work

Main Entry: work
Pronunciation: \ˈwərk\
Function: noun
Date: before 12^th Century
An activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something
(Webster’s Dictionary)

And so the blog of reflections comes full circle, and we spend our last day at Kingston High School.  Julie and I applied to the AIR residency to create the time and space to reevaluate how we might work together. That question evolved to where to work as our eyes were opened to the school architecture around us and we stumbled upon a performative space right outside our school office door.

After weeks of workshops, space activations and lunch time interventions I find myself  now in the midst of continuing to question why we work. How can our work matter? What is the agency of art? What can it do and what is it being asked to do?

           Culturally,

            Socially,

            Politically,

            Personally.

In the Space Activator Projects  visual intervention, performance, community and play collided and conversed to spark and engage space, performers and their audience in new ways. The work challenged and encouraged performers and audiences alike to see. It worked to broaden the eye and the imagination to consider the full canvas. And that is the heart of why I continue to work.

To foster a new breed of radical reciprocity.

To reorient. To experience. To discover. To contribute.

I work. I persevere. I create. I question. I return to the beginning of this reflective post- to the resonating succession of thought: how to work, where to work, why to work. And this is both where I’ll end and perhaps where we all need to begin – not with an answer, but with a question, a series of questions that center on the belief that the arts can and have a responsibility to create change- in individuals, in communities and the way that they form, evolve, communicate, and learn- Change that requires risk, creativity, and work.