Letter to NYC about London

Part of a writing exercise workshop, thinking back 9 years ago to when I first moved to London and writing back to a friend in NYC about my thoughts and observations about the change:

Dear Sara:

So here I am after the whirlwind of NYC for so many years, landed in a place that is somehow so similar yet polar opposite. The pace of life here is so much slower, and takes some getting used to. But slowing down feels good. I can hear myself and somehow be more the me than I was able to be before. What frustrated me about New York was everyone was always in your face all the time and I felt a lack of emotional space. Here everyone is so guarded and inside themselves. I think it must be the weather! 

The grey skies wrap you like a blanket and you feel comfortable and quiet, calming your emotions. Getting around these streets is so intense! Ive always prided myself of being an avid traveller, but my first week alone I got lost at least 10 x. There is no compass grid system to work with, you swear youre going North and suddenly its South! And with a white sky you cannot see the sun for direction. I realise now how rigid the grid system is, almost violent to our nature as organic beings. The medieval footprint here means you have to meander slowly to get anywhere, instead of pushing though a system of squares and rectangles, there are much more triangles and circles (in this case roundabouts). 

I also realise the who I am has changed by sheer context! There are few Latinos, some Americans, almost no real New Yorkers, and I have become much more an exotic of species, shorter and darker by comparison, with too sharp a tongue and too fast a pace. Need to exorcise the New York demon out of me…

One of my favourite things about London is how local it is. A big city that really is a collection of villages, people love and respect the local in a beautiful way. There is pride in the history and stories and Londoners are happy to share it with foreigners and immigrants, so I feel I am able to settle in and become one of many. Its funny only the English from outside of London tend to ask me where I am from, Londoners take it for granted that everyone is from somewhere and may instead ask what I do, or chat about the weather. Actually talking about the weather seems crucial as an ice-breaker. And you’ll never guess, everyone complains its rainy!! How funny is that? I guess it’s a social bonding method to moan and agree about the weather. Note to self, tone down the cheery attitude… 

Okay running out of space, love you and more soon! 

RMX

Artist Walk with Cooltan and Artangel

Developing a new project commissioned by Artangel and in conjunction with Cooltan.

Artangel projects are given shape by a particular place and time. They can involve journeys to unfamiliar locations, from underground hangars to abandoned libraries. Or sometimes they can offer unfamiliar experiences in more familiar environments – a terraced house, a department store or daytime television.

CoolTan Arts believes mental well-being is enhanced by the power of creativity. It’s a charity run by and for adults with mental distress. Cooltan aim to promote positive mental health/well being, bringing about a change in how participants perceive themselves, enabling people to gain greater focus and to re-establish their relationship with society. Cooltan aim to offer life long learning and enable people to achieve qualification and accreditation status in the coming year. They achieve this through quality arts education with professional outcomes such as public exhibitions, and social enterprise principles.

The project in made in collaboration with the commission of Saskia Olde Wolbers yet to be announced so will not expand on that yet.

But for my project I share this description:

This project will be a narrated walk that uses as a source of inspiration the Victorian row house situated at 87 Hackford Road where Vincent Van Gogh resided in 1873 whilst in London. It will explore letters written by Van Gogh about his experience here in London and also consider what it would have been like to see this city through his eyes, allegedly suffering from epilepsy, bi-polar disorder and delusions.

The project will explore walking around the area, passing Van Gogh’s former residence and invite people on to a new journey of discovery. This will be a one-to-one performance, in which one audience members walks on a narrated journey, which they can hear over headphones.

Guided by the product of the Cooltan workshops, the audience is encouraged to delve into an alternate reality of the city, and follow a course through our own chosen route where they will encounter the peoples, stories, rumours, and whispers that inhabit the architecture that surrounds us.

I will work together with participants on the narrative through interactive workshops that explore our own stories in connection to Van Gogh’s. As we learn about him we can learn about ourselves and share this in a special public walk.

The participant on this narrated walking tour examines their surroundings by creating interior visualisations based on their movement through the space. The world they create is influenced by the sounds and smells that come from the environment as well as introduced by what we develop.

Is they city what it seems? What happens when we stop taking it for granted and put ourselves in the vulnerable position of using our imagination publicly…

The art of dying: Aesthetics and palliative care

Here is an article I just had published based on my experience working as a Community Artist for St. Christopher's Hospice in South London. This institution was not what may come to mind as a typical hospice, but rather it was a holistic care and education centre, complete with a performance / music room, a large central hall with a cafe and public seating, a gym, a landscaped garden and a wonderful atrium that is used for art workshops. I was part of the Arts Team, a selection of about 8 individuals with specialities in visual arts, graphic design, music, music therapy, video and performance. My time working there was formative and I learned much about death and dying and the arts which I discuss in this paper.

Here is a link to the journal:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Issue,id=2052/

You do have to subscribe, though back issues are still free. If you are interested in knowing more about the article just email me.

Abstract below:

Volume 2 Issue 2

Cover Date: August 2011

The art of dying: Aesthetics and palliative care

Authors:  Roberto Sánchez-Camus
DOI: 10.1386/jaah.2.2.155_7

Keywords
death and dying,liminality,aesthetics,place-making,St Christopher’s Hospice,palliative care,

Abstract

The Art of Dying explores the function of arts integration into the management of death. The article focuses on a practitioner’s point of view as a Community Artist at St Christopher’s Hospice in London. Looking at how the death process itself functions as a transitory and liminal phase in life, the article proposes that the arts are an integral component of dying. With references to creative texts that have shaped how we view and manage death The Art of Dying demonstrates the methods in which arts can be integrated into the dying process. The creative process is shown through two case studies to assist the dying person in dealing with the complexities of the transitional phase, allowing a level of objectivity and critical thinking. The article concludes with the power of place-making through memory and its impact on legacy and a new narration of life when faced with death.

on Nature Walking...

Just returned from an epic trekking experience: did the 'circuito grande' of the Torres del Paine national park in Patagonia, Chile. Walked about 180km over 8 days starting at Refugio Laguna Amarga and ending at the waterfalls at Pudeto (map below).

The park itself has a variety of areas of outstanding natural beauty and levels of tourist infiltration, from more upscale country-hotel lodgings to free camping. The general trek is called 'W' which takes you up to see Glacier Grey then around one small mountain range and up Valle del Frances, back down to the immense lake and up again to see the famous torres.

Though the 'W' trek is highly walked, around the back of the mountain range you can go at it alone with the wind, waterfalls and puma tracks as company. Taking all my provisions with me, it took a few days before the noise in my head died down. No company, no phone, no music just my 12k pack stuffed with a good tent and sleeping bag and my walking shoes.

There is a poetry in walking and traversing space consciously. Becoming aware of the gradations of landscape, of the changes in temperature to altitude, of your body's own weight and posture. There's that moment that you stand still only moving your legs while the earth magically revolves under you. I think about Richard Long's work, where we get to glimpse a single moment of a journey. But when that journey goes on a week it becomes a pilgrimage, like the Camino de Santiado de Compostella.

And silence... This is key. It was days before I had to speak to anyone and then it was 'hola' in passing. There is a lucidity in quietness, in taking the time to listen and hear. Each bird call transforms from a musical note to a language, the trickle of the upcoming river beckons a rest and a drink, the thunder of crashing snow and glaciar ice a power that fills with awe and dread.

I can't remember feeling so alive and full of hope before. You feel the wind come off the millennial ice caps, formed from the cracking and popping of millions of little air bubbles trapped since before the dinosaurs and breathed into your lungs, whirling in your brain. The cold, crisp water that tastes so pure you just become certain its somehow linking you with the planet from before man ever even walked this land.

And so much water... clean, fresh, aqua-blue, sweet water flowing non-stop.... The dreams of 2012 armageddon are very far away in these remote places...

Moving your body through a landscape allows a sense of focus and freedom, of accomplishment and dedication and of humbling pain and uncertainty. A time-out from the urban experiences I study and love. But it also gives me the tools to understand better how we may walk in the concrete forests of London, New York or Santiago by being connected to the more subtle currents that revolve around us.

I may have arrived but I've left part of me in those mountains while part of them remain in me....





Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

'...interstitial, unoccupied spaces at the edges of the interstate...'

The Edge of Light: Wendover is a poetic study of landscape, environment, development and isolation in what the artists Brian Rosa and Adam Ryder describe as 'the border of nowhere and nowhere' in the US.

What is striking about these photos is the stillness and isolation in the images, confusing the viewer as to wether the subject is that which is being lit or the light itself. Though the exploration sought out the edge of light, its the degrees of dark that become most heightened. Light at dawn or is it dusk? Artificial or natural? Either way there remains a sense of deep sleep in the photo essay. It makes us question not only how we use light but how we use the landscape. Its no wonder its a result of a residency at the Center for Land Use Interpretation. 

For a comparable study of light and subject, see Peter Di Campo's photo study of Ghana at night via flashlight Life Without Lights recently published in the NYTimes.