Atelier Barbette 20 (Patreon)

Hello my dear, strange, wonderful patrons!

It's here: ATELIER BARBETTE ... NUMBER 20.

Wow!

Thank you all so much for your support.

I didn't set out to make so many of these short little vlogs but they've turned into a wonderful way to efficiently share the work that has been going on inside and outside the studio on this project with all of you.

I've already gone back and watched some of the early ones a few times and it gives me that warm fuzzy feeling of being able to clearly see the progress that I've made in the last year and a half on this project.

To be able to scroll back when I'm in the creative trenches and my mind is telling me that this idea is shit, the work is shit, i'm shit, etc. -- and be able to quickly observe some external evidence that that's probably not the case; that I should allow myself to briefly wallow in the depths of artistic self-doubt; and that I should then pick myself up and carry on with making the work ... so valuable. 

I hope you enjoy being able to see the arc as much as I do.

As briefly mentioned in the previous vlog instalment's write-up, this is the last Atelier Barbette vlog that will be gracing your inboxes for a little bit because the work spread out before me for the next several weeks is mightily daunting. I'm going to be quite preoccupied doing the actual work.

Fear not! I will be documenting it all, and squirrelling away the video and audio artifacts of this period so that I can share it all with you in May.

But to set your expectations for the next month I'll be ...

• sharing text updates about the project
• sharing audio clips of what composer Greg Harrison has been creating for this
• (if I can spare a few brain cells to rub together in between the intense rehearsal schedule) sharing some musings about the artistic questions that underpin this work, and how my relationship to those questions has been shifting over time***

(*** I know that sounds vague –– so, what I mean is -- when I started this project, I was just thinking about the project and my relationship as a trans artist to the source material [Barbette]; about strange beauty; about the nuance and complexity of gender expression and identity; about how placing ourselves in the context of historical timelines can give us unique ways to regard our own current timelines. But -- over the last year and a half we've been observing a shift towards fascist and rightwing rhetoric and ideologies and politics gaining prevalence and support on all sorts of issues [at least where I'm from]. It's impossible not to consider this in relation to the project. To Barbette. To what it means to be making this kind of work ... right now. Basically -- I have thoughts about it, and I'll try to hammer some of them out. They might not be deeply coherent right now, but they'll be valuable to circle back to and revisit when it comes time to start writing the essays for the SLOW CIRCUS: BARBETTE book in the second half of this year).

Until next time, stay strange & wonderful -- and I promise to be staying hard at work creating strange and wonderful things, too.

XO

Ess