October 26, 2004
Pygmalion @ Eyba
What happened at Pygmalion? We should have stayed in touch with everyone during the workshop, but it was impossible; a faulty ISDN line kept conspiring against it, and the general tone of the lab didn't really ask for it. But also, the way things evolved, it seemed like we couldn't really do much in Germany, not in practical terms. As Chumbacca's project gets closer (at least in principle) to the art world, the entertainment business looks, oddly, much too theoretical for it. By this I mean that what we need to do at this stage is to keep coming up with interesting pieces and ideas, try them out, see what works and what doesn't, and the Pygmalion workshop could not provide us with much help in that respect. Not that it was their fault — we owe them the current direction of the project and that's more than I would ask from them.
On the other hand, theorising is not what entertainment people do best, and our mentor couldn't understand Chumbacca's view of things even if you draw him a map (which we did). So I basically took my time to read what I can't read at home: the thick Conceptual Art book by Alberro/Stimson (great); the Masotta anthology (cool); Julian Stallabrass' High Art Lite (bullshit). I also wrote, of course. There is a Chumbacca Paper soon to be published here, and we have a clearer proposal that I'll post next. Most important of all: we hung out with the most interesting people.
As for the "Industry" contacts, it was strange, for the reasons mentioned above — Chumbacca isn't really for them and he wasn't interested at all in making an effort to socialize. I did the dirty work then, and got many revealing moments out of it. Will comment about this in private. The final balance is, I think, pretty good: we have a clear idea of what we want to do, we have a clearer idea of where not to pursue it. As an additional bonus, I found that my high esteem of almost every aspect of Pygmalion clashed with my view that these programmes shouldn't really exist at all. I like these kinds of challenges. Further discussion on this, later, probably somewhere else.
Posted by huili at October 26, 2004 04:52 PM