ours + mine

i realised something a little while after getting to jozi, during or after a conversation with i cant remember who or about exactly what.. i can think of things this way: there are two kinds of information - one is all of our shared knowledge - all of our history, current events, everything we can see together or have access to. the other is all the things that only i, the individual, can imagine or dream.. what can only occur in a particular way to me, because of the very particular combination of things that make my experience. presenting either of these bits in isolation may not be the best way to share information. the former can be boring; 'who cares that i'm presenting this? everyone already has access to this information'. the latter can be confusing; 'who can understand this? only i have access to this information'. the most interesting thing i can possibly create & present is a combination of these things. a combination of familiar information and something an audience would never have imaginied is something that people can understand/connect to and at the same time be absolutely surprised by because, with the addition of only what i can imagine, it never would have occured to them to see it that way.

this has become a kind of guideline for me here, to apply to art-making but also to living. i have met people here who are living intensely, excitedly, because what they are making themselves, given what they 'should'/are expected to be, is new to everyone around them. given everyone's shared history and knowledge plus what these individuals' particular imaginations of what they can be is, what they are making and presenting themseves as is not something people have imagined/expected before.

as it applies to things im making, its changing the way i look at documentary work. so i thought 'documentation can only be interesting if what's being documented is genuinely something people havent seen before'. zen marie adds 'or if you're showing people something in a way they haven't seen before'. which resonates with the same 'what is known by everyone + what only the individual knows'.

with that in mind i've changed my 'lady chancellor' work. the images now are altered to suggest more of what i imagine about them, and the kind of information they hold and can suggest, instead of representing only information that was available to everone passing on lady chancellor road - though acknowledging that presenting the images as they were, as a group that can be viewed together in one place, as opposed to the way they come to be in real life - with much more time and distance between them - did already change the way they were made available to everyone. and, as dave mentioned months ago, also changed as recorded by my particular eye/intention/method. still i feel this new change adds another layer, making it more of something not before imagined by others, but still accessible to others and so more interesting.

also i realised in another moment that the only point of anything can only be to make a moment interesting, so it is the only thing in life thats important. and maybe only more important, and more interesting, is to make a moment interesting not just for myself, but to make a moment interesting for others / as many others as possible..

click here to see the updated 'lady chancellor' images

also, later today i'll update the site again with images from this year's erotic art week 'photobooth'

-rodell