Vacant Room Week Two

Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. - Laurie Penny, http://pennyred.blogspot.com/

Allo,

It is now the end of week two. We have had to say goodbye to our mentor Halcyon Macleod. We will miss her terribly. Other than that, it's been an excellent and difficult week. Excellent with the actors, difficult with our own brains; with ethics, politics. A few questions. In consuming images of destruction and disaster, are we engaging in a kind of pornography? Are we genuinely emotionally engaged, or engaged critically as artists, ignoring suffering for form, light, shade, framing? Are the riots in London political reality or an image for us to improvise from? Are we vultures? We think we probably are. It's difficult.

We also used buckets, flowers and made shelters out of ladders and blankets. Abe's shelter was clearly the best.

love mark