Friday, June 5, 2015

If You Don't Document It, Did It Happen?

Bandana made with fabric gifted to me and bias tape made from Ikea fabric
This is one of the questions my friend, the performance artist Jess Dobkin, addressed in her recent performance  "How Many Performance Artists Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb (for Martha Wilson)"where she had 100 or so people documenting the performance with various technologies from pen and paper (yours truly and many others), video, film, tweets, etch-a-sketch, and more.  It is also something I grapple with because I really am not very good at documenting my output via social media.

Take, for example, MeMadeMay2015.  I pretty much did what I'd set out to do - wore something I'd made at least three days a week.  Oftentimes it was more frequent; nonetheless, it was hard to remember to take an image and upload it to Instagram.  I often couldn't be bothered.  I was doing other things, which reminds me of Susan Sontag and her collection of essays On Photography.

So, no new promises but just a thought I wanted to share.  Know that I'm always working on something, and sometimes I share it here or on Instagram.  Just because you haven't told everyone about it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.