A LIL' UPDATE FOR THE NEW YEAR

And so we limp, crawl, or bolt across the finish line of another decade. Hello, "tens" or "teens" or whatever we're going to call you!*

My work this year is clearing out my work. There will be less and less of it, if all goes well. I'm in a contemplative phase. An experimental phase. I'm gestating. Trying to give things enough room and enough time to gestate properly. I may report on those flailings and waitings and failings right here on magdalen.com. I don't think I have to decide that right now.

Existing projects are looking like this:

- I have a new project operating under code name Froglet. This thing is off the hook! I've never done anything even remotely like it before. I'm working in entirely new media, using entirely new processes. Froglet is not destined for festival, gallery, screen, or performance space. Froglet will simply be Froglet, if all goes well.

- Music is back. I'm writing it. Eric Hausmann and I are playing it. We're still working on a 6,480 hour-long soundtrack for the Easter Island Project, which is a patently insane thing to attempt, which cracks us up.

- The Easter Island Project is undergoing a radical transformation. I don't know what it's going to be like. I just look at the cocoon every morning, wondering.

- PLAZM magazine has a lot of interesting things up our collective sleeves. Stay tuned. In the meantime, read our blog.

- New Oregon Arts & Letters continues the New Oregon Interview Series. I'm the editor and an occasional writer, with Nora Robertson as host, primary writer, and producer. Come to our final two shows in Portland, January and February! Details at neworegon.org.

- Manifest Destiny is this project-thingy I've been doing for a couple years now. (Image above: detail from Nye Beach series, 2007.) It seems to go on and on. Lately I've been thinking about putting some of the documentation here on the interwebs.

- Salt: I'm still obsessed with salt, and I'm still experimenting with it. The piece I planned to show at the Cooley in September 2010 will be pushed back to coincide with the new dates for Reed College's centennial celebration. I've got 'til September 2011 to finish it now! Woo!

- My writing is currently focused on two genres: "Figure Out My Life" writing (a.k.a. a journal) and "Make Money" writing (a.k.a. whatever you've got that needs to be written, edited, or shaped). "Eat, Pray, Kill" is back burnered, pleasantly and intentionally, for the time being.

- I may do a series of short residencies in Seattle, including workshops. Events will be by invitation only. Send email to Vanessa DeWolf, director of Studio Current, at plastiqarts _at_ gmail if you'd like to participate or be notified.

- Something will be happening on the web. Documentation. Stories. Things that float. I don't know yet. It won't be Twitter. I'd rather hand-make it and drop it off on your doorstep. But anyway. Something interesting may happen here soon. No guarantees.

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*I sooo don't want to have the conversation about whether the new decade actually starts in 2011, 'kay?