What Work Wills

This month While Making It Together started. During the past weeks I have received our first five guests.

I learned so much. And, what was did I have todo to make that happen? Lending my ear. And asking a few colleagues and friends to lend me theirs. Yes, we acted with our hands and bodies. 

There was an object there. One object they brought, to be added to the hybrid object already made.

There was a common action. A shared act of making something with their donated object, wrapping it together to the other objects.

And silence.

I didn’t know what this work was about in the beginning (I am still figuring out what it is about, actually, together with my guests). I knew I had to do it. Or, more precisely, I let the work do me.

What happens when letting the work do you, rather than the other way around?

First lesson on the relevance of this shift came from artist Juan Cañizares, WMIT's guest #2. And with him, the realization of the difference between project and work. As architect, we project - have a goal, a brief, a set of intentions - and create and build towards that plan, within that timeframe and constraints. Solving problems.
Before and after our WMIT session, Juan kept talking about works. And after a while it stroke me. WMIT is not a project, but a work. When changing the nomination in the surface, a long and deep meaning also shifted.

Work is what happens. You make a plan, set a structure, set yourself to work on it, until you - actually, more accurately - until the work considers itself done. There is no up-front result or vision to follow. It is unpredictable and surprising.

This fundamental difference might be already obvious for you. But I tell you, it was a revelation for me last week for the first time, after “working” on “projects” for 20 years! - was also a difference in handling our work together, "visible" during the making sessions with our first 5 guests.

They are, in their current practice, 3 architects and 2 artists. It was my duty, as host of this work, to listen to them and follow their lead during making. The two artists, Juan and Maria (Gil Uldemolins), dug into wrapping, quite quickly not being all about their object but the moment, and the hybrid thing corseted in pink that we had in between us. It was about the rhythm and time shared by our bodies, about the communication between all those objects, about the thoughts we share without talking. It was about our hands touching, when handling the spool from one to the other. It was boring and beautiful. It was one of the most intimate experiences I have shared, and surely the most intimate in a working environment.

My 3 architect guests, colleagues of mine, and very different in their own practices, started centered in their own objects, to end up in the same place, a bit later.

Eric (Guibert, architect and gardener) - our first guest - was delicately wrapping the branch he'd brought, and was horrified when I - following my projection of making a communal sculpture, my project goal - started to squeeze its leaves with the thread, suffocating them already. They were obviously going to dry out and die, but I was killing them already there. After quite a while and observing his reaction, I switched, following his lead and way of wrapping. And, funny enough, we ended up our (long, about 2.5 hours) session with him wrapping as me (fast and quick, around both chair and branch), and me wrapping as him (slowly, delicately, carefully). We switched our “making” identities along the way.

Michael (Wildmann), my guest #5, was the one that took the longest to give in to the fact that both his object and the thread would do whatever the hell they wished, despite his efforts for being precise. Like drawing, Mike was projecting lines over his donated object (a coffee maker), the thin pink thread being his pencil, or his Autocad line. After a while during which, hopelessly, we both tried to wrap the coffee maker's round belly in a symmetrical and precise way to the hybrid bunch, he gave in. And from there on we just wrapped, loop by loop, from side to side, forgetting about precision and projection and letting the material simply do her thing, while both thread and coffee maker winked at each other and smiled (possibly LOL at us :-).

What about you? Have you had experiences of letting go preconceived ideas, and let the work be, rather than projecting a wish or vision? How did that shift happen?

Would love to hear about it in the comments below.

Would you kill it?

Would you kill a beloved object?

While Making It Together.

A project, just kicking-off, in which I invite a small group of people to come, one by one, and make an object together with me. We'll make an object composed by objects, each one brought, killed, sacrificed, by each one of us. A personal object which belongs to their life, with a meaning and history to them, and which they are willing to say good bye to.

I started sacrificing the first object: a green chair. 

And I say sacrificing because the feeling while starting to wrap it was of killing it, actually. It was quite an emotional moment.

I welcomed the chair into the atelier, in LUCA School of Arts, in Brussels. Unwrapped it from its traveling plastic sleeve. Mounted its legs. Then, said goodbye to it. 

Good bye, thank you for the times together. I remember buying you in the flea market, cleaning you up, moving you from home to home, from Madrid to Zurich. I remember sitting on you, having many friends and family sitting on you too, moving you around, seeing you day after day. Now I have you in Brussels, where I say goodbye to you in your current form and life. Goodbye, and welcome to your new form and life.

I picked you up to make my very first exercise of connection with an inanimate object: 50 Resting Postures With Chair. That was the beginning of this crazy shift from working with and from concepts into working with and from the body, the start of exploring what happens when giving time and attention to the objects around us. 

If I wouldn’t kill you, I would let you die a slow death. You would be part of my home and life for a few more years, and one day you would be weary and old, not as bright. I would change you for another pop, and would donate you or put you out in the street. I'd kill you by letting you age and slowly die - as an object, and in my life.

I said goodbye to it, then started wrapping it in bright pink thread. 

Which object would you choose to kill?

With a goodbye ritual, and giving it a bright new body.
And sacrifice it to link it to other bodies, unknown bodies. Perhaps awakening it into a new life.

Or, would you rather let it die?

Looking forward to your thoughts in the comments below.