VE @Glug in Shoreditch

30 October 2010

Anna and I did a little talk at Glug on Thursday. Around the broad theme of storytelling. Our first proper public live talk and we were a bit nervous. Which is really quite funny when our other day jobs and last 15 years of work have been and still are full of presenting, giving talks and standing up in public. Maybe it was because we were talking alongside some great guys, like Jamie Weick (of Airside), Sean Griffiths (of FAT) and Richard Hogg (who’s also in a band called Satans Cock).

Maybe it was simply that this is so much more than a job, it’s something that we’ve been living with, dreaming about and working so intensely on for close to 2 years. So going out and realising that “no one really knows what the hell we’re up to or about” and Oh my God will it even make sense” brought out a few nerves.

Our talk went into what visual writing is all about, we showed our “bad news” film from our Belgian printer, shared our finished Tristram Shandy and how that all came about, introduced some of the beautiful final images from Tree Of Codes and some snapshots of the brilliantly crazy reactions that book has yielded so far.

We think, afterall, it did make sense, we got some lovely inspired feedback afterwards (from strangers, not just friends being kind, honestly). There’s definitely room for improvement in setting up what VE is all about when we talk about it to a bunch of 400 strangers, let’s be frank about that, but once the books were on screen we think our babble came to some kind of fruition.

What was really really nice was being out there with other people talking about what they do, and getting inspired by their talks too. Jamie showed some gorgeous work from Airside, Sean from FAT made us laugh and think about the validity of copying, Mark Fisher made us realise that we know very little about capital political storytelling from a philosophical point of view, and Richard Hogg brought the house down with his observations and love of being contrary.

First one done and dusted, here’s till next time.

Britt

  • Share