I’ve just spent two days in Hobart doing some planning around an event that we’re going to run next year, based on rekindling imagination.

I spent hours at Mona, which was better than ever… The Wim Delvoye exhibition is startling and marvellous [his website is great - click on the link]. He’s most famous for his living art – the tattooed pigs, tattooed Tim, which were quirky and fun. I thought his more startling stuff was the religious iconography – the stretched, twisted and distorted cathedral tower, the twisted helix crucifixes, the stained glass windows.

The Anselm Kiefer Sternenfall is also new since I was last there. It’s a lead and glass construction of a bookcase and books, which is in a state of destruction [google it - there are images a-plenty. Mona are clear on their 'take photos but don't put them in websites' policy, so i won't add any here]. It’s in a light-drenched room on the bottom floor, and at the very end of the gallery. It’s one of only two artworks in the gallery that interact with the outside environment – Tattooed Tim, Wim Delvoye’s living artwork, is the other. He sits in front of a window that overlooks the river.

I loved this section of the ‘art wank’ curator’s notes about Sternenfall, which includes a quote from Kiefer:

‘People mustn’t try to understand what I am saying through my works. People should try to see something in them. They must see with their own way of thinking, their own history… In a way, each viewer “finishes” the work with their own vision, their own stance in relation to it.’ You do not need to know what Kiefer knows, or to study what he has read; indeed, he says, ‘many know better than the artist what he has done’.

The imagination event will be held in October next year. It will involve some structured input and conversations, but much of the time will simply be a chance to use a different part of our brains and find connections and as-yet-unimagined spaces for newness. We’re still working on details, but they’ll be up here as soon as things are finalised.

I spent a lot of time wandering Hobart, looking at potential venues and accommodation sites – one of the things i love about Hobart is that it’s easier to walk and catch the ferry than to hire a car. Walking a city means there are always some lovely unexpected moments – like these… the installation of crocheted, polymer trees, hidden behind the wall in Salamanca:

the poetry on the wall just down from the trees:

which both contrasted rather dramatically with the sign on the church noticeboard just down the road:

I came away so grateful that even if the church is unable to grasp the opportunity, at least graffiti artists, hidden art spaces and entrepeneurial gallery owners are offering public moments of resonance, grace and transformation… and i can’t wait for october next year to see how more of us might begin to do that.

And then I’m taking two weeks off. See you on the flipside.

[image by mike]

I had no idea my body could hurt this much.

The space was beautiful on Saturday night – made more so by the people who came in and made it their own. We were over run by people – they were lining up out the front before it began, and we had to kick them out well after the closing time. I think we probably knew about a quarter of those who came – the rest were street walk-ins or people who came through the festival guide. Blythe’s pavement chalk was the best advertising ever.

[image by blythe]

We’ve always said that numbers don’t matter. I think the lovely thing for us was that people stayed. Some left after a couple of minutes, but overwhelmingly, people stayed for a long time – some even delayed their dinner reservations to stay longer! And they did stuff, they interacted with the spaces [seriously, on the whole, people outside the church participate far more willingly and vulnerably in spaces than people do in churches]. They made the space beautiful.

[image by mike]

But, oh my word, it was exhausting.

I think this is the space that has cost us the most, physically and emotionally. We argued more about this one [or, because we're introverts, we stewed more about this one, and frowned a lot], partly because the theme is so fraught. All of us in the team have strong, and very different, personal reactions to home – its security or fear, its presence or absence. Being able to articulate that in a way that didn’t deny another person’s story was really difficult. A number of the team work in areas where home has particular poignancy – trying to advocate for asylum seekers, or educate the community in homelessness, or help people live in their own homes with dignity – so it’s really hard to find ways to tell stories that don’t preach; that don’t assume everyone needs the same thing. Our best spaces are those that ask questions without demanding an answer; that allow nuance and untold stories. With this theme, it was all too easy to flip into universal truths about what everyone needs.

