‘Theatre has to get to get over itself and put crips in its scripts.’ Guardian Comment is Free.

The Guardian Comment is Free asked me to respond to Lisa Hammond’s Open Letter to Writers: Put Crips in your scripts (reproduced on this blog at: http://kaiteoreilly.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/lisa-hammonds-open-letter-to-writers-put-crips-in-your-scripts/)  

What follows is their edit of my article.

I think it is edifying to read the forty plus comments on the Guardian website in response to the article. You will find the article and the comments at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/30/theatre-disability-crips-in-scripts

Theatre has to get over itself and put crips in its scripts.

Kaite O’Reilly. 

Guardian Comment is Free.

I was delighted to read Lisa Hammond’s open letter to writers as part of this year’s TV Drama Writers’ Festival – Put crips in your scripts. It’s a sentiment I support, and have for some time. As a playwright, I’ve been trying to put complex, seductive, intelligent characters who just so happen to have an impairment into my scripts for decades. It is only in rare cases I am commissioned to write such a play; usually I have to smuggle it in like a Trojan horse, with disability politics and what I call “crip humour” in its belly.

Disability is often viewed as worthy, depressing, or a plethora of other negative associations I (and many others) have been trying to challenge and subvert in our work for years. I find this representation astonishing, for the vast majority of my disabled friends and colleagues are the wittiest, most outrageous and life-affirming human beings I have ever had the pleasure of spending time with.

I identify proudly as a disabled person, but am often struck how to those without this cultural identification the impaired body is “other”. Disabled people are “them” – over there – not a deaf uncle, a parent with Alzheimer’s or an acquaintance who has survived brain injury following a car accident. Although the vast majority of us will acquire impairment through the natural process of ageing, through accident, warfare or illness, disabled people are still feared, ostracised and set apart.

The western theatrical canon is filled with disabled characters. We are metaphors for tragedy, loss, the human condition – the victim or villain, the scapegoat, the inferior, scary “special” one, the freak, the problem requiring treatment, medicalisation and normalisation. Although disabled characters occur in thousands of plays, seldom have the writers been disabled themselves, or written from that perspective. It is also rare for actors with impairments to be cast in productions, even when the character is disabled. As I scornfully stated in my 2002 play Peeling, in which Hammond performed: “Cripping up is the 21st century’s answer to blacking up”.

As Hammond suggests in her essay, the theatre profession just needs to get over it – their fear, concerns about expense, about difference. There are fantastic deaf and disabled performers in the UK, just as there are talented and experienced choreographers, directors, visual artists, sit-down comedians, and writers. I hope that the Paralympics, and Unlimited at Southbank Centre,  part of the Cultural Olympiad, will change preconceptions just as the Olympics did regarding sportswomen and abilities.

For “putting crips in our scripts” means we have different protagonists with different stories, which don’t always have to revolve around yet another medical drama. The active, sexy, wilful protagonists of In Water I’m Weightless are an anomaly simply by being protagonists, and in control of their lives. The work is a montage of movement, visuals, excerpts from fictional monologues and not, as most of the reviewers assumed, the actors’ autobiographies (as director John McGrath said, “that’s called acting”).

We need characters who are not victims, whose diagnosis or difference is not the central drama of their lives, but multi-faceted individuals with careers and relationships, dreams and challenges. I want characters who are full of themselves, their hands and mouths filled with a swanky eloquence. Whether in signed or spoken languages, words can dazzle and dip, shape form, shape meaning and shape a perspective that counters the previously held.

We need to have crips in our scripts not just to reflect the society we live in, but, as one of my characters says, to “threaten the narrow definition of human variety … [to] broaden the scope of human possibilities”. And we need crip actors to perform these parts, not yet another non-disabled actor doing an impersonation, with an eye on an award.

(c) copyright Kaite O’Reilly 30th August 2012.

Guardian culture professionals network: London 2012 and Disability arts

An interview with me is included in an article on the impact of the Cultural Olympiad on The Guardian website:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2012/aug/28/disability-arts-london-2012-impact

Have monologues, will travel. From inspiration to the Southbank. Part 1.

