The Humble Market – AND Festival WE PLAY Expo, Miller Park Preston

You might remember that sometime ago I paid a visit to The Humble Market while it had taken up shop within the walls of FACT. That was at the beginning of summer and now where at the edge of autumn and I find myself waiting by the side of a railway bridge located in a rather nice park in Preston. Why? Well The Humble Market has set up a new stall underneath this railway bridge, which forms part of the WE PLAY Expo which has gathered many of the projects created via the Cultural Olympiad to mark the end of the Olympics.

Whatever the rhymes and reasons of it being here, or my own reasons for being here for that matter. Where here, and I'm looking forward it curious to see how the controlled installation I saw at FACT has transposed itself to this exterior setting. How will my experience of the piece differ, already I can hear excited whoops coming from behind the fencing separating us from the performance space. I can't help wonder how this all relates to the warning of the 'psychological challenging' nature of the piece.

Quickly we are gathered and allowed to pass through the fence and as we do so we are handed a foam animal mask. Mines a tiger. It briefly flashes through my mind that this could be a device used in order to break down inhibitions, giving each 'player' something to hide behind. There's no time to really mull over this as we are suddenly ushered through the space filled with various vehicles and the pounding sounds of Baile Funk by performers dressed in gorilla suits. Our hairy guides take us towards a stage area where another gorilla is on stage in boxing gloves and shorts, sparring with thin air. Behind him are the standard images of Brazil, beaches full of tall tanned people, all juxtaposed with facts about Brazil current state and it promised future state of power and status.

We are instructed to dance and contemplate the fact that the world will be more Brazilian by 2020 and are we ready for this? What does it matter anyway? Who is that figure gilding through the bouncing crowd, is it the king of Brazil as he is dressed in flowing robes. Whoever he is he demands that members of the crowd answer his question 'What's the first thing that comes into your mind when you think of Brazil'. The usual tropes pop up, samba, sunshine, the whole The Girl form Ipanema view of Brazil. Looking back on it I seems that this was some kind of brainwashing, as it was disorientating, pushing you sweeping you along with a strange energy. There's no way you can get out now. Suddenly I find myself hands in the air swaying along to We Are the World.

This is just the beginning. We are gathered into our packs and lead by a gorilla host to one of the vehicles. I'm lined up against the taxi I saw in Liverpool in front of some familiar looking head dresses, our workshops are about to begin. A countdown, a horn blares and it starts.

Time for a group photo and like before where ushered in the taxi. For a moment I wonder if the energy from the pumped up intro is about to dissipate. It all seems to running along the same lines as Liverpool, same car, same projection, same scouse accent coming from the radio. Until the car is invaded by a gorilla who rampages through the car. It's one of those moments that occur in pieces like this, as audience member you're face with a decision, whether to be passive or join in. Not knowing what to do I tickle the gorilla.

What comes next compounds the difficulty of deciding a level of interactivity. As suddenly a hand slams on the window. The door fly's open and women dressed in paramilitary uniform begin dragging the passengers out of the car. Is this a test of British reserve versus Latin confrontation? I don't know but as they point their hands in the shape of guns at me, I know who has the power here. This little group of soon dragged into a extreme samba workshop. All this takes place a corner tucked away from the rest of the space; it's at once sinister and exciting. It's also a great use of the under bridge setting as it hints of horrible acts undertaken away from the gaze of others. As we learn samba moves under the piss-yellow light of the streetlights our capturers demand we answer questions regarding the state of the poor of Brazil. The snarling policewomen detest our status as tourist only here for sunshine and bright shiny smiles, so much so that we are executed!

This must be the 'psychological challenging' section of tonight and one of our party does look genuinely shocked, but soon our capturers are cheerfully shacking our hands and it on to the next workshop.

Which takes place within a white stretched limo, on the way there were instructed by our gorilla guide to hold hands. I actually take the hands of the people either side of me, that's not like me maybe the last experience has pushed me to be more Brazilian. Once in the limo we discover that this is a song writing workshop where asked to drag up emotions from our mobile phones in order to create a song. After the shock of our car-jacking this part of the performance seems good natured and sweet. Almost a chance to catch your breath and maybe it suffers because of that.

