Notes from Week 2, Day 2, Evening

SPLENDID is a curious thing for me. I'm a fan of transparency in creative projects and this has not been a transparent process. I don't mind not knowing what's going to happen from one day to the next, but I like to know what kind of system I'm involved in.

I've spent the first week of the lab figuring that out. So in the interests of transparency for dummies, let's go through the Splendid system.

On the one hand, there is this 3 week lab where young (30 years old or under) artists / innovators are stimulated and provoked by other, experienced artists / innovators. This is partly to provoke from the group of young 'uns some fresh, collaborative ideas for how art may be woven into the 2010 Splendour in the Grass festival and partly to affect the general creative development of the young artists / innovators, by opening them up to fresh experiences.

For five months after the lab, we engage on a semi-regular basis in an online discussion about our proposals for the festival before we submit them to Splendour for consideration in December.

We are paid an honorarium to do the lab, but not for the process afterwards. The last part of our payment is based on putting in a proposal to Splendour. We will get paid for any work we do for Splendour.

It has generally been a great experience – during Week 1, Julian, Natalie, Deborah and Mickie all allowed us to get to know each other and create from new places with dexterity and skill.

This morning Jenny, Tom and Tom all made fantastic, diverse presentations on their work. I was very excited. However the day seemed to be more about rhetoric that we all agreed on rather than creating new ideas and work from the basis of their fields of experience and stimulus they presented. Jenny was very quiet after her presentation and I wondered how and when she would step in (which I am looking forward to). The two Toms dominated the day and they seem to have big, soul unpicking plans for us over the next few days - so I guess I've just got to breathe and go with the flow...

Thus far, we, the young artists, have not had a chance to collaborate with each other on our own terms. The other nine, young artists are a lovely group of respectful, open, determined people and I'm looking forward to working with some or all of them in the future.

I must admit I miss being able to bring more of my own frameworks to this process and hope we get some time to experiment on our own terms later on in the lab. For now, though, it has been great to respond to the frameworks the different provocateurs have set up and I've truly appreciated that experience.

So that's the lab.

On the other hand, there is a desired, concrete outcome in this program: proposals for art works at the 2010 Splendour in the Grass festival.

This is not your usual art project. If we do propose a project for Splendour 2010, it will need to present art in an insidious manner; be something that does not really present itself as art; be simple, wildly imaginative and effective at somehow creating a surprising, amazing experience for the 20,000 festival attendees, most of whom will be in some kind of mind-altered state and mostly focused on music and mates.

You don't have to propose something for Splendour in the Grass 2010. You can do the lab and walk away. Even after the experience of the lab, you don't have to propose a collaborative project, you can propose one of your own, and presumably you can propose something that involves other people (say, your regular collaborators in your usual work life).

But considering the overall structure of this program, the way it points the lab gently at the desired outcomes, I believe the idea is to propose something for the festival and for the proposal to be based on ideas that come out of the lab.

There are an impressive range of partners and networks involved in this program (well done organisers!) and there is excellent potential for project ideas generated in this lab to go to all sorts of places, beyond Splendour in the Grass, nationally and internationally.

This is a rare, excellent opportunity, which led me to applying to Splendid in the first place. I'm stoked to be a part of it.

But being a part of it means: feeding off the provocateurs provoking and their personal frameworks and absorbing all the new worlds that brings you into; thinking about your own practice's relation to that provoking after hours; pondering upon how to alchemise your own practice and all the responses to the provoking into the Splendour festival environment in truly innovative ways; writing these blog posts; speaking to camera about the lab to many different media sources and paradigms; sussing out which of your lab mates are not only beautiful people but possible collaborators for this and possible other projects; cooking and eating; maintaining other projects' momentums during the lab; finding time to develop your hopeful new collaboration into a proposal with more provoking and distilling from outside sources, amidst your other projects; taking it easy throughout the whole thing as there's no point getting overwhelmed.

Get all that?

Random Photos from Week 1:

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