Setting the space-in-between
Coming to the creative table (or tableaux)
PREFACE : For this moment of thoughts, the topic arises around flux states, which I previously spoke about in the last editorial. Sometimes the way I write might come across a little confusing, or confused, but I’m hopeful you can find your own entry point into the moments I’ve written about. I aim is to write as naturally as possible, and only enhance my idiosyncrasy with writing and thought. The following begins to break into some kindred ideas that may not be resolved but can riff off of one another. So the explorer is exploring within the explored text below. The subtitle around this piece is ’The Setting’. Enjoy.
THE SETTING. What does that even mean? as I’ve begun building this creative world around TK.CC, I’ve taken language from the space around a test kitchen, its research-infused lab, the food, exploration, and the like, beginning to unpack and recode it… So in a sense, I’ve pondered ‘The Setting’ as two themes: (1) the planning of a plan to take place; a predetermined framework; and a strategic impetus that reveals or guides the exploration. As well as (2) a place where we come together, in an unplanned and open environment, or space, somewhere that gives room for an actual ‘setting’ to take place and reveal itself (like a setting of a setting). The first can take on the latter, and become a more thoughtful and human process in the formulation of “making the setting”, instead of putting the human through the formula, we can put the formula through the human. Give it some lively vibrancy. A fun placement. A more creative space. Because being human is a creative process, we’ve just lost some of that space. Another hypothesis to this possible ‘Setting’, is the something (or somewhere) we’re all trying to sell each other”; A prepackaged, off-the-shelf, all-inclusive thing that you just switch on and it does all the other things for you. A shortcut. Are we only seekers of shortcuts? We’ve evolved to find shortcuts, these ‘efficiencies’ in every corner of the act of being, but I digress on my original ‘Setting’ but I’ve left it in anyway, I could removed it but maybe some complexity is good. Or maybe it’s just the confusing part to start off with. We’ll see who continues to read on.
Onwards. Let’s go and find a way to create space, space within the creative process, and space within the receiving process, as (it continuously appears) we’re in a time now where the answer to our ideas, our projects, and our narratives, need to be wrapped up in neat little packages. To consume as quickly as possible. Because we need to ensure that people understand exactly. What. Is. Happening. before it happens… but why? Well, I guess we don’t want to go ahead and scare anybody into using their senses, actively, and then, provoke some sort of thought to take place in these words read here – but we’re not idiots, we wouldn’t push that on anyone 😏
Why then is there this focused fixation on everything making sense? why are we so focused on making sure we know something before we engage with it – it’s interesting to think about, this conundrum – perhaps we’ve lost our footing, lost the explorer in us, whereby we need the full path laid out for us, cannot conceive of laying the path down ourselves, and that’s in any instance of the path both being and becoming. We’re in an age where time is sold, it’s nonexistent, we’re not autonomous with it, and we’re not even allowed to look at time anymore. Don’t look! We just don’t see it. Yet somehow we’re wasting more time? Imagine that. Everything is funnelling to singular points, and those points are pointing inward too. And this isn’t even on the topic of A.I. singularity, maybe in tandem, we should discuss it here? Or not. But it does instil in us a space where these frictions displace our presence as we are doped up on this timeless reality, distractedly present, presented distraction, distracted presently – distracted zombification doped up on scroll-phine. Scroll-phine is just the new drug addiction we’re unaware we have, because the intravenous taps straight into our psyche, silently. And if you couldn’t tell it’s a play on the word morphine, as distraction culture has emblazoned our minds eye, distracting us from the culture we’re looking at in that very moment we’re looking at it. And when we’re not doped up, we’re rinsed and repeated, feeding the scroll.
MEDITATIONS on LOVE SONGS was a project for love, spanning the making of music, artwork creation, poetry and writing to develop an immersive experience for one, with this virtual vinyl. The following text was written when the project was shared with everyone:
“A poem in song, of love songs, of 31 births, a document of 6 years, of a love colliding. Exploring a world, as two bubbles collide and entangle, going on a journey of discovery. They’re explorers uncovering. A performance for one, sonically minded, conceptually sound, to endless love, across 6 movements, comes in at 31”07’. This work is sensorial, a gift, virtual vinyl. An edition for 1.”