Karina Jones, Mat Fraser, David Toole, Nick Phillips, Sophie Stone – in Water I’m Weightless. Photo Farrows/Creative.

My production with National Theatre Wales, In Water I’m Weightless, is at the Southbank Centre, London, 31st August and 1st September as part of the official celebrations for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, an Unlimited Commission. I’m fortunate to be part of an astonishing sports and cultural Olympiad, but the genesis and ambition for this project goes far back, with roots deeper than this particular celebration. True to the spirit of this blog, I decided to trace the project’s long developmental process, to answer, as Dave Byrnes put it: ‘Well, how did I get here..?’

Some years ago I received a Creative Wales Award from the Arts Council of Wales in order to explore the solo theatrical form and also create what I called The ‘d’ Monologues. These were to be a series of monologues written specifically for Deaf and disabled performers, written from a perspective where disability is not feared, or negative, but where it is the ‘norm’. As I have written at length elsewhere, I’m often frustrated at how shallow and negative the depiction of disabled characters are in popular culture; the narratives are often (but thankfully not always) about the shock and horror of dealing with an acquired impairment/illness, or trying to be cured. I wanted to create some alternatives.

The work would not be Verbatim, nor Testamonial Theatre, but fictional monologues informed by the reality and normality of living life with an impairment. I wanted to reflect what I call crip’ humour and disability cool – a way of being in the world which is celebratory, subversive, collaborative and supportive.

I also wanted to develop my dramaturgical skills as a playwright. I have much experience in writing dialogue with a multitude of characters, but not with solo pieces. The monologue brings a whole set of dramatic problems with it, including issues of pace, dynamic, tempo-rhythm, and that central question ‘who are they talking to and why?’

I don’t believe naturalistic pieces where a character starts speaking aloud ‘to themselves’ – it reads as expositional, and it’s not naturalistic to have long conversations with yourself in full sentences, it’s stylised. I’m also not a fan of ponderous solos where a character addresses themselves reflectively in a ‘mirror,’ usually whilst removing make up, brushing hair, trimming moustaches, or straightening ties (it might be more interesting if they were doing all of the above, at once).

Direct address to the audience can be powerful and intimate (think Alan Bennett’s ‘Talking Heads’), but my personal favourites are those which are more stylised – think anything by Samuel Beckett (‘Eh Joe’, ‘Piece of Monologue’, ‘Rockaby’, ‘Not I’, etc), Bryony Lavery’s ‘Frozen’, or post-dramatic work by Crimp (parts of ‘Attempts on her life’), Kroetz (“Request Concert’), Simon Stephens (‘Pornography’), to name just a few.

My ambition was to develop myself as a dramatist, and not to follow one particular style or voice. The project began with me exploring the broad form of the solo dramatic work through practical and theoretical experimentation: reading extensively, picking apart renowned work as though it was a car engine and then piecing it together again (seriously – this is the best way to learn how a piece of respected writing works), seeing solo work, and interacting with its makers.

I decided to start with the queen of the ‘microphone and stool’ solo - Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues. We had some email interaction, and spoke once through her office on the telephone, but we never managed to meet in person. When I was in New York she was out of town, involved with productions and organising international ‘V’ Days.

The quotation which stuck is: ‘When you bring consciousness to anything, things begin to shift.’

I spent some time in the US in 2009, observing and experiencing performance work which was either solo work, or dealing with stories of disability and impairment. Although my work would not be biographical, I saw work by Anna DeVere Smith and spoke with her about creative process, then to my great fortune shadowed Ping Chong + Company in New York.

Twenty years ago Ping Chong initiated ‘The Undesirable Elements’ series, ‘an ongoing series of community-specific interview-based theatre works examining issues of culture and identity of individuals who are outsiders within their mainstream community.’ I was fortunate to spend time with the associate director, Sara Katz, and saw several performances around the Brooklyn area, where disabled individuals performed their own stories, based on interviews which Sara had dramaturged.

