Snapchat Poem

I wrote a thing, and I read it to some friends, and they told me it was a poem. It’s not like my other poems though this one is meant to be read aloud. I thought about recording it and sharing it with you here, but I’m not ready to release it into the world as a static object yet. I want you to hear it though, so I’m going to try something new. At 8:00 pm CST Friday March 18th I will be performing this poem live via snapchat @bethijay91 one stanza at a time. It will be live on my story for 24 hrs after that for your viewing pleasure, and I hope you will snap me back your responses. This will be an intentionally impermanent record of what it is right now, but I have plans to incorporate it into a one person play I am working on right now for next year so it won’t be the last you hear of it. This is an experiment in form too. If there is good response perhaps I will write more poetry for snapchat we’ll see. I look forward to sharing.

 

Update 8:00 am : I mispublished my snapchat name last night because it was late and I was excited, it has been corrected now my apologies. 

New idea: objects and 1 Take Super 8 festival

I am going to build an interactive art installation/that explores our relationship to the universe through our relationship to objects.

Due to the circumstance of the piece further details must remain under wraps, but I look forward to sharing teasers as the project progresses.

I am presently seeking a gallery to submit the piece to, or an alternative gallery space to commandeer for a week to three weeks for the purposes of art.

So far my greatest challenge with the piece is explaining the concept in an engaging way on paper without giving the audience too much information. I am reading a lot of backs of plays to see how other publishers and authors have accomplished this.

Meanwhile, I submitted a short film to the 1 take Super 8 festival. It’s my first piece on film, and the first film period I’ve shot in ten years.

The piece hasn’t been titled but the premise is Urban Alice in Wonderland. It’s shot on a single roll of B&W film (so under three minutes) completely silent with no effort to incorporate dialogue stand ins at all. Filmed in back alleys and under bridges in the rain; the inner city back drop is as essential to the piece as the performers themselves.

Hopefully it is in focus and not just a blurry mess. The great thing about the festival is I won’t know until it is revealed, alongside 24 other surprise films, In front of a live audience at the Roxy Theatre July 8th.

The festival is going to be a lot of good fun if you are in the YXE area you should check it out.

I’m going to try not to think about it until then to avoid dying from nerves, so I thought I better tell you about it now.

Visual poetry

I want to create visual poetry this summer.

I’m missing filming and editing and I’m looking for a way to get back into it and to explore “sampling” real life for my various performance pieces.

The plan is to collect a lot of footage of everyday things while exploring different kinds of light, colour, composition, texture, and tempo. Then, I will take samples of this footage and edit them into a wordless poem, whose shape will literally emerge from the source of inspiration captured on film, for easily digestible pieces of media art to be consumed as you would a painting, or a Lyric, rather than a full narrative, as is traditional in the medium.

I might use these pieces further, in Dear Devotion in particular, but mostly it will be an experiment in composing images with no specific end product in mind.

I plan to invest in a cheap camcorder in June to begin collecting the footage. I’ve yet to decide whether to begin editing immediately, or to enjoy the collection process and worry about curating the actual poems later in the fall when the mind is more crisp and clear rather than hazy with summer.

If you are interested in being a subject in this project let me know in the comments, no acting experience necessary, think of it like live life drawing modelling only with more clothes on.

New idea

I want to make a video of a hundred different girls and women and ladies and femmes and tom boys and broads and hags and lasses opening up jars of pickles.
It would be a tight shot of just elbow to forearm twisting the lid off of various jars of pickles, maybe some peanut butter or tomato sauce for good measure.
It will play continuously on the wall in my fantasy art exhibit that I am building in the back corners of my mind.
The fear it is over coming I think is obvious: every woman has (at least) one thing that they are mortally afraid they will never be able to do with out assistance, and that this one short coming will cause them to shrivel up and die if ever they are unsuccessful at securing a husband.
Or maybe this is just me?
At any rate mine is opening jars.
I’ve done it many times successfully but I still panic every time I’m on my own and I have to do it. I worry that maybe this will be the time, the time I die alone and hungry in my apartment because I can’t open the jar of pickles.
Now that I say it aloud I feel silly and maybe I really am the only one with such irrational spinster fears.
But I want to make the video anyways.

New idea

I’ve been toying around with the idea of creating art spaces. Art exhibits that are physical spaces that you experience immersively. Where the lines between performer and audience are blurred and we all become voyagers together on this journey through the piece.

I am interested in playing with the boundaries between public and private. Who we are on the inside versus the outside, and what that does to how we relate to each other and our physical world.

My latest idea along these lines is to build a public installation piece. On one end of the piece would be a pay phone confessional where people could step off the street to whisper or shout their secrets into the receiver. On the other end would be the “operator” who perhaps would be in a gallery space or another public space far removed. They would have a receiver only with the listening capabilities intact. Like a tin can and twine phone there role would be to receive these secrets. To respond to them internally. And to write anonymous pieces of advice, reactions, impressions, drawings on the wall in publicaly private bit of graffiti.

This idea is still very rough and unformed so don’t steal it, and in return I will let you know how it develops so that you can watch the creative process in action start to finish.

We need each other in our own private ways.