Thread by @aleyakassam

Of creative weaving / trampolining / mashakura-ing / relay-ing / kitchdi-ing / samosa-ing(?) -

(artists taking a piece of work that someone else created and jumping off with it into a different direction - is there a term for that?)

A thread

For a long time, I've always found other artists' work to be such fuel when it comes to inspiring me to create new work, shape ongoing work, or even understand existing work in a different way.

I am definitely not a solo artist, and very much find energy from those around me

Lately, I've been leaning more into that, and trying also to 'show my workings' - so when I am inspired in a very specific way, I find ways of tracing those skeletal bones within the work itself.

It gives me deep satisfaction to see what has gone into the marinade of a piece

And also I get a real kick out of tracing back inspiration - like I imagine if we look a piece like a flower, if you go back, you see the branch, the trunk, the roots - each thing feeding the next, each one inhabiting its own structure and being in the world.

Let me give you some examples of it in my own work so this stops being so abstract

This photo of a dead lizard on the pathway down to the Watamu beach

and

The 9th second in to @HeyHeyBlinky Lwanda Magere


were the springboards for a piece of instagram flash fiction about Lwanda's former lover

I'll share the piece in the next tweet

I queered up Lwanda Magere @keguro_

Here's another....this time not fiction, but musings inspired by a @truthslinger photo

And this one, which went around in looping circles in the most delicious fashion :)

I wrote a piece from a photo my brother in law sent me, but in which I referenced the art of KibokoHachiyon whose work I just love!

Here is the piece

And then unbidden, Kiboko took the piece, and created this!!!

And it was just so wonderful to see how one person's expression of a thing can be used as fuel to become a completely different expression in a different form yielding a different sort of deliciousness

I'm all for variety in deliciousnesses.

All this to say....

These were KaChanyados - little pieces of flash prose I wrote on Instagram based off photos I took.

I found it immensely satisfying to complete a thing every day - and it was part of an exercise in flow...

It might be useful in this time of tedium

Aaaaaaand to say, that if anyone is looking for a thing to use to bounce off of in creating another thing - feel free to dig around my instagram if you find anything useful...

I'd be super into that

I can imagine recipes & songs & shorts & lists & pieces of jewellery & & &

Fin

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