus my attention on breath as a way to wait
as a way to give myself space

I hope to stand aside from what I know
what I want
what I like

from feelings of security
from feelings of insecurity

I use breathing and waiting to place surrender at the heart of creating these sounds

surrender not in terms of being dominated or subjugation
but surrender as an act of transformation
surrender as a way to open out a pathway of surprises

lost in the activity
lost in sitting with breath
lost in listening
lost in moving
lost in waiting

to make the sound was to make a kind of silence