MIXED-DISCIPLINE SESSION (all genres welcome)

Mondays 7:00-9:30pm
March 5 – May 7, 2012
COST: $100/$90 for members

REGISTRATION

When you click on the registration button, it automatically defaults to the member status.
If you are new to the field, please select non-member which is located underneath the central frame. Thanks.

If you have questions about the session, please email thefieldseattle@gmail.com

FACILITATORS:

A K Mimi Allin
Wyly Astley

LOCATION

Studio-Current (Capitol Hill)
1417 10th Ave #C
Seattle, WA 98122

SESSION STRUCTURE

• 10 weeks (8 weeks in summer), often concludes with informal showing for invited guests
• 2½ hour sessions
• Max # of participants (including facilitators) 10, min 4
• Field sessions begin and end promptly

In each individual session, we:

-determine who intends to show work
-do a warm-up exercise (optional, time and interest permitting)
-show work (informal 10-minute limit, though arrangements can be made for a longer works)
-have a brief break (optional, time and interest permitting)
-gather in a circle
-give feedback, piece by piece, in the order shown (time for feedback equally allotted)
-have a closing discussion (optional, time and interest permitting)

SESSION DECORUM

Field sessions follow guidelines designed to maximize group function and cohesiveness, to create a safe environment, to optimize each artist’s ability to receive feedback about his/her work and to help focus sessions on the work rather than the artist.

ATTENDANCE

A commitment to the group is essential. Momentum can waver when participants skip sessions, so regular attendance is important. To develop an atmosphere of trust, participants commit to attending every week regardless of whether or not they have work to show.

Al was a member of The Field-Seattle’s very first playwrights session, where he much of “It’s Not Stealing” was developed. This fall he began a two year playwrights residency in The Seattle Repertory Theatre’s inaugural Writers Group, which is a part of the Rep’s New Play Program.

Congratulations, Al!

You’ve been hearing about Mimi Allin for months, even years. Her work is provocative. Her feedback is challenging. Other artists find her inspiring. Sometimes you tell yourself, “I want to be in a session with Mimi, and cut free from my inhibitions.”

Here is your chance! Mimi will be conducting a Mixed Discipline session on Monday nights. Come, and bring a friend. This is a short session, so we will hit the ground running.

Mondays, Nov. 7 to Dec. 5, 7 to 9:30 p.m.
Mixed Disciplines

Facilitator: A K Mimi Allin

A K Mimi Allin first came to Seattle’s attention big-time back in 2006, when she assumed the mantle of “The Poetess at Green Lake” and spent every Sunday in the park for a year, sharing and receiving poems with passersby. Since then this conceptual artist has conducted more than a score of events, many of them providing opportunities for other artists to pursue work on their interests. Nobody who was there will forget these studies: In White, In Melancholy or In Memory. Mimi spent the summer conducting a pilgrimage, Tahoma Kora–not only walking around Mount Rainier but performing prostrations most of the way.

Mimi is a member of the Field Steering Committee. If you want to see more about her work, please look at her website. It’s a virtual certainty: If you take part in this session, you’ll be inspired–and challenged

But personally, The Field has revolutionized the way that I work, especially in the early stages of a project, and this question got me thinking about why.

When I walked into my first Field session more than 2 years ago, I literally had no idea what I was going to do next or what I planned to work on. I had just ended an intense (and inspiring) year-long acting program and all I knew is that I wanted to keep my creative momentum going. For the first few sessions, I brought scraps of past plays and essays. And then one night, right before that week’s meeting, I had this dream that haunted me all day.  I considered scribbling the whole thing down on a napkin and bringing that to present, even though I’d already dug up another bit of something to read that night, but I didn’t. Still, the idea stayed with me. Over the next week, I wrote three pages of text, and by the end of the 8-week session I had a rough–very rough–draft of my first solo show.

• It can feel like an act of bravery to show work to other people that doesn’t feel “ready”–and it is! But the benefits of taking that leap are enormous.

