‘poolside emergency 2011

This year I was invited to write about some of the artists involved in The Bluecoat's 'poolside emergency, here is the link to said writing and so so much more…..

http://poolside.posterous.com/

Me and the Machine – On Ways to Disappear Without Leaving a Trace, FutureEverything, Manchester

On the sixth floor of a blank looking office complex there is something going on, hidden in the a empty office space there is a story, for the last four days Me and the Machine have been coxing this narrative out of the space and make it part of the piece 'On Ways to Disappear Without a Trace'.

The piece is a site specific, performance installation to be undertaken by one person at a time by themselves. People arrive to be placed in front of a set a double doors and be given a set of headphones which will provide the narrative which they will wilfully follow. This is where it starts for me, as I was 'working the door' again, I manage to sneak in. So I don't get to know if their sense of expectation feeds into the work I would like to think it did.

Walking into the space the exotic voice which appears in your ear (should that be in your head?) begins to guide you through a noirish tale, her story becomes your story, her footsteps becomes yours. As this narrative of red shoes and mysterious rooftop strangers unfolds you become more involved, in a sense you become like a child developing its own little play world.

This is a playful piece; it requires the imagination of the participant to make it fully work. It's this action of engaging the imagination that seems to make the title a bit of a misnomer, it feels that rather than disappearing you become more solid, you become the main focus, and you become the star of this narrative. Even though there's a part of you which is aware that other people have been here before and the narrative would still play out the same way without you, that is all over ridded and you feel that you are pushing the narrative along as much as it pulls you. This might be where you truly disappear into your own mental state, away into whatever world you choose in order to 'deal' with the real world.

You could question why a piece like this would feature in a festival which celebrates digital technologies, the first reason which springs to mind is the changes within playback devices, a few years ago a piece like this would require you to carry a CD player probably in a cumbersome backpack. Other than that the other reason I could think of is that this piece, and the current crop of pieces like it, also seems to raise questions regarding how we interact the world, whether the technologies we develop are enhancing our experience of the world or do they take away the need to experience the world physically?

It's a question I can't answer, but with pieces like this I am willing to be part of the research.

Warpaint – FutureEverything/The Ritz Manchester

The overall feeling of the night, is that finally plucked up the courage to tell 'that one girl' how I feel, only to notice she spent the whole time looking at someone else.

Or they were great and not even the drunk screaming 'I LOVE YOU JENNY!!!' right in my eye throughout couldn't spoil it!!!

Bryony Kimmings Sex Idiot, The Bluecoat

I'll be honest I don't understand sex, it's never really been part of my life, it has always seemed to exist in some kind of parallel universe. Like skydiving or visiting China something other people did. Maybe it exists in this way for most people an expected shared experience that is kept private, like going the toilet or masturbating.

Last night I was privy to have brief access to this strange and baffling parallel universe through Bryony Kimmings's Sex Idiot a grand burlesque, inspired by her contraction of a STI and in a disarmingly honest and sincere way details her sexual history, with some of the most glorious hats I've ever seen.

I have to honest (again) I missed the first half (I was working the door) but I walk in to see Bryony half dressed in a speculator Matador uniform staggering around the stage surrounded by faux romantic trappings, flowers, paper hearts and the like. She speaks of the dangers of lusting after the 'other' which goes in a mini performance where she puts lipstick on each of her hands and then proceeds to 'kiss' herself. After the kissing is over she quietly wipes the lipstick off and is left alone, she manages to convey the sense of loss and regret in pursuing the things you think you want and losing the things you had.

There are a number of these 'quiet' moments in one section of the performance she invites the audience to donate their pubic hair and they oblige, scissors are handed out along with Jack Daniels to 'provide' an excuse. After the snipping is done and the tools are handed back Kimmings informs the audience that the scissors have never been cleaned nor have the bottles, they have had unprotected contact with multiple partners and now you have exposed yourself to God knows what. It's a canny way of highlighting that given the right circumstances people would do the stupidest things, without thinking of the dangers. I believe that this echoes a common sexual misadventure one which I've missed out on.

It's within these moments, and throughout the show, Kimmings exposes not only her own vulnerability but everybody's vulnerability there's a scene towards where it's revealed that the source of Bryony's STI was her then boyfriend whom she genuinely cared for. It's a shocking and heartbreaking moment. This is such a loaded moment the whole reason for her to confront her past, came from some form of misplaced guilt. There's still a contradiction out there where women are expected to be having sex but are limited by some undisclosed number of people they can sleep with and if they are unfortunate to catch an STI, (or suspected to have one) the supposed onus often seem to be placed on the woman.

