So. A not uncommon thing happened this week. I was sitting down to talk about creating the pre-narrative for a show that will take place as part of next year's Vaults Festival in Waterloo. The show, Pedro and The Captain, is about fighting against oppressive powers, amongst many other things. We want to create a fictional activist movement that will gain strength and visibility online before the show until it finally explodes into the real world as the festival kicks off. We will stage interventions, rallies and generally disturb the peace of VAULTS 2016. It'll be great fun and it'll all aim towards the powerful show at its centre. The director and I were trying to come up with a visual language for it, some design ideas.
And I remembered the R and D we did for Fast Moving Consumables earlier in the year.
We spent two days piling up and splurging out ideas about freedom and repression, both personal and political. So much of it never made it into the show in a recognisable form. But it was all still there; images and snippets of conversations bouncing around my head. And some of it, including the picture of the woman above with the gas mask, and the Pamphlet Bomb flyer, were perfect jump offs for this project.
I guess what I am trying to say is - It's never wasted time. If you spend that special two days you get to go wild on an idea really talking about the things that make you tick, that tickle you, that make your heart beat faster and you hair stand on end then somewhere, at sometime, it will be useful. Even if that is months away on a completely different project.
It all helps.
Maybe just not in the way you intended.
Comments