NOT / TRENDING NOW working with or without popular consensus

Mary Pearson, 2 October 2012

Called By Mary

Attended by Roger, Andy, Mary, Aliki, Sarah, Steph

Some things we talked about:

What about when you are not doing what everybody else is doing?

“For posterity..” “Nobody Understands Me..” “One day..”

Responding to the now - in the instance of political theatre, there is an expectation of a kind of politics that doesn't exist anymore

Looking in instead of looking out

About the idea of uniqueness: there will always be someone that has come up against the same problem/ issue as you

(Everybody else is the one and only? Uniqueness is unique to me)

Is trending a good thing?

Uniqueness vs. Isolation (existential crisis or fitting into no category)

On trending: not wanting to be swept up in a run of lemmings into the sea

Making theatre amongst a variety of other kinds of theatre, Recognized as a unique contribution to an ecology

Everyone has a role to play, unique part of a team 

“people power”

There are ideas persons, who set the ball rolling

Stabilizers and de-Stabilizers

(“Some animals browse and drink at waterholes not doing much of anything”, others rush in and destabilize situation)

Accessibility: finding the places where your work fits/belongs

As an artist, How often do you SELF RENEW?

SELLING OUT, BRANDING and RE-BRANDING

Branding/Rebranding eventually filters inwards, reconstitutes self

What about hitting a different target than the one you meant?

Feedback tells what it is you are & do as artist, not always what you intended

Maybe of a series of work only one hits the mark

Giving the public what they want

Disappointing them when they want “another one of those” (a previous success - which might never be produced again)

How do people describe your work? A narrower version of what you're doing or what you're good at, reductive

The “VOODOO ART OF MARKETING” work that is suitably rich, suitably complex, reductive descriptions of, made to sell

MARKETING & TRENDING and the Voodoo Marketeer

Hitting the Zeitgeist

When all the conditions are there: right creative team, right theme, right amount of money, right venue, right festival, everyone is clapping at the end… (and actually it's a stinker)

Creating a stinker, being analytical about what made the stinker a stinker

Believing your own publicity/ drowing in superstructure or HYPE

“Strangled by your own entrails”

In school, taught to venerate the radical and groundbreaking, wanting to emulate that, when it is no longer radical (at the point which it is being taught in institution)

Radical always un-radical before hitting the open air..

Being radical for the sake of it

Where to protest now?

Where to fire when you can't find the target

Positioning oneself as (an outsider, an insider, a joiner in, a rebel) already by the age of 14?

Many outsiders have been practicing the outsider as a child

Tags:

hype, political, outsider art, trending, trends, radical