I can only speak from secondary sources (mainly drunken late night chats with actual real life females!) but clear that there concerns and experiences have been reflected in Kimmings performance. She also playfully mocks the way these experiences, and feminist theories, are earnestly expressed throughout performance, and all, art. As ridiculous as some of the acts performed by Kimmings are I've seen performances which pronouce their feminist credentials which come of much more ridiculious and less serious for it.

Have I learnt anything about the mysterious world of sex? Well it's a confusing mess which can in part define you and at the heart of it all there's a human attempting to control and understand at all.

For now my time in this parallel universe is over.

Fierce Festival: Covet Me Care for Me – Shelia Ghelani

Weirdly this that last week I was returning from Birmingham, so this might be a good time for a recollection of the last thing I saw as part of my brief interacting with the Fierce Festival. That being Shelia Ghelani's performance Covet Me Care for Me.

I'll be honest I don't really know what to expect as I head towards the space where the performance is being held. As I do enter the space pass the free drink and another cheery hello I attempt to take in what's going on. Which at first appears to be a group of people milling in front of a large red curtain while a delightfully soppy 50's pop song fills the air (the song is Frankie Avalon's Why? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqjjUKu9t-8 ). There is something Lynchian about the scene albeit without the sense of violence, even when I try to recall the events of the day Bobby Vinton's Blue Velvet comes crashing into my head.

I drifting here, but the Blue Velvet connection has already bought to my mind associations with love and violence, the risk you take in allowing yourself to become an object for someone else putting yourself in harm's way (well that's what I am told). My thoughts seem to be reflected at the centre of Ghelani's performance where she invites members of the audience to select a glass heart containing a nurse's watch and ribbons. They look like the tin man's attempts to make a heart. The participant is adorned with safety gear, given a hammer and asked to break the heart, once this has been done the watch and ribbons are given to the participant who disappears behind the curtain, while the shattered remains are gathered and placed in the space left by the heart.

I want to take part in this and after some confused politeness, I get my chance. I select a misshapen heart I've had my eye on, Shelia asks why I chose this one it's because it was misshapen I say which leads her to ask 'So you want to put it out of its misery?' no I feel an affinity with it an answer which Shelia likes. I place my heart on a mound in front of the curtain a note of the hearts number is taken and I sign a receipt, formalising the savage act I am about to undertake on the delicate heart. I am dressed in the safety gear and given the hammer, I kneel in front the curtain in front of the heart and with one hit it satisfactory smashes. I have to ask myself am I taking small satisfaction in symbolically breaking a heart and not having my heart broken. Once the act is done Shelia begins to disrobe me of the safety gear, just before removing the gauntlets she pauses and says: 'This is my favourite part, as I get you look in your eyes.' It's a startling moment akin to when that girl/boy you like smiles at you, a quiet personal moment for you to treasure.

Perhaps this is the underlining point of the performance, it's about the way we transfer these temporary fleeting emotions into something tangible. If we look we all have those objects connecting us back to those moments whether they be scrawled messages on a tatty bear mat or that e-mail you haven't deleted, in an attempt to preserve that spark of possibility of love. So with my memento I am sent behind the curtain where I hand over the items to a lady who will wrap the 'mongrel objects' in some fancy trappings. This is undertaken in coyish silence perhaps she is complicit in what has just occurred, they understand how and why I have come to possess this object, who knows she ain't telling.

I have my charming object, which I will care for and I think I will take up the invitation to meet up a some future point.

http://sheilaghelani.co.uk/

http://www.wearefierce.org/fierce-festival/whats-on/covet-me-care-for-me-sheila-ghelani

Fierce Festival – Prayer, James Webb

I don't know if anyone else has had this experience when engaged in a dialogue with an artwork, you can clearly see what the artist is attempting to say, you understand how you as the precipitant are meant to interact and what response the work is meant to generate within you and yet you suspect that this is an intellectual response, that's good isn't it? At least it shows that your where paying some attention during your Contextual Studies lectures, right?

This is the experience I had while 'immersed' in James Webb's installation piece Prayer, which is the first part of the Fierce Festival I've seen. As I walk pass the cheery Hello of the invigilators I enter the larger church like space of The Old Library to be greeted by what looks like a slightly tatty looking carpet with speakers poking out of it. The installation is already being experienced by a group of students who lay in-between the speakers, attentively listening to the mix of religious sounds raising from the floor, how do I their attentively listening? They have their eyes closed, which often seems the way people experience sound art.

