Media

big hours small hours

We’ve made an audio piece that is responding to the different neurodivergent practices we’ve encountered through the workshops and regular Making Time sessions, and ideas about sharing stretchy time and doing things together apart, and neurotransgression (Daniel Oliver, 2024) and sitcoms, and radio plays, and zoom bombing, and minions, and figure skating, and different kinds of silences, and piss and jelly and leather. We made it over four days in collaboration with our good friend Nicol Parkinson. Being together in the same space is important, being together on zoom is important!! This/we have been inspired by Daniel Oliver, Aby Watson, Abby Nocon, Ashokkumar Mistry, Evan Ifekoya, Kasra Jalilipour, Alina Lupu, Liza Prins, Sofia Barton, Kate Liston, Lady Kitt, Chantal Herbert and everyone who comes to Making Time ❤️

Listen here:

Audio description for big hours small hours:

The audio artwork starts with a short section of a song composed by Nicol Parkinson made from samples of Grace and Jo coworking together over zoom – words and noises are taken from their context and pieced together into a rhythm. Small sections of this are used throughout to signal a change of topic and/or style.

Nicol asks Grace and Jo to describe what Making Time is and they answer in a conversational style, explaining that it’s a regular session for neurodivergent people, every Monday morning on zoom. Grace and Jo attempts to recreate the feeling of a zoom bomber encroaching on one of the Making Time workshops, recordings of Grace and Jo describing the experience are overlaid in an overwhelming way, but where snippets are still clearly audible. As this ends we move back to Jo describing the light touch facilitation style at Making Time.

Next we hear Grace and Jo overlaid, giving each other a task to describe a video aloud. Grace assigns Jo Do What U Like (1991) by Take That, Jo assigns Grace a video of Tomas Lorenc Guarino Sabate figure skating while dressed as a minion.

Moving back to the conversation, Grace and Jo discuss how they might introduce the workshops that they hosted with 9 artists over the last year, anddescribe Daniel Oliver’s Rash Analogy, which was the basis for one of the workshops.

A long central section has Grace, Jo and Nicol performing together over zoom. They read and sing aloud words from a piece of writing by Daniel Oliver. At the same time (in the sound piece, not in reality) Grace and Jo improvise with contact mic’d objects and instruments, to a light-touch score developed by Nicol to accompany the performance.

Grace and Jo describe how much they notice that they miss Making Time when it’s a bank holiday, and the importance of taking bank holidays as a freelance worker, and how Making Time gives us the feeling of having colleagues when we might not be able to access feelings of fellowship in other ways as disabled freelancers

In the next section Grace leads the pair of them in an exercise of waking sleep (a bit like meditation but purposefully letting your mind wander, which is supposed to refresh the ADHD mind), and over the top, a recording of Grace encouraging Jo to read a piece of freewriting they did inspired by Kate Liston’s response piece to Making Time.

Back in the conversation, Grace and Jo describe the impact of Making Time on their lives, and how important it has become to form this community/have company to approach hard things.

Nicol then asks Grace ‘why minions?’ And Jo ‘why figure skating?’ and their answers are overlaid on top of one another.

Jo talks about how Making Time helps them feel like there is an end point to a big project or a difficult task, and Making Time can be a container for this which, as Grace says, closes the loop. The song from the beginning of the artwork now plays in full.

Kate Liston’s text

Coming soon!!!

All Facing in the Same Direction (2023)

You can also watch a film Grace made in 2023 with some of our Making Time members:

All Facing in the Same Direction (2023)
39 minutes 50 seconds
1920×1080, AAC H.264

A film by Grace Denton
Producer: Frances Stacey
Video contributors: Victoria Louise Doyle, Sal Harris, J Neve Harrington, Evan Ifekoya and Andre-Alex Kamienski
Additional video: Lucy Barker, Jennifer Doveton, Nick Fitzgerald, Tara Johnston-Comerford, Johanna Koen, Ant Lightfoot, Catrin Osborne, Emma Plover, Maisie Pritchard, Millie Sheppard and Geraldine Snell
Second Camera: Saya Naruse
Edit Consultant: Christian Wright
Audio Consultant: Craig Pollard
Subtitle font: Inconstant Regular by Daniel Brokstad