‘Telling Time’ is a speech-choir workshop that I ran as one of the Communal Making sessions at Jamboree 2018 at Dartington Estate, Devon, UK in June 2018.
The session addressed how h/story is told, how telling it locates it in time, and how the told story endures or is lost. Together the group examined how we place ourselves in h/story, through autobiography, stories of our practice, tales of media, periodisation of art work, and narratives of progress. Shifting between personal telling and larger narratives in which we play a part, the topics arose from the participants in response to quotations and prompts in the workbook. The workbook had pages on the following topics: my time / time past / art time / quantum time / present time / telling time / scoring time / future time / queer time / white time / doing time / extra time
As a group of 18, and in smaller working groups we addressed themes of time as it relates to practicing as an artist: where do we come from to this business of making, where are we now with it, where do we hope to go in the future. Participants got to keep their workbook as a souvenir of the session, and as a prompt for further thinking on the topics raised.
At the end of the session we made a vocal improvisation drawing on the textual material generated in the workshop. I devised a score for three voices or three parts from the material generated during the vocal improvisation: telling time a3 score
In May 2019 I ran an adapted version of the workshop for students on the Transart PhD Programme at Plymouth University. The focus of the discussion was shifted somewhat to support this specific cohort, and the shape of the score reflected the concerns and interests of the participants. I developed a visual score / record of the event: telling time score 2
A further development of the workshop with the title, What Time is Art? was run as a two-part online zoom event in August 2020. This was part of the PITCH programme of events for CAMP (Contemporary Art Membership Plymouth). Over two 2-hour sessions participants discussed ideas of time in relation to art practice(s). The sessions addressed how a story of making is told, how telling it locates it in time, and how the told story endures or is lost. A visual score was developed from the participants contributions: what time is art? score