In dialogue: Katrina Niebergal & Andrew Wilson respond to the Call Centre prompt via a series of isolated segments from transcribed conversations.
6.
Stress is too big a word but I was starting to be like: 'jeez, what is it, what is the thing that we are doing?'. And then I realised we are already doing it.
We have been saying this from the very beginning. We are already doing the thing. And I think its really good to remember in this case but I also think its really good to remember in general, with my work. I’m already doing it I just have to find swift ways to get it down. And I don’t need to search for relevance, we already have the relevance.
We are already in the form. Or inventing the form.
Yeah, that’s perhaps why there are loads of interesting cross-overs here. You can never be sure when you introduce people, but I was confident that between the four of us (Julie, Zahra, you and I), there would be enough common ground, but also enough difference.
In addition to our conversations and writings, I’ve also started to feed my blog posts into a video, or a moving-image poem.
Ok that’s what I started to want you to do, which maybe sounds funny. When I was talking about what I think a correspondent is or can be, that’s also what I meant. Like this was an opportunity to funnel stuff out for you, not just for us.
Having seen the screening of the NASA LIE video, I can see there is so much potential, you are really starting to find a form there.
I’m super stoked that’s what you want to do.
Following some of the things you were saying, esp, the nature of this way of working and presenting something that is finished, which obvs when you make a video it is. The artwork itself, may be finished, but the content within it, is left wide-open. It presents information, to invite the viewer to ask questions, and to challenge me too.
You know, when you were talking about this time as liminal space...
Liminality: the ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.
... if we are going to respond to this thing, especially whilst we are in it, maybe this is the only way really.
Yeah, it also comes back to pressure right. All this pressure that everyone is feeling.
But also this pressure for artists to have answers, or to be able to reflect on something when its happening which is what we are doing, ‘we are already doing it’.
But the expectation that there should be something more polished, or something finished, or something, is ridiculous but it’s still a pressure that I put upon myself.
Yeah, this way of working, of sharing, of dialogue, of bashing heads together, merging experiences, is what Call Centre is all about, as a project. It seems to me at least.
Bringing these six people together who then invite another however many correspondents, it feels like that is at the heart of the project. But it also relates to the work, or whatever it was we were doing, prior to this.
It is work. Rest assured it is. Super-important cultural work.