The company describe the process as follows:

‘Undesirable Elements is presented as a chamber piece of story-telling; a “seated opera for the spoken word” that exists as an open framework that can be tailored to suit the needs and issues facing any community. Each production is made with a local host organization and local participants. The development process includes an extended community residency during which Ping Chong + Company artists conduct intensive interviews with potential participants and get to know the issues and concerns facing that community. These interviews form the basis of a script that weaves cast members’ individual experiences together in a chronological narrative touching on both political and personal experiences. The script is performed by the interviewees themselves, many of whom have never before spoken publicly.’    http://www.pingchong.org/undesirable-elements/

It was immensely useful to see this work, for although it was not a style or approach I wanted to follow, it gave me an example of interweaving voices. I wanted to explore choral work – how several actors could tell the one story – and I also wanted to look at interlocking individual monologues to make a whole. A great example of this in a full length work is Mark O’Rowe’s ‘Terminus’, which I saw at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2008.

After my various field trips, I started writing extensively, and in different ‘voices’ and form, supported by workshop explorations over eighteen months. In 2009/10 The ‘d’ Monologues were shown as script in hand readings at the National Theatre Studio in London, Unity Festival at Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, and Disability Pride, Cardiff Bay. Directed by Phillip Zarrilli and myself, they were performed by Macsen McKay, Sara Beer, Kay Jenkins, Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds and Maggie Hampton.

Cymru crips at National Theatre Studio, London.

These workshops and shared public readings allowed me to refine the texts, check the response to the work and also ‘test’ the content and form, before diverse audiences I was able to discuss the work with, after – professional (NTS), integrated (Unity), and disability culture (Pride).

Further projects included work with Julie McNamara on a one woman show I Fall to Pieces, about surviving the mental health system,  which was presented as work in progress at DaDaFest International Festival in Liverpool in 2010, and a project I aim to bring to full production in the future.

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Directed by Phillip Zarrilli, the presentation was part of my first Unlimited Commission with The Llanarth Group.

I Fall to Pieces enabled me to explore the relationship between live song and text. Julie Mc (as we call her) is a phenomenal performer and inspiring individual, whose energy, experience, and talents opened up a new vista for me as playwright and dramaturg, creating a full length one woman show. I had to struggle with changing dynamic and keeping the tempo rhythm and narrative going. In plays with more than one character, you can refresh the dynamic and lift the mood by simply having a new character enter. How to keep the pace moving, the audience engaged, and the narrative rolling can be a big challenge when making a solo piece. I relished the challenge and look forward to a time when we can fully realise this project, for we learnt from the tears and emotional response from the audience at DaDaFest, this material, combined with these collaborators, works.

A further entry on this journey from inspiration to Southbank, will follow.

For information about Unlimited, ‘a series of major commissions, the UK’s largest programme celebrating arts, culture and sport by deaf and disabled people’, please go to:

http://press.artscouncil.org.uk/Press-Releases/10-commissions-announced-for-Unlimited-the-UK-s-largest-programme-celebrating-arts-culture-and-sport-by-disabled-and-deaf-people-3e1.aspx

In Water I’m Weightless, directed by John McGrath, for National Theatre Wales, will be at The Purcell Room, Southbank Centre:

Friday 31st August 6.30pm, Saturday 1st September 2pm and 7.30pm

http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/dance-performance/tickets/in-water-im-weightless-65346

Kaite will be speaking on a panel at Southbank Centre, plus leading a writing workshop on 30th August: ttp://kaiteoreilly.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/kaite-oreilly-workshop-and-panel-discussion-at-southbank-centre-30th-august-2012/

How to write the ‘right’ ending, part two: consequential action.

I don’t like endings which are too tidy and ‘pat’. I distrust them. I feel like I’ve been processed – part of a well-oiled machine which has passed me along its predictable, dependable conveyer belt, depositing me unscathed, unchallenged and unsurprised at the end. I feel like the magical mystery tour I signed up to gave me an advance road map, with the route yellow highlighted in. I feel I have been part of a pedestrian equation, where A+B=AB.

