Taking up Residence

I went to a work session one time at BANFF. It's in one of the most beautiful areas of Canada.

On the first day of our residency, we were taken to a little office and our photos were taken and we were issued ID cards and under our names on the ID cards it said "ARTIST." I found this both charming and ironic which is, frankly, how I experience a lot of Canadian things. Such a useless administrative function, processing the artists, documenting them,  providing them a means of identification.

After we got our cards, we went for a little walk around the campus, which has gorgeous views in every direction and is fashioned a little bit like its own town. We saw a little store and went in. I was hoping to grab a newspaper and my friend needed cigarettes. We noticed they had coffee and each decided to grab a cup. (It being Canada, the little coffee stirrers were not made of wood; they were linguini, a more readily compostable item.) When we went up to the counter to pay, they asked to see our cards. "Are you kidding?," I thought to myself. "I need to show ID to buy a newspaper and to use one of your whole wheat linguini noodles to stir my coffee?!"

But we showed them. And the clerk said, "Thank you." And I said, "what do we owe you?" And the clerk said. "Oh. You're artists. You don't pay."

Anything we wanted, anywhere in that little campus town. It was free. Even the cigarettes.

There was something about that gesture that landed deeply and which, as I recall, animated the work that we did that week. I felt valued, even treasured. And trusted. Someone believed that whatever incidental items I felt as if I required to do my work were important. I still have that card.

*     *     *

One of my friends posted on social media this week that they were not thinking of themselves anymore as under quarantine. They'd decided to refer to themselves as artist in residence.

 How you think about things changes a lot.

What are the ways that you can bend the arc of your personal situation to suit your creative needs?

Work on that today.

*     *     *

There you are. In your space. With your time. And your work.

How can you make changes to your space and the ways you use time to facilitate your working well?

What structures of self-care do you need to or want to enact to set up your working day?

In what ways can you transform your living space into a working space or customize your working space into a space that is dedicated to THIS PROJECT?

How can you design (loosely) a daily working practice?
How much time a day to be focused solely on your working?
If it is hard to work on your own, how to schedule co-working sessions with one another, where you open a link between you so you can glance up and see what the other is doing and, perhaps, check in hourly to see how it's going. Or agree to share some work at the end of the day.

How can you create time that is totally free of interruption, of notification, news, social media, alerts, alarms, intrusion?

How can you get the sorts of interaction and feedback that your work needs or wants?

In so many ways, the experience that you've been consigned to is the worst set of circumstances ever. And the times are authentically frightening, for real. Tucked inside this dark shitstorm cloud there is this sanctuary.

You are there. In your space. With your time. And: you are an artist.


What will you do with your workday?



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