I failed to tell the story. I had a revelation while field recording.

I did a field recording today at the graffiti dumpster. On my way to the spot I was listening to Adam Grant’s Work Life podcast and he was talking to film maker Ava DuVernay. The conversation was really interesting. One of the parts of the their chat which stuck with me was when DuVernay said and I’m paraphrasing here,  sometimes good ideas from people don’t get implemented because the person is not good at talking or explaining the idea or telling the story. When I heard this I realized I had failed to do this with the graffiti dumpster project. And the stupid part about my failure with this project is this: I know how to explain a conceptual art project and I know how to tell a story. I know how to weave everything together. I am a successful artist who shows my work regularly and has received numerous grants and fellowships in support of my work. And somehow I failed to think about this project as such. I’m not sure why I treated the graffiti dumpster different than any other art I make. 

I’m going have to fix narrative on the web page and tell the story in the way I should have done at the start. 

More about this in my next few posts.