Then it's on to the next workshop. I find myself face to face with the INTIMATRON. In its original form this piece came off as a little flat, but in this edited form there is more of a drive behind it. The format remains the same, questions are answered. After that I play a repeat visit to Philosophy Hill again to ponder the mysteries of the universe this time accompanied by hot water bottles and a monk who sits serenely in the back of a van. Maybe it's the adrenaline set off the initial dancing but peoples answers seem to come more easily.

It's soon time for the final workshop, which takes place in the back of a transit van. In the van we gathered around a round table in an atmosphere akin to a séance. We are taken through a tale of possible success; we are given control of the main character of this tale instructed to make decisions of their behalf. Though this questions are raised about the nature of success and also our individual attitudes towards it. During this element I begin to notice the group dynamic some members of the group are vocal, some still looked shell-shocked by the pervious events. We eventually steer our fictional creation 'Rob' to some form of success, whatever that means, we disembark from the van and head back to the stage area.

Here a apparently simple question awaits us 'Waiting room or Disco?' I go for Disco. We put our masks back on and are handing headphones to get the full effect of the music. We are joined by three gorillas and a brash record producer. He's going to ask questions and if we agree we put our hands in the air. So there we are in our Baile cocoon, I wonder what we look like to those who had chosen 'waiting room' do come off as foolish, does it seem where having a good time, do we appear more 'Brazilian'. At the time none of this occurred it me I just danced and threw my hands up in the air in a positive response to the questions. I notice that people are being ushered up on stage to stand in front of large projected images of the other people, is this the live link up to Brazil? I'll find out soon enough.

Before that something strange happens, after a group hug (hey, it's that kind of party) my headphones are switched to another channel. Suddenly I'm hearing a voice asking to look to the person in front of me and if we could be friends. I had been accidently switch to another channel and suddenly I'm confronted with an awareness of what I'm doing, sweating underneath this mask, but being so caught up with the whole atmosphere of the piece I keep going, and our guide switches me back to the right channel. Eventually I find myself to be the only once dancing; I get to be King of the Disco! Whatever that means, I get a cheer its some kind of success.

After that I'm taken to the stage where my telematic moment awaits. I'm about to be broadcasted to a stranger, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm probably on some kind of rush after all that dancing I'd be nervous. I stand on my mark and await my possible new friend to appear. in front of me there arrive a pleasant looking girl, were asked to scan each other, make judgments regarding the sentiment of movements. Eventually where both asked if we'd like to keep in touch over the year. I say yes, she says no. It's a little disappointing but who many times much this happen a day, who many times has it happened to me before, I can't and I don't take it personally.

Turning our backs on each other I leave the stage and begin to leave The Humble Market. Like before we are handed an assessment of our Brazilian-ness. The message still appears to be non-sense, but this time I have the sensation that somehow any concept of identity lays with the control of the other of someone else. This sensation raises the question of how can anyone think of commodifying something so elusive and maybe this leads to a way of circumventing the powers that set out to wrap us up into individual sellable packages. If no one can put a finger on how you are, surely they'll won't be able to put a price tag on you.

Having this question in my head as I walk away from the stage of The Humble Market, indicates that this configuration of The Humble Market has been more successful at articulating its concepts and preoccupations. Of course whatever form they have taken it has been clear that they have been ambitious projects and one of the highlights of this years AND Festival.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Secret of the Machine

What does it mean to be a machine? Not just the simple blank faced binary motivation of your computer. Something else, something more akin to begin the Grand Wizard of Oz.

The person behind the curtain that you mustn't look behind.

From the other side one might ask: Why shouldn't you look you might ask why not and confirm your belief that there is no sophisticated machinery behind there. You won't look because admit it you want to believe, to get lost in the idea that two artist have created an artificial intelligence set solely in the task of spice development in the back of a caravan.

