Dear Sandra Carluccio,
I don’t really know how to start this letter, the title can really throw some people. Actually it’s not just the title, but the content as well. These things aren’t about love in the romantic sense, they are more like a fan letter, and I guess for some this might be their first piece of fanmail?
I guess their inner monologue cruises along the lines of, “That Clinton is a bit of a kooky sort. But holy woah? He wrote down all that stuff about me and put it on the Internet? What is he, some sort of millenial?” Yeah. Probably. I even reply to my own rhetorical questions. But before we get totally sidetracked, this letter is about you.
Without a doubt, you are one of my most favoured collaborators. You strike this balance between professionalism and a sense of fun that is near impossible to rival. And you do it with ease, the ability to have a laugh and get shit done at the same time is such a rare trait. Usually people fall at one end of the spectrum or the other. But working on a Sandra project though? Everyone works their guts out make the thing a reality, but any stress is punctuated with laughter and joy. All too often those difficult moments can be filled with less enjoyable behaviours and emotions. But the joy you radiate? It comes through in your work, it’s fun. You see it in all the warm smiles your patrons wear as they experience the journey you made for them.
Now don’t get mad, but I built a journey for the Commonwealth Games. It was this weird collision of influences: Sport, Isaac Asimov, Tom Sachs, Cyberpunk and Carluccio the great. However, instead of using mobile phones, I handmade these ‘defcon style badges’, for narrating the story. And holy cow! I really solved the pickle matrix with this one. It was GPS based, but way more accurate than the GPS in a mobile phone has ever been. Everyone got their audio triggers and no one got lost. I just about cried when we had our first tech preview / test session. One of the people I was working with came up to me and said ‘Wow, that is really good for a first pass at the software.’ I had to correct him, this was something that built on a lot of hard learnt lessons of projects gone by. I absolutely could not have built this thing from scratch had it not been for the time I have spent working alongside you in the trenches.
From this otherside of the performace fence, as someone who has worked alongside you? The professionalism that you bring to the ‘business’ of your arts practice is nothing short of stella. You are amazingly well organised, and above all ethical. It is something I put a lot of effort into emulating. The world needs more Sandra produced work, the world needs more warm smiles. And more people need to experience the creative working environment you enable.
There is this great phrase that I only encountered in my older years: ‘Overnight success takes ten years.’ Give it ten years Sandra. You will be unstoppable.
Love,
Clinton Freeman.
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