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…

NYC Ghosts and Flowers

I never really understand what happens when I get to New York. An invisible energy goes into me and I buzz through my time there at a million miles an hour without a moment to contemplate all the images, memories, people, senses, and emotions that boil together in the soup of experience that is walking those frenetic streets.

My brother said to me 'you make it hectic'

Maybe thats true, but there is also an energy there that's palpable. New York is also a muddled palimpsest of memories for me, every neighbourhood, subway line, and flavour of bagel has something to associate it with and makes each movement a surge of thoughts that mix up with the present and confuse the past.

I remember reading that the local Native Americans considered Manhattan a sacred island, formed of bedrock, sticking out into the bay and hugged by two rivers as it sat there like a steady glacier. A large rock formation that held underneath it the rest of the planet and on top of it a crown of buildings with golden lights flickering at night and sneezing jewelled bridges across to other pieces of land.

New York is like one of those lovers you can't help be obsessed with even though you know they are really unhealthy for you emotionally, but the electric charge of being together is worth the burn out when you are apart and you realise that it could never really be long-term.

The city is a walking theatre, a waking psychotic episode, each person manages to be a huge personality and they all somehow fit into the rush hour subway car while competing mariachi bands and break-dancers clear space for some change.

Random conversations with strangers about my tree tattoo, the presidential election, parking regulations, the best coffee. Union Square with public chess playing, Hare Krishnas,  political slogans in chalk, kids on skateboards and hippies with guitars. Times Square with hoards of tourists, dressed up cartoon characters aggressively requesting photos for money (I was told Elmo had been arrested on a number of occasions in full costume), police side by side with them as a tourist attraction... I cant even see the ads, all I see is a blur of light, was the New Years ball always that tiny?

I stayed at my brother's in Sugar Hill, Harlem. History and future rolled into one, amazing brownstones, gentrification, the local bodega that carried every item I brought back from Colombia as gifts.... oh well.

At night the white noise... It never really gets quiet. The white noise always buzzes... It never really gets dark, the sky a golden orange... I saw some stars though. I did.

How many things can you do in one day in New York? More than you can cram in most cities, the place is built for movement and efficiency... Its truly exhausting. And exhilarating. Every one should live there for a while, work its flow, walk its streets, meets its people and see what cosmopolitan truly is. But as Kurt Vonnegut said: 'Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.'

I guess thats why I did....

I love you New York...

You drive me crazy...


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Circus in Colombia...

Nothing better to do post-PhD than take up tattooing and run away with a circus.... In this case am now Technical Director for Circolombia on their world tour of their show Urban... Circolombia is was born from and is composed of graduates from the Colombian circus school Circo Para Todos based in the city of Cali.

You can read more about the school here: Click

And about Circolombia here: Click

Also a brilliant documentary on the school and it's social context (Spanish no subtitles): Click

Finally a music video I shot with part of the troupe in Rio de Janeiro in June this year: Click

The great thing about circus is that everyone is in it together, less comparmentalised than traditional theatre and much more risk. Though I have included circus in my performance work before I am now incorporating performance into circus work and finding it totally gratifying. How did it take me this long to get into this artform? 

Very happy to also be completing a residency here in Cali, Colombia at the circus school Circo Para Todos. I am giving an intensive laboratory in creative collaborative performance making for the final year students. The students basically have by this point completed 4 years of training where they have completed a routine that they then sell to the various businesses around the world, either touring shows, cruises or theme parks. The perks are travel and pay, a real draw for many of the inner-city youth who compose the student body.

I have found the energy and vibrancy of the participants intense and brilliant. Very open to the process and able to conceptualise form and play in an open-minded and exciting way. In a matter of days we put together 6 skits based on dreams that we performed for a small audience. Now my task is to think about the bigger picture of their final degree show in December and offer a method towards which to create a meta-narrative that will link all their individual numbers as well as transition skits to keep the flow of the show.

Apparently Cali is the 11th most dangerous city in the world according to a report by Seguridad, Justicia y Paz. Of course this is subjective, as I wandered the streets going from bars to clubs and meeting people throughout the evening without ever feeling threatened. But of course Colombia is synonomous with the drug trade, and well after all it is a major producer marijuana, cocaine and heroine. Regardless there is the Latin American warmth that is contagious and undeniable. No exchange begins without a ping-pong of salutations and greetings, which are actually genuine not just an ice-breaker. And like Brasil, its teeming with a mix of races that form a real unique mix.

The combination of vibrant energy, motivated students, engaged staff and a circus ethos make for a formidable experience. There is a magic at the school and in the city that demonstrates a cultural power here in Colombia that from afar gets clouded by negative media attention and assumptions. But as I've recently learned it is after all here in Colombia that the famed El Dorado existed, city of gold that the original conquistadors sought with such bloody consequences. And so apt that this vast and lush country, bordering the Pacific and the Gulf should hide its treasures until you come seek them out... 

As Choc Quib Town says closing their song: 'Ahora dígame que cree usted porque Colombia es más que coca, marijuana y café'

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Housing Estates, London, and Dystopia

Just went to see the Broadwater Farm exhibition, portraying the story of a massive council estate complex in Tottenham made infamous after it's 1985 riots.


Held at Bruce Castle Museum, an interesting site in itself, a strange piece of history nestled in one of the more socioeconomically challenged areas of London. The power of the exhibit was in it's honour of the local people who made Broadwater a success. But underlying it all was the sense that the brutality of the civic system not only crushed a momentum of people's movement but left it dead on the curb.

Broadwater was one of those massive efforts at post-war social engineering, meant to deal with poverty and rising immigration. The huge complex was built and then basically left to decay and within a decade had fallen to such a state of disrepair that it clearly reflects a planned state of structural violence against a community by a council. The failure of these large-scale housing estates was studied by the Land Use Research Unit at King's College in the late seventies. The research of this group influenced Coleman's book Utopia on Trial: vision and reality in planned housing, which featured Broadwater Farm as an example (she was head of the research unit at the time).

The Centre for Spatially Integrated Social Science has a great article on this: Design Disadvantagement.

I also recommend the film Utopia London, which outlines the Labour vision of modern social housing and how in many ways it failed at the hands of politicians and urban planners with no foresight into community and culture.

Finally if you're in London a cycle up to Tottenham to see the exhibit takes you past the smashed windows and boarded shops that mark the result of the recent riots caused by anger over police brutality. Guardian: 'Tottenham in flames as riot follows protest'. 26 years on and history repeats itself, as we move faster towards a social dystopia fuelled by mind-numbing solutions by those in power: BBC: 'David Cameron back councils planning to evict rioters'. Russ Swan has some amazing photos he shot there in 1985 and an good article on his blog entry: Cat and mouse on Broadwater Farm, 1985

To not end on that note I channel the thoughts of Jane Jacobs and her research into the existence and importance of community at the street level and the failure of urban planning to respond to that community in her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, something that seems to have not been accounted for in the early planning of Broadwater and most other estates across the country. History doomed to repeat itself....

Press Release:

In 1985 Broadwater Farm experienced one of the worst nights of civil unrest anywhere on mainland Britain. It shocked the nation and nearly destroyed a community. Just months before, Diana Princess of Wales visited to congratulate the Broadwater Farm Youth Association on its success. Today Broadwater Farm is seen as a model of social housing, attracting visitors from around the world. This exhibition will explore the heroic achievements of a community who from the very beginning fought against all the odds. October 2010 at Broadwater Farm Community Centre. Now on at Bruce Castle Museum June 2011 to March 2012

Hoods, Freedom & Dancing

I love the Hackney Gazette. Mostly because it comes free through my postbox, its local and not stapled, meaning I can read it page by page as I walk my dog and use it to scoop his poo off the pavement. I dont though agree with it's big brother policy of posting photos of looters so that we can all pretend to be hey-diddly-doo neighbour vigilantes in Fahrenheit 451. Reminds me of the graffiti I saw in Greece, 'WE WEAR OUR HOODS UP SO YOU CAN LOOK US IN THE EYE'

A friend of mine just wrote to me: 'the only forces who feel empowered to express themselves in our society r the yobs who riot for flatscreens. the rest is divergence...'

As usual I find myself somewhere in between all stances and I still go with Emma Goldman's philosophy, if I can't dance I dont want to be part of your revolution:

'I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to be beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.' (Goldman 2006)

Linked by Graeme Miller

Did the intrepid journey that is the audio tour of Graeme Miller's archive of stories surrounding the construction of the M11 in East London and subsequent displacement of locals and protest culture that arose from the development.