Why wouldn't you? It's a small request though, to suspend your disbelief, it makes you engage more. It makes you more excited to find a computer that is puzzling over the properties of nutmeg or the algorithms that might describe the delicacies between sweet and sour.

Much more involving then watching a person like me fumble with jars.

So take it from me, the secret of the machine, all the interesting stuff is happening on your side.

A Rainy Day in Manchester

So it's Friday the 13^th and I am looking at the rain outside of my window and I think to myself 'If I have to stay in I am going to have to go out'. I grab my umbrella and head off towards Manchester for some artfaggery.

Under the cover of said umbrella I set off in the direction of my first destination BLANKSPACE to see an exhibition entitled Chroma by Liz West, which reports to explore themes of colour theory, collecting and the real and illusory.

After arriving at BLANKSPACE I find myself within a room facing a pile of furniture. It's like being in some forgotten some backroom or attic only there are monitors poking out from within some of the cupboards. Each seems to be panning over a sea of bric a brac each dedicated to a band of the spectrum. I am not sure what to think as I stand in the dank. I can see one of the draws is open I take a peek and its empty. Though the smell of all this old furniture is touching some buttons.

I move on to the next piece, where as I go upstairs I am greeted by a red glow a intriguing piece of atmosphere perhaps? Once at the top of the stairs I see the source of this glow a room painted red which is accompanied by three other rooms each filled with colour (green, blue, yellow). There is something about approaching and being these rooms that does make me think about the condition of being 'red' or 'blue'. Of course my nerd brains flicks to the colour coded labs of The Andromeda Strain. In each of the rooms there is a vitrine filled with white plastic junk, this is meant to make us think about how things are affected by colour, but for me I found it distracting from the fact that I myself was being coloured. There is a lot I like about the works for example the orange glow which emanates from the slit that is Orange Chamber which in turns defines the small corridor space is interesting. All this is slightly diffused when you look through the slit into a reflected world of detritus. Maybe I should think about it in another way maybe Liz West has created the condition where I expected to see a golden dawn only to face disappointment.

On the whole it's a positive start Liz West's work has been interesting and engaging. Now it's off down Oxford Rd to the Whitworth to see We Face Forward part of a city wide celebration of contemporary African art. Which you can add to the growing list of 'things I know very little about'. Looking around I wonder what I am going to learn about Africa the work has a familiarity to it, documentary photographs, conceptual ideas float around, themes of identity and information overload abound. Pieces which stick for me are Pascale Morthike Tayou's The World Falls Apart a manmade forest filled with the frames of ghost diamonds and strange distorted figures. The wall blurb describes it as a 'bridge between thinking and dreaming' and it has that element of a dream where objects are familiar and yet unknowable. I also liked Lucy Azubike's paintings called Wear and Tear the paintings themselves are careful recreations of the scraps left behind by layers of posters. They suggest to me a series of designs for a new style of urban camouflage one best suited for the war of the everyday.

I am left with the feeling there's more perhaps a second visit would be in order.

Then it's back up Oxford Rd through the crowds of begowned graduating students and head towards the Cornerhouse for Stanya Khan's exhibition It's Good, I'm Cool. Which I'm informed by the pamphlet handed to me by the invigilator is her first solo show in Europe and is comprised of her videos and drawings. What it doesn't mention is comfy sofas and Laz-E-Boys!

Said furniture is welcomed as I sit in front of the image of a battered, bruised and bandaged figure talking about the macho-ness of certain hamburgers to someone off screen. This conversation is soundtracked by small blasts of METAL! It suggests a kind of empty masculinity. As the video progresses we see this damaged figure undertake a strange odyssey where she, still dressed in hospital robes, is seen in the desert discovering a briefcase, going skateboarding. We also she her going through her day to day life despite of her injuries there's a strange mixture of the ordinary and the strange in this video that conflict between extreme personal trauma and the fact that the rest of the world carries on. Which runs through all the videos and the first floor, what also strikes me is the honesty of the videos. In two videos Kathy and Sandra where Khan interview her best friend and her mother's casting a sympathetic eye over their lives, guts are spilled questions about how we live are lives are asked. There is no real narrative to these pieces I get the sensation that I could simply dip in and out these are slices of life always changing always the same.

