Identity- is it real if it changes depending on where I am?

Identity - Mine

Identity of a nation, of a people, of a thing of a collective unwritten agreement.

….as I was trying to find the essence, the identity of what this big new wonderful project I’m trying to create with and for the community I live in I looked for previous texts I’ve written and found that I’ve dreamed this idea up over and over again in hundreds of other projects…..

So my conclusion, as it is often, is that I as an artist cannot let go of a theme/topice/expression until it’s worked itself through me to it’s audience it in fact becomes my identity, my artistic identity if you will.

….and yet the paradox is that I’m different people in different situations. Often I prefer to travel because who I become when I’m with people from other cultures. I became different after having lived in another country. So I think, though identity means:

“the distinguishing character or personality of an individual : INDIVIDUALITY” it also means “sameness of essential or generic character in different instances or sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing : ONENESS”

My identity is ever changing

SO HERE IS THE PROJECT I PROPOSED 6 YEARS AGO - and it still stands!

I would like to create a theatre piece that can be taken anywhere using “Treteau” style mixed with my own “Peace Junk Theatre” (Finding beauty from ugly nothings and telling epic stories through castaway objects)

My curiosity about the theme “identity” relates to the façades we hold for our society and that become confusing when migration happens. When all the things we thought were truths are suddenly no longer truths but simply one way of doing it.

I want to bring play back into the conversation of solving common world problems. Get back to basics when we had less things to distract us. Use things around us to tell stories, creating beauty with what we already have. Possibly showing materialists what they're missing out on and  bringing to life the sense that we don't need the newest fashionable item to enjoy our lives and each other. If we take away all the materialistic things, religious and cultural attachments - we are all the same.

I’m really interested in collaborating with other artists and sharing tools to create professional shows. I’m also interested in creating work within and with a community to help people see beauty in their area despite financial restriction.

What do I bring?

Red Nose Clown -Treteau, Peace Junk – Pay it forward – Flashmobs

Plan: 1 week research, 1 week devicing and 1 week final rehearsals. Possible other outcomes: Installation art, including community stories and flashmob work.

I have been doing research in playful vulnerability over the past 10 years. I find that you can’t hate someone whose whole life story you have just heard or who you’ve just shared a creative process with – it connects deeper than words could ever describe.

“Same difference” is a project I’ve just started in Sweden. My hope is to do this “identity” exploration in many different countries and environments with artists from those areas and also explore new ways of continued work across borders, because I find that artists have already found how to work together despite their different backgrounds, in fact they prefer the differences. Putting together a global ensemble and a format of how to connect in a creative process long distance and on location to cross pollinate more effectively.

I’ve been working with a mixture of professional actors, musicians, dancers, artists of different art forms since 1996. I lived in Boulder, Colorado for 12 years and worked in a community where mindfulness practice and creative process was at the core. Since moving to Sweden I’ve been focusing on using theatre/contemplative practice/artivism globally and locally. I have applied for grants to do a global project on the theme “Same Difference”. Participating in Communitism III could (but doesn’t have to) be the first step in creating a global show that is relevant to our time and connect artists in seeking and finding solutions to artist collaboration across borders and styles. By enabling cross pollination over borders we can connect the extremist sides of our communities and countries.

Beautiful Oops - Missing pieces - Are we really looking?

Where to start?

Let’s start with ourselves.

The best way I know to look for the unknown, the buried, the uncomfortable truths is through the creative process. When I just know there’s something there and I allow for an improvised mind and body, the truth comes through.

Finally, racism is being acknowledged on the world level. We cannot with all our privilege just sit and not contribute to healing this.

I come from a really long history of horrible acts on the human rights of which I’ve benefitted from as a result of being born into this skin. In order to transform this dynamic, we have to look at these character defects before we can even see what changes we can make.

So this week will focus on opening up our listening, seeing, and connecting to our creativity source in order to explore our part of racism.

Let the art do the talking.

What are we missing?

What’s underneath the surface?

Beautiful oops- The Naked Truth

The Naked Truth

Or are they the stories we believe in secret.

JOIN ZOOM

I’ve always been interested in the fronts people show and what’s hiding underneath. Especially my own. I’ve been you could say obsessed with the dualistic reality in my painting and theatrical world for as long as I remember.

This week the theme will be an object and the story underneath, whether it’s abstract or not doesn’t matter.

As per usual you can always join just to hang out working on your own project if you wish.

