I’m out tonight making a ‘live press’ performance for the second time this week as one of the Ladies of the Press* (together with Renee O’Drobinak). This is another thing I do. One half of a performance and art publishing duo. We have a broad art publishing practice and one of our favourite activities is the ‘live press’, a term we use to describe making spontaneous magazines in situ at openings and live arts events . So I’ve have dashed home straight from work to pick up my equipment and post this in a whirlwind of pressing activity! I was (we were) working late last night. Tonight we’re at a Fourth Door Review talk at The Gallery and earlier in the week we made a ‘live press’ publication at ‘Paper Jam’, an event held at The Gallery at Goldsmiths College of Art. At some point that evening, someone came to interview me at the very moment I was assembling the first finished publication of the night (‘Papered Jammed, Pressed <LIVE!>’ http://www.ladiesofthepress.org/livepress_pdf/pjpressed_readers.pdf) asking for a definition of a ‘live press’ … I ended up trying to convince them that there was some sort of contradictory but creatively charged relationship between performance and print, or so I (we) thought in any case. A type of art publishing version of improvisation in music or ad hoc poetry readings or play rehearsals and so on, which is really contrary to the traditionally long processes of publishing involving concept, research, editing, design, layout and finally print and assembly. I went on. I (we) therefore thought it conceptually closer to, and potentially capable of, capturing ‘live’ art. And on. So that it’s not so much where the ‘live press’ work is located, but when? And right then, as I was wrapping up by saying that interrupting the performance by asking about the performance was type of archiving and contrary to the performance itself, in the mid sentence, for the first time in the three years of ‘live press’ing, I found myself inhabiting the moment of the performance that was in progress all around me, without me. i found myself in the ‘pressing’ (to use a printing pun) moment. In moment of its own making at the place of its own making and in the impromptu and the performantive manner of its own making. Anyway, all this got me thinking about performance all over again. Performance and whatever the opposite of that might be? Archiving? And that was before the ‘What do ‘I’ want?’ post. Which slightly paralysed me, mentally and emotionally. Which is what ‘wanting’ does to me normally, or not so normally, whatever the case may be? I can only say that ‘I want’, truthfully. The ‘I’ and the ‘what’ of it all is more mis-leading and make-believing. I must must make a move but I’ll return, very soon. Speaking of which Danilo, come back! Left alone to my thoughts, I couldn’t decide between ‘Paris’ and ‘Tybalt’? What do ‘I’ want?
Lots of love,
xxx
Ana
Latest images from the Ladies of the Press* ‘live press’ activities:
http://www.ladiesofthepress.org/livepress.html
http://www.facebook.com/ladiesofthepress
Ladies of the Press* website:
