My Site/ In Space

'My site/In Space is an ongoing series of site-specific performances. For each edition Switch hunt out an inspiring space and convene a group of artists. Their goal is to create performances in response to the space within two weeks of first encountering it. The result is an ephemeral moment, made in a flash and never performed again.'



On the night of the 'art and the internet' talk, during Live Week, I met a rather charming man, who told me how he was opening up his flat to a bunch of artists to do as they would for 2 weeks before then opening it up to the public for a weekend of performances... I was intrigued. Both by Justin, who I'd just met and by the performance or whatever it was! So I got myself a ticket for a tenner. Blimey to let people into your home like that must be exhausting and invasive, I dont think I could!
The evening began on broadway market in Hackney where we were asked to convene in the pub 'Off Broadway' and meet with a woman who would be wearing a flower in her hair. It was very relaxed, despite being sent a message saying 'time waits for no-one', and rushing to the pub, we had plenty of time to enjoy a cold beer before setting off on our adventure. Justin was no-where to be seen, I figured he'd be at home awaiting our arrival. We were welcomed to the flat with a cube of soda bread and asked to remove our shoes. About 15 of us crammed into the living room and awaited our next instruction, unsure of what we should be doing and feeling far removed from our comfort zones, particularly when 1 person was invited into a slim cupboard with a young woman, the rest of us shuffled about nervously avoiding eye contact, as we watched the throw on the sofa seductively but rather pathetically slink its way off and onto the floor. Others were shown to the cupboard, while the rest of us giggled and squidged. Gratefully, I was taken outside into the fresh air onto a balcony and given a massage, left to wonder what was going on inside and slightly worried about my friend who had come along for the ride. I was reluctant to get off the lounger and rejoin the others, surprisingly enjoying and relaxed by the tactile communication. "Where were they? What had become of my friend, hold on that's his voice reading a poem, oh no is he being told off? He does have quite a distinctive voice!" A slide show made from curled up strips of negatives, poetic and inspirational to the photographer, nostalgic.



Upstairs more sensory communication, in front of a bathroom mirror, the artist who had massaged me, now took us one by one and posed with us, as if in a photo booth, trying us on for size. A voyeuristic view from the bedroom of stockinged legs and a camisole, then back down in single file to put on our shoes and depart. All rather formal. Across red carpet, past grass cutting with scissors and a picnic for one on a traffic island, we were led to the park. Toilet humorous stop. Lost. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! "Ah there's Justin and he has biscuits! Starting to make sense now - 2 groups, 2 homes! So this is where he lives!" Ah the 'performance art' - physical, predictable. Many snapshots of this strange man who I met once and was intrigued to know better. Lots of leopard skin and eastern delights! The bed was prominent as we all sat round it like a vigil. Later a Skype piece that was beautiful, sensual, funny and futuristic. Err, a kitchen symphony, annoying, banal. 'Shower scene', a momentary glimpse of the nude, 'traveling water' led through walls as taps ran.
Ahhhh pub!

The evening was a concoction of mini performance pieces that responded to the flats and the people who lived in them, some were very sensual and inspiring for me, others were predictable and felt disjointed. I was more into the first flat as it was less directed (the artists decided to direct more in the 2nd half as they felt the audience required it). For me it was less about the individual interventions, but more about a general feeling of unease and intrigue, pushing my own boundaries. I think that the idea of letting people work so site specifically is amazing and worth exploring further than this. I think that it may work better with less artists though; it might become more fluid, or more artists, making it properly hectic and destabilising.
How far can you go in someone-else's home?

Check out other interesting stuff by Switch Performance.


And look out for The Art of Engagement, the new programme starts in august with residencies from Justin Allen, Clare Adams and others... John Jordan is part of the current programme by the way!


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2C

The first time I became truly aware of the ever troublesome relationship between the human species and its home planet was when, as a fifteen year old I watched Koyaanisqatsi - the Hopi Indian term for ‘life out of balance’. The collage of beautiful, rich imagery depicts the vastness and seeming impenetrability of the natural world contrasted with the rampant over consumption and needless wastage brought on by human activity. In the appendix of his book ‘The Rest is Noise’ Alex Ross describes the film as depicting humans as an ‘Insectoid Species’, I used to think this was spot on.

Koyaanisqatsi was released during the early 80's at a point when ecological changes were starting to become more widely known. Yet as was pointed out during 'My Dad's Strip Club' on Thursday night the changes we are bringing about are liken to the fuel spontaneously set alight in the hold of the Titanic on it's maiden voyage; we know the fire is there yet we're willing to take any number of reckless chances and disguise what is really going on. We'll just hope that non of the passengers find out.

Two-Degrees festival promised to be a challenging critique of the environmental predicament we currently find ourselves in and although I only made it to a couple of the events on offer, each of the artists involved bravely tackled aspects of something that is pertinent and hugely complex. The laboratory for Insurrectionary Imagination illustrated the urgency of this well – “This planet has no emergency exits”.

The ‘Lab of ii’ as they are abbreviated firstly allowed participants a glimpse into what skills might be needed for a post-capitalist (or post-apocalyptic) world. We were shown how to seed-bomb patches of wasteland, construct radical origami and (a skill that would be useful) construct AM radio receivers. We were then shown ‘Consensus Decision Making’

I confess I came to ‘The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination’ with many misgivings. When being introduced to Consensus Decision Making and given the choice of where to spend the rest of the evening, either in the Theatre, Spitalfields City Farm, or Bishop’s Square, I felt like I was making a large commitment in a short space of time in a decision making process that might take so much longer. having to make a choice about something that could have become a provocative act in one evening seemed difficult. I was won over though – during the large discussion many of the group expressed the desire to go to Bishop’s Square whilst sticking to the initial premise of the evening that we would have a “lovely time", eventually deciding to set up a temporary living space in the area using the modified wheel-barrows and lettuce plants supplied by the 'Lab of ii'.

We donned life-jackets (that felt more like portable hugging-machines), manned-up the wheelbarrows and headed for the square. Very soon we had the barrows on-end, bolted together so they formed frames for a canopy to go over and we had makeshift living spaces. We did have a "lovely time". What made it all the more special was how the authorities responded to us. What we were doing could have been interpreted as disruptive yet we shared tea with the police and security guards, it was explained what we were doing and they seemed fine with this.

What came across in the events, whether it be the workshops during the Lab of ii or Lottie Child's rediscovering of the city's green spaces is that we have choice. The two degrees rise in global temperature could be 40 years away, yet this isn't inevitable, it all depends on whether we really want to prevent it or not.

I started some work experience this week. By the lifts it states that 'A 15 second journey in the lifts uses as much energy as a 60 Watt light bulb does in an hour'. I took the stairs.

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'Sneak Preview' the finale!

The end is nigh, as my show comes to its end, will it be a climax or just fizzle out into the forgotten?! I thought I would take this opportunity for one last self indulgent plug! COME AND SEE MY SHOW PLEEEEASE!



I do feel a little guilty asking my friends to come and do it all again - look at me and all my work, indulge me and support me! But I think I've earnt it over the years - going to their shows and various functions, its all part of the game - you come to mine and I'll come to yours and hopefully some other people will turn up too! Its been well worth the effort though - I have found myself an audience and I think doors have been opened! I certainly feel more confident about what I'm doing and people have started to take me more seriously as an artist/photographer, even though I've been showing them stuff for years, now its up on a wall it seems to mean something to them! Blimey I'm even being called an artist over a teacher! Its good to shake it up a bit and lose the labels! But come next week half the work will be packed away, hidden from view, taking up valuable storage space in my little flat, I wanna make more but what to do with it all? On the other hand I've actually sold quite a few and they'll be going up in new places, being seen by more people which is really cool! And exciting! Yes lets do more and have another show but where next???? Any offers?!

'Sneak Preview' closing party Saturday the 30th May 4-7pm EDVI public house, 25 Bromfield St. Angel N1 OPZ (open daily 12-10pm, Free)
See previous post titled 'Sneak Preview' in April for more details... Read more...

'Sneak Preview'

It really is all consuming putting on an exhibition, I'd forgotten how much work is involved! The whole process of getting it organised and publicised has been quite stressful due to lack of time and this weekend was lost to framing and hanging; a tiresome task - bring on the day when I have my own minions to do such things for me! As if! I have been questioning why the hell I'm doing it and who it's really for - I feel a bit guilty for being so absorbed by it all - as if my work is so important! But I've committed - my head is on the block and it's gotta be good!


Here's a statement I wrote for it:
Emerging from collaborations and adventures with friends and muse, these photographic pieces seek to capture a child like innocence and a playful spirit within adult themes. Un-posed, subjects are caught semi-unaware in an attempt to capture intimate moments with themselves or a playmate. The work subverts the idea of a so-called masculine, feminine and 'gay-gaze', and concentrates on members of the gay community in London, to which the artist is drawn. The show also includes the beginnings of a project based on the artist's experiences and identity as a 'fag-hag' and invites other ladies and their gay friends to take part in a collaborative project. The artist also desires new 'muses' and welcomes any 'gorgeous' gay men to satisfy her artistic needs!




This is the first time I've exhibited in a while, since becoming a teacher over 4 years ago. The work I've been making is very different to that which I did previous to teaching and to be honest is quite the opposite to the more 'socio-political' work I try to advocate. Since falling into teaching photography as a subject, rather than general fine art, I have moved into a more photographic practice of my own and have been inspired to experiment with new skills and media... which is good for me and for my students and the resulting work is often quite beautiful to look at. I have always used photography but more as a documentary tool for my own performances and interventions or set up ideas and observations. I never made 'pretty pictures'; they were more like statements or comments.

So over the last few years I have collaborated sporadically with my friend and muse Nate, who is a gorgeous young gay dancer. He has been a great source of inspiration and encouraged me to get out there and show off the fruits of our labour. The work is quite self indulgent I guess, it's been fun to make and was possibly an escape from the reality of full time work. It is nice to look at (mostly) and I feel almost apologetic for that because there isn't a hard hitting message in there. It's quite ironic because I'm also working on some critical, theoretical work about photography and digitalisation for my MA in art and education. I have also worried (unnecessarily I think now!) about the content of some of the images which are a bit 'saucy', because of certain ideals of how teachers should be... and wondered whether I should invite colleagues and students - (I did in the end).
But what the hell - here I am exhibiting in what was once one of our locals and was in fact where I first met Nate when he was working behind the bar. And now it's all up and looking fabulous, i do feel quite proud and excited!
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Inanimate Live Objects

My visit to Glasgow a couple of weeks ago happened to coincide with New Territories, The International Festival of Live Art. I chose to see ‘Technological Phantasmagorias I, II, II’ by UBU (Quebec) at Tramway.

The peice was en promenade and three separate works were shown. As we were led behind a large black curtain I did not expect what came next, as my eyes were fooled and brain baffled. And when I re-emerged I was at a loss at how to define it. How do I talk about something like this? Well here’s my best...

When entering the first space you were faced with three tiny figures dressed in white sat atop a high ledge in front of a bright translucent white screen. The bodies were made of plastic and each head had a video projection of a human face cast onto a mannequin head. The preciseness of the projection was very deceptive; I thought that I was watching real people’s heads protruding out of a screen. I even imagined the actors standing on a block behind the screen, and then I realised that the screen was almost see-through! The projectors were well hidden and the lighting very crisp to outline the 3D figures.

The script for the peice was John Fosse’s play called ‘Sleep My Baby Sleep’. The characters sat chatting, staring into bleakness, their blank faces stayed forward and wide-eyed. They were talking of nothing and everything, of understanding everything and knowing nothing! They were asking existential questions about the state of being and nothingness. The use of ‘dead’ plastic objects with ‘real’ faces with pre-recorded script created a cold atmosphere. There was no live action but the objects existed in the present time and space. The peice felt endless as the characters went round in circles not knowing if they had just arrived there or had been there all their lives. The peice could physically be never ending; the technology allows for this and could carry on (pending power supply) without wavering.