See you there!

June 3rd at 6 pm (Swedish time) 12 EST

For those who want “MY NAKED TRUTH” is hanging out in the nude below.

I’m grieving the hopes, dreams, and even real goals, that have kept me going all these years. My inability to give up on my commitment and belief that you can do anything you put your mind to has allowed me to create impossible things with no security upfront. Yet it never opened the door wide enough for me to find the way to truly live on what I create, but I could always see it so clearly, what I could do….and then other things happened…I don’t have another dream or goal in life. I don’t have anything else that inspires me or drives me.

This Corona Break is allowing me to watch this even closer, realizing that I don’t know who I am if I don’t have a goal, how do I pivot if there is no new project to plan. Will I stop existing? I’m terrified that I don’t know how to be without a goal. And yet we are still moving aimlessly forward. I think there is more space to notice how I feel and to pick up on opportunities. Maybe I didn’t need to push and motivate myself and others so hard all these years. The goals I had when I was 20 are now 20 years old. THEY DIDN’T HAPPEN - But other things did. I have now spent the same amount of time heading towards a goal that in my field is only possible in your 20’s and maybe if you’re extremely lucky 30’s. And I realized they are only serving me now, to move forward not because I can actually get there nor do I really want to from here, but because I need something to propel me forward so that I don’t feel the biggest fear of all: I’m not an artist if I’m not creating, I’m not an artist if I’m not being paid to do so, If I’m not an artist I’m not creating and if I don’t create I cannot live. I still want to succeed in creating art/theatre/creative collaborations. If it was hard in my 20’s to succeed in entertainment then now should be impossible.

This is were the Corona Break has been good, the forced slowing down, space I didn’t want. I realized that pushing harder when it isn’t working was always a way to prove to myself and others that I wasn’t giving up. Everyone who has ever created something great has had to push through difficult times, but maybe my survival as an artist was too strong and it shouldn’t have been about pushing harder, maybe I missed some pivots. Who knows? I just know that I’m done doing it the way I’ve been doing it to solve the problem because after 20 years the problem most certainly isn’t about giving up or putting in the time and hard work. This pivot will have to be the most creative work I’ve ever done. I will only succeed here on out in a way that hasn’t been done before….in fact, I’ve always known this, as I do art that isn’t mainstream and I love to question the status quo, in fact, I believe that is our job as artists. And let’s be honest even in the mainstream entertainment you have to constantly find a new way in, even and especially the few women artists that have made it, they have to pivot just to stay in.

So finally the biggest and everlasting question is why, oh why with so many people wanting to express themselves creatively in the world, doesn’t the world meet this demand and include the various forms of artists and those fields as viable, paid and valued jobs in society, so that more people can contribute to all the other fields of jobs with creative input instead of having to drop out take jobs they are no good at or worse loose themselves entirely?

More Layers....of humanity

Beautiful Oops

Layers of humanity - Stories within stories

May 20 th, 5 PM (Swedish Time)

JOIN ZOOM

Come on everyone-

LET’S TELL SOM STORIES!!!!

and create some art from the words.

Join this Zoom Artist Studio.

Layers - of humanity

Stories within stories

Wednesday May 13th, 5pm Swedish time (8 am PST, 11am EST)

JOIN US! HANGOUT WITH OTHER ARTISTS AND EITHER CREATE A “COLLABORATIVE WORD SCRAMBLE DRAWING” WITH WHAT YOU GOT OR SIMPLY HANG OUT WHILE WORKING ON SOME OF YOUR OWN PROJECTS.

We’ll do fun introduction and a warm up together the rest of the time we hang out while working together.

Artist Hang Out - exquisite corpse challenge

Exquisite Corpse challenge

Join us on Zoom and create with other artists !!!!!

JOIN ZOOM

Not everyone can create such a brilliant living exquisite corpse like this….but we can try. We will find a way to create a collaborate, surrealist, exquisite corpse using whatever artform pleases you. See you @ 5 pm Swedish time!!!!

What you want kurbits challenge - QUARANTINE ARTIST HANG

Wednesday, April 29th

11 am & 5 pm Swedish time (8 am PST, 11 am EST)

JOIN ZOOM

OUR LOCAL DALARNAS MUSEUM IS HOLDING A TWIST ON OUR LOCAL FOLK ART FORM “KURBITS”. JOIN US FOR SOME ARTIST HANG AND EITHER CREATE AND CREATE A MODERN KURBITS WITH WHAT YOU GOT OR SIMPLY HANG OUT WHILE WORKING ON SOME OF YOUR OWN PROJECTS.

