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Greetings from Ireland!

Due to a misunderstanding regarding my 90 day visa limitations, I’m currently working in the midst of several disruptions and relocations as I bide time out of the Schengen area (visiting Liverpool, Istanbul, and Donegal) so that I may reenter next week to present my work at the conference in Lisbon before finally flying home. I will have been away for 3.5 months total! And, while I would love to eventually permanently live in one place here in Europe (namely Berlin) I am about ready to go home again.

I’m right now deep in the final planning/designing phases for my “1,000 Invisible Things” performance lecture which will incorporate a 20 minute audio soundtrack that includes 2 musical scores woven together, some spoken word elements that will fade in and out throughout the soundscape, an ephemeral, minimal video as a backdrop, and some very minimal live performance actions by yours truly. I don’t have much to share with you on that at the moment since it is in so many different parts. But here’s an image from the process of gathering material and communicating with my collaborators…

Now… what to share with you for critique?

Well, I ended up debuting the Invisibility Lab in Berlin during Berlin Art Week rather than waiting for the conference in Lisbon. So that was super exciting for me!

Unfortunately, I had an unexpected setback just a couple of days before the opening event when a strong gust of wind ripped through the terrace where I had my Invisibility Lab tent set up, and destroyed the tent, snapping a leg and toppling it over. While I was at first, really deeply upset and stressed out about it, I thought about Andrew’s guidance – to always identify the true essence of a thing – to get down to that finest little element that is really the basis of whatever we’re creating. I realized then, that it wasn’t the structure that identifies the Invisibility Lab, but rather the content and engagement – the actual research and what we’re creating together inside the Lab.

This realization was very helpful as I searched for another location to situate the Lab in time for the Openhaus event at ZK/U on September 14th. (I remember now saying this summer, that I really like to engage with space, improvising a presentation based on the limitations and opportunities that are presented – be they time, space, audience, etc. So this situation presented just this type of opportunity.)

I set up a long table and chairs tucked into an area near the entrance to the Main Hall and exhibition space. I set out the Lab Sheets, displayed some apothecary jars and arranged some lighting. On opening night, wearing a lab coat and holding a clipboard, I welcomed people to the Invisibility Lab and invited them to add something to the Archive of Invisible Things.

I’m now realizing, I created, in essence an invisible lab where we’re researching invisibility… This is definitely not what I’d planned originally, but it evolved this way naturally. I worried about how it might complicate the one-to-one private performance sessions, but even those seemed to succeed as the intimate experiences that I’d intended them to be, even within the public space.

I have a lot of documentation, but I’ll post just a few images here so you get a sense of what was happening in the space.

 

Below are the blank forms people were filling out in Lab #1. I plan to publish them – either online or in book form. Right now, they are in a portfolio with plastic sleeves, so you can read both the front and back of each form. I’m excited that a few people are actually filling in the specimen label using their own language, but so far, most of them are in English. (Maybe I need to make that suggestion more clear.)

 

I’m getting French, Turkish and Portuguese translations for these now…

Here is a form being filled in during the lab.

It was surprising to me that people took quite a long time to fill out the forms – much longer than I expected. The image below is one of the ZK/U founders filling out a form. You can see, people were really giving the questions some serious thought. It took anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes to fill out, depending on how much inner searching they had to do to find their answers.

The Lab #2 performance experiment is a collaborative drawing and live-action video capture of our hands creating the work together. I also recorded our discussion about invisibility and plan to use the audio and video in future works…

The guys below wanted to do the lab experiment together – which was really interesting. They’re both psychology students and they were really inspired by the whole concept. I found their answers and perspectives fascinating – and each a bit different. I haven’t had time to listen/review the audio and video yet, but look forward to at some point in the next few days, as I hope to be able to float a few of their sentences in over the audio score we’re creating for Lisbon…

For fun, Farid and I made a short performance video of me interacting with the archive. I’m not sure if/where I will use it, but I’m including it here for feedback, suggestions, or laughs. I still need to add credits and perhaps other image fades at the end… but here it is in its current form. I’m totally open to any feedback you’d like to give.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AjwTH5PGLk

I have been making a lot of audio recordings – some of which will find their way into the ambient soundscape I’m creating with the help of a sound engineer for my upcoming performance lecture in Lisbon. Unfortunately, it is not yet complete, so I can’t include it for this round.

This recording is of me reading the list of 1000 invisible things in my collection. Other recordings I’ve made this summer/fall include whispers, the sound of the jars rolling across the floor, the lids being opened and closed, vocalizing, singing, humming, tapping, etc.

{Sorry, I can’t seem to add it here, so I’ll put it in the email for you}

There’s so much material to share with you all, but I’m going to stop here for now. I must get back to preparing the video for my performance.

One of the big questions I have is how best to archive and share this material. The documentation and research is as much a part of the finished work as any creative mash-ups I make along the way…

I’m thinking of creating one website to host anything related to the Invisibility Lab, where I can post events, publish the forms, gather and arrange the data, upload videos, audio, news pieces, etc… but I’m having a little difficulty organizing all of my material and thoughts around this…

My Transart reviewer this summer, An Panheuysen, suggested I look at the website Center for Dying on Stage which you can check out. I’d like to figure this out sooner than later so people have a place to go to learn more, see their contributions to the Archive of Invisible Things, and see what events are coming up – but of course, this project will have to wait until after Lisbon.

I look forward to any suggestions you have on this or any other things that strike you!

Thank you in advance. Can’t wait to hear your feedback!

Best,

Gabrielle