Rejection, Failure, Stasis (But Not in a Bad Way...) / by Heather Kapplow

Art plans are falling through like a landslide this month:

  • Melbourne screening devolved into bullshit. Apparently when you are invited to present your work within the context of an academic conference, you are expected to pay the conference registration fee. Whether you are attending in person or not. Pardon my French, but fuck that.
  • And Just Like That, You Die as originally conceived has been deemed by a trustworthy, highly accredited physical therapist as "not quite 100% guaranteed to cause permanent, irreversible damage," to the small bones and nerve canals in both of my hands/wrists "but some percentage quite close to that." So development of this work is on hold for the moment. I'm planning to consult with a mad genius instrument builder to see if there's an alternative way to accomplish the same goal, and have also submitted an inquiry in to the piece's main inspiration for some feedback, but I'm not holding my breath about getting any response in that case.
  • My perfuming apprenticeship is about to get put on hold because an unexpected wad of health-insurance-gone-awry-debt has suddenly surfaced in my life and made investing in perfuming supplies in an effort to understand something slightly ineffable about class consciousness seem too extravagant an endeavor.
  • I've also had a few grant and residency applications that I didn't bother mentioning here rejected.

The good news is that I am feeling upbeat about everything. I'm excited for the aspects of the perfuming project that I can move ahead with even without being able to invest much, and I'm feeling ready to revisit a few "archival" project ideas that I set aside awhile ago for a rainy day.

One is an extremely low budget audio project, and the other is a kind of drawing-based 3D object thing that I stopped working on years ago because the construction was too expensive. Just recently a local artist doing something that uses a similar technique gave me some tips for doing what I wanted to do using some relatively inexpensive pre-fab components that didn't exist when I was struggling with this before, so now I'm ready to revisit this project. Or will be this Fall.

Finally, because my local camera shop was having a sale on some soon-to-expire Fuji FP100C film, I decided to resurrect my Polaroid 250 Land Camera from my packed-away analog camera collection in the basement this month.

It's been really fun to have this clunker back in my life. And to be reminded of all of the funky techniques I had once developed for using a medium and tool that's far harder to control than other cameras and film. Here's an image taken under a bridge in Pawtucket RI during the DOT AIR Experimental Music Festival.

Crooked scan of FujiPolaroid image taken during a set by The Eyesores at DOT AIR 2014.

Oh, crap, I never gave you my Summer reading list and Summer is almost over! I can't remember all of it, but here's what I can remember right now. Maybe it will end up retroactively shedding light on some project that hasn't been made yet...

I promise not to make bullet points in next month's post. It's incredibly annoying and I know it. Sorry.