Give me your bones

This publication is a journey of many companions – passengers of several stations. Those who have arrived at the final stop and are about to change trains together. We decided on the title collectively. “Give me your bones” means “let me support you,” not just support of our artistic practices but also giving space to the whole complexity of creation – making art, relationships, days, moments. Bones give structure to our bodies, they are hard and at the same time can be fragile. Our strength and dynamics are built on bones. And because so many tasks rest on our skeletal system, sometimes it’s nice to stop, lean back and tell a story. We hope that the stories here at least give some idea of the space, the smell, the sound, the dance of our meetings.

EXCERPTS / QUOTES

LANGUAGE AND LIVELIHOOD

Eva Meyer-Keller … After having worked for more than twenty years as an independent artist mainly working in the performing arts, I felt the need to reflect on what has happened. Not so much the content of the artistic work itself, but rather on how we actually got here today, as humans. Where have different kinds of (working) conditions led us? How did we participate in them? How did they influence our work? How did they shape our lives? With these questions in mind, I used some support funding I had received to initiate several artists’ meetings where we would talk about these issues. Finally, together with William Locke Wheeler and Agata Siniarska, I am making this book, which is the outcome of these meetings and the conversations that followed. I extended an invitation to colleagues as well as to myself to articulate thoughts, agencies, perspectives, worries, concerns, difficulties, vulnerabilities, moments of conflict, of being overwhelmed, of coincidences or encounters that shaped our lives, some details that mattered. Where are we now? How are we now? …

MOVE WORK THINK LEARN MEET

Johanna Withelm … The conversations collected in this reader bear witness to explorations of personal spaces, of collective art creation, of one’s own position, of needs and of access to the things one does. Opening oneself up to different perspectives and seeing the complexity of life – the whole shebang – and how everything is intertwined with everything. And taking on the big questions – how can this complexity be successfully unfurled in one’s work? How can these moments be interwoven with one another – the good ones and the uncomfortable ones – and how can we manage not to exclude these uncomfortable feelings but rather incorporate them into artmaking? How can we learn a caring and supportive way of encountering artmaking? ...

SPACE FOR ALLOWANCE

Tina Tarpgaard ... The way you hold the idea of a sort of knowledge empowers you to exist inside the structures that surround us. How do we deal with the system and make that space for ourselves while feeling the clash between us and the system. How can we empower that temporality, that knowledge located within being an artist and producing and doing? And how can that be what shapes the structure and not vice versa? ...

SPACE FOR ALLOWANCE

Cuqui Jerez ... The relation of life and work is becoming closer and closer. Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s an idea of not stating something with your work but listening to yourself and seeing how you can grow in your life through your work. ...