Creative exploration and curiosity are afoot at the Center, thanks to the start of a new project spearheaded by current visiting artist Ain Gordon, dubbed the “White Box Residencies.” The name refers to the white square in our logo and signifies the Center as the place where all of our disciplinary programs meet in the middle and share common ground. Gordon, who has had a keen interest in discovering more about the Center itself since he arrived, will pick one artist at a time for creative investigations into the Center’s space. The residencies are experimental in nature, as each artist looks to the Center and its various activities for inspiration and direction.

The first White Box artist is Tania Isaac, a 2011 Pew Fellow in dance and choreography. For the past few weeks, Isaac has peppered the walls of the Center with blank pages for writing and sharing ideas, in an evolving project called “The Notebook.” Center staff took her cues to jot down thoughts in response to questions about artistic practice and Center life, and also recorded their daily travels around the Center with color-coded, initialed dots on strategically placed papers around the office. When Gordon came up with the idea for the White Box Residencies, Isaac was immediately drawn to the premise: “More than almost anything else I am curious and I love questions. I would broadly define the work I do as a choreographer, writer, and insatiably curious human, as investigation or observation or perhaps even morbid fascination with culture in its broadest and most intimate terms; from extended historical intersections between countries to the nuances of brief encounters between individuals."

The Center website will soon feature a White Box Residency page that records each of these artists’ stays and the projects that grow out of their interactions with Center staff and the space itself. In the meantime, take a sneak peek at photos of Isaac’s “Notebook,” and read her thoughts about navigating the project’s evolution, the surprises that arose during her time here, and how she feels “The Notebook” has been received.

The idea of an open-ended investigation, a process with no pre-determined outcome was fascinating. It was what drew me to art in the first place—the fact that there is no correct answer. It is still the hardest thing i have ever done. Every time I do this I start from scratch, reading, planning, writing, imagining, wondering if it will all really come together...until the moment that it coalesces, hopefully into exactly what I wanted, sometimes into something even better than I planned for.

The realm of the unknown is so familiar, even when the project is meticulously laid out, that it was a relief to really not know at all, and to have everyone involved know that it was unknown. There was a hovering anxiety about what [the project] could be, but I think it reinforced the idea of honing down the essentials of what drives me as an artist. I care. A lot. About what I imagine or could not possibly fathom that other people around me care about.

I could not quite imagine making a dance, so the process had to be led by my curiosity about the Center itself and the metaphor of the white box space. Where is center? Who is center? What do I do before I make a dance? Or before I write? The "open notebook" has become central to how I think and work, so this project became an extension of that thinking process. This is how I make anything. My version of the notebook had so far been my exploration of process and an invitation to others to be part of the process. This offered the opportunity to draw out others' thinking processes and—to some extent—participate in the notebook they created. I called it the interlocutor for a few reasons:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Interlocutor may refer to:

• Interlocutor (music), the master of ceremonies of a minstrel show
• Interlocutor (politics), someone who informally explains the views of a government and also can relay messages back to a government
• Interlocutor (law), an order of any Scottish Court.
• Interlocutor (linguistics), a participant in a discourse.

In the best of all possible worlds, this is the discourse I want to navigate.

I am interested in the creative process as a mode of critical thinking. I am interested in how individuals and organizations are perceived and perceive each other. I am interested in how language clarifies or obfuscates. I am interested in what happens when a person does not necessarily create art, but approaches work as an artistic practice. And like I said, I am interested in what it is that people care about. Deeply. And how and when and if they ever get to say it. This is an organization that straddles artistic, administrative, political, and corporate islands. How does that happen? What happens if the process of supporting art becomes its own artistic and creative entity? Not nominally, but truly so. So I asked. And then it took off in its own direction.  By the time I started, I knew that I wanted to have a notebook and as I took in the space, I wanted to know how "traffic flow" worked from one department/entity to the next. Culture. Pattern. Rules.

I mentioned to someone at the Center that while I probably could not say for a fact that it were true, I imagine or at least feel that I enter most situations with a very high expectation of nothing in particular. I know that I want something to happen, but I am quite content with letting the 'thing' grow itself naturally out of the culture being mined.

My surprise in being here: The continuous questioning. The wanting more. The formal informality. The fluidity of thought. The earnest desire for open relationships despite the fact that they are inherently complex and potentially combustible. The fact that there is good productive friction. All of which are difficult to create, manage and sustain when any powerful financial entity marries into the world of art and artists. It is a creative, evolving beast. And I loved being in its belly.

As to how it was received? From my end, I loved the conversations the sprung up on the walls around me, among the people around me, with the people standing next to me, with people passing through corridors. There was an energy that built slowly but steadily around it all that made it seem important and effective. Thoughtful and playful. I loved that the idea of SERIOUS PLAY already existed here.

—Tania Isaac