Call

Accompanying text for September call to Kat. Kat, if you have not completed your piece read no further!

Call and Response is a project myself and Katherine Johnson are doing together as collaborative partners. I live in the West Midlands. Katherine lives in Lancashire. Call and response is our solution to bridge the physical gap between two collaborative working partners: One of us sets a brief, the other one answers it. The piece not being complete without the stimulus or the product. The interesting thing is that we will each have very different ideas on how the piece will turn out as we both have different thought patterns.

The most recent call I have sent Kat is a picture of myself, no instructions alongside apart from to visit this blog when she has completed the piece. I wanted to document my thoughts on it so there would be something to compare after the piece was created.

Kat,
This is a picture of myself that is really rather horrible. Everything about it from the double chin to the glasses, it is really unflattering. However, it struck me when I came across it that I had never thrown it away. Every time I see it I cringe. But I haven't destroyed it, neither have I shown it to anyone. I got to thinking and felt immensely glad that there were no social networking sites around when I was a teenager! Especially as I was a bit of an oddball! I can't imagine having that sort of pressure when I was younger when and being judged by how many friends you have, what you look like and how witty your status updates are. Via these sites we can edit how we are perceived, I have been known to de-tag the odd horrific picture so why had I not thrown the photo away? Is it that there is something special about the printed photograph and that by destroying it it would destroy a memory? Or are we so flooded with photos today because of the ease of digital equipment and media that the loss of one or two is not important?

In any case this photo I have not shown to anyone I have shown to you and anyone else that will come across it as part of this project. I look forward to your response.