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.
Notes on joining in with Making Time by Kate Liston
We invited artist and academic Kate Liston to respond creatively to the Making Time sessions and workshops, and she wrote this lovely meditation on how time can be divided, made and otherwise coped with: monastic time, swampy time, bedtime, un-synchronized together time. You can read her piece below:
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
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.