It looks like a re-envisioning is progress, after a failed attempt to get myself involved in theatre again, which very well could be a blessing in disguise, I’m taking a step back and examining how to proceed.
For the immediate future i’ve decided to rebrand STUDIO 802 into SCAM ( Southern Colorado Alternative Media). With the intention of creating work to go outside the 719, and perhaps have an occasional show there. Zelda will use Watch This Space as a venue for her new Our Community Dance Co. project.
This has truly give me time to pause and re-evaluate my presence in COS as an artistic novelty. The amount of complacency here is stifling, if it’s not Blues, Beer, or Baseball caps it don’t go! I have in the past came to the realization that what I do is of no real interest to the community either artistic or in general. I feel I came to believe something existed that did not, an open minded well educated art consumer. Which I think most likely only exists in a few urban areas in the USA.
I think what the problem I have with HOMETOWN is I won’t lie to myself. I won’t live in that smurfy denial that passes as optimism today. The reality is that even the young people here, artistic or other wise, are quite conservative. Which could very well just be a sign of the times, but does not bode well for the future being any more liberally minded. Their idea of something “far out” has been qualified by the artistic complacency locally and permeated by mass media culture from which they get their ideas and inspirations. It goes back to my joke 20 years ago about COS, we were doing Beckett at the Open Egg Theatre and I told a reporter ” we can do work that’s 30 years old and be called avant garde here”
This is why this place won’t change, no deveation is allowed, and we know as Mr. Frank Zappa ( regardless if you like his music or not, he was one of the smartest social commentators in the last 40 years) so wisely said: “Without deveation from the norm progress is not possible”.
I realize that postmodernism has killed the concept of an Avant Garde, or originality as a desired practice. Which is kind of the framework under which I do my work. I guess like most artists I need to step back look at the canvas and either finish the god damn painting or throw it out, or paint over it and start again.