The second peice was Samuel Beckett’s ‘Play’; the seated theatre space had three large terracotta pots with mannequin heads sticking out of them. The heads looked as if they too were made of terracotta. Darkness remained until one of the characters spoke and a bright light (from a hidden projector) transmitted a face onto the mannequin. The peice gave me a bit of a headache because we were sitting in near total darkness and according to my eyes I was seeing real people talking in the present. But my brain did not believe my eyes, as there was something not quite right about what was happening. I could not feel the energy of living, breathing human beings and as with the first peice, the work and performance space felt cold.

The actors spoke in French and the subtitles did not appear until half way through the peice. The three characters were in a love triangle, each talking about their experience; the light shining on the talking head highlighted the self-importance that each character possessed. But I did not enjoy ‘Play’, the words were spoken very quickly and the subtitles went by too fast to read. Sitting in the dark trying to work out if these faces were 'real' or not strained my eyes and overall I felt that the piece really isolated its audience.

The third piece ‘Blind’ was absolutely entrancing. Sitting again, in near darkness, 12 heads emerged. There were 6 males and 6 females but only 2 actors who had been recycled to create each individual. These projected images of hologram beings were suspended on stage, behind a clear screen. The ensemble were blind, they had been left alone by their minder from the hospice where they resided. The image of these heads in mid-air was rather haunting but incredibly beautiful. Each character talked about what they could hear and where they thought they were. The group were physically together but completely isolated from one another.

The coldness that I felt in the previous two installations was now replaced with peace, stillness but also a feeling of being lost. I felt for these technologically fabricated characters, which were lost in darkness. Using only the head of each character brought the focus onto the mind. Was I hearing their thoughts? Or their actual speech? The characters looked vulnerable in the blank space that surrounded them. 'Blind' came to a chilling climax when one of them realises that their minder has not abandoned them, but had been for some time sitting next to them, dead! I was submerged in this incomparable peice and the images presented and conjured by language will not be forgotten anytime soon.

The technology used by UBU gave life to the dead objects physically present onstage. It was a test for the brain. ‘Technological Phantasmagorias I, II, II’ did lack something and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. But I now realise that it was missing a certain energy. The energy that is created between a live performer and their audience was absent. There was no sweat, muck ups, or adrenalin. This is not a draw back or negative but an unusual feeling, something that I was not used to. The brilliance and preciseness of the technology overrides this lack. When using pre-recorded material I think that one has to sacrifice the live factor. I was however suprised and pleased that I really felt something for the characters in the first and last installations. People that I have seen but will never meet, people that potentially coule be dead in real life. I do not know when these real people acted out the scenes for the first time in the past, that were then re-presented in the time and space in which I saw them. This technology appealed to my senses and I was amazed by this. Read more...

Sydney Thursday

Thursday night, as Thursday nights tend to do, hosted a couple of interesting openings in Sydney. The first I attended was Artspace's Between Site & Space exhibition of six artists from Australia and Japan. The second, at the Australian Centre for Photography (ACP), showed Sandy Nicholson's 2nd Place and Denis Darzacq's Hyper, below.
Between Site & Space is a collaboration between the Tokyo Wonder Site (TWS) and Artspace, Sydney. Three Australian artists, Alex Gawronski, Gail Priest and Tim Silver completed residencies in Tokyo in 2008, and were exhibited with Japan's chosen artists, Exonemo, Paramodel and Hiraku Suzuki, at TWS's Diorama of the City show. This year, the exhibit comes to Artspace to symbolise an ongoing relationship between Tokyo and Sydney.

The works are different here than they were in Tokyo, as the brochure and Artspace website reveals, and the space itself suggests; they have been "elaborated". I wondered as I wandered through the space if they felt more cohesive in Tokyo. Because there is a certain sense of ad hoc-ness, perhaps even a sense of dislocation, here in Sydney. Maybe this was the intention, the paradigms of location/dislocation in relation to place were mentioned in opening speeches, but I felt overall a little lost by the lack of cohesion between works and the way they had been displayed.

This is not to say the works themselves aren't interesting. I found Hiraku Suzuki's silver wall-painted 'Road Sign' truly beautiful and Tim Silver's 'Shooting tadpoles at the moon', three screens playing slideshows of a series of Manga-esque horror-movie-like stills, a fascinating way to depict still image while imparting a montage-like effect upon the viewer (see install-shot below).


Exonemo's wonderful installation 'Supernatural' explores the concept of time as a construct and subverts the restrictions it has placed upon us all by live-feeding footage of themselves (Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa) at home in Tokyo alongside live-feed of the Artspace gallery in Sydney. The two screens are bisected horizontally (that is, through both countries) by a large spoon. I very much like this notion of spooning with people who are in another country. This work lifted the exhibition with its literal embodiment of the concept, claimed by the organisers, of "facilitating contact" between Tokyo and Sydney.

Though, I must note, this contact was achieved rather hilariously when I accidentally kicked one of Paramodel's installation pieces, a toy truck, and it went driving across the room. This certainly fascilitated conversation when I had to apologise to Paramodel's Yasuhiko Hayashi and Yusuke Nakano for my clumsiness.

A still of Exonemo's 'Supernatural' installation:


Sandy Nicholson's 2nd Place at ACP was a lot of fun. His works show lightly ironic portraits of second-place getters beside images of them in action or close-up and large still-lifes of their trophies. The secondary 'portraits' contain printed text of a quote from the subject describing how they feel about coming second. These quotes shed insight onto the photo itself, which isn't often enough to decipher what the competition in fact was. For example, Bryan Bennett (pictured below), who came second in the Rock Paper Scissors World Series, says, "I knew I had lost before the final throw".


The juxtaposition of humorous competitions such as world gaming championships (that is, video gaming), hot-dog eating and nail-painting championships, with the serious demeanours of many of Nicholson's subjects creates an amusing and affirming exhibit of the people who aren't winners, something I think we can all relate to in one way or another.

Denis Darzacq's Hyper is a much more concise exhibit. It depicts young people hovering mid-air in public spaces such as supermarkets. Their bodies seem to hang as if by invisible string or by superimposition. But a video documenting Darzacq's process reveals it is all 'real', these young men and women are experts of the sport called Parkour or Free Running. Their immense physical skills, the ability to throw themselves into the air, flip, land in unusual ways and live to tell the tale, is diverted in Darzacq's photos, however. His images show only one moment in the intricate parkour move. So what we see, more than examples of astounding physical ability, is what looks like human helplessness in front of bright, shiny consumerism.

This reading is perhaps deep, but for me these limp, seemingly out-of-control bodies, hanging lifeless or possessed in shopping aisles, is representational of our overall lack of control, lack of escape-route, when it comes to consumerism. As a result, these images are incredibly powerful.

Three exhibits, three very different approaches. Another Thursday.
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Psychogeography or "goal-orientated walking"

There seems to be a lot of exhibitions about the city on at the moment. Last weekend I purposely made my way across London to visit two. First was Paul Caton's An Internal Bleeding of the Heart at The Bearspace Gallery, Deptford. Caton's pencil drawings tell surreal stories that are both quaint and sinister: "Two hoodies wait in a ruined abbey. One, holding a large medieval sword keeps watch while the other sleeps. The blade glistens against the backdrop of dark trees and stone." .

These troubling, and yet also humerous myths set two protagonist hoodies against various idyllic countryside scenes. At first they seem to be transported straight from the urban environment into a romantic landscape, out of place and alienated. This is exactly the point Caton's making, he says "Their styling is just a post modern device to show that I mean what I'm talking about. This is a serious subject. If I have to rip-off Dutch masters to make a point then that's okay. The most important issue today is what is happening to the children. Art so far has ignored it. It isn't interested. It is too occupied by its own self."