It’s essential that there is structure and form to our writing (even – or especially – when the work is ‘experimental’), but here is a line between the well structured and the disappointingly predictable ‘I could see that coming for miles.’

But I’m not a fan of unpredictable, ‘magical’ endings either, where elements not previously existing in the world of the play fly in,  and ‘explain’ or solve everything. It doesn’t have to be as blatant as the god from the machine, deus ex machina. Think the chance meeting and deep conversation with the stranger with the meaningful past/anecdote to tell/piece of ancient wisdom to pass on which has surprising resonance with the protagonist’s dilemma and precipitates a sudden understanding and even swifter conclusion…  Or the surprise lottery win, the unexpected behest, the sudden death or illness, or the offer of a new job/house/country/lover/gender/whatever, which draws everything together in a premature ending leaving the viewer blinking and feeling cheated as the houselights come up.

The kind of endings I like are the ones where we are kept guessing until the last moment and then go ‘yes, of course it would end like that.’ We know that Hamlet will end up on a pyre of bodies, as when we think about it, this is the only possible ending, given his actions and interactions throughout the play. In this kind of writing, character equals plot, and plot equals character. They are indivisible, and there is logic – cause and effect: an action is made which brings a response, retaliation, or reward – consequential action – but not the simple binary of A + B of above, but a logarithm, a complex equation which, in both literary and mathematical senses of the word, is ‘beautiful’.

I’ve always believed that nothing should be extraneous in a play (or a story, or a novel, or a screenplay, or any kind of art or craft). Everything needs to earn its right to be there, and it all should contribute in some way to the ending. I can’t bear loose threads, or the sections included merely as a brain rest, so we can look at the attractive people, or hear a nice song, or be ‘entertained’ by something before returning to the true meat of the evening.

Of course some performances are not presenting a main or single narrative – there may not be a plot. Rather, they can be a montage working towards an overall effect at the close of the piece, rather than the resolution of a conflict, or a quest, or a psychological or emotional journey. Then I feel the power of the ending is cumulative, relying on everything that came before.

I love work which is up-close and personal, so involving and intricate it is as though I’m scrutinising individual stitches and threads, and it is only when it is drawing to a close, or complete, I can step back and see the tapestry, the full woven landscape whose minutiae I know and have followed.

That kind of experience brings great satisfaction and, for me, the most powerful ending, for everything has been created and spun out of what existed at the beginning: a fully realised world, a cast of well-developed characters whose actions and reactions create the stuff of the plot, a narrative full of twists and turns, which is unpredictable, but logical.

copyright Kaite O’Reilly 25 August 2012.

Anais Nin on life.

I’ve had some great conversations on the creative process since posting ‘To learn, first make a really good mess’ – and when I saw this on brainpickings.org, I couldn’t resist reproducing it.

Part of the process of writing, as well as living, seems to be making sense of the confusions that beset us, or that we create. I was talking with my friend and fellow writer Sandra Bendelow today, and much of our discussion was about having the patience to ride out the periods of confusion when writing, of trusting that the murk will clear and clarity will follow. We agreed this came with experience, for often when in the  eye of the storm that is drafting and redrafting, courage and faith (in the work and the artist’s ability) can be lost.

This artwork by Lisa Congdon, reproducing a quotation from Anais Nin’s journals seemed timely….

For further information on both Anais Nin and Lisa Congdon, to read the original post on brainpickings, or even buy a reproduction of the above, please follow the links below:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/13/anais-nin-on-life-lisa-congdon/

http://www.etsy.com/shop/lisacongdon

http://www.20×200.com/artist/150-lisa-congdon

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 97-101.

Further quotations and pieces of advice from established writers, taken from interviews, festivals, and articles…. Writing one hundred rules has almost taken a year, and  I’ve enjoyed compiling this so much, rather than finish the series here at one hundred, I’ve cheated and increased it to one hundred and fifty… Hope you continue to enjoy some of the gems I’ve gathered over the years…

97.   A true story can be falsified in the telling. Language is lazy, it wants to revert to what’s obvious, to what’s been said before, to short cuts…There’s no secret, of course, to writing a good story. But to strive against the clichés of perception and expression, to work to get down something true in words – this is the only place to start. (Tessa Hadley).

