Locked-down freedoms

Still from ORBIT (out of play) | 1m 20s digital video | 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic marks a period in which many of the activities that had become the core of my practice - collaboration, participation and working with specific sites - became impossible or severely curtailed. The shock of work being halted and cancelled, literally overnight, was immense. But I am one of the lucky ones, with reasonable living space and just enough resources to tide me over.  I've therefore enjoyed some positive aspects to lockdown. This pause in business as usual has provided me with my first extended time out in about six (frankly exhausting) years. After 12 weeks, I feel I have just about caught up with myself.

It took me a couple of weeks to get my bearings. While many arts organisations immediately went into overdrive, recruiting artists to generate digital content and participate in online activities, I was still trying to process the immensity of what we were facing and work out the basic elements of survival for myself and those close to me.

Initially I was glad of the time to wrap up Anyone may come and go Preston Street Union's commission for RAMM. As a group, we then went on the contribute to Adam Garratt's online 'lightboxcolab' project.  I  also worked with Megan Calver to put our future work for the Thelma Hulbert Gallery on ice with a short promo video. She and I later set to work on a long-postponed publication to wrap up LEAN, our project for Od Festival in 2018.

Although the empty weeks that stretched ahead encouraged me to think big, I settled instead for working in short bursts on small projects to allow for the other inevitable tensions, intrusions, worries and responsibilities of  living through a pandemic. I made a couple of unsuccessful applications(what's new?) but have also had a few generous invitations to make new work.

I set about teaching myself editing with Vegas Movie Studio, trying to work with video as a medium in its own right, rather than just a means of documentation. It's early days but I contributed a video work the predecessor to your prayer to Forced Collaboration and made ORBIT (out of play), based on my daily circular lockdown walks, for an informal Zoom project 'Stilled Lives'. This film grew from an image I made for a lockdown show 'together / apart' at That Art Gallery, Bristol.

I've been incredibly appreciative of the opportunity to view online and for free, gallery, film and performance works that would otherwise have required a trip to London (or even further afield). Highlights have been Tacita Dean's Event for a Stage (a rare opportunity to see her work in digital format), Mark Wallinger's Threshold to the Kingdom, Helen Cammock's They Call It Idlewild, John Smith's The Black Tower, Ed Atkins' Old Food, Hofesh Schecter's Clowns, Fabrizio Terranova's Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival, Complicite's The Encounter and Simon Stephens' The Sea Wall.

No doubt we will emerge from lockdown to a changed world, but I feel more ready to face it after this chance to pause and reflect. I hope we can 'build back better' - politically, socially and environmentally. There are interesting times ahead, in which activism may be one of the most important uses of artists' time and effort.