Gael's Erratic Pigeon Post | Artist. Schmartist?
A newsletter about woodwork, mangoes, icebergs and sometimes improv.
A newsletter about woodwork, mangoes, icebergs and sometimes improv.
Hello dear (old or new) reader friend!
This second half of the year 2024 is full of projects, of work and of old and new adventures. It’s busy, draining, stimulating, exciting and all the rest at the same time! So as usual, my brain is running wild with ideas, passionate rants and questions, like ‘Is anyone truly unique?’.
As usual, feel encouraged to answer to this Pigeon Post with anything you want, and if you liked it, feel free to share it with your friends!
THE IMPROV CHATTER
In the last few weeks, I’ve been pretty busy with the production of my latest show Polar Nights. Normies1—and sometimes improvisers—assume that improv is only the bit that we see on stage.
In the latest Pigeon Post, I talked about all of the jobs that we do, and especially how important the technical behind the scene is. I read a lot of reactions from tech around the world that were whooping from behind their light desks and sound boards, it couldn’t make me happier! So I decided to dive a bit more into the BTS of the upcoming Flock Theatre production.
Admin, logistics and money-stuff
Any project can only exist if the logistics and finances are healthy. The 3 important things you need for that are:
Anticipation and planning well in advance to not get caught by things you should have done months ago, depending on what you want to happen
Some solid budgeting, finance following and organisation of your data, keeping track of everything actually going on
A good PR and communication to let people know what will happen eventually—in Flock, that’s all Laura doing an amazing job at it
If this feels scary to you, you’re not weird. I am currently designing a workshop for budgeting and piloting projects with the working title VAT the f***?!. Interested? Reach out to shout!
Photoshoot and graphic communication
As director of the production, I am the one in charge of the concept of the communication. Because I am also the graphic designer for Flock, I will also be in charge of designing the posters. But this time, I got very precious help for the photoshoot: brilliant Amsterdam(-Noord) photographer Wesley Verhoeve embarked with me onto making the process a part of the experience!
All of the pictures were taken on an analog camera, in black and white, and the next steps are to enlarge the negatives—with a new friend called Thor, more about that next time—and contact-print them to create cyanotypes. Doesn’t it sound cool AF?
I am very excited about all of that. And if you like nerdy stuff, Wesley has a newsletter called Process, and his new photography book just became available in pre-order this weekend! It’s gonna be gorgeous.
Set and sound design
A big chunk of the project around Polar Nights resides in its ambitious staging and wish for sound design. In the last months, the work has been focused on making decisions that would heighten the audience experience during the show.
One part is visual. On one hand, Tanine Dunais is in charge of the furnitures and accessories for each night, making the picture unique to that night. On the other hand, the broader set and staging is something I imagined: a play happening at all time in a shelter to overwinter. This translated by a dome that will occupy the center of the play. And this week I had my first try outs after measuring, cutting, drilling, screwing and assembling!
For the sound design, I will be working with recordings from some of my awesome fellow-residents of the Arctic Circle. They recorded ambient sounds above ground and under water, and some of them2 were kind enough to share them with me. It’s gonna be eerie, immersive and beautiful!
Especially because on the sound-front, I also have some help from the brilliant British sound designer Daniel Potts. He helps me figuring out how to do what I want, and hopefully will be able to make it for the entire week of the shows performances.
This is obviously only the tip of the iceberg, and there is plenty more in the works besides rehearsal. If it sparks your imagination, if you are curious or just excited to see the result of this work, come watch one of the four performances on December 12, 13, 14 and 15 in Amsterdam.
Tickets are on sales already, and there is only a limited amount of seats available!
SOME LIFE STUFF
As you probably know if you’ve seen me in the last 4 months—or if you just read the paragraph above—I went to Svalbard earlier this week as part of a selected artist for the Arctic Circle residency. Three weeks in the high Arctic, including 15 days on a tall ship, out of communication range, phone or internet. All of that with 40 other humans: 28 co-residents, and 12 crew members to help navigate the ship, keep us warm and fed, and guide us in the wilderness.
