In the beginning I was excited.
The first time working on a solo. Not an act. A solo piece. Without anyone telling me what to do. Absolute freedom.
Excitement stayed for a short moment.
Then excitement left and pressure came. What was that, I had always wanted to create, always wanted to make art about? This was the moment in my career where I would define my art… Wow. Way too much pressure.
I got stuck. Nothing was moving anymore mot even me. I was sitting on my bed trying to come up with a genius concept but nothing was good enough for my critical mind.
I thought of other creation processes that I had been part of. Doubting the project was inevitable part of the process. But now it resulted in inactiveness. I was just chewing my nails and browsing the Internet for inspiration. My nails were getting shorter but the inspiration wasn’t coming. People were asking me about how it went with my project and I avoided answering as I didn’t feel confident about the concept anymore.
What got me out of it were two things.
One: Physical research. Despite of not knowing where I was going with it I bought 12 granite stones and brought them to the studio. And then I just improvised with them and things happened. Two: Don’t judge. At least not yet. At this stage of the process I needed to tell myself that what I was aiming for was a collection of material. Good stuff and also just stuff. If and how and why, all this was for later.
Emma Laule 