Diary of a Digital Residency 2023

Monday 6th February, 2023

We set out what our core aims of the week’s work was, aside from what we needed to achieve in the week’s residency. We had 5 aims:

• To work with complete respect, where everyone feels heard and an equal member of the group.
• For us to individually and collectively learn from the week, that we can take away one thing to advance our artists practice.
• For us all to remember one piece or work, or one thing that we can take into our net ensemble work.
• To work as coherently as an ensemble as we can where we all can and will participate and take care of ourselves.
• To have fun and enjoy the week.

We started off by watching the European group video, and reflecting back to the group what we got out of the introductory talk and meeting

We asked the group to respond and create something individually to the 3 themes at the core of the residency, and to use your personal object of importance at some point in your presentation.

Antigone;

Guterees speech to the COP conference in November 2022

Climate crisis

All of the work ha moments of poignancy and truthfulness. The challenge, we agreed, was to interweave all our varied responses with the overall themes in such a short time.

This was magnified when we saw the quality of Cypriot partner’s work, a very beautiful non-verbal piece using chorus of hands and mirrors.

Tuesday 7th February, 2023

Our focus today was to integrate a deeper sense of trust and confidence at a deeper level in the group, and to work in pairs as a means to tackling what we felt were very big themes.

It was good to connect with the Cypriots very briefly to see that they had the same struggles of ow to work together that we were having. The theme they brought into the work today was colonialism.

Each of our pairs rehearsed and presented interesting work again in response. All work was very different thematically, in style and form.

There was some disagreement within the group and this was addressed by Michael McCabe who provided everyone an opportunity to speak and provide input into the process.

I reminded the group of our agreed aims, and that it was my role to facilitate all of the group to be as best a working creative group as possible.

In reflection, the work today was of a very good level, which clear creative work achieved.

Wednesday 8th February, 2023

Today we focused initially today on fun games, and trust exercises as a means to bond and unite the group.

This led to very good group collective work, and after meeting with the Cypriot team, we had a much better idea of linking our work to their work.

It was as if today was the deciding day in terms of what both groups were doing, collectively.

In the European meeting, we shared the discussions and methodology of work that we had been exploring as a group.

We proceeded to prepare a script and a means as to plan how we could achieve the work collectively. We were no clear as to how we would link the two different approaches and responses to the themes and we were happy to move forward with our plan.

Thursday 10th February, 2023

In effect, this was our production day. We finalized our script after another discussion with the Cypriots,

And individually we each knew what we expected of each other.

We worked in one space to maximize our preparation time and in the afternoon we shot the main segment of our performance, outside in a venue close to the working space.

We concluded the work today by finalizing our studio news scenes. Probably the best day for the work of the group in terms of artistic achievement, but more fundamentally by the way the ensemble worked cohesively under time pressure.

Friday 11th February, 2023

Performance reflection and feedback day.

We were very happy with recorded performance, which we believe was very well received by all our European partners. There was a good connection between the Irish and Cypriot work.

The length of this online meeting was long, and challenging. We would propose a longer break half way point to help cope with online fatigue.

In reflection, all felt satisfied with the resulted work. The group recognized the challenges in Dublin in relation to securing rehearsal space and all agreed that it would have been better to have one working space, and were envious of the gorgeous spaces all our European partners displayed.

In final feedback, all artists that we had achieved what we set out to achieve at the start of the week.

There was a very positive feeling in the room. All expressed the wish to do another residency of this form, with the one strongest request: One same physical space to do so.