On blogging

Why use a blog?

We are international artists, Elodie resident in Paris, Janine in London. Since embarking upon this project we have worked together in New York, Charente, Canterbury and London. The next phase of our work will take place in Paris in the early Spring 09. Whilst the underwater train does run regularly and (reasonably directly) to our doors, there is a limit to how many times we meet in each others' countries at the moment.

We both agree that the space for reflection afforded by the pauses between research phases are beneficial, and actually probably essential when our work becomes very "heady". However, as collaborators and excellent friends, we miss a regular exchange of thoughts and a dialogue about ideas- afterall we use each to propel our own ideas forward and the work gained momentum through our exchanges.

We each keep notebooks and we periodically make an effort to standardise the information contained so that we have landmarks or summaries of where we are at every now and then. This is really helpful at these developmental stages when there are so many ideas that we are seeking to structure. Inevitably we organise our ideas differently and our diagrammatic representations are different, but this is a shared process so we share them, and the differences can add new information too.

So. Where does that leave us?

Well, as recognised widely these days, documentation is (if not everything then very) important. For applications, evidence of process... And this is a research process. We are using this blog as a forum for sharing notes and resources between ourselves, having conversations and organising our research in a more linear way than perhaps it feels in the studio (where we are often having to review and clarify). It is important for us to know that we are using the same language in the same way at this stage of laying the foundations of a method; writing helps that by fleshing out arguments for subtleties in definition which carry a lot of connotation and thus affect both our understanding of what we are doing, and that of our potential reader/ audience.

In making this resource publicly available we invite spectators to our process in the same way that we invite audience to sharings. We are not presenting a finished work, but threads and snippets.

So in short: the blog allows us to present visual and film work, text and commentary, links and access to our profiles (other ideas/ work/ projects) and helps to keep us in touch across the land and seas. It is like our caravan.