When you try so hard but you don't succeed...

For the past 14,000 years aka since last October I was working on a very different kind of assignment than before. As an experiment of sorts our year of Photographic Art has been collaborating with a local town in their face-lifting program. That is to say, we were asked to produce art - by our own terms - for the town and its community. Sounds exciting, and a bit terrifying too, for the vast majority of us had never done anything of the kind before.
Now we have officially, and timetable-wise moved on to the next module, but those whose work was selected for the phase 2: to become something concrete financed by the local council are now, I imagine, fabricating, budgeting and arranging exhibition spaces. I'm not involved in this second part - mainly, I suppose, because I wasn't in the least satisfied with the outcome, which kind of made me sink into desperation, and eventually give up on the project. Featuring other personal issues and whatnot - it has been a pain to work on this topic, and even though I have learned a lot and more, I'm sincerely relieved to be rid of it.

Nevertheless, my work will be featured in the publication that is in the process of making at the moment. So, let us see some passable creations that I managed to produce during those painstaking months.


[As of now, the untitled project of doom]

Human body is the instrument, which connects our inner world with the physical reality that surrounds us. Through movement we experience our environment and become part of it; we change it, as it changes us.

My body in a landscape is like a foreign object that doesn't belong there: an intruder or a guest whose visit - even if extending over several hours - is nothing but a fleeting moment for the local flora. This place though, the American Garden, is something of an intruder even in itself. Californian redwood trees, monkey puzzles and evergreen azaleas have found their unlikely home in the middle of the Welsh valleys where ash trees and oaks are more frequent acquaintances.

The once carefully constructed garden is now an overgrown thicket, which, in the light of the rising sun appears as a magical place with its rich, vibrant colours and entangled vegetation.

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You ask, what has any of that got to do with community art. Nothing. I don't like working with people, or under expectations that my work should be easily understood by those people. I want to do my thing and explore art, sometimes in a not-so-accessible way. But that's it.

Now my main objective is to get my shit together, and instead of mindlessly panicking and trying too hard, do stuff that I find intriguing and engaging, to shoot first, ask questions later, as someone whose name I don't recall once said to his photography students.