98.  Aim for a story that is both surprising and satisfying. The only thing worse than reading a novel and feeling like you know exactly what’s going to happen is reading a novel and feeling unfulfilled at the end — like what happened wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Your readers invest themselves in your story. They deserve an emotional and intellectual payoff.

99.   I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it. (Ray Bradbury).

100.   Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type. (Margaret Atwood).

101.  I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. (G.K. Chesterton). 

And so to the novel…. some differences between novel writing and playwriting.

And so to the novel…. some differences between novel writing and playwriting..

And so to the novel…. some differences between novel writing and playwriting.

I’ve not been completely honest when writing this blog. I’ve tried to document the process of making three performances in real time – I’ve reproduced interviews, previews, reviews – I’ve mapped techs and photographed rehearsals – I’ve thought about theatre, live performance, drama, whatever you might like to call it…. and all the time, at the back of my head, the back of the queue, has been this…. The novel in progress….

The unfinished novel has been with me for some time now, longer than I care to admit. It has languished for years, unattended and forgotten, on floppy disks and yellowing paper in folders; it has been revisited, fiddled with, shaken and mussed up a bit, then abandoned on spare external hard drives; it has been relaunched and reinvented, printed off and sent out into the world to be critiqued, blue penciled, in odd rare moments even admired…. But enough is enough. It is time to get that much loved unloved neglected unforgettable joy in my heart pain in my side mass of ideas, action, and plotline finally off my desk. It is time to complete the definitive current draft. It is time to get the manuscript to my new literary agent, as promised.

Writing a novel is very different to writing plays. I can only comment from my own (as yet) incomplete experience, but whilst certain theoretical elements are similar – storylining, creating characters, structuring the work so it is dramatically effective – the practice of making this happen is completely alien.

Part of it is to with size. I can hold the whole of a play in my head at one time. I can lie half-awake, surface-sleeping, running chronologically through a play in progress, projecting the action onto the theatre screen of my mind, checking the throughlines, the tempo-rhythm, the pace and flow of it all. I can think of a character and all their attributes appear to me, their slights and disappointments, what they really need and what they think they need. I can juxtapose them against other characters, project dynamics and interactions, revolve them 360 degrees, understanding them fully as I control how they are shaped and revealed by the action of the play.

I try doing that with my novel and I’m swamped, drowned, water-boarded by the mass of material hurrying through my brain. It’s too big to hold it all in my mind at one time, and in any meaningful order – and that’s a frightening and quite new concept to this dramatist.

‘I know how to make a story arc!’ I seethe to myself. ‘I understand showing not telling, making paradoxical, credible, motivational characters who are driven to take action, I fully comprehend the practical, ethical, and dramatic implications of cause and effect….’ But when it comes to putting it down in a sensible, workaday way in this novel….??!!!!  Well. There you have it – you can see by my offensive, over the top punctuation and exclamation marks. When it comes to transferring my so-called transferable skills as an experienced dramatist to the first time novelist, my organic computer-brain says no.

But I am very determined. To have any kind of career in this business, you need to have will power and staying power, the optimism (some define it as stupidity) and resilience (ditto) to keep banging your head against the wall, for hours, even years, on end. I will fulfil this ambition to write a book, an ambition held since I first was able, alone, and all by myself, to magically translate strange markings on a page into the palpable and memorable fear of the little red hen whose very sky was falling in. My late mother always maintained this ambition to write was even earlier, existing before I could trace the alphabet, or unable to hold a crayon in any way but chimp-like, with my whole fist.

So this is a very long and very powerful desire. And although I haven’t yet published a novel, I have published plays and essays, collections and short stories. And now it is time to try with this incomplete manuscript. I have an enthusiastic and encouraging new agent. I have over 90 thousand words written already in a third draft version. Now it’s just the final polish (‘just’?!), the final push – and I like to think I’m ready for it.

