Putting together the crøwoman show I’ve felt the need to post photos of rehearsals. I’m admittedly an oversharer but, on reflection, another part of this is proving that I’m doing this by myself. This might sound a bit ridiculous but in the past people have congratulated men on some of the tech aspect of a performance of mine when they literally had only the vaguest thing to do with a project. It is important that artists get the credit for their work and if I use somebody else’s film/sound/photo then I credit them. Otherwise the work is my own. I’m not sure this happens to men: Andy was once congratulated on his work on a series of films I made when he had nothing to do with them; and I was told how lucky I was at a gig in Wrexham that a sound engineer had done such a great job of producing my sound when I had my own small desk plugged into theirs so that he could only turn the entire volume up or down. This is not to pull down the brilliant work of men I’m surrounded by, their talents speak for themselves and I love working with men as much as women, I just wish it wasn’t presumed that I must have had male input. I love the punk ethos of just fucking getting out there and doing it: learn as you go; don’t make it perfect just fucking make it; stretch yourself, dive into self-directed learning; follow your own intuition and ideas; keep your vision and don’t let others project their own bullshit onto you; and if you can’t yet make the art that you dream of then keep learning new techniques until you can. The only thing I’m competing with is the art I made yesterday because, more than anything, I want to be understood. I realise that is the hardest thing as an artist: to be able to translate all the complex ideas and philosophies swimming around the head in a way that is so beautiful and simple they speak to everybody.
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