So the question I have been asked a lot since the show, and even during it... "What are you going to do next?"
The elephant based answer is that I am going to work hard at raising money, applying for grants and working a day job, in order to take a big trip next year. The most minimal level of adventure will be to go to Thailand and work at the Elephant Nature Foundation (there's a link to their site at the bottom of the page) for maybe a month and then come back and use the experience and material I've gained to be the basis of the next big elephant show.
I still feel connected to the subject matter and have a some more ideas that will potentially form the basis of a couple more shows.
The extended version of the trip (relying on funding and my capacity to come up with a satisfactory plan for the living arrangements of my cat) is to go to Thailand and do the volunteer work at the foundation and then go to India and Africa to visit some more elephants and cultures interested in elephants, and finally end up in America, where I would love to do a residency at the Women's Studio Workshop. They are an amazing residency program in the mountains of New York (State). They are a residency program focused on printmaking, paper making, book binding (and I think ceramics and sculpture). As the name implies they only accept women and you get a months worth of accommodation, unlimited printing press access, conversation and acquaintance with other women artists and basically an incredible experience. I'm pretty sure I would have pleanty of material to work with in that month after visiting Thailand, India and Africa!
However, in the mean time I am going to do something a bit different. In order not to get jaded with the elephant theme I think it is going to be important to do a few side projects as well. This year I am going to try curating a show or two and I also have an idea for another show planned for August, and its all about red balloons!
I was watching a performance at fortyfive downstairs called 'The Black Bag' and in it they sung a cover of the 1980's hit song 99 Red Balloons by the German band Nena. I had never really taken much notice of the song, it is quite boppy and fast paced, but the way the performer in this show sung it was slow and melancholy, which revealed the lyrics and made me pay attention to them for the first time...
99 Red BalloonsYou and I in a little toy shop
buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got
Set them free at the break of dawn
'Til one by one, they were gone
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message, "
Something's out there"
Floating in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by.
99 red balloons floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere red
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
Where 99 red balloons go by.
99 Decision Street, 99 ministers meet
To worry, worry, super-scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by.
99 Knights of the air
ride super-high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a Superhero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
As 99 red balloons go by.
99 dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It's all over and I'm
standin' pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a
souvenirJust to prove the world was here...
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go.
This song got stuck in my head for days, and with it some beautiful rich images of red balloons floating in a summer sky. So I thought I would have a show around that.
I love it as a comment on the folly of war and the ego so often responsible for it, not to mention the impact it has on regular people. But I also have come to see it on a more individual level as a kind of metaphor for the way relationships can flare up over nothing much and then you stand there with the ashes of a friendship or love affair after all the shots have been fired and hurt has been inflicted and there you stand, still alive, but all that was built up is destroyed...
Some thoughts:
Red the colour of passion, love, lust, blood, violence, danger and war. (The German lyrics did not specify that the balloons were red. A 'Luftballon' is a colorful toy balloon, rather than a balloon for transport or research. Kevin McAlea wrote the English version, titled "99 Red Balloons" on an envelope, which he claims to still have, which has a more satirical tone than the original. The English version is not a direct translation of the German but contains a somewhat different set of lyrics. The overall story and sentiment is the same though.)
Balloons, filled with air, usually breathed into by us, our own life force used to inflate them.
A Shakespearean quality to the folly, needless waste and tragedy. A joke, or playful moment gone terribly wrong.
City is civilisation, the slow build up of effort, industry, care and planning. Cities are the controlling and taming of the wild, a 'civilised' nation or person is one who is cultivated, educated, mature. It is logic, intelligence and control.
What goes wrong is random, a mistake, a misunderstanding. Chaos plays a hand. But the city is also destroyed by ego, war lust, carelessness, over-inflated fears and desire for domination over others... control gone out of control... and that dichotomous (and false) mindset of kill/die, destroy or be destroyed, control or be controlled.
Toy shop and balloons, are all innocence... it is almost an archetypal tale of a child learning the devastating power of their newly developed passions as they hit adolescence and emerge into adulthood.