We’ll do a fun introduction and a warm-up together the rest of the time we hang out while working together.

Connect and Create with other artists around the world

Beautiful Ooops

22 April 5pm (Swedish Time)

Based on the children’s book and our family’s code of conduct I give you a crash course in turning mistakes into art… that can be translated into any part of your life… like a pandemic ruining all possibilities of work… OR?

Just need a distraction? Need to hear another voice than your own? Or just need some inspiration to get you going again? Or really for no or any reason at all come and hang, watch and create with us. Open to all ages, levels of expertise and seriousness.

The more the merrier.

NEXT WEEK : FREE LIVE WORKSHOPS

Anyone else going through midlife crises purely because they’ve seen their VOICES and heard their FACES on one too many zoom meetings?

-asking for a friend

Join ZOOM

Sunday April 5, 9am (MST) 11am (EST) 5pm (Swedish time)

Based on the children’s book and our family’s code of conduct I give you a crash course in turning mistakes into art… that can be translated into any part of your life… like a pandemic ruining all possibility of work… OR?

Creative Quarantine Bootcamp

Got cabin fever?
artistic ants in your art-pants?

Can’t find anything interesting to do
without your peeps around?

---

I'm certainly walking aimlessly
around the house… starting…
but not finishing projects!

So to help myself
and hopefully give some relief out there
in the quarantined world….

---

I’m putting together some FREE Workshops
and Community building frameworks which
you can continue to do with your family
and virtual communities.

Classes will include artistic, creative
and interactive tools and games
for surviving yourself…
and the quarantine.

Workshops

1. Beautiful Oops

   Based on the children’s book and our family’s code of conduct I give you a crash course in turning mistakes in art… or really it can be translated into any part of your life… like a pandemic ruining all possibility of work… OR?

2. “What-you-got Creativity”

   Using what you have at home and junk around you… let’s create some art. I’ll throw in some basic design principles based on Eastern art and design practices.

3. Personal Creative Inventory

   Stuck at home? Feeling like you can’t access your creative flow? A perfect opportunity to reflect or discover habits and blocks that inhibit you from creating freely. While also connecting with other artists to form a support network that can keep you going when we are released back out.

4. Artistic Meditations

   Having a hard time letting go of the monkey mind? Need another way into your normal artistic practice? This workshop will focus on various meditation techniques done using various artistic exercises.

Projects

1. #Random Artist Project

2. #What To Do Art Project

   Take a picture of what you have available (materials, junk, trash whatever) and I’ll give you an art
   project to do with it.

   @kjersti13webb

Community Groups

1. Peer to peer artist support/inspiration group

2. A family game of Celebrity

3. Artistic Parents Support Group

4. Support for caretakers

5. Bring your own character improv

Hey Google, I'm coming for you!

Why?

When I first started out in my young twenties I was lucky enough to be mentored by an incredible woman. She taught me many life lessons I still practice till this day

1. Laugh at yourself and your mistakes. We all make them. We’ll keep making them. So they can either thwart you or you can laugh at your silly humanity that keeps making the same mistakes – and convincing itself that you'll somehow never do it again.

2. I was panicked in small talk situations. She gave me the advice to: DON’T talk about yourself. Ask questions that cannot be answered by yes or no. 

Which brings me to where I find myself today. Here I am again, a lost human, an artist trying to figure out where I went wrong. Did I miss that very crucial piece of information in school where they taught SUCCESS?

Turns out I did. I’m still living under the assumption that the internet likes successes that are ruled by word hits. Turns out everyone – other than me – knows that Google got smarter… BUT NOT FOR LONG!!!! I’m coming for you Google.

Turns out she (Google) likes a good answer. 

So full circle. I hear my mentor laughing at the irony: I need to ask questions… stop talking about myself. Find the question that needs to be answered……

So here we go!

Can I find the questions of the world, that will also allow the work I want to put out into the world, create the community I always envisioned (that is before community was traded for everyone staring at their screens) in the middle of nowhere in the woods in Sweden (where everyone thinks they're social and inclusive, but no one has time, energy or money to change their own world to adjust it enough to bring in anyone new). Where comfort is ”a right”……..

So that Google will send people to my page and I can do the work I was put on this earth to do?

I say – BRING IT!!!!!