{"id":1613,"date":"2026-03-24T03:09:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T03:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/?p=1613"},"modified":"2026-03-24T03:10:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T03:10:26","slug":"after-my-writing-residency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/after-my-writing-residency\/","title":{"rendered":"After my writing residency &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1616 size-medium alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/cottage_garden_reduced-225x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/>My four weeks at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.robertlordwriterscottage.nz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Lord Cottage<\/a> flew by; the first week recovering from a heavy cold, the second week getting settled in and seeing friends, the third week preparing for the System Change event, and final week preparing for and giving a lecture at the university. In amongst all of that, I did do a bit of writing &#8211; but not on the project that I&#8217;d originally proposed (a book about my cyberformance work). Instead, I&#8217;ve been working on the texts for the Magdalena Project installation at <a href=\"https:\/\/laflis.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LAFLIS<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This project will be one of my mirror installations, this time a permanent installation as part of a wonderful theatrical archive documenting the work of Eugenio Barba, Julia Varley, Odin Teatret and the Third Theatre movement, of which the Magdalena Project is part. I&#8217;m gathering responses from women of the global Magdalena network to four questions, as both text and recorded voice. While at the cottage, I&#8217;ve been compiling their responses and starting to create an order. Then I will begin to animate the texts and create a soundscape from the voices. The responses are as diverse as the network &#8211; poetic to concrete, some a single word and others a short anecdote. I&#8217;m excited about how the installation will evolve.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1615 size-medium alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/grant_kirsty_helen_reduced-234x300.jpg\" alt=\"Grant Robertson, Kirsty Graham and Helen Varley Jamieson\" width=\"234\" height=\"300\" \/> Spending this time in Dunedin has reminded me again of what a vibrant, liveable small city it is, and the weather at the moment is superb. True, the weather can also be miserable and the public transport is unreliable; but there are so many great initiatives, creative people, excellent restaurants and beautiful gardens that make up for it. A number of old friends who like me left Dunedin long ago are now back, or planning to return, and I still have many good friends here. I even managed a catch up with the two OUSA presidents who came after me &#8211; Kirsty Graham and Grant Robertson.<\/p>\n<p>Dunedin is where I was born and grew up, and now I feel the land calling me home. Yet, next week I&#8217;ll set off back to the other side of the world, with projects already starting to call to me &#8230; and the world in such a dizzying state of change, it feels very difficult to make any kinds of plans or promises. The Munich I&#8217;m returning to has just elected a new gay green mayor, ousting the conservatives for the first time in many decades; and just this morning the war in Iran seems to have been pulled back from the brink &#8230; all that death and destruction for what? And nobody is holding their breath that it won&#8217;t change again in the next moment.<\/p>\n<p>The only response is to keep going; keep working, creating, writing, living. Keep taking care of each other.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My four weeks at the Robert Lord Cottage have flown by, and it&#8217;s almost time for me to head back to the other side of the world &#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1617,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions\/1617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}