Hi, Reader, how are you this week? This doesn't have to be one-way communication; I want to know.
Act One, Knowledge is Power!
Since a young age, I've known that the lung epithelium* has a surface area approximately the size of a tennis court and represents the largest epithelial surface in the body. In my family, this is a Catherine Fact. These are tidbits of information dispersed, often at random that ultimately proved true but had no discernable source.
Performing Knowledge in Edinburgh 2011
I pick up information and like releasing it in unsuspecting places. For me, dramatic writing is an outlet for this trait. I don’t want to produce papers or be pompous at parties. To learn, I take in information and regurgitate it as a story. I even made a solo show called Knowledge that was all about this. In it, I talked about the importance of learning, shared a fair few facts, and taught a single audience member to knit. It was entertaining! Facts are fun!!
I’m currently researching my next film with an Indigenous Justice focus. I am reading and reading and mixing Indigenous knowledge, Colonial narrative, and modern-day academic literature from predominantly white institutions. Absorbing like a sponge. I am not yet writing. Just soaking up the words and ideas of others. It isn’t great for the environment, but I often have to print these papers. Seeing the bulk of this knowledge, which in many ways is inaccessible to the general public through paywalls or less tangible systemic barriers, I am humbled by the opportunity I have to gain knowledge. I am also questioning which knowledges were sanctioned, supported, persecuted, and punished.
If knowledge is power**, then it can be abused. I will continue to contemplate that as I write this documentary narrative.
*the thin tissue forming the outer layer of a body's surface and lining the alimentary canal and other hollow structures.
**Francis Bacon is thought to be the first to commit the phrase "knowledge is power" to print in his Meditationes Sacrae (1597). Francis Bacon, the philosopher, was the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain in the 16th century, not the Irishborn painter of the same name who is known for unsettling imagery.
Act Two, where freedom surfaces.
Stephanie Lazenby in Where Do I Begin? Photo by Dan Derby
I am back in the rehearsal room this week, and it feels like home. I am working with writer and performer Stephanie Lazenby. Three years ago, we made Where Do I Begin?. Together, in a time when theatres globally were closed and even gathering as two individuals felt risky, we created - distanced and masked.
In a different world, we've come back together to ask many questions, grapple with Stephanie’s newest writing, and play with big themes and ideas. We don’t know whether we are reworking or working towards something new. The possibilities are endless, and the potential is immense. There was freedom in the room yesterday, and there will be again today because we are not holding ourselves to any goal - we are simply showing up.
I am being “paid” in delicious lunches prepared by Stephanie. She is being “paid” by my investment in her writing and vision. Sometimes, money isn’t the exchange. There is a freedom in that as well.
When antiquated and insufficient systems and structures of art-making constrict the process, artists shouldn’t be afraid to choose liberation.
Act Three, unbound columns and rows?
In 1979, Dan Bricklin codeveloped VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet. Fact! I use spreadsheets daily; I’ve been deeply immersed in columns and rows for film budgets and rehearsal schedules in the last week. Simplicity and complexity sit side-by-side. In Bricklin’s 2016 TedX Talk, he describes how restrictions allow for possibility.
In many ways, the rigidity of spreadsheets couldn’t be further away from the creative work of play, which is central to my film and theatre practice. Still, without the structure, my practice wouldn’t be successful. Bricklin describes the importance of prototyping in his talk,
“The act of making of a simple working version of what you are trying to build forces you to uncover key problems and to find solutions to those problems much less expensively.”
A shift is in the air for Film Unbound, the media production company I have led for a decade. Prototypes are essential to envision that future. I’ve sat down in the last few weeks with clients and collaborators for the films that will act as prototypes. It’s been invigorating. Each project involves subjects, individuals, or ideas with knowledge that demands dispersal to address a power imbalance.
It’s Catherine Facts on hyper-drive, sending mission-driven media into the world. Perhaps I’ve been prototyping for longer than I realized.