During the nebulous formation of this thing called The1st4 at the back of my mind I head certain ideas of what it should be and what it should attempt to do. Words like development, experiment, new work all filtered through.
All still quite nebulous, what do these words means and how would they manifest themselves?
One manifestation of this swirling concepts comes in the form of our DiCTATE strand. The idea is to take an artist whose work is not in the live/performance field (pretty board I know) and ask them to produce a 'performance score' which is then given to a performance artist to interpret.
By bringing together artists this way will see the creation of a new work and this would satisfy the ambitions for collaboration as well as creating a space for artists to develop and create new work. DiCTATE also ticks the experimental box.
Everyone involved is trying something new, untested. Both artists have not attempted to create art in this way. Myself as curator has not done this before, to programme a work which is yet to exist, we have the framework for the work, the work is in the future.
It's a risk.
Risk is one of the elements of The1st4, one of the reasons it exists. Part of The1st4 remit must involve taking risks to move forward, to allow artists to come to together create something unique, risky isn't it all part of what makes a vibrant art scene?
I hope you can join us in April to see the results of this experimentation.
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