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Time

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 | Time | 3 Comments

Time is central to my way of working as an artist. I use time to try things out, go back over, see how it has worked out, try again - to change and move on. I don’t get it right first time and would not expect to. I work in long time and short time: ideas can develop over many years. My assessment of my work can also evolve over years.

Projects and organisations have natural rhythms which can be long or short. Music ensembles can work together over decades. I have run film making workshops that have lasted two hours. However for funders and agencies time seems to represent risk - and not of the bold, exciting, ground-breaking kind, but the I-can’t-justify-it kind.

Funded projects don’t often seem to allow for time - time for reflection or recasting or admitting to failure and trying again. I am often asked to work in short time: please come up with a proposal - for an art project, a workshop, a talk or some writing - in a couple of days. And then those projects may not happen for months. Have others experienced a strange mental displacement by the time you come to actually carry out a project - what was going through my mind at that time I proposed this?

In my experience the projects with the strongest social aims will often happen over the shortest time. If I am working with a teenager for a day taking photographs I may encourage in him increased self-esteem, a willingness to “re-engage”, to desist from certain behaviours - but probably only if he is on that journey already.

Time is necessary to make successful projects, to try different approaches, to fail and try again. Funded projects do not often allow this. These project seem like stepping stones poking above the flow of a creative life.

So,
How do we manage the pulls of long time and short time in a project-funded world?

How do we measure success when it can emerge over the long term?

When does time feel like risk rather than opportunity? › Continue reading