SUPPORT SYSTEM
The Donkey is Desperate, A love Letter to Holding
Full Moon Midnight of March 29, 2021
Dear Diary,
Another Full-Moon-Midnight,
Last year, when I invited Bronwyn Lace to collaborate with me on the NOTION of SUPPORT SYSTEM , I told her that the support that The Centre for The Less Good Idea gave me during a 2019 residency roused in me the confidence and ambition to start this project, ‘Hand to Mouth.’ The correspondence we started very quickly became a kind of Love Letter between an artist and institution . This was cute, but also conflicting: an artist and institution in love? What kind of utopian art world do you think we are living in? We decided to hold on to the Love Letter vibe, and instead of directing them at each other, to find something else to bestow them upon.
This Love Letter is about a donkey . The Donkey is desperate.
The Donkey is desperate because the monumental amphitheater built to hold her work has no mechanisms for holding her. If The Donkey was the chair in the diagram above, the walls were the amphitheater , and the tension pole was the support system --- The Donkey would be very disappointed.
Ostensibly, the pole is supporting the chair in its position, but in a weird balance of tension and friction, the pole is the one being supported in this scenario. The pole is performing its ability to maintain tension, but this tension is dependent on the certainty of reliable opposing surfaces. Once secure, it can provide its support as a performative act. The real support is located in the symbiosis of this arrangement. The Pole is also in need of everything in the system to participate, for it to provide the act of support .
Past-forward to Johannesburg in 2019, still unaware of each other’s being, both artist and institution existed in a similar PRE-FICTION, a condition in which we held similar placeholders for each other to fulfill. From the first introduction to each other's work, almost immediately we recognized in each other, and appreciated the aesthetic and the commitment to rigorous processes, but fell short of predicting the synergy that would manifest in our personal connection. This synergy did not require extra effort, it was feeding on the deficiencies and generosity we were already invested in. But something else happened, a new need was triggered and a new desire manifested, a zeal to prolong this singularity, to extend it beyond its genuine temporality and last for at least ever, or even better, forever. Bronwyn, the director of The Centre and an artist herself. Deville, an artist flirting with the idea of becoming an institution through the sculptural system of his dance company. We reflect on institutional holding , and on the intimacy of being held , while resisting holding on. We found ourselves on the support pole, balancing between care and control .
We use the word holding often: holding space, holding tensions, holding time. We talk often about the confidence and ambition in our synergy. The Centre enjoys financial stability in combination with an organisational flexibility that gives space for an attention to internal processes and relationships between artists and the institution . We see how instrumental this security is in providing a safe space for others. In this tender exchange of care , we also tend to practice control . As directors of circumstances of collective art making, we recognise the importance of care while practicing control . In navigating the production’s responsibilities and demands of timelines, budgets, and outcomes, we realize that we have both the ability to create damage and to be damaged at the same time; we find ourselves being even more careful . Being careful and being care-full (full of care ) are two different things, and we don't think we can be carefree quite yet. Some damages are ongoing, and some damages are not yet done.
The Donkey is desperate because the arena is about her but not for her.
The coliseum 's cogs have no capacity for her processes. She is the muse within the museum , but she is not invited to the cocktail party. She is asked to be there, to be exposed there, to entertain the cream, but sadly there is no coinage for this concert. It has already been spent on the heavy-gram, high-gloss invitation cards. Her rigorous strategies, processes, methodical approaches developed by trial and error go unseen, unheard. Her commitment and passion are often taken for granted, and sometimes taken advantage of. It is impossible to be more vulnerable than she is: her body, her thoughts, her questions, and her ideas are all laid bare as she is easily consumed at the same time as the cheap fancy cocktail platters and expensive bad wine.
If the coliseum looked closely, it might recognize the cracks on her surface as the web of scars they truly are. Those scars hold records of brave attempts and necessary risks. With some wisdom and better muscle memory, some damages could have been prevented. Those battle scars are also a record of previous personal and institutional failures and absence of support , resulting so often in the lack of a safe, soft landing ground.
The Donkey is desperate and she can’t afford to not be in need .
We need to talk --- suddenly a conversation.
