It's been a considerable amount of time since my last 'pondering' post. My practice-led research has been even more immersive than I thought. I have been writing a lot, but not in an online forum i.e. my own website. This might be a good thing given I discovered that writing, and language, has imbued in my practice than I previously thought.

In my masters research, I delved into the interrelationship between performer and audience, particularly in solo dance practice. I found this term – intersubjectivity, which is where we perceive subjectivity of one another. The intersubjective space between two communicating parties is where streams of shared information exist. In a way, it's based on my instinct on what others think of me. I might not be 100% right, but I can extract a lot of information out of this perception, likewise others. So it can be said that what I think of them and what they think of me is shared information, if you go by reciprocation with one another.

I then apply this idea to my audience – the people right in front or, or around, me in my performance. The audience, who are they? Firstly, the general public who are interested in seeing dance; my peers in the artistic community all across the disciplines. Or so I thought. Other times, I have been surprised by whom my audience are. Like a young boy at Campbelltown Art Centre (NSW) where I performed Opposite My House Is a Funeral Parlour, he sticked around past his bedtime to take about choreography on the topic of death. Or Mary, a lady coming to the Mechanics Institute, who almost walked away from Orbit before she even saw it. Later she bought us a bottle of wine out of her appreciation for the show (see my previous post about this here.)

In an effort to expand my audience, I too invite a group of audience from the funding bodies like the Australia Council, Arts Victoria, Dancehouse, Arts House, etc. This group of audience is important on one level: to expose my work to them – to let them know that me and my work exists. Similar to exposing my work to my peers or reviewers, I'm hoping to receive critical feedback from these organisations when I apply for a grant whether or not I am successful for the grant. Mind you, they often said feedback is not available these days.  Nevertheless, there is a form of interdependence between individual artists and the artistic community which includes these funding bodies. Although our ongoing practice may not always require full support from the funding bodies, these organisations are parts of the artistic community and, now and again, artists rely on them as a support system of our artistic practice. Like you live in a city and you accept that the administrating bodies make your community run smoothly.

Like most artists, most of my grant submissions don't yield successful results, but that doesn't matter. We artists always find ways to sustain our practice. Importantly, at the back of our minds, we trust the grant assessment through a peer-review process – for each grant application, there will be a panel of artists selected to assess our grants. We accept that the money is limited, there's not enough to go around. Yet we still trust the process and hope that one time we will be successful and get a grant.

I think the word "trust" is important here. Trust is the basis of interdependence and reciprocation with one another.  Recently, however, my trust was severely eroded through a grant submission. I don't think it's important to specify which grant I applied for, to whom or how much money. What happened was that when the call for expression-of-interest went out,I looked up on the online application form and found that they required 300 words for each section: biographies of all artists, relevant past works, the idea for the project and how the opportunity would benefit my practice. There's no word limit on the delivery plan.  

There was not a lot of words allowed in each section, but all in all, I would write a 1200-word application, which, I thought, was sensible. I worked for a week to develop the idea for the project with those word-limits in mind.  The day before the grant due when I was ready to submit the application, however, I went on to that online application form and found that the word-limit for each section had changed to 600 words.  I couldn't believe my eyes, but I submitted it anyway and emailed the organisation to assess my application as per when the application form first published. In the hindsight, I don't know what that means in term of assessing a grant as they would have both 1200-word and 2400-word applications. Needless to say, with 2400 words, you can articulate your idea more, which is a considerable advantage.

At that moment of finding out the application form had changed to 600 words for each section, I reflected that it never crossed my mind that I should check the word-limit in case they changed it. If I did that, it meant that I didn't trust the organisation at the first place to publish a well-thoughtout application form. At this moment, in turn, I lost trust in the organisation that they knew what they're doing and that the assessment process would be fair. I foresaw that my application would not be successful because a) I lost the opportunity to articulate my idea, almost felt misled to do so, and b) if the law of reciprocation is true and I perceive they wouldn't like my work based on their recent programming, it is true that they are not "excited" about my work.

I grant that not everyone would like my work and that there would have been short applications submitted other than mine.  I could be philosophical and think that everything happens at the right time; not getting this grant means not needing it, etc, etc. What I feel troubled about is that I have lost trust in this organisation which is one of the few supporters of independent dance artists in Melbourne, which never occurred to me before. I have a long association with this particular organisation but have lost interest in what they put up in their program in the past few years. It's like not trusting the water supply in your city! Then again, it's the law of reciprocation: I lost interest in them, they lost interest in me.

So I call upon my artistic peers to support one another in critical facilitation. I think we are interdependent our peers more than ever. We might not always be successful in all our grant applications but that doesn't mean our practice are in vain. We should get together and share our work. Be open to give and receive feedback. Who's with me?