Today is about our predilection for exposing the means of production.

Hello

I’m beginning to think about and write a text for 40 days and 40 nights. The idea is that, twice daily, from 5th November until 14th December 2018, Quarantine’s existing website will close down and be replaced, for 40 days and 40 nights by a shifting series of texts/images/sounds. A kind of essay in fragments.

I want to construct something that is built out of perhaps seemingly disconnected elements, yet somehow holds together as a whole; it will mix fact and imaginary elements; fundamentally it will look to the future, and be built out of experience and imagination. I imagine a kind of manifesto for the future built out of or responding to/escaping from experience of the past. It’s not a retrospective or an archive.  It will be ordinary, banal, passionate, provocative, difficult, poetic, simple. Everything is allowed, nothing is censored.   

The main idea is to address the question: if we were to start a brand new artistic project called Quarantine on 14th December 2018, what would it be, what would it do?

To help start this, it would be great if you could answer some of the following questions.  I don’t imagine that many if any answers will be named or credited, but if they are it will only be with your permission. Mostly they’ll just serve as fragments of text/image/sound etc. Please don’t try to make them join up or make sense. You don’t have to answer all of them. Please answer them in your own way – it’s really not any kind of exam. If you want me to treat your responses in confidence but are happy for them to somehow be used, please tell me your terms…

Here goes.

Within the period 5th November 1998 to this very day (and beyond), could you please answer (some of) the following:

1) Moments of (popular) culture that spring to mind or seem to have stuck

2) Political or social events that remain with you

3) What’s the most important thing that’s happening right now?

4) What’s theatre for?

5) What occupies you most right now?

6) 3 images of the past 20 years

7) 3 images of now

8) 3 images of the future

9) What should Quarantine be?

10) What should Quarantine not be?

11) What sounds should we play?

12) What do we need to do?

13) What should we do?

14) What’s important to do?

15) What’s urgent to do?

16) Will our future work be theatre?  (If so, why so; if not, why not?)

17) What will the future look like?

18) What will our future work look like?

19) Write 3 statements for a manifesto.

20) Write an apology for all we’ve done wrong and the work that’s failed.

21) What questions should I have asked?