Alas technology has erased all my notes, but I'll try to give an impression. Linked is a tour of East London given through a series of sound installations that are broadcast from transmitters attached to light poles across a 4 mile stretch. You have to pick up your own receiving devise and headphones in order to listen to the work, but these are hard to come by. Luckily Redbridge Museum had a few, adding a good amount of miles to our journey but somehow part of the adventure (if you plan on actually doing this walk plan ahead).  Though there is a map, finding each transmitter is still a challenge, though a group of us were lucky to be guided by Oliver James Hymans, who wrote a dissertation on psychogeography with this piece as a case study.

As you approach each transmitter the sound slowly starts feeding into the headphones. Its slightly eery and ghostly, as if you are overhearing a conversation through an open window somewhere nearby. It becomes clear the recordings are testimonials of people affected by the construction of the M11 motorway and destruction of well anything in its path. The recordings are sampled and remixed with music giving it the impression of an early negativland track. The testimonials range from residents, to squatters, to elderly focusing mostly on the energy of protest and the destruction of sites of memory and places of local identity and history. I particularly like the transmission coming from a light pole in between two chestnut trees that referenced The Battle of George Green and the feeling that the takeover of the park by protesters was like a return the common land before the Acts of Enclosures privatised areas across England, a fantastic analogy and still powerful today.

I was interested in the people who lived in the houses near these transmitters and I wondered if they had any idea about it. Though I loved the experience, even for me who loves to explore and is interested in site, history, memory and place this was not an easy task to fulfill. This was mostly due to such poor maintenance of the artwork itself by Museum of London and Arts Admin. I couldn't help to wonder about those transmitters powered 24/7 and broadcasting empty messages to deaf ears. Perhaps this is the route history eventually takes, most people forgetting the struggles of the past for the comforts of the future. After the work I felt happy to have learned a piece of history and a new respect for a locale and yet somewhat melancholic in thinking about our constant move towards greater privitisation and development. As a radicant myself I wonder about how to save and respect roots while helping us move across borders freely.

The M11 felt both like a massive border and yet somehow an escape route...


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

NYLON

It's hard to wrap your head around the scale of New York and London as they are so topographically different.
London is a complete mess of roads neatly organised into concentric zones that seem to spread out forever until suddenly it hits the M25 motorway and becomes farmland.
New York is a neatly organised set of roads set on to a mess of islands and inlets and seems to be encircled by endless suburbs with farmland somewhere way down the I95 highway.

I made loads of versions of these maps in some sense to put my two realities together, they somehow help me better contextualise and understand my place in these two twin cities (fraternal twins of course)

Violent Flash Mobs

Interesting article about youth gatherings turned into violent rushes through civic areas:
From NYTimes:
PHILADELPHIA — It started innocently enough seven years ago as an act of performance art where people linked through social-networking Web sites and text messaging suddenly gathered on the streets for impromptu pillow fights in New York, group disco routines in London, and even a huge snowball fight in Washington.
Young people filled South Street in Philadelphia on Saturday in what officials said was the latest flash mob to turn dangerous. Seth Kaufman was injured in the flash mob Saturday, which he called “a tsunami of kids.” But these so-called flash mobs have taken a more aggressive and raucous turn here as hundreds of teenagers have been converging downtown for a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize property.
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FrenchMottershead First UK solo exhibition

This exhibition is the first solo show by artists Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead and is the culmination of their two-year international SHOPS project bringing together a collection of intimate portraits of local shops and contemporary urban life.

21 Nov 2009 - 13 Feb 2010

Site Gallery

Frenchmottershead

Shops Project

Triangulated City: Beirut - Show Images

Site A: Zoukak (alleyway)

Site B: Central Parking, B7 (-7 underground)

Site C: Luna Park

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

'Play Me, I'm Yours' strangers around a melody

Recently observed a a variety of everyday virtuosos belting out tunes on a piano in central London. Though I had seen the piano before I assumed it was some sort of glorified busking. But when I stopped to watched I realised something very special was happening, creative talent was emerging from strangers in the middle of the city. First a jazzy tune, followed by a young girl playing a melody, then her brother who belted out a blues tune that inspired impromptu partner dancing by a couple, then a young boy in his uniform played a simple yet beautiful tune. It was a great moment of participation and creativity in the old smoke.

'Play Me, I'm Yours' is an arts project by Luke Jerram