What also strikes me about Khan's work is a refreshing lack of irony, even when dressed like a penis in Looking Good Feeling Good there's no sense of knowingness which leads to a sense of vulnerability and kind of warmth I guess. I think I mean her work has Pathos which for me can be summed up it by one of her drawings (her drawings feature animals and imamate objects caught in tableaus of everyday angst) which features two octopus one is missing a tentacle the other simply says 'It'll grow back'. It's funny, sad and charming, think Rob Ryan without the sappiness, and would look great on my wall.

That's kind of where my day ends, I did make it to the Manchester Art Gallery with 5 minutes to closing so only briefly saw what they had on display so I can save that for another day.

Kaffe Mattews – you might come out of the water every time singing

Sitting on the edge of a pontoon my feet dangling off the edge into a dim abyss. Though in my equally dim mind I know that the solid floor is inches away from my feet. I am staring at my feet and I am surrounding, enveloped by shifting patterns of sound. These sounds generated by the data accrued from the behaviour of Hammerhead sharks that inhabit the waters of an island I shall never visit.

The varying sound tumbling around me in pitch and speed, gives me a duality where I'm both part of this environment and its centre. Attempting to avoid the cliché for listening to sound art I keep my eyes open. The next time you experience a sound piece look for people doing the 'sound art pose' – eyes closed, head cocked to one side. My reason for this is that like all installations, a sound installation should alter my perception or experience of the space in which it is installed.

I'm laying on the platform now, looking up at the four green lights and a trench that forms part of ceiling the gallery space. The sound passes from speaker to speaker indicating that invisible, partly physical thing are circling the space.

Then the rumbling kicks in.

The platform begins to vibrate; it begins to vibrate my vision. It's not an entirely unpleasant experience but it is akin to being drunk, on you bed waiting for room to stop spinning. Something which is at one thrilling but you want the sensation to leave you so you can return to a sense of normality. A mixture of laying on my back and the rolling thumping sound has disoriented me.

Having already though about writing about my experience words begin to rush in. Really hard-core pretentious stuff like: 'What fire could recall the firmament' and 'How can you code the seas'. Then I realise there are meant to be sharks here swimming in the either, but there isn't. What I am experiencing here is movement transformed in data then transformed into sound. An attempt to comprehend nature as right, as abstract, as a diagram in a book.

Then I begin to consider is the enveloping sound really that abstract. It feels as much as an amplification of the world around you. The movement of others, the lives of others, if you can spend a few moments stand at the top of the stairwell. Looking at the people walking around the space below and see how it tally's with the sound.

Somewhere within the swirl of sound I began to think about how in our species attempts to catalogue the world still points to something unknowable. Something elusive in the actions of the creatures which inhabit this planet from: apes to bacteria. Maybe it is this experience of the unattainable that makes us delve deeper into the unknown. To listen out for the song that is referred to in the title of this piece.

Kaffe Matthews installation is currently part of the Galapagos exhibition at The Bluecoat until the 1^st July

http://www.artistsvisitgalapagos.com/

http://www.kaffematthews.net/

Prometheus

Well it's been a week since Prometheus landed Ridley Scott's return not only to the Alien franchise but to science fiction. The film not unlike George Lucas's return to the Star Wars universe has seen some frenzied fanboy action who've been waiting 30ish years for Ridley to get back to the future.

Thirty years that's plenty of time for people's ideas and beliefs about a film, and what a film should be to become quite ingrained. Even Scott who was responsible for so much of what we would expect from any film connected to the Alien franchise would have a mountain of expectation to climb. Despite Scott being the drive behind Prometheus, as he appeared haunted by the hollow eyes of the 'space jockey' and its role in the creation of the xenomorph.