What happened to all this unspoken un-invested, pre-fictional synergy?
Washed away with the need .
This Love Letter is about what is triggered: (in)security .
In this moment, we realize the uncertainty and codependency in our desires.
That this is not set in stone, someone needs to set it.
The need is not only for securing the eternal future, it is also to resolve all the (in)security it generates, a premature rejection management.
DC: I enjoy thinking about my time at The Centre as a time in which I was held . It brings to light the ongoing instability and risks. My relationship to security is in its absence, I can’t look back at many situations where there was security, provided or cultivated, on a financial or an emotional level. The interesting thing about an absence, as opposed to a deficit, is that a deficit can register a lack, and out of need or desire, create a placeholder for what is missing. Absence is a void, an unregistered scarcity. It is not a shortage of a thing, it is its non-existence.
BL: The fungus is thriving. He took root and discovered himself in a warm and welcoming habitat. His mushrooming is due to his ability to absorb the nourishment found within his current abode. In an interdependent and effervescent dance with the space, he discovers a fermenting, parts of himself proliferate and relish the culture of the room, he reciprocates, and a ménage à trois flourishes.
DC: (in)security is not the lack of security, it is its absence, and the absence of the things it provides: confidence, ambition, and support being some of them. Being held by The Centre brought to light not my insecurities , these I know and negotiate on the daily. I think what was triggered is the absence of a placeholder for security. When I saw it and was held by it, I had no negative space to fill. There was no deficit waiting to be charged. A new need was triggered.
BL: The terms culture and codependency continually appear in our dialogue, we speak about them in relation to the space, to institutional holding , to what the artist brings to the space as well as what both artist and institution need from one another. For me, both words conjure a picture of health. I don’t imagine that is the same for all individuals who fill a role of heading up an arts institution . I feel the well-being and robustness of the Centre’s culture is because, as a physical space it has, by design, taken its cues from artists and artistic process. It is an institution that knows in its bones that supporting art and therefore artists is an honour, a cause for celebration, and that the resulting codependency is seminal to the culture experienced in the room. This culture is one of empathy, intimacy, and trust. A space that invites artists to reinvent disciplines and shift our worlds also needs to encourage honesty and self-awareness. Rather than insisting artists are good or right, it asks artists to be present. Holding gives birth to a synergetic relationship, which often has the capacity to mature into an energy with the ability to radiate out of the space and far beyond its institutional womb.
Dear coliseum of cold hard ground,
this Love Letter actually means a break up.
We need to break up so we can be WITH each other.
The Donkey removes herself from the ill-fitting structures that failed to hold her,
she refuses to be rejected into definitions of inside and outside.
She is always at The Centre.
As a time-based art form, The Donkey needs to be given the same attention and resources allotted to the museum show so she can redirect them into supporting other needs .
Others’ needs .
She needs the three P’s—partners, producers, presenters—to have as much of a stake in what we make. To be exposed to the risks, damages, and potentials of our situation and share its load and its responsibilities. Power dynamics are seldom acknowledged, some doing the invisible labor, others giving out the thank you notes. You are not welcome. This is neither a blame game, nor a complicity competition.
Fast forward to now, this new collaboration two years later is our POST-FICTION. For the next 28 days of the NOTION of SUPPORT SYSTEM , we approach structures of support as a subject matter, a method, and a sculptural system . We know now what is needed : a responsive structure of support built from needs , and a soft crashing ground for when it fails. All at fault and similarly disillusioned, we ultimately seek societal change, but this is not possible without radical intimacy, transparency, and vulnerability within our relationships. For this moon cycle we will constitute an incorporated body of equal partners, sentient and inanimate collaborators forming in coalitions with individuals and institution . The tendency to separate creative processes from operational realities sow division within the system . Instead, we aim to take a holistic approach that provides nuanced care to its variety of needs --- the studio, backstage, administrative porn, box office, and showtime --- issued by a deeper understanding of the support we need and the support we can provide.
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Hand to Mouth, SUPPORT SYSTEM --- Deville Cohen & Bronwyn Lace, March 29, 2021
Photographer: Lauryn Siegel
Co-copy editor: Ian Cofre