Kaite O’Reilly workshop and panel discussion at Southbank Centre 30th August 2012.

WRITING WORKSHOP WITH KAITE O’REILLY: YOU SAY INCLUSIVE, I SAY SUBVERSIVE

Thursday 30 August 2012. 3.30pm. Southbank Centre, London.

An introduction to making performance work which, in both content and form, reflects a world that is more inclusive, challenges hackneyed representations of disability, and creates new narratives, protagonists and dynamic form.

The creative and theatrical possibilities of access devices or tools – sign language interpretation, audio description, projected text or subtitles, for example – are still not being widely explored. This workshop begins to consider these as the potential means to artistic innovation and exploration, rather than an ‘add on’, illustrated by examples from Kaite’s texts and productions within the ‘mainstream’ and disability arts and culture.

Please note – this free event requires a ticket. You can reserve your ticket online (£1.75 transaction fee) or by phone on 0844 847 9910 (£2.75 transaction fee). Transaction fees apply per transaction, not per ticket. You can also reserve your seat without a transaction fee by visiting one of our Southbank Centre Ticket Offices in person.

Kaite O’Reilly’s ‘In Water I’m Weightless’ with National Theatre Wales appears at Southbank Centre as part of Unlimited. She won the 2010/11 Ted Hughes Award for New Works in Poetry for her new version of Aeschulus’s ‘Persians’, for National Theatre Wales.

30 August 2012, 3:30pm

Sunley Pavillion

Southbank Centre

 

http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/dance-performance/tickets/writing-workshop-with-kaite-oreilly-you-say-inclusive-i-say-subversive-68990

MAKING CREATIVE PERFORMANCE FOR DEAF AND HEARING AUDIENCES

Thursday 30 August 2012

2pm

Southbank Centre, London

A dynamic panel discussion exploring the creative use of voice and sign language within live performance.

The speakers include artists Kaite O’Reilly, Jenny Sealey, Ramesh Meyyappan and Sophie Woolley.

http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/dance-performance/tickets/making-creative-performance-for-deaf-and-hearing

Unlimited at Southbank Centre: 30 August – 9 September, 2012

‘Unlimited celebrates disability, arts, culture and sport on an unprecedented scale and encourages disabled and deaf artists to push beyond their personal best alongside Paralympic athletes, by creating work which opens doors, changes minds, and inspires new collaborations.’ Arts Council England

Southbank Centre will present the Unlimited commissions across the site in a high profile festival to coincide with the 2012 Paralympics. The Unlimited commissions invited artists to think big and develop dream projects that they would not otherwise have had the resources to create. The programme is about artists pushing themselves to reach previously unattained goals.

The 29 Unlimited commissions range widely in artform including dance, live arts, visual arts, music and theatre. The Unlimited programme will put the spotlight on the artistic vision and originality of deaf and disabled artists, giving them space to present their work and share their practice more widely.

Unlimited is a London 2012 Cultural Olympiad project. The project is principally funded by the National Lottery through the Olympic Lottery Distributor, and is delivered in partnership between London 2012, Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Wales, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the British Council.

To learn, first make a really good mess.

I’m visited by Tjibbe Hooghiemstra, a fabulous Dutch artist I have known for many years but seen seldom. We met at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig in county Monaghan, Ireland, in 1991, when I was in residence and he was visiting. Since then our imaginative paths have crossed frequently (a mutual fascination with Antarctica and ships in frozen seas is one such overlap), although we have not been physically in the same space.

Conversations with Tjibbe are wide-ranging and exhilarating, covering everything from magical happenings on hillsides in rural Ireland, dark matter and auditory hallucinations, collaborations with 2012 Pulitzer Prize-finalist poet, essayist, novelist and critic Forrest Gander,  and everything, it seems, in between. His engagement and delight in ideas and conversation is infectious, firing up my jaded brain, still tired from making three projects back to back.