As Scott is drive behind Prometheus it's only natural that his influences and sensibilities' will show through. What do I know about his influences? Well I believe that one of those influences to be the work of Moebius and comics like Metal Hurlant. From the opening 'sacrifice' scene where a unidentified alien destroys himself leaving bits of its DNA all a familiar looking landscape, before skipping millennia to a group of futuristic archaeologists. Somewhere around this point I wondered if I was watching a live action version of a Moebius strip. It seemed that Prometheus would be a grandiose, sometimes queasy, mixture of ancient mythologies and futurism often found in comics of the 70's.

Like these comics, Prometheus is a bit of a fantastic mess. It has plot holes that you could fly the Nostromo through. It also has several competing plot strands; this element invoked a comparison with David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. Mulholland Drive being an unmade TV series mushed into a film leaving a few stories untold. Of course Scott's films aren't always celebrated for their plots. The film seems to breeze through characters, or does it? Comparisons between the crew of the Prometheus and Nostromo can be drawn, though the crew of the Prometheus are meeting for the first time and therefore don't have the shared experiences and the petty grievances of the Nostromo crew.

The exception would be Fassbender's David who is pretty much the focus of the film and thanks to the behaviour of pervious androids (expect Bishop) we know that androids are sneaky and not on your side. Preferring to tow the company line and admiring the alien. Having an android at the centre of the film does invite comparisons with Blade Runner, though the androids in Blade Runner are much nobler then the ones in Scott's Alien universe. In both films androids have disappointing encounters with their creators.

All that aside what has Prometheus brought to the Alien franchise. For me it has brought of back a sense of Freudian unease to the alien. When characters become infected by the alien there is an undercurrent of a sexual act being forced upon them. The character of Shaw herself is infected through 'normal' sex in the ultimate corruption of human reproduction. This corruption of reproduction and therefor a corruption of humanity lies at the core of what makes the alien scary. Killing you out right isn't enough, especially if it can infect you and force you into becoming the genesis of some other vile creature. You can see my point when you are confronted with the possibility of giving birth to a squid baby, a squid baby that has eyes that shoot tentacles.

Prometheus is uneven, but it is ambitious and tries to deal with everything from the parent/child bond to the ultimate question of why are we here. Maybe not successfully but after a week I'm still thinking about it where with some blockbusters I've forgotten them on the walk home.

PS. I saw it in 2D.

Galapagos, The Bluecoat - Liverpool

I am sure I am not alone in doing this but when I wonder around exhibitions making seemingly random connections between the work on display and my own experiences. One of these connections happened while looking at The Bluecoat's current Galapagos exhibition, where I was reminded of a novel I had read I few years ago called The Traveller in Black
by John Brunner. This was a fantasy novel wherein the titular Traveller in Black is charged with bringing order and reason to a world of chaos and magic.

Why would this fantasy novel spring to mind, when the twelve artists involved in the exhibition have rooted themselves within the real world, within the physicality of the Galapagos Islands themselves. It may lay in my perception of the islands themselves, which provides a kind of link to The Bluecoat's previous Topophobia exhibition. The associations between the exhibitions between Brunner's book and the exhibition may have been triggered by Alexis Deacon's sketches of the creatures that dwell of the dream archipelagos.

Within Deacon's rather beautiful drawings there is the reminder of a time when 'here be monsters', things that existed just beyond the horizon, monsters which disappeared into fiction as Europeans expanded their influence across the globe. The islands saw their first European visitors in the 16^th century who saw nothing of worth in the islands, outside of providing a rich source of protein in the form of Giant Tortoises. So this pragmatism is counter to the image I have of sailors struck in awe at the creatures living on the islands. Though I have to wonder what the sailor Thomas Chappell saw that caused him to burn one of the islands in 1820.

Maybe this marks the point the starting point where the European idea of reason conquered though exploration and categorization the realms of mythology. Like Brunner's titular hero's quest to bring everything to a single nature. A process that continues to this day, when confronted by Dorothy Cross's hovering whale spine, their first reaction is to assume that it is the bones of a dinosaur. Rather than the bones of some forgotten giant species. I also wonder if this speaks about our perception that we are the top of our evolutionary tree and therefore there is nothing 'bigger' then us currently on this planet.

