About The Post Project

The idea was groomed over several cups of tea, some hand-made biscuits, and a desk that has known a lot of making…
Simply to enable a dialogue, a conversation across space (lots of space in this case), a kind of geographical defiance and also a gratitude for what the space opens.
Since there is much beauty to be found in both immediacy and waiting – learning to steady one’s rhythms in response to all sorts of weather conditions, the question was whether there could be three prongs to this impossible, moveable and on-going Afternoon Tea.

To play at spontaneity (with the section of the project called Now!).

And also to play at patience (in the section entitled Waiting).

The section called post project is what lies between that which is delayed and that which surprises us: the apparent-continuity of the mundan^(c)e.

And so, to be precise:
post project requires one of the makers to send a visual diptych, and for the other to respond with a text stanza. The stanza then becomes the ekphrastic opportunity for the next diptych, and so on. As in all of the sections, this practice (for, of course this is what we are doing: practicing), is to have to respond, and to respond relevantly, aware of the other and of that which goes before. There might be the most extreme kind of newness in this. Since, although it is easy to react, it is often difficult to respond. So we practice failing beautifully at responding to the other, and to what they offer us.
Now! might be summarised as an exercise in asking. Another newness, another kind of painful joy. Quite impossible perhaps. In this practice, one of the makers sends a text – to the other side of the world – with the demand for five words. Any words, and the recipient takes the prompts for these words from their immediate surroundings. These five words are then sent straight back via text message, and the original asker then uses them to construct a visual response.
Finally, the last aspect of the project, the practice of Waiting, involves slower, hard-copy missals sent away. These contain specific bundles of instructions that the recipient then follows in order to experience a process of making dreamt up for them by the sender. In this section Antonia might usher Emma through specific tasks involving text, and perhaps Emma will coach Antonia in ways to use a camera differently. However, there is nothing foreseen, really, about the bundles, the tasks, or the media upon which they will rely. These processes will be documented for the web as another kind of undertaking also. (So this almost makes a fourth, silent aspect of the whole project: How to remember, via words or images, or how to share, perhaps, in the most generous way?)

This is the partial-whole we have dreamt up for ourselves. We don’t really know what will happen. Any appearance of organisation here is virtual, just as many kilometres only equals ‘far-away’ from a certain perspective.