The essay I wrote was about art and loyalty (I had originally planned to write a digital ascetic manifesto, but thinking about what it means to write rules ended up being more interesting). I did this by looking at contemporary loyalty through the lens of neo-medievalism, as I’m interested in the lives of early monks and holy men. In my original proposal to Outlandia I said I was going to research Simon Stylites, who lived on a platform on top of a pillar near Aleppo in Syria for 37 years in the fourth century. This developed into a broader consideration of how similar medieval loyalties were to contemporary loyalties, and how eremitic ascetics like Simon and their counterparts the cenobites were not unlike today’s artists. Being on a pillar, in the forest, obviously resonated with this and I enjoyed using the peace and quiet to think about what my loyalties were there, at Outlandia, and to read about neo-medievalism and asceticism.
Obviously the forest and mountain did not
have Wi-Fi, which I am sure is one of the main attractions for people, for
people to look beyond their screens at the landscape and get away. That said,
I’m interested in how these devices and networks we use came to be such a bind.
Why not have Wi-Fi? Why not have access to a network? I decided to set one up,
a local Wi-Fi network that just broadcast to the immediate area. To do this I
needed two things, a mast and an ‘Internet’. I made the mast from stuff in the
forest, rope, string, logs and sticks. The Internet, made from a battery
powered raspberry pi, consisted of one webpage showing a short film I made
during the week called Tribute. It is
quite obvious that the Outlandia location is quite remote, so the chances of
anyone accessing the network were relatively slim, but again, why should this
matter? The film Tribute, was just
that, a tribute to a person I can no longer see. The film was a message of
sorts, and as I sat on the side of the hill, with the network invisibly
circulating around me, I felt an intimate connection via the network that was
contrary to the type of connection that, perhaps, we feel is so onerous at
times.
All images courtesy dave Evans 2017
All in all I had a great time at Outlandia,
I got a lot done and the location brought up some considerations that would
probably not have arisen in my own studio. It was good having to choose
carefully what I took each day and I enjoyed how clumsy I felt when working to
erect the mast in the forest. It made me think a lot about how important
limitations are to artists, how we all incorporate them into our practices
somehow.
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