The key to improvisation is to never say (k)no(w).
One of my favorite television shows growing up was Whose Line is It Anyway? with Clive Anderson. Four performers sit on the stage open and willing to embrace any scenario thrown in their face. They react creatively to a situation either proposed by the audience or the moderator. The quality of their wit is a factor in getting audience approval, but more than anything it’s commitment. Committing to something and seeing it through no matter how ridiculous persuades the audience to trust the performer and ride along. Improvisation within a structure is the basis of my work. Taking what I am given and riffing off of it, whether it’s footage, an image, material within my workspace, a found object, a narrative structure, etc. this is how I function. It is a philosophy I subscribe to in life as well as in the studio. Perhaps I cannot always control situations thrown my way but I truly believe I have control of my reaction to them. Admittedly sometimes I throw things at myself. I use the idea of improvisation in the construction of one frame to the next in my videos, the decisions made throughout the making of my objects and drawings, and the overall relationships between these elements within the spatial narrative of an environment.
In my universe, my pristine white box, my mental vast void of blankness, everything is interchangeable. Nothing is holy, everything is holy, and the rules are mine to change at my whim, when I want, how I want. It’s acceptance, it’s freedom, it’s contradictory, it’s changeable, and it is not going to last. Immediacy and hedonistic indulgence overshadow inconceivable Immortality. I will be forgotten and so I desire to be in the moment. My work lives and dies as I do. But for now it exists in the prism realities of existence, in Greene’s (multi) universe(s), in the liminal spaces. Stop it from being airless. Glean all the enjoyment I can out of just being, reacting, playing, in the moment, in the experience. We hold on, hoping for an anchor to keep us from being sucked into the swirling vortex down the drain into decay and then into oblivion. What would happen if we all relaxed?
One of my favorite television shows growing up was Whose Line is It Anyway? with Clive Anderson. Four performers sit on the stage open and willing to embrace any scenario thrown in their face. They react creatively to a situation either proposed by the audience or the moderator. The quality of their wit is a factor in getting audience approval, but more than anything it’s commitment. Committing to something and seeing it through no matter how ridiculous persuades the audience to trust the performer and ride along. Improvisation within a structure is the basis of my work. Taking what I am given and riffing off of it, whether it’s footage, an image, material within my workspace, a found object, a narrative structure, etc. this is how I function. It is a philosophy I subscribe to in life as well as in the studio. Perhaps I cannot always control situations thrown my way but I truly believe I have control of my reaction to them. Admittedly sometimes I throw things at myself. I use the idea of improvisation in the construction of one frame to the next in my videos, the decisions made throughout the making of my objects and drawings, and the overall relationships between these elements within the spatial narrative of an environment.
In my universe, my pristine white box, my mental vast void of blankness, everything is interchangeable. Nothing is holy, everything is holy, and the rules are mine to change at my whim, when I want, how I want. It’s acceptance, it’s freedom, it’s contradictory, it’s changeable, and it is not going to last. Immediacy and hedonistic indulgence overshadow inconceivable Immortality. I will be forgotten and so I desire to be in the moment. My work lives and dies as I do. But for now it exists in the prism realities of existence, in Greene’s (multi) universe(s), in the liminal spaces. Stop it from being airless. Glean all the enjoyment I can out of just being, reacting, playing, in the moment, in the experience. We hold on, hoping for an anchor to keep us from being sucked into the swirling vortex down the drain into decay and then into oblivion. What would happen if we all relaxed?