[image by mike]

If this is a place that’s safe,
if this is a time to start stripping back the layers
- to fill the cracks and clean the dirt,
not cover them up –
rip a piece of the wallpaper off
to take with you

Let the wall hold the cracks
and the dirt
until you can.

I think we found it at the last minute; letting the complexity show without needing to moralise, and trusting the spaces to do what they do.

Which they did.

There was no mention of God anywhere [apart from a silent, blaspheming prayer written on the wall of a transparent paper house]. No-one would have known it was in a church building if we didn’t tell them. And i suspect no-one went away thinking about God or faith, and most certainly not thinking about needing to go to church. But i think maybe people went away feeling more human. And more and more i think that’s the best gift we can hope to offer.

where you become well

where you learn to live,
and learn to love again.

Some say home is an unattainable dream
an expectation that costs too much
and carries too much pain

and that it’s in the leaving
you learn to live,
and learn to love again.

If you have a story of home or of leaving, we’d love to hear it.

Skype ‘theresnoplacelikeit’ or call +61 3 9015 9781 and leave us a message with your story of home or its absence. We’ll be using the stories – no names, of course – as part of our Melbourne Fringe Festival installation on October 8.

We’re exploring home, it’s presence and absence, our yearning and escaping… come along, it will be lovely.

We met yesterday in the basement to make and try some stuff. It was a hard and complicated day.

I think it raised, more than any other space, how much we bring our own stuff into a space – our own ‘rightness’ of where we are with our lives. How much we are able to say that our happiness and wellbeing will be everyone’s? How much we can know what is good and necessary for another person? How much are we willing to make our ‘now’ universal?

It was an uncomfortable conversation, mostly because we were talking about things that are at the core of our being, even more than faith. It’s been far easier for us to throw God into question than this stuff. That being said, it’s kind of nice to be at a point of working in a space together that is that hard to wrestle with, where we have to listen hard to what each other is saying, and what we aren’t yet able to say.

And today, as it does when you go through the hard thinking space, there’s an idea floating around that might make the space hold together, that might let all the permutations and possibilities hold together. And the lovely thing is that it’s already immediately obvious that each ‘truth’ is going to be richer and more complex and beautiful because it’s held alongside its contradiction

So, all that’s to say that we have a very low key space happening on July 9, in the basement. More information to come soon.

The 2011 Oxygen Tour

The tour, as normal, begins and ends in London. We start by attending Greenbelt Festival, then participants will choose between two alternative tours.

Tour Option 1 – Contextual expressions of church
[August 24 - September 5]
Led by Kathy Jacka
This group will explore possibilities for developing new forms of church. We’ll engage in conversations with communities involved in developing ‘Fresh Expressions’ of church in the UK; consider the underlying theology and principles of post-church or emerging church communities; explore connections between the church and social space; and talk together about how we can engage our learnings in our own contexts. We’ll also spend time simply being inspired. [The timing of this tour allows for people to connect with the Fresh Expressions training course in Cambridge]

Tour Option 2 – Curation and transformation
[August 24 - September 8]
Led by Cheryl Lawrie
This group will spend a week exploring how culture and spirituality can connect to create spaces and moments of transformation in public places. We’ll explore public spaces and exhibitions, with time set aside each day to reflect with theologians, artists and people who might provoke our thinking and imaginations. In turn, we’ll reflect on how we might create such spaces in our own contexts. At the end of the trip we’ll spend a couple of days debriefing in the south of France. This tour will be of particular interest to those who are exploring spirituality and faith outside the church context, and for those who are looking for inspiration and ideas on the way.

Download the pdf for more information and to register: UK 2011 expression of interest

The current plan is for both groups to travel together, but be part of different conversations in each location.

The cost is $2500 pp, which includes Greenbelt registration, camping, accommodation in internal travel [i.e. everything but airfares from Australia to London, and food].

I’ll have more information by the end of next week. Let me know if you’d like it.

It seems very likely that we are going to run the new forms of community trip alongside my curation / transformation trip, as we’ve done in the last few years. Registration forms will be available early in January.