Showing the playful potential of ideas, as they expand in the world for others, loved ones or not. And yes… you can listen to this album now on Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, and all other streamers.
When I embark on writing I usually don’t know the path, I’ll have a seed from a word, or sentence. For this piece it started while I was meditating, seeing ideas pass through my thoughts, mind full in a mindful space, trying to focus on letting go, but sometimes it’s not possible as the thoughts grip along the sides. While I’m focusing on my breath and unlistening to the birds around me, the sun washes over me, I begin to have sparks come through, thinking about why. why we need so much clarity? why is there no space for the creative process to just be? Be playful! Just be in play. We should be opening more playful spaces that are focused firstly on the act of play, not on the goal to; sell this, make this function for that requirement, support that need, and hit these targets; as these spaces can place us down pathways we may never have expected, in turn these pathways may find stepping stones to answers some other goal, intentionally or unintentionally, and even signal a need to some solution we had not yet known we needed the solution too. I’m not unvalidating the use of goals to drive the creative process, but that to me is not the only way, and that to me is not the only way we should continue to proceed creatively in the beginning. As this space for play, for wandering, and for letting the unknown wonderfully confuse us, can activate the mind to make the abstract, for abstraction's sake, or for something else to come into our point-of-view. Evoking an active state of mind.
We need in every aspect of life, a little bit more play, and a little bit more abstraction in how we package the process of ideas, projects, and narratives; giving room to the viewer, and the audiences; to ignite their creative processes, and engage with life in a way that becomes more active. And less distractive. Even saying the word ENGAGE sounds dirty now. Everything has been used, and abused, to sell and distribute the thing to you, instantaneously, with no space, and no time, leaving no room for contemplation, we’re on automatic, and when there is room for contemplation, we don’t know what to do with it, our automatic motors frazzle and fill the space with something, anything, so we don’t need to engage with our inner selves – our contemplative selves. And we stuff our minds and time with this junk, junk that looks like the stuff we’re trying to see, but we’re creating and contributing to our own distracted filter over the lens and never actually peering beyond the filter. Let’s call it ‘The Big Filter Affect’. Even some spaces that want to spread the act of ‘mindfulness’, ‘slowing down’, and ‘contemplation’, somehow feel like they’re jamming down our pipes, so we smoke it up, and get stoked on the instant gratification. That we align with these ideas. Feel like we act on them. Are actors for them. But, continue to allow these trains to train our subconscious motors to act as they want us to act, act like the machine, like the machine wants its components to keep machining. The age of machined mindfulness is now! Are you mindful enough yet?
Now we’re constantly distilling and packaging innovation as information overload, we’re all doing something and we’re all spewing out something else (I’m here too); thoughts and feelings, this idea, that idea, and that other new thing. We’re all machining our own machines… and yelling. Yelling to be heard, heard in this silent stage, in the technological age, in this silent box, of endless dots, illuminating, casting our eyes in blue, screening, a sea of people scrolling, counting down backwards, from 0, 1, and 2. We’re lost, and we don’t want to find our way out – distraction is dope! – but maybe we need to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, get a little bit more lost. Chase the tail of confusion, and see just how abstract this whole thing is. Pull back the curtains on “reality”, and try to see the set-of-life as each of us may be open to seeing it, as it unfolds this magical space, between things, from creation to reception, and engagement, let’s get lost in-between.
I’ve spent my whole life finding entry points into the creative process, it’s always been there, from the cerebral to the physical act of creation. Yet along the way I got distracted, or continually informed by the idea that clarity is pinnacle, and shown a required need to sell an idea, be clear, and have everything smoothed out, so they slide down the digestive track of the world around us, and we’re all clear. Is that clear? This falls from any side of the creative sphere, working for others (to answer their questions), working for ourselves (to answer our questions), and working with others (to explore our shared questioning), each path having liner notes, allowing no space for mystery, no space for complete and utter confusion, or simple some MORE abstract moments – if the unknown is a bit much for some, for a sum; the sum of all parts could be none. It seems we need a little bit more space between. Between understanding and not understanding, knowing and not knowing, being and curiosity. I mean we already spend our lives in a between space, the space of life and death, which probably just scares the shit out of most people, so most probably avoid acknowledging it at all costs, and hunt for the fountain of youth, or maybe just YOLO the shit out of life, which feels like it’s doing the same thing from the opposite end, as it sits nice and comfortably with the other lovely acronym FOMO.