• It gives me a weekly deadline to create something–anything–to show. Because participants comment on your work at face value, there is no need to make excuses if it’s not perfect yet, which is great for the state of vulnerability that I live in at the beginning of a project.

• It allows me to see if my embryonic ideas are on track. Because reflective feedback tells us what others see in our work, it makes a great reality check at a time when my thoughts and ideas are most fluid.

• It gives me a way to consider new ideas that haven’t yet occured to me. I often find that I’m not really telling the story that I first set out to tell, and hearing another version of that story can help me make connections and clarify thoughts that are lurking below the surface, deepening my original intent. Usually I find that I’m a lot smarter than I think I am!

• And most importantly for me–it takes the isolation out of the creative process. Sharing my work right away–in whatever sketchy elemental form–gives it a life and energy that it doesn’t have when it’s all me and the laptop. All art eventually needs an audience and introducing the other into the creative process early on can be invigorating.

If you’re just starting a project or stumped about what to do next, consider registering for The Field’s November Mixed Discipline Session facilitated by Mimi AKA Allin. 

The Field-Seattle is offering three sessions this fall.

To register contact thefieldseattle@gmail.com

Mixed Disciplines Session 1:
Mondays Oct. 3-31, 7:00-9:30pm


Facilitated by Rebecca Goldberg

For all artists, of all disciplines, at all levels of experience, working on projects at all levels of development.

Cost: $50 for new participants ($45 for Field Members)

Mixed Disciplines Session 2: 
Mondays Nov. 7-Dec. 5, 7:00-9:30pm


Facilitated by Mimi AKA Allin

Same as session 1, or combine both for a 10-week session.

Cost: $50 for new participants ($45 for Field Members)

Longer Works Session: 
Sundays, Oct. 2-Dec. 11, 11:30 am-2:00pm

Facilitated by Karl Thunemann

Focusing on one project throughout the 10-week session.

Field experience is desirable, but not required.

Cost: $100 for new participants ($90 for Field Members)

View from the Williamsburg Bridge

There I met artists from New York, Miami, Salt Lake City, Houston, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington DC, Atlanta, and Chicago, all of whom are administrators or facilitators of The Field in their cities. I participated in Field sessions, showing the piece that I’ve been developing in the Field sessions here and receiving reflective feedback from a whole new group of people with a wide range of perspectives. And I saw their work too, and heard about programs in their cities, and challenges that they have faced as passionate volunteers for The Field, just like me. I returned to Seattle inspired and rejuvenated as an artist and as a member of this organization. Here is just a few of the things that I’ve been mulling over since the conference:

Seattle does things our own way. What we call reflective feedback, most other cities call “Fieldwork.” I was asked to describe the difference between them and I’m not entirely sure that they believed me when I said that they are the exact same thing. Many cities offer a fully produced, public performance, either annually or at the end of each session. In Seattle, we tend to keep it loose, inviting friends and bringing food depending on the interest of session participants. I found a lot of the Field leaders in other cities were really concerned with the artistic growth of their members over the course of their sessions, while I tend to think of our role as offering a process and leaving the artist to find their own growth within it (the same way that they receive and incorporate feedback in our sessions).

So does everyone else. In New York, they offered Fieldwork Plus, a session where the artists can, if they choose, step out of the guidelines of reflective feedback (ahem…fieldwork) to ask specific questions or frame a context for their work. In Salt Lake City, Field members get together once in awhile for breakfast just to connect as a community. In Miami, a city with a vibrant and well supported visual arts scene, they offer their sessions to performing artists only so they can give a little more to artists that are less supported in their community.

We are not alone. One of the strengths of the conference for me was that the organizers focused on our growth and development, not only as Field leaders, but as working artists who, like all artists, are struggling for resources and ideas to make our work happen. We spent time talking about different modes of feedback, strategic planning for our organizations, writing artists statements, and bartering goods and ideas as a way to function without a lot of cash. I learned that my challenges as an artist and our challenges as an organization are not mine—not ours—alone and we have not even begun to scratch the surface of what we can offer each other.

Plus, I won’t be complaining about Seattle summers for a good long while.