Saturday, July 04, 2009

The Project 2 - In The Flesh, Part 2 and Beyond.

Faith Arts Justice Technology Creation & Creativity Bootlegging Stealing Sharing

Things that tick my boxes.

The Project 2 - In The Flesh, Part 2 and Beyond.

So, the Project day was underway....

For me, first session I attended was Beki Bateson, GB Festival Director, though in true Greenbelt fashion, other talks, workshops and events were kicking off on other rooms and venues throughout the day.

There was also, maybe it was planned that way in choosing the location, an open air large balcony overlooking a nice green space, which throughout the day offered me and others a quiet space (the clement weather helped allow this to unfold!), and also somewhere where I could partake in a few drags of small cigar puffs and reflect...



Beki's session began with her offering the group an introduction to her thoughts and work in the Arts, Justice and Faith combined field, and used Banksy as an example to highlight how these 'movements;, for want of a better terminology, can come together and combine to create change. "Just space', is a phrase that really sticks in my mind that she used to explain how justice and faith can be exposed and shared through a piece of Art. She showed Banksy's images that are present on the Separation Wall in Palestine as striking examples of how Art can expose in a very real way, beautiful yet disturbing imagery that chews through the gaze and starts to work on your inner.
She talked of her work with Amos Trust and Greenbelt and Art she has seen in her travels by the people of place like Nicaragua, South Africa and Palestine, Art of the people of those places, and by people who have been affected by visiting those places and gone on to produce their own form of Art/ Justice / Faith kind of combination from the effects of their time in those places.



This stuff was resounding in me and making real connections, having been with Beki and a group of 20 other Greenbelter's on a weeks visit to Palestine last year and seeing this Wall Art, by Banksy and many other, unknown Wall Artists. Like the work of Garth Hewitt and his music and poetry that is accompanied by images by Wilf Witty that has come out of many many trips by them to these aforementioned places.

(So as I sit writing this second part self-review of the Project Day, 2 weeks since it happened, I keep interrupting myself with events that have gone on in the space between then and now, and feel the need to interject those thoughts also here....)

Faith, Art, Justice...... when combined they really do attract me, but for me there is something missing..... and this morning, awake ridiculously early for Saturday, I connect the missing piece of the jigsaw.

Where I fit in to all this....

The word is technology.

its been staring me in the face and only today I connect the jigsaw pieces.

Between today and 2 Saturdays ago since the Project, what have I done? What have I been a part of, and where it fits in?


Well, an ongoing thing I am involved in, as you may know if your read this blog or are involved with Greenbelt, is the podcast that is a monthly release available over there on the right of the screen if you click the virtual cassette tape you can hear....
I work on all the bits that the wonderful Paul Northup has assembled in terms of script, audio snippets and photographs, and knit them all together and create the finished article that your hear.
Latest episode was released end of June, and Greenbelt has a wonderful page up with more info on each of the people and things featured each month right over here....

Directly connected with that, I have re-mastered another 10 of the Greenbelt Recorded Talks, that currently are available over here in their original state, but soon will be available in their re-mastered (a fancy terminology for making them more ear- friendly!), through iTunes Audiobooks, and through Audible.com as part of an expansion and widening out of selected Recorded Talks from Greenbelts' past to the worldwide Online Community....

And also, since early this year I have been working (this is so exciting I can still hardly believe it), for this band, and things just got a whole lot more mental this past week as they kicked off their world tour.

Difficult to really go into detail here with what I do for various reasons, hence to say technology is a key thing with it all, and the way that this lot embrace and use technology, and combine it with Art, and Faith and Justice is absolutely second to none. The future is getting kissed. From all angles.



Now, before you get the idea that much of the time I actually know what I am doing re: Technology, then please, think again.
No, that would be far from the truth.
But one thing is, I am not scared of technology, for me its just another tool in the box.
I like to use whatever is at my fingertips to make purpose, using the tech toolbox.
Tech without a goal in mind, a vision, an aim, a project or a realisation at the end of it is just time-passing and very very boring.

So, this box of tech tools at my disposable is much like the rest of my life, very very messy. Same as my faith, Itty bitty, make-it-up-as-you-go-along,
But I do have a feel for it. Often I feel guided and driven along a path where the bits of tech laid out in front of me combine and help open up this 'just space' place that i learned its' name from from Beki B.

I space where visions and hopes turn into the created.

It can look or sound like magic, and brilliant, the final resulting piece that is born of the time and energy expelled in the making of the Art (whatever your own ideas of what Art actually is or encompasses is may be greatly different to my own, I know that). But its not magic, its actually the child of what it takes to be creative, inspiration mixed with plenty of graft........

So Part 2 of the Project blog has turned into something else, and there i need to leave it, to return to it in Part 3 very soon......

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