The trip was absolutely gorgeous. I am very lucky to have been able and privileged enough to participate to such a unique residency! I also got to work on a small project about (im)perfection, taking one and only one Polaroid picture per day, which yielded fascinating results in terms of reflection on my practice as an artist. (and yes, we’ve seen a polar bear)
If you’ve read the Post so far, you’ve probably noticed that it inspired me for a big chunk of the new Flock Theatre production: the theme, part of the set, the sound design, some of the visual design and even the cyanotypes are all ideas born from the residency. But if you’ve talked about it with me a bit more in depth—it being during the residency itself or afterwards—you know that I’ve also been struggling a lot with some of the aspects of the residency.
I am unfortunately not yet ripe for drawing actual conclusions from some of my frustrations during the trip, but I would like to share one of the reflections with you: What the fuck are we doing?!
Who are we making art for? Can anyone interested truly access what we produce? Do we keep in mind the audience’s experience before putting something out in the world? Or are we simply indulging in self-satisfied experimentation, valuing the process itself as enough to not need any work on the output? Is our audience here to witness process or the selected and filtered result of it? Are we really special?
Hot take: I don’t really believe in genius in art. I think that the geniuses in history have mostly been people that were at the good place at the good time, with enough privilege and friends to give them space, exposition and attention.
I obviously don’t think that anyone can do anything with the same result yield—which links to my belief that improv should be open to anyone, but cannot be for everyone. But I also don’t believe in the concept of unique point of view or unique abilities: if Da Vinci hadn’t painted Mona Lisa, another painting from another painter would have taken its place. You doubt it? Then how would we explain that somehow ‘randomly’ 98% of artistic geniuses in arts just happened to be men?
During my time in the Arctic, I struggled with the feeling of being not enough of an artist: not educated in arts, not cultured enough, not going out enough, not open enough, not unique enough, not believing enough in my own uniqueness, simply not enough. And at the very same time, I struggled with the notion that art seemed to be so voluntarily obscure, somewhat cloaked in vagueness, ego, narcissism and inaccessible without having a MA. It felt like we lost the distinction between what we have to say to customers, funds or institutions to finance our work, and what we share with colleagues and friends. Is it all appearances? Is it all pretend? Do we truly believe that we are unique and therefore that we have this sacred mission to generate art? Is it all bullshit? Who are we really doing this for?
It reminded me of a conversation a couple of years back on audience numbers in the local improv community, and the question ‘Can art exist without its audience?’. The more it goes, and the more I think not. How can we reconcile this with the ideal of purity of art, untouched by the dirt of capitalistic restrictions or by the bother of wondering if what we present is worth paying for—in cash, kind or time?
I don’t know, and I am not sure I ever will. But all these questions are boiling and it sips into my own artistic practice in the field of improv. And there again, feeling both too snob and too brute, too idealistic and too realistic, too naïvely hopeful and too cynical.
A BIG OL’ SHOUT OUT
One of the people in our field I admire the most when it comes to making shit happen is Manuel Speck. He is an improviser from Karlsruhe, brilliant teacher and absolute mastermind of growing a business.
This year, in addition to teaching, performing, directing, traveling, creating new shows and co-organising the festival with me, he also moved his school, Improtheater Karlsruhe, into a new building—with three class rooms, a small stage, offices and a little bar—and he officially took over the artistic direction of the Marotte theatre, a beautiful little puppetry theatre in town, that he is taking over fully in 2025. I love this for him, for his community, and for what it represents for improv!
If you’re ever in Karlsruhe, give him a ring. And if you’re ever looking for inspiration, you know where to find it!
RANDOM THOUGHT
Most mangoes suck in Europe. I didn’t understand the buzz about mangoes before I went to Australia. And then I came back and missed them. BUT NOT ALL IS LOST!
For a few years now, during European mango season—yes, there is such a thing—I order mangoes from a direct-sales network of farmers based in Southern Europe that cultivate mangoes, avocados, passion fruits, etc.
It is not only absolutely delicious, it also makes me survive the bleakness of autumn! If you’re curious about the process, CrowdFarming3 was built by farmers to cut the big chains of distribution from the equation.
Thanks for reading me! I hope you liked reading what feels like opening a bit of my head to you. Today was a lot of doors to open, not a lot of doors to close. To be continued.
Take care, be kind and eat your mangoes!
Gael
Non-improvisers. ↩
Julia Hechtman and Ashley Middleton for now, with a couple more coming. ↩
I do not have any finances in CrowdFarming, or any agreement with them. I’m just a happy mango-eater. 😃 ↩
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