005: CONSIDER THIS UNSETTLED
DISPATCHES 005 | 11:11 | 9.25.26
October is close enough that “I’ll deal with that in October” has stopped being a useful phrase. A lot is coming together. Trying to let that register before moving on to the next thing.
This time next week, Dispatches will be coming from inside the Strange Companions residency.
I would love to tell you this means everything will be finished.
It just means we’ve moved the unfinishedness to a second location.
There is something very convenient about telling the story of making something after it’s done. You know which decisions mattered. You can identify the breakthrough.
After years of making, the work deserves three weeks to marinate, and those weeks deserve a place in the story too.
I have a vision for Strange Companions. We've done a lot of work toward it. The residency begins with just the four Orders and the visual elements made for the Oracle Deck and Field Guide. From there, we’ll build and introduce the other parts of the project over the month.
The intention is to bring sculpture, sound, writing and ritual into a shared space, building towards the closing reception on October 23. There is a direction. There are decisions I want to be able to question once we’re there.
Something can make sense in my head, in a drawing, even as an object, needs reconsidering when it meets everything else. How much space does it need? What happens when sound is present? Am I explaining a relationship that the work itself hasn’t made apparent?
I want time to notice those things before deciding they’re settled.
Having a few weeks at Sparrow Artspace to do that is a privilege I don’t want to take for granted. There is space to build, to spend time with what we’ve made and to change something while we still have the opportunity. So much of making happens around the demand to get it finished, photographed and out into the world. Here, some of that thinking can happen with the work already in public.
That feels exciting. It also means being seen reconsidering something I may have sounded quite certain about a week earlier.
People visiting at different points in October will encounter different stages. We’ll be introducing work, developing the sound and finding out what needs more attention. Some of the original vision may hold up exactly as imagined. Some of it may change for reasons I can’t anticipate from the studio.
I don’t want to be so committed to proving the original plan right that I miss what those weeks could make possible.
COMING EARLY OCTOBER
Having a few weeks at Sparrow Artspace to do that is a privilege I don’t want to take for granted. There is space to build, to spend time with what we’ve made and to change something while we still have the opportunity. So much of making happens around the demand to get it finished, photographed and out into the world. Here, some of that thinking can happen with the work already in public.
That feels exciting. It also means being seen reconsidering something I may have sounded quite certain about a week earlier.
People visiting at different points in October will encounter different stages. We’ll be introducing work, developing the sound and finding out what needs more attention. Some of the original vision may hold up exactly as imagined. Some of it may change for reasons I can’t anticipate from the studio.
I don’t want to be so committed to proving the original plan right that I miss what those weeks could make possible.
A PERFECTLY REASONABLE OCTOBER
For over ten years, we’ve watched a horror film a day throughout October. This year’s theme is folk horror.
Ritual, strange presences, people trying to make sense of forces they don’t entirely understand. You can probably see the overlap with the Dreadlings.
Nothing like unwinding with a village that takes community participation too far.