We talk about this blog and the importance of giving access to process. ‘It’s seldom done,’ Tjibbe says, and we discuss the impossibility of truly writing about process whilst in the vortex of making something new. When making work, especially to a deadline, I’m usually so close to the material I can’t get distance or perspective, so can only give an impressionistic representation rather than a forensic one. He encourages me to reflect on the different processes I’ve been through this year, making three contrasting projects which utilised my skills in different ways. ‘Maybe you should write a book?’ he suggests, and we laugh, knowing I prefer to focus on making work rather than a book about the process of making work…

‘To really learn, you have to make a mess,’ he says, referring to advice he gives to student artists at a most specific moment in their development and training. Through our discussion, I interpret this as him encouraging young in career artists to experiment, to go beyond the known, to deliberately make ‘bad’ work so they will learn more of process, of creativity, of transforming the base into something more valuable, or rare. ‘When you have made a mess, you will understand more, and may be onto something good,’ he says.

I think about my own experiences and how the most difficult, painfully complicated and apparently insurmountable obstacles, impossible messes, yielded the best learning experiences: The plot of the screenplay which refused to come together until I took all the components apart and, strand by strand, hour after hour, worked through all possible storylines until I eventually found the detail which worked; the play which was so saggy and uncooked in the middle I hated it with what felt like every fibre in my body – until I forced myself to re-examine and reinvent the characters, inhabit each moment of the dynamic I was trying to create, imagining how each character would respond in each of those moments – then making that raw, condensed. This taught me about the necessary economy in the dramatic moment – how to make something taut, tense, alive, full of pace. I’m not sure the lessons would have been absorbed so completely without the despair and determination of trying to bring order to a bloody great mess. I smile at Tjibbe. I think he’s onto something, here…

Information on Tjibbe Hooghiemstra:

http://www.vangardgallery.com/vangard-gallery-artists/a-i/tjibbe-hooghiemstra/

Tjibbe Hooghiemstra is a Dutch artist who has built up many connections in Ireland, including a stint as artist in residence at Annaghmakerrig, and the Cill Rialaig Project in County Kerry.

He regularly teaches at the University of Ulster and the National College of Art and Design. His work is a considered philosophical engagement with the landscape. The landscape is not taken as established; it is looked at, scrutinized, and re-worked. The quality of the Irish environment, the water, the light and the rain, are all dealt with, recorded and layered into his work. This is an artist for whom materials are important. Paper is not just a support, it is an integral part of his artworks. His use of collage is also crucial, and as the viewer can see, it represents a delicate balance between losing and finding the image in each of the drawings and paintings.

Tjibbe Hooghiemstra works in Ireland and the Netherlands.
His works are included in the collections of:  Stededlijk Museum, Amsterdam, Teylers Museum, Harlem Tate Gallery, London, National Collection of Contemporary Drawing, Limerick, Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick.

“What the work conveys is a quiet, attentive sensibility and the layering of time. For example, he views landscape not in a conventional pictorial way but as a fragmentary composite of the marks made by the many generations who have lived on it. His work is almost obtuse in its wilful obliqueness, but it gains on each repeated viewing and many of the drawings are quiet beautiful” - Aidan Dunne

He is represented by: – Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast
- Freight and Volume, New York
- Galerie Espace, Amsterdam
- Gallerie Der Spiegel, Cologne
- Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin
- Vangard Gallery, Cork
- Yanagisawa Gallery, Tokyo.

Artist’s statement:

Materials are important to Hooghiemstra. Paper is not just a support, it is an integral constituent of the artworks and through the engagement with collage, the altering and additions to the surface, the work is constructed. The quality of the marks, dry, scratched or on a water saturated surface are vital to convey the essential sense of place. A delicate balance between loosing and finding the image is sought. Hooghiemstra does not make studies or sketches; everything is a non-mediated item, completely of itself. The evocative fragments are forged into a meaningful whole.

“What the work conveys is a quiet, attentive sensibility and the layering of time. For example, he views landscape not in a conventional pictorial way but as a fragmentary composite of the marks made by the many generations who have lived on it. His work is almost obtuse in its wilful obliqueness, but it gains on each repeated viewing and many of the drawings are quiet beautiful” – Aidan Dunne