Heading north, I then went to see Laura Oldfield Ford's London 2013, Drifting Through Ruins at Hales Gallery in the T Building. The exhibition consisted of a striking grid of over a hundred ink drawings that were distinct but also connected. Walking from one side of the room to the other, the viewer is taken through post industrial wastelands, weaving into living rooms and council estates. Oldfield Ford is as much an activist as an artist and also produces the zine Savage Messiah, documenting her psychogeographic "drifts" through London.



Compared to Caton, Oldfield Ford's drawings are more energetic and less fathomable. This layered style of drawing often seems to come out of a practice of psychogeography, a bit of a tired term for a way of exploring urban environments that has been around in various guises since the nineteenth century. It generally involves bringing together the physical landscape and something more subjective as a way experiencing the city and can often express an element of dissatisfaction and a desire for change.



Set in 2013, Laura Oldfield Ford's drawings are nothing like the shiny, optimistic architectural renderings of the Olympic sites, but instead form a sense of foreboding about the regeneration to come - the "failed utopias".

I found these two exhibitions interesting to see side by side. Paul Caton's drawings aren't the result of an urban drift, but they are an intriguing combination of personal references - more of a walk through the artists brain: the Yorkshire landscape where he grew up post miners strike, a ruined 16 C building from Ken Loach's film Kes and titles borrowed from a bird watching book are skillfully combined.
Oldfield-Ford on the other hand observes an area of London as it is now, collapsing time into where it's heading. There's defiantly a feeling of big change around at the moment that includes the city seeming to swing between the pessimistic and the Utopian. I'd be really interested in hearing if anyone recommend any artists that might be picking up on this or working somewhere in between.
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The top 40 illustrated guide to 2008

For all you nostalgic pop pickers here's the Artsadmin Artblogs illustrated guide to all that was great and good in 2008.
In no particular order, as it is just too hard to place.
Please let us know if we have missed anything!
what did you see?
what changed your life?
what inspired you?
and if you can't think of anything then heres hoping for exceptional 2009.



Cornelia Parker - Chomskian Abstract - Whitechapel


Pina Bausch - Rite of Spring - Sadler's Wells


National Theatre of Scotland - Black Watch - Barbican


Leonard Cohen - Albert Hall


Heiner Goebbels - Stifter's Dinge - A co-commission by Artangel and Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne


Karlheinz Stockhausen Concert - Wilton’s Music Hall


DV8 -To Be Straight With You - National Theatre


Doran George - Dancing with a Dead Man’s Things - Chisenhale Dance Space


Franko B - Don’t Leave Me This Way - ICA


The Golden Age of Couture - V&A


Viktor & Rolf - Barbican


You Me Bum Bum Train - Cordy House


Dare to Dance – South Bank Centre


Folk Day - the Proms


Rosemary Butcher - WinLab - Siobhan Davies Dance Centre


Marcela Levi - In-organic' - La Caldera, Barcelona


Bjork - Hammersmith Apollo


Klang - A Tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen - Southbank Centre


Merce Cunningham Dance Company - Barbican Centre


Punchdrunk - Masque of the Red Death - BAC


Francis Bacon - Tate Modern


Steve Mcqueen - Hunger


Supremes - V&A


Dangalnama - Theatre Royal Stratford East


Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art at Barbican


Duotard - Blame it on the Burgers


Helena Hunter - Tracing Shadows - NRLA in 2008


Roger Hiorns - Seizure'


All the people who tried extinguish the flame as the Olympic Torch rally


Guillermo Gomez-Pena - La Pocha Nostra - NRLA 2008


Roy Peters - End Of Story - NRLA 2008


Julia Bardsley - Almost The Same - Chelsea Theatre


Sheila Ghelani's Grafting and Budding at BAC


Photomonth 2008

Check out the blog here
Inder Salim’s ‘Mochi-ki-Dukan, ART AUCTION in support of Suraj & his family’ at the Palette Gallery, Delhi



And While London Burns - Platform


Super Night Shot - Gob Squad


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