Anyway I join them at the back of the space, and think about the interplay of sound and space, giggle when I recognise the words of Aleister Crowley come through the ethers. As I watch the others lay there I realise that I am not really sure how to interact with this piece when I think this it occurs to me that this could be due to my secularism, how do you act among this confusing mess of faiths? I know we are expected to drop to our knees in an act resembling prayer and I do this but still something nags at me, something isn't quite right. Part of me is looking for direct, looking for some priest figure to anoint me into some kind of ceremony where the religious aspects will come to the fore.

Perhaps this sensation of something 'missing' is as much an unexpected reaction to the cascade of religious sounds as it is to the experience of the installation as a whole. I wonder if it's a reflection of the difficult position religion currently has within a secular world but I feel that stems from me making those connections rather it being something inherent within the piece. It could been the overall lack of an atmosphere that has added to this sensation that this installation could have been so much more.

Here's more info…

http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?artId=716&Title=Fierce%20Festival.%20James%20Webb:%20Prayer

 

 

 

Fierce Festival: Symphony of a Missing Room - Lundahl & Seitl

This is why I am here. This is why I've travelled here.

http://www.wearefierce.org/fierce-festival/whats-on/symphony-of-a-missing-room

But where did it start? Four weeks ago I am standing in WH Smiths, killing time, reading The Wire reading about this thing, a collision of sound art and performance, space and memory. It's telling me I will be able to experience it within a certain time in a certain space.

Now, two weeks later, I am sat by my computer, at home; I've elected to take the experience.

I am waiting for it to begin; an elderly man in a long leather trench coat wearing mirrored sunglasses, carrying a cane throws his hat on the ground and sings to the sun.

I am in a nervous group my hands are free.

We follow the first guide, she leads us to a second guide already we are different, separate from everyone else, in this space, in this museum. We are given headphones a woman's voice is cooing instructions we follow another woman I never see her face, she leads us through museum rooms, have I been here before? I haven't been here but I've been here in other museums at other times haven't I? There's a piano playing we follow the guide, is she a guide? We've followed her so far, followed the instructions coming through the headphones and we find ourselves on the threshold of something if we already weren't.

We close our eyes,I hope we close are eyes. The world goes white even through my closed eyes the world goes white. Everything drops away I lose my sense of place I lose sense of time I lose any sense of anyone else but myself.

Is this where it starts?

I feel like I about to passout, slip into a lucid dream. The museum space has already dropped away, the group, the other people within the museum have gone with it. All there is, is the voice coming through from somewhere else is telling me about a room, unknown to anyone else, secret yet known,I realise that to access this room I have to give myself I have to reach out and take that hand in front(?) of me and allow it to take me where either it goes.

Space shifts through corridors, small passageways, woods, space has become elastic anything physical sense of the museum has gone all I know is that there is enough floor space to cover my footfall. Throughout this all are the hands that reach out from somewhere perhaps they are projections of my imagination, whatever the case they guide me gently, gracefully, their benign presence stops the anxiety, they don't laugh at me when I reach out to feel for that non-existent tree (I know it's not there but I have to feel for it).

I have given myself to this 'performance' I have slipped willing into this other space, this other time and it occurs to me this will end and I don't want it to. Here in this space it feels that the elastic promise of dreams can be fulfilled. On reflection it seems an incredible thing to say, I know that the world doesn't work that way but when the time comes to leave the other space I find myself back in the material world, looking at the reflection of the group in the glass covering some painting of a grand sailing ship I feel disappointed, I know that this experience will end, the memory of it will fade.

I feel the gently push of hands on my back; they are putting me right where I belong. I, we open our eyes back in the museum, fully this time in front of us someone lies on the ground, just beyond that three others sit squarely and watch us it's as if they are just on the edge of my understanding, the soon to be forgotten elements of this dream.

We close our eyes for the last time, we lay on the floor, a tap on my shoulder my eyes open and my headphones (the last connection) are removed.

I get to my feet, as do the others and we are out of that other space, we collect coats, one of the group asks me: 'do you think we ever left that room?' yes we did, we have been were we have been, the experience has been real, like the places we visit in our dreams the places we forge from our memories.

I am eating cheap food, in a dim pub.

I am waiting at an empty train station.

This is why I came here and the further away I get, the more I want to go back.

http://lundahl-seitl.com/