Taking that supposed place on the top of the tree, eventually humans settled on Galapagos. Their lives and settlements becoming fodder for the exploratory photographs of the likes of Paulo Catrica or even falling under the critical eye of the islands true inhabitants such as The Blue-footed Booby (with the help of Marcus Coates) who sees nothing special in the lives of humans. I guess what we can take from the progression of reason is that we aren't as separate from nature as we seem, and within the ecology of the islands we see ecology of our selves.

I've also written a piece about Kaffe Matthews sound installation read it here

http://confusedguff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/kaffe-mattews-you-might-come-out-of.html

http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/events/view/exhibitions/1255

http://www.artistsvisitgalapagos.com/

Where I’m Anymore…

This was a piece I wrote as a companion piece to this http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2012/02/no-map-for-this-territory/ which in turn was about the recent Topophobia exhibition at The Bluecoat….

Where to begin, where do I position myself to begin writing. It's problematic. Especially when the subject you want to talk about, in this case the Topophobia exhibition at The Bluecoat, which itself deals with the shifting definitions of space and place.

So where I am? (Or should that be where was I?) Well this piece was initially written in The Bluecoat Gallery, to be more precise Gallery 3 of The Bluecoat. That's the room at the back with the really big windows, where the orbs of Polly Gould sit quietly and look out on the passers-by.

It seems apt to start here, in a place which a mere four years ago not exist in this state as it was created during the gallery's two year hibernation. Which leads into the other reason, it was in that period of hibernation that saw the 'arrival' of Liverpool One, a large retail development which has become to dominate this part of the city.

Looking out into the street I wonder if this is an example of what Marc Augé termed super modernity. A space or place which is as once familiar, but holds no meaning. A place which has no evidence of human permanence, the little echoes of humanity, yet. In a slight digression a place like Liverpool One also highlights, if inadvertently, the economic, social and political forces that shape a city. Also how the ambitions of a small group of people can have on the wider population.

Why have I wittered on about retail development (a subject I know very little about) well spending time in Gallery 3 it hard not to see a bleedthrough between exhibitions themes of displacement of the reduction of meaning which leads to feeling of anxiety and the space immediately outside the gallery space. Though I am not sure which is bleeding into which.

Perhaps it's just being in the Gallery 3 space with it large aquarium like windows which offers me a view on the people passing by which makes me reflect on the transient nature of the space that surrounds us. This in turn makes me reflect on the transient nature of the space I inhabit.

Surely to some degree this gallery is a non-place. As much through necessary for a gallery space has to be accommodating to the art which flows through it. A sympathetic shell, a contemporary gallery in the broadest sense of the world.

Are the spaces of The Bluecoat and Liverpool One a model of how we live in the world? To understand that nothing is permanent, that everything is open to change. These shifting, intermediate spaces have existed in one form of another. Ever since somebody set up an artificial border (a hedge of fence) and claimed that this land is different from all the land which surrounds.

This claiming of ownership of land can be considered the origin of where our concepts and landscape and place. Is this where our anxieties about place stem from? This supposedly setting of physical boundaries created a set of undefined boundaries between commerce and culture. For centuries the idea of a place was in part set by the people who wanted to or could afford to, little interest in with we would consider 'landscape painting' until land owners wanted to be able to show off their lands without taking people there.

What has this got to do with The Bluecoat or Liverpool One, well for one it shows the artists role in defining or exploring our notions of place. Only now these definitions are as much up to the individual as much as they are to the culture, perhaps our modern definitions of place arrive from shared experiences rather than solely physical limits. Would it be better to consider these apparent non-places such as Liverpool One, chain stores and even perhaps contemporary galleries (though I haven't mentioned it before the internet) as the canvases, stages on which we become part of a collective experience.

Of course from my removed position (once in Gallery 3, now elsewhere) I can't offer definitive proof of this, but it is something to consider the next time you pop into a gallery or even Tesco's or Starbucks.

The exhibition will tour to the Spacex Gallery, Exeter from the 12^th May

www.spacex.org.uk

www.topophobia.co.uk