Red Stitch open it up

A quick note to draw attention to a discussion about racial diversity in casting practice that someone at Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre has opened up on Facebook this evening. They are brave and honest in approaching a topic over which it seems they may have received recent criticism. This h/t is via @WhiteWhaleThtr on Twitter, and I feel decidedly odd typing that, but there you go – the brilliance of social networking for you.

The Budget Jig

Although this scenario is not news to most independent makers in the world (at least not in Melbourne, Australia), I thought it important to put forth a bit of a sad fact that I have just calculated. A kind of harsh reality-check if you will. I hope that my writing briefly about money matters here is truly an isolated event. I don’t find finances (with relation to art creation) very interesting at all, generally speaking. It is just that I have been sitting in front of Excel spreadsheets a fair bit recently, staring into an all-too familiar void. It felt worth mentioning, albeit briefly, and from an understandably biased perspective.

At this point in its funding fortune, The Melbourne Town Players will be creating Attract/Repel on just under one-seventh of its actual, estimated budget. That includes support from Full Tilt for a week’s development, and in-kind support from The Store Room, Attract/Repel‘s host and presenter. Aside from the one, isolated week, none of the artists will be on salary for the entire development and performance season. It is a normal profit-share scenario, with the bulk of the budget for expenses coming out of the box-office before the artists can take their split.

It is absolutely true that some of the greatest work is created almost entirely cash-less. The examples that ring through our little city’s short (but rich) history are nothing short of inspiring. And it is of course, all the more horrifying to be witness to ghastly works of little artistic merit that clearly have extraordinary budgets (by indie’s humble standards) with which to play. Such is the political lay of the land, I’m well aware. And in the absence of a complete overhaul of our funding systems (public and cultural support mechanisms, educational institutions, etc.) this is the way it will remain for the foreseeable future.

It is good, however, to keep reminding oneself of just how much is achieved with just how little.

We did our last show, Sandwiches with an entire budget of $1,000, and (despite the extraordinary heat – not entirely an artistic choice) it was a stunning achievement. This is absolutely not an argument in favour of withholding further funding from independent artists, but rather one that whispers, “Well, if that is what can be done with nothing, just imagine the wings all these artists could grow with something real.”

Meaning and Composition

Meaning is created by the association of one object with another.
Meaning is created by the association of an object with nothing.
Meaning is created by the absence of an object.
Meaning is created by the void in which we expect an object.
Meaning is created by the association of an object with the viewer.
Meaning is created by the association of an object with sound.
Meaning is created by the association of an object with word.
Meaning is created by the association of an object with colour.

Meaning is created by the association of word with sound.
Meaning is created by the association of sound with colour.
Meaning is created by the association of colour with word.
Meaning is created by the association of word with viewer.
Meaning is created by the association of sound with viewer.
Meaning is created by the association of colour with viewer.

Meaning is created by the association of a number of these elements with each other.

Meaning is not necessarily created cognitively.

Meaning is created by the artist.
Meaning is created by the viewer.
Meaning is created by the object.
Meaning is created by the sound.
Meaning is created by the colour.
Meaning is created by the word.
Meaning is created by the lack thereof.

Meaning is affected by the social context.
Meaning is affected by the political context.
Meaning is affected by the weather.

This continues.

Studio 1

Fragments of the home of The Melbourne Town Players and The Screen Test Studio, in the cozy depths of The Store Room.

The Melbourne Town Players gets modern

Well, our company, TMTP has had a website for a while now, but she’s finally flung herself into the twenty-first centry and now has not only a Facebook Page but a Twitter Account, as well. Fan her, follow her, and stay tuned for really bloody exciting updates to her website. But wait, there’s more! That’s right, friends. The Melbourne Town Players also has her very own weblog. How modern is that?

Yes. A Saturday well spent.

Colour 1.

I am currently reading Colour: Documents of Contemporary Art – it’s a collection of essays, thoughts, poetic gestures about the subjects both of colour and colours. It’s editor is David Batchelor, an artist with whose work I was previously unfamiliar.

Attract/Repel has been born of acute inspiration in the form of extreme converse emotional reactions I felt when viewing a work by Dan Flavin (and two keen artist/bloggers’ comments on my post that noted this phenomenon).

Dan Flavin

It’s exciting now, to see if only a small amount of Batchelor’s work online – the similarities and divergences from Flavin’s colour-light pieces.

David Batchelor Saatchi Gallery

Attract/Repel‘s lighting designer also just sent me a link to Bill Culbert. Which, pardon the pun, throws a whole new light on things… the achromal light triggers an entirely different response in me to the colour. It becomes more… theoretical, I suppose, but no less affecting. Not seeing it in the flesh is difficult, however – it was, I suppose the proximity to Flavin’s work that produced such extreme responses in me – being a recipient of the light itself is very different from seeing it in a book or on as a jpeg. Although, immediately, it’s the darkness between the staffs of illumination in the Culbert that I am finding almost the most affecting and almost narrative.

Bill Culbert Roslyn Oxley9

Actual/Ideal

Actual/Ideal is the distillation of several blogs, and bits of media floating both around the internet, and my offline world. Significantly, the two most recent weblogs I have kept were Mink Tails and Observations from the Bottom of the Garden. Both of which served their purpose – Mink Tails for a much longer period of time (during which it underwent several different incarnations) and Observations… for a brief flash. My decision to consolidate these efforts is driven by a clear conclusion as to what the purpose of an online journal/notebook should serve at this point in my life, and in my developing body of work.

Actual/Ideal is again variously a scrapbook, a notebook, et cetera – its purpose fluid to each thought/encounter/question’s specific demand. It is, however, on a broader scale, an extended meditation on art and the world, on art in the world, and (I hope far more infrequently) the world of art. And above and beyond this, it is an extension of my own art practice; and at the end of the day, a tool for a deeper understanding of what I am doing and what I am making, and the context in which this work exists.