Thursday 1st May - a quick one
the 80th etude
Hello everyone!
What a lovely May Day! Hope you’re enjoying the sun!
One of the original intentions of etude was to highlight performances you can watch live from the comfort of your desktop! Unfortunately, there haven’t been that many occasions to share such online events since we ‘returned to normal’. However! I wanted to highlight something which I’m really excited about which starts next week.
The Microscope Sessions by Rhiannon Armstrong and Tim Spooner.
Free to access but tips welcome
Every Monday from 5th May at 13:00pm
We are on a video call together: our cameras are microscopes and they are focussed on paper instead of ourselves.
We border each other.
We co-create a painting in real-time.
We attend to the demands of our microscopic materials.
Tune in as the painting emerges through an evolving game of consequences, cross-pollination, and contamination.
The Microscope Sessions was a project that developed between Rhiannon and Tim early in lockdown. Following the cancellation of some work they were due to start together in the spring, they decided to meet once a week on Skype instead, to explore ideas and as a way just to stay connected. This work has been shown as part of the online programmes of The National Gallery, Southbank Centre, and The Place in London, with Forest Fringe TV, and was part of the LIFT Concept Touring residency.
“Over 40 minutes, on a video-call, we collaboratively make a watercolour painting under microscope cameras from our homes. One camera-feed overlays the other, so that when paint crosses out of one painter’s region, it requires the other painter to continue it, attempting to cancel the space between us.
What the painting is and the way it emerges is led by neither one of us.
The work is a complex set of responses and counter-responses to each others’ boundaries, intentions and mistakes, and the will of the materials.
Audiences see and hear this composite painting being made in extreme closeup and intimate detail. They also see us as we work, looking hard and trying hard.”
I’m so excited for this! It’s such a beautiful concept and I just wanted to bring attention to it and hope it reaches an audience. I’ve not really got much to add to this, I basically just copied and pasted all the details from their website. I wish more online interactions existed like this and I hope you’re all able to watch it and enjoy!
Talk soon
Josh