TASTING MICROCOSMS (2023) was a commissioned art project using moving-image to explore molecular abstraction of Japanese cuisine in leading hospitality venue Future Future, (view motion here), (or here), (and here). Below is the accompanying text:
“Taste these microcosms colliding with one another – Reculturing from culinary and Japanese cultures, this commission for Future Future commenced with the collecting and sourcing of found footage from 90s Japanese TV, molecular gastronomy, agriculture and permaculture, through to sampling imagery from the Future Future online feeds.
In this process of reculturing, the collected material used as the raw ingredients is pulled apart, and deconstructed, very slowly, pushing each micro, each detail, into new forms of materiality, exposing the formatting of these raw materials as a new textural palette, forming a post ecosystem of visual ASMR and synesthesia – evoking goosebumps on the senses.”
Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, distraction from abstracting did. But who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?
Sometimes my writing will be easier to digest. Again, this editorial may not. We’re going for some slight molecular gastronomy today. It’s food. But a little hard to digest. Because I’m trying to inspire an idea. The idea of how to create a recipe. So the tangents, loops, and swoops of words, are there to inspire me to get lost in between them. We can feel rhythms, motifs and codes for a question that has no question mark, at this stage. It’s a stage to inspire more question-making. So have we collectively lost our inspiration? Our recipes for a new dish? Maybe we need to find a new kitchen, and figure out if we’re going to be the chefs or the utensils… cause cultural signs are pouring into the latter. And with this, we could, in vanilla essence, lose our pure creativity-ness, as we place claim on the utensil as ‘creative’. We are just the tools for a system in place. Placed on us. The products. I question the conditions of this cultural conundrum – is the product or the puppet really the actor? I can leave that with you. Might you play Metallica - Master of Puppets while you ponder?
But can’t we all be open to experiencing a more abstract perspective, understanding something and not being able to articulate it? Maybe we simple feel it, or sense it, or even experience it. Or just not get it. We all have the ability to just ‘like’ it, even if we don’t understand what ‘it’ is. That’s absolutely ok with me, I often prefer that. And it should be ok with you too.
PACKAGING THE IDEA ; A little idea architecture for your mind-full-ness. We could think about the conversational ideas above as – a concept I coined while reaching the end of writing this – Creative Stretching, where the ‘between’ works with ‘continuous’ to push the thing, the idea, the creating, and the outcome. To exceed the fossilising curiosity of us as the product (or utensil as I laid claim), and break curiosity free from this extinction. Let’s replace culture with culture. With this new culturing, we could say that the two states that arise, the between state(s) and continuous state(s), both allow us to develop relationships and processes (or relationship processes) to act upon; the Between being in the grey areas or friction spaces, neither here nor there, this or that, it’s the openness state (of changing); and Continuous being the pusher, the explorer, leading from one thing to the next, endless observing, it’s the curiosity state (of connecting).
There is no line between things, only relationships, and this nature of thinking holds strong potential for the creative self, as a protagonist, in each active life we embark on, to become the chief and not the utensil. When we understand that pressure, and friction, are also components of these between states, maybe we can see our reflections as more than resistance. Then we can also allow ourselves to continue along these paths and find something other than what we expect to happen. Because it probably isn’t standing there in front of you, you’ll need to walk right through that mirror, to see what flavours lay on the other side.
People say I should focus on one thing, sometimes, maybe often, mmm no not often, and I’ve siloed my pursuits for most of my life, through a separate part of my psyche to organise / arrange things, but now I’ve reached a clarity point; of removing those lines; letting the relationships just be. In turn decided to move forward and keep doing everything, because why not? Does it feel dense sometimes? Yep. Does it become foggy? Yep. But when I reflect on a life lived, will the single practice (for me) suffice? Probably not. No. Definitely not. I love minimalist practices (if we remove all of the detail will there be any character left?) but I’m wrapped in a maximalist worldliness. So make up your own life – I want my taste to grow. So I’m gonna keep tasting.
Enjoy your food with others,
Dale.