artsadmin email

Hey everybody,

Sorry for taking so long to respond to this. We feel that our practice is changing a lot recently, and the simple task of writing (or more accurately copy and pasting) a bio threw up a lot of questions that we have been having in the last months. We feel that sheaf+barley has been chafing at us a lot, although we’re sure that they’re lovely and well-meaning mythic archetypes. The insistence on the specifically English/Saxon iconography and language is strange considering Noa’s heritages and roots, although we both grew up in England so we were appropriating it to our own means (but how far can one fuck with something that can so easily be subsumed into nationalist discourse? That was probably always the point). The aesthetic that has grown out of the sheaf+barley practice, natural-ness and organic things, is constrictive. The lack of the living experience both of us could project into these archetypes seems counter-productive, for example Noa’s trans-ness and recent experiences with this. And so on and so on...

The project and practice remains that same, we’re just trying to find a new language and a new frame for our making and living. Reconceptualising our relationship to what we want to make, reframing it, finding a new language and aesthetic to speak about it with. We don’t want to be tied down to a singular thing or way of making. We want the work to directly reflect, or perhaps simply be, our life. The language of sheaf+barley and cunning folk got us so far and will still be useful, but there is more that needs to be spoken and we need new voices to speak it with.

So, in regards to the bursary, things will remain exactly the same. Really we’re doing the same thing and we’ll be using the bursary for the same stuff. In fact we believe this process will help us use the bursary far more effectively. However we understand if you would rather have the simple sheaf+barley bio and we can provide that. We don’t want our own repositionings to affect what you need to do.

We’re also into the idea of including this email in a link as part of our description of how we’ll be using the bursary, as well as the application form itself - maybe putting it in a pastebin and linking it - let us know if you’re ok with that or not!

Best,
max+noa