Sabbatical Reflection
On the ground of the performances I make I seek stillness, I witness and slow and stabilize the urgency in the unstable. This is why the farmer’s son dances.
‘ How do you inhabit your training? How do you unrest and unsettle your practice?’
In this moment of sabbatical reflection I was thinking a lot about fellowfeeling; 16th Century speech for kindness and compassion. Fellowfeeling, a word I truly try to embody as a human being, an artist and teacher. In these 29 months of the global pandemic, I have seen my anxiety and mental health be on fire, yet I have tried, and also failed to keep focused on the creative, on my teaching and my empathy towards care, kindness, positive engagement and to make sure the people I encounter are seen. Seen in hope. Seen to give space and connect with each other.
I was fortunate enough to be on my first sabbatical pre-pandemic. Please see Facebook posts I wrote from Saturday September 30th, 2017 5.23pm – Wednesday January 22nd, 2020, 9.45pm that reflect my journey. Art and life for me are not separate and as an artist and person I always say there is nothing that you don’t know about me. Sabbatical was a true turning point for me. A journey of self and others. A Journey to learn to be alone and to attempt to trust myself and my voice. To connect. To create. To be alone.
Saturday September 30th, 2017 5.23pm
Sabbatical letter completed (thxs to extension) Fingers crossed for my first ever sabbatical for entire calendar year of 2019! After 19 years, 39 consecutive semesters, 20 summer schools, 1,618 students One of my proposed points of departure…’What are a series of flickering dances that pay homage to the dead? To look at the imprints of hoof, cow tongue licked and the nudge of a cow that tried to help get my father up onto his feet when he fell on the concrete.’ ‘What is a dance of a non human helping a human? What is a dance of a cow, saying goodbye to the herdsman that had milked and looked after her for years?’ ‘I am currently not sure if this will be a solo performance project, a film, a piece of writing, a series of photos or feed into the current development of Atom-r work.
Friday October 27th, 2017, 4.30pm
Sabbatical granted for ENTIRE YEAR, 365 days of 2019!! maybe my hair will start growing back. from my letter:
‘I am not afraid of work and when you are the son of a working class herdsman, you take nothing for granted, work is all you have and work provides a way to be connected and creative in the community I am incredibly fortunate and lucky to be part…I cannot imagine being away from the institution that I have grown up with since 1999, a 26 year old, to today 44.’ (and will be 46 in 2019 lol.)
Monday December 17th, 2018, 6.09pm
I’ve been teaching since I was 22 and a half. I’m now 45 and a half. I’ve been at SAIC now for 19 and a half years, 39 semesters, 1750 students, 20 summer schools, career advisor and academic advisor and admissions reviewer and graduate coordinator in performance I’m on SABBATICAL as of 9 minutes ago!!!!!!!! Just finished!!!! Thank you current and former students. I will return spring semester 2020 xoxo
a full year away!
Tuesday February 28th, 2019, 2.38pm
Tomorrow (28th) will be the anniversary of dad’s fall from the milking parlour roof in 2002. Last night at the artist talk we learnt from an audience member that due to fences in disrepair and climate change erosion of coastal cliffs cows often fall off the cliffs and onto the beaches below. Falling onto their backs, their legs upright. The cows unknowingly fall from a great height. The cows falling, the cow and farmer an accident as they fall, slipping, tipping, an edge, caught in sand, cliff face. When dad came out of his coma he told us how he thought the cows were nudging him with their wet noses to help to get him up off the concrete parlour floor. Before bed last night I thought of him on those New Zealand beaches, he and I like cows, in Rhinestone, moving our heads, our bodies around the cows who have fallen on the beaches, nuzzling to try and get them up. Pushing our bodies along the backs of the cows to lift them back up onto their hooves, their feet. To help them on their way. Brushing of human and animal. To carry the weight of the fall onto our backs. Sam told us last night that the high tide is significant as it brings materials to the coast line each day. As the anniversary approaches so does the tide of animal, cow and farmer. Xo
Wednesday May 29th, 2019, 10.32pm
I have to admit I’ve been struggling. Not feeling great and been feeling lonely and Britney loneliness. Have been asleep most days on the sofa in the morning/ afternoon before the gym. I need to get back on the saddle. Why am I saying this? Working through mental shit tap. Kick up the backside to get back to work and to the creative, to work, to being vulnerable and not wasting precious time and getting myself out the house. It’s time. As I look back, anxiety and work and adrenaline have pushed me through. Time to stop watching msnbc. Xo time for cows, and focusing once more. It’s time to stop being lazy (sorry for honest post.)
Monday August 26th, 2019 11.15pm
Get ready for emotional post. Sabbatical. There’s no book to tell you how to do this. Year 21 at SAIC begins. After this Wisconsin trip, with no internet I just spent the last 6 hours responding to emails to get caught up and still not caught up as I’m realising I’m working on 16 invites and opportunities this coming fall and winter. In the car coming home today with Kelly Kaczynski and her beautiful daughter Fin I was telling her about the FALLOW field in farming where you let a field rest, to allow the field in the next Cycle to be fallow, baron, to allow new seeds and energy to come. After intime, goat show, Asia, Australia and New Zealand I thought I had nothing to show and was being lazy and sad and not doing what I needed to do being on sabbatical and that this is a very privileged time and experience. I’m crying tonight as I think like us all think I’m an imposter, i don’t deserve this and also can’t believe that I’m able to have all of these wonderful opportunities to come and time and space and fallowness and also to return here at 46 to perhaps the most vulnerable space I have been in since I was three years old, to return to the rhinestone cowboy, to seek images of risk for me I wouldn’t do, and to share with you all in loneliness and to be both overwhelmed and excited to these projects and exhibitions to come and seeking always new communities and spaces to make the work through the unknown. The fallow seeks new energy. The fallow seeks new opportunities and risks I have yet to discover. Loneliness allows for the fallow to move in ways of tears, of tinsel, darkness, sadness and joy. Marking and gestures of anxiety and forever grateful. Offers coming over the phone, today Dallas and to be in a show with Zackary Drucker and SUNGJAE Lee and finally I hope to see the real south fork and sue Ellen. I apologise for my emotional journals on here. But I’m so grateful for this life and to know you all and in crying to be okay. And to keep hustling. This is a remarkable life and a fallow year of opportunities xo
Wednesday September 4th, 2019, 10.27pm
I deleted this and realise I shouldn’t have. Love you all. Pushing vulnerability. ‘Crying. What is this life. 23 years on. So grateful. Emotional fool xo’
Wednesday December 18th, 2019, 2.22pm
Today marks a year since I started my sabbatical. Tonight is my last night in the UK for a while. Sabbatical has been a privilege, one that I don’t take for granted and after 23 years of teaching I finally figured out I could do things for myself (a hard, hard untangling.) I’m a caretaker. It’s been hard and still hard to try and listen to my own needs and self care. I’m an emotional fool but have learnt so much this year and also stumbled, fell in vulnerability, deep sadness and somehow walked through the fire to try and be a better listener, maker and to keep making. I’m grateful that everyday I have a Hixsonism in my head telling me to make your work. Without art I wouldn’t be here and without being an emotional fool I wouldn’t be able to make the images I make. There is one more residency to come in January, before I return to dear and thank god I teach in an ART SCHOOL. SAIC xxxx
Wednesday January 22nd, 2020, 9.45pm
Time to go back. A year’s sabbatical is coming to a close. Year 21 at my dear art school home can begin. This has been a privilege and one I hope you will all have seen I have not taken lightly. My mentor Lin Hixson always tells me to do your work and in this year I have learnt so much. To make the work and to be real and vulnerable and to be present. It’s been hard but in all the travels from New Zealand, Australia, China, Taiwan, Korea, poor farm, Bates college, oxbow, New York, New Orleans, Dartington, Hanging Hill Farm, Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, York, Doveridge, Brighton, London, Chicago, Iowa street and @ohklahomo the most important thing is to be yourself and make the work that needs to be made and to learn that it’s okay to try, to be with cows, to make work in new and old communities, to host dinners with artists, to hold spaces for others to belong, to give space to others to make their work, to host people in my home when I’m not here, to give back and to think of students and to thank them in the work that I made during this time of being away. To past students thank you. It’s time to go home, to the art farm that I’m forever grateful for and for the new students and alumni they will become to give to them. Thank you for this time and thank you for following me on This journey I never anticipated ever having in my life this year. Forever grateful to you all for so many opportunities I have been given and hope to have and continue to give back as I go home this spring semester. Thank you SAIC and always be feral, always make your work and Always be strange and weird and queer and in the words of @dollyparton I will always love you. It’s time. See y’all soon and let the magic begin once more. Just hope I remember how to teach and give back xoxo
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2022 is my 28th year of performance making. In the last 28 years I have learned that invitation, interruption and opportunity keep me creatively evolving. 28 years of performing, collaborating, rehearsing, touring, exhibiting, curating, organizing and always questioning what it means for my body and the bodies I work with to formally capture and craft highly disciplined, focused and visually striking images that are still, slow, deliberate and always in active motion. I am a farmer’s, a herdsman son. Becoming older, I have learnt how embodied and connected I am to the farm, to the fields I was raised on. A farm started by monks over a 1000 years ago. I have rotated multiple fertile fields of creative work that include performances, exhibitions, film screenings, teaching, curatorial projects, published books and articles in journals.
I am a son of a herdsman, who was born in the house that was attached to my dad’s job. The house was ‘tied’ to the job, as long as he milked the 100 plus cows twice a day, 7 days a week, waking up at 5am and coming home at 7pm, we would have a house called home. At the age of 3, in 1976 my birth mother left the family, she was having an affair with another farmer who lived a mile away from the house. Alone, dad cared for my three sisters and I. When he was at work, we were looked after by dad’s sister, my gran and our next door neighbour. Dad gained full custody of us all in court and remarried my step mother when I was 6, in 1979. I still to this day can’t imagine how he did this, cared and looked after us all. Herdsman, father, mother, and carer. On February 28th 2002, Dad fell from the roof of the dairy parlour onto the concrete floor. It was remarkable that he survived such an horrific accident and was in a coma for many months and hospitalised for a year until he came home, cared for 24 hours a day. Lucid, unable to walk, having to be hand fed, wearing nappies/diapers. This man, this gentle force is with me everyday and I truly believe why I am the person that I attempt to be. In the face of trauma he always gave a laugh and a smile, from his children being abandoned to his accident. Steady, stoic and a working class hard worker who gave so much to his family and community. I am forever grateful for his presence.
In forwarding, my teaching is always to give space, opportunity and care. To listen, watch, respond, look carefully and look again. I am truly grateful for all the opportunities I have been given at SAIC, from the age of 26, to now almost 49. I am proud to teach in the only Performance Department in an Art school in the United States. What a privilege to teach and be in an Art School and create community and learn new ways and new approaches from the students we work with.
Finally, I kept thinking about a 14th century word, ‘Respair’, an almost abandoned word that means fresh hope in recovery from despair, anguish and hopelessness.
START: Monday December 17th, 2018 6pm
2018:
Chicago
2019:
Wellington
Auckland
Melbourne
Beijing
Shanghai
Shenzhen
Hong Kong
Taipei
Seoul
Chicago
New York City
New Orleans
Chicago
Manawa
Chicago
Oxbow
Bates College
Chicago
Dallas
Chicago
Dartington
Derby
Lincoln
York
Hanging Hill Farm
Nottingham
Doveridge
Brighton
London
Chicago
2020:
New Orleans
Montpelier
Chicago
STOP: Wednesday January 22nd, 2020, 9.45pm
-Mark Jeffery, Full Professor, Performance
