30th of September 2010
You know those days when they should give out medals just for leaving the house? Well today was one of those days. Wintery, cold and permanently pouring with rain. Despite this a fabulous group of young people & me met for the first of our sessions at Independent People HQ.
I’d prepared a presentation, and lots of practical exercises. The session was three hours long. Would I have enough material? Would they be bored within 10 mins & we’d all just end up on facebook? Would they just look at me and say ‘this is just too weird…?’
We ended up working solidly, fuelled by tea & kitkats, with not even a proper break (unheard of in most arty circles!) and when I looked at the clock it was 4pm. We had the most intelligent and thought provoking debates really getting straight to the nitty gritty of it all. Examples? Well what about What is Art? For just a quick starter… Whilst looking at some slides the questions were coming thick & fast. ‘Is an action Art if no one knows about it? What if the audience aren’t present? What if there is no audience?’ We talked about context and placement participation and intent. We also talked about Cheryl Cole.
I haven’t enjoyed such an indepth & relevant discussion about live art for I don’t know how long, and these young people have inspired me with their intelligent slant on the world.
We looked at all sorts of practice and performance, the wild and the wonderful to the discreet and the quiet. We sent our secrets to ‘Post Secret’ and declared ourselves all officially artists.
It amazed me the way this group took up (often quite abstract) concepts and ran with them, referring stuff back to their own life experiences and reflecting on how this might take shape for an audience. This was way more than I could have dared hoped for a first session.
The conversation naturally turned to ‘Transient Living’. What does this mean? What does it mean to US?. The group spoke about their experiences of being insecurely housed and what the issues are personally. Individual stuff, but with themes so common to all of us. We decided we wanted to focus on this aspect and saw the analogy of the ‘shared house’ fit really well with what we mean: The shared house is a structure, a communal dwelling. In the case of these particular young people each inhabitant shares a commonality of homelessness, the same set of issues. However, once the individual doors are shut there are so many individual lives being led, with their unique set of problems, hopes and fears. We decided this was really important to get across, and had some great initial ideas about how we could communicate this. But first….
We had to find a name!
An hour later and we got a taste of why people pay ad agencies…
We wanted to communicate all the above in a catchy, memorable & descriptive way. Many rejects (some to stupid/rude/abstract to mention) were, well, rejected before we came up with something solid, something multi faceted, something fitting…
SEDIMENTARY
Watch this space for how it beds in….
Oh yes, those medals are on order for all.
Photos of Neil Callaghan and Simone Kenyon building their Currah for their 'Museum of Floating Objects', with the help of Rory at Bristol Harbourside
2nd of October 2010
We ended up working solidly, fuelled by tea & kitkats, with not even a proper break (unheard of in most arty circles!) and when I looked at the clock it was 4pm. We had the most intelligent and thought provoking debates really getting straight to the nitty gritty of it all. Examples? Well what about What is Art? For just a quick starter… Whilst looking at some slides the questions were coming thick & fast. ‘Is an action Art if no one knows about it? What if the audience aren’t present? What if there is no audience?’ We talked about context and placement participