RUNNING UP TO THE OPENING OF THE RESIDENCY
SO MANY DAYS GONE BY
IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

Here we are... a day before the residency begins. Tomorrow the first batch of artists comes in. Workmen finished putting down the plinth of the Connaught Place circles. And then one night, the framework for the aerial map arrived. The map of Connaught Place up there next to the roof. A pie in the sky. All together, this is the framework for the installation based on The WhyNot Place theme.
These are the frameworks that all our 25 artists will be breathing life into for the next ten weeks. Sink or swim… this is the pool its going to happen in.
The assured way the workers on the floor handle their respective crafts while putting the installation framework into place. Carpenters, welders, electricians… all seem to know exactly what to do and when.
For example, how do you draw five concentric circles simultaneously on the installation floor? For the carpenters this one was a no-brainer. They just took a long strip of plywood. Hammered six nails into it at the different lengths – each representing the length of the radius of the next concentric circle. Then they hammered the nail closest to the end of the strip into the floor. And then turned the strip around on the floor and there they were – five perfect concentric circles scratched into the floor of the installation space. Ready to receive five layers of metal track.
A million and a half things got planned, honed, dropped, picked up again and dropped again and so on… activities, performances, PR, documentaries, documentation, administration, budgets… basic stuff like designing the teeshirts and the posters… compartmented space for the artists' studios or an open plan... after a whole load of agonizing, we went for the open plan simply because it let in all the natural light and let the artists talk and look and touch and feel each other's work all the time... too many things, too little time... what to do or not to do… Every time the same self-questioning... How intrusive would it be? Would it look hyped up and overheated… more art market than art initiative?? So many times, I heard myself or one among us say, ”Tell you what, lets figure this out as we go along. Good we discussed this and got a handle on it.” And so Alice moved on hurtling down the rabbit-hole…