Thought Residencies

Hi, it's me, Adrienne Wong, Spiderwebshow Thought Resident, December 2017 with my second thought.

It's 8:30pm and I'm finally sitting still. After a long day. And it makes me wonder: do you take a break every day?

I don't.

And... that makes me wonder: do I even know how to relax anymore? Do I even know what I like to do to relax? Everything I can think of... that I like to do... has to do with work: cooking, reading, watching certain shows, reading certain books.

So I guess I'd have to say that the thing I like to do to relax... is nothing. That's not so bad.

Hello this is Adrienne Wong. I am the SpiderWebShow thought resident for December 2017.

I'm in my car right now. I've just picked up a wood rasp from my friend. I'm borrowing it so that my father-in-common-law (who's visiting right now) can help us with our drawers in the kitchen. Make them less sticky.

I've traded two cans of Coke Zero and two slices of black forest cape–cake, although I don't expect to get those things back.

It makes me think how the barter economy is pretty swell. Uhh. Especially for things that you don't need for very long. Things you might need for a theatre show, for example. So I wonder how that barter economy can work in our favour as theatre makers.

In kind donations are one thing but is there some kind of Bunz Trading Zone for theatre? That's it for now. I'll have another thought tomorrow. I hope.

Hi this is Michael Wheeler and this is my final thought.

I think for the arts to really thrive in Canada we need to radically reshape the way that Arts Councils work. Operating funding works on a system where the older the company is, the more money they have. If you started a company in the 70s you have good money, 80s still pretty good, 90s getting rough, and by the time you get to the 00s you're not even talking about real money any more. This has a real effective on what is the professional work that is made in the country. It's the work that's made by those companies that have the real money from the 70s and 80s and quite often those companies have the oldest ideas. So we're funding professionally the oldest ideas and I think that's bad for art and that's bad for innovation.

I've been reading a lot about how automation is going to change the nature of work - that it won't just be factories, but it will be lawyers and accountants, and even doctors. So much of what humans do as work currently will be automated through robots and algorithms. And then the question is what do we do with our time? Now that our bodies are not required to generate capital. And, uh , i don't know: Make plays, start the revolution?

Is there anything more anachronistic than the Royal family? Who cares about this wedding? Why do we care? Why do we allow this family to be on our money, to avoid paying taxes, to have to sign our laws? What have they done? They've accumulated wealth. They do not adhere to any democratic principles and yet we place them at the top of our society.

Let's evolve as a people. Let's take agency into our own hands. Let's abolish the monarchy and have a Republic in our lifetime. It's time.

If the reason a society should support artwork is that it is an economic driver that contributes to a creative economy, if we were to determine that art did not drive the economy, should we then not have art?

Hear that sound? Hear that sound? That's the Fisher Price, I don't know, "bounce and play" I'm gonna call it. Anyhow, this thought is about being a parent and how before I was one I was sure that it would be hard because how would I get any work done with all the diapers and the no sleeping and carrying and bouncing and uhh it is really hard to get work done but not for those reasons. Mostly because Noa, my daughter, is so darn cute that I can't imagine why I would do any work when she's around. So that's why I have to leave the house actually.

One of the things that's different about hiring Canadian than American is we celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. Much earlier. Mid-October. This means there's no breaks between Mid-October and Christmas. We go straight. No holidays. No nothin. Just workin. Hard. Dark. Days. Gettin it. Done.

I first joined Twitter in December of 2011. Since they I have made, apparently 19.2 thousand tweets. And all those little messages that I have sent out into the universe have reshaped how I use language. In particular, how I can be brief in making my point. Now that Twitter has doubled the character limit to 280, I imagine this will shape again the way that I use language to express myself, aaand I hope I don't become more long-winded.

A recurring concept in the arts is: Entrepreneurship. How can artists be Entrepreneurs? And one one hand i think that's a really amazing idea, and in particular that artists can control their own destiny by being entrepreneurs that make their own work. And on the other hand, the idea that art should be profit-driven is antithetical to what makes it valuable.