전사 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:00.479 --> 00:00:04.000
I'm Alejandra Russi, and this is the Russi Hive.
00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.560
Conversations with people who treat their work and life as a creative practice.
00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:15.679
As we enter the late summer haze, I'm wrapping Season One with a trilogy of shorter solo episodes about the podcast itself.
00:00:15.679 --> 00:00:19.519
The spark, the launch, and the living creature finding its next form.
00:00:19.519 --> 00:00:32.320
Next up, the Thursday Machine, a teeny tiny dispatch on the anticlimax of launching, repetition and pattern as working method, and the alarm bell that rings when a working structure starts feeling a little too settled.
00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:35.920
This podcast is presented by Ricco/ Maresca.
00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:45.840
So what happens when something you've been working on tirelessly for months is finally released into the world?
00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:46.960
Nothing much.
00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:57.840
The strange and slightly disturbing thing about being trapped in your own head is that everything happening in there feels like a matter of cosmic significance.
00:00:57.840 --> 00:01:07.040
Meanwhile, everyone else is just living their life, treating whatever is happening in theirs as equally consequential.
00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:08.799
And that's actually part of the point.
00:01:08.799 --> 00:01:10.879
We all carry worlds inside of us.
00:01:10.879 --> 00:01:19.280
Or to borrow the language of my new meditation practice, we create the world from within a particular field of consciousness.
00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:21.599
That's basically the crux of my interviews.
00:01:21.599 --> 00:01:34.079
I want to get beyond the Q&A information exchange and become a witness to how someone else makes sense of their experience and then turns that understanding into a creative practice.
00:01:34.079 --> 00:01:38.079
But I feel like I've said variations of this ad nauseum.
00:01:38.079 --> 00:01:42.799
Like every time I get in front of a camera alone, so I will stop.
00:01:42.799 --> 00:01:52.640
What also happens when you launch a project that promises to publish something every two weeks is that you now have to publish something every two weeks.
00:01:52.640 --> 00:02:14.319
Every other Thursday arrives with absolutely no regard for whether I am inspired, exhausted, underprepared, overprepared, questioning every decision I've ever made, or suddenly convinced that podcasting itself may actually be a terrible cultural phenomenon.
00:02:14.319 --> 00:02:27.680
So while putting anything new out into the world usually requires a huge psychological leap, keeping it alive requires something much less dramatic and in many ways harder.
00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:28.960
Repetition.
00:02:28.960 --> 00:02:32.159
What does repetition do to a creative project?
00:02:32.159 --> 00:02:56.879
It gives it rhythm, it exposes its weaknesses, it creates new habits, it turns certain decisions into instinct, it makes the thing less precious, it occasionally makes you hate the thing, it creates systems, rituals, shortcuts, it makes you weirdly emotional about Thursdays, and somewhere along the way, it turns something you are trying to make into something you simply do.
00:02:56.879 --> 00:02:59.520
So let's unravel just the rhythm part.
00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:05.520
Because this is where my gallery job became unexpectedly useful as an operational system.
00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:12.479
As media director at Ricco/ Maresca, I think of exhibition promotion as a kind of downstream process.
00:03:12.479 --> 00:03:18.560
The opening reception is a fixed uh point on the calendar, the thing everything else is moving toward.
00:03:18.560 --> 00:03:25.199
But because it's fixed, you work backward from it to figure out everything that needs to happen first.
00:03:25.199 --> 00:03:31.199
So technically, I guess you start downstream and you work your way upstream.
00:03:31.199 --> 00:03:32.400
Now I'm confused.
00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:33.199
Just kidding.
00:03:33.199 --> 00:03:34.879
I am very seldom confused.
00:03:34.879 --> 00:03:37.520
With the podcast, it's uh slightly different.
00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:46.639
Once I have the raw footage in the bag, or to be more precise, a very large SSD drive, I put the episode into a production pipeline.
00:03:46.639 --> 00:03:50.400
The launch date is the equivalent of the exhibition opening.
00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:54.240
Then comes video editing, which is a pretty big job.
00:03:54.240 --> 00:04:00.879
I had some help in season one, but brave soul that I am, I am actually doing it myself in season two.
00:04:00.879 --> 00:04:04.960
There's this wonderful thing called a multicam clip.
00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:11.919
Camera one, camera two, camera three all synced together with the individual audio channels.
00:04:11.919 --> 00:04:18.959
Then you're just like cut, cut, cut angle A, angle B, angle C, you're like stitching reality back together.
00:04:18.959 --> 00:04:23.600
Or at least the very limited reality of one podcast episode.
00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:26.879
Let's skip the uploading process because that's boring.
00:04:26.879 --> 00:04:29.920
The episode publishes automatically at 8 a.m.
00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:41.439
Then I send an email blast to the gallery's mailing list with the copy and all the relevant links, which ideally I have prepared a couple of days in advance like a responsible adult.
00:04:41.439 --> 00:04:46.480
The day before I announce the episode on Instagram with what I call a Sharpie video.
00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:48.879
RIP, the Sharpie video, actually.
00:04:48.879 --> 00:04:53.600
Season two is getting a punchier announcement, so stay tuned.
00:04:53.600 --> 00:04:55.839
Then come the Instagram posts.
00:04:55.839 --> 00:04:58.720
And yes, I do know I promised TikTok.
00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:04.319
That's also a season two project because I need to enter the TikTok state of mind.
00:05:04.319 --> 00:05:07.920
And apparently that takes a little longer if you're a millennial.
00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:11.920
So let's get back to the Instagram grid for just a moment.
00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:14.240
Let me just go there for a second.
00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:20.480
Even just the visual cadence of this grid is deeply soothing to my brain.
00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:26.480
The way the colors move in these predictable patterns.
00:05:26.480 --> 00:05:31.199
Anyway, it helps if you get pleasure from that sort of thing.
00:05:31.199 --> 00:05:39.759
But how do you know when the rhythm that keeps a creative project alive starts to prevent it from changing?
00:05:39.759 --> 00:05:52.240
I think you know when you get a little too comfortable, when you start autopiloting your way through certain decisions, when the structure that once helped you move starts kind of hardening into a template.
00:05:52.240 --> 00:05:53.759
I don't think I'm there yet.
00:05:53.759 --> 00:06:04.480
But the question knocking at my door is, what do you deliberately disrupt before the formula starts dictating the project?
00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:07.519
That's where we will pick up next week.
00:06:07.519 --> 00:06:25.920
If this conversation resonated with you, follow the show wherever you listen and find me on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Substack @russihive. If someone came to mind for The Hive, send guest suggestions to guests at russihive.com.
00:06:25.920 --> 00:06:30.560
And if you just want to say hi, it's hello at russihive.com.
00:06:30.560 --> 00:06:34.560
Original music and sonic identity for the Russi Hive by Ant food.
00:06:35.120 --> 00:06:39.439
Until next time, let your life be a creative act.