Following our first meeting in Summerhall and the proposal of ‘Gurrl Dinner’, myself, Harry Mayston, Emily Geary and Kate Garramone held two further meetings to discuss the project.
Meeting Two
This was the first meeting attended in person by Emily, and so as a group we did a run down of our previous week’s discussion, going through the concept, the associated theories and inspiration, and how so far we have been constructing the evening. From this we could then get Emily’s external thoughts, coming at the project from fresh eyes as described in Week 4 by curator James Clegg. Sometimes you become too close a project and just need a fresh set of ideas and eyes. The biggest takeaway Emily said was so far we have described the event as having a table that is not functional, with it being more of an installation piece that attendees would gather around. We weren’t even certain as to whether or not we should have chairs, due to the budget and how starkly different the chairs provided by Summerhall were to our collective vision. We had understood the table to be observational. Instead, Emily reframed this as the table in itself could be a performative tool. If we had (non-alcoholic) drinks on it ready for when guests arrive, and 15 table settings ready with the chairs around, this would create an immediate dinner party atmosphere. By including an interactive element, people are more likely to be engaged. We took this as the main thought to consider before the next meeting.
Meeting Three
This meeting was our most practical and productive discussion, with a strong emphasis on us making an active plan to follow in the week leading up to the event, with responsibilities divided and a clear vision for ‘Gurrl Dinner’ devised. As this was so important, throughout this meeting Harry Mayston took notes so that we all were clear on the plan. Here is a copy of our notes, with several ideas from week one and two being revised into this week 3 plan:
As you can see, our vision is getting clearer and closer to what we imagine the event to actually look like. We have managed to condense our ideas regarding the physical room layout and the visuals of the event, with Katie taking a dominant role here. Myself and Harry will be organising the invitations to send out, using old written letters as inspiration, and thinking about the way ink physically looks on the page. We also managed to refine our ‘menu’, focusing the main after San Zhang’s performance on being a collective drawing task in which people use one material to respond to the starter. This way the task becomes reflective and constructive, acting as a balance between the starter and the main. This will be finished by our intellectual fruit salad, which currently includes the poem The Orange by Wendy Cope (1980), and the extract of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) which discusses a fig tree.
Our next steps will be to produce and send out the invitations for the event, and to all begin working on our respective responsibilities. We have booked Summerhall from 2-9pm on the day of the event so we are planning to get into the space early to dress the room, write the tags, and test a couple of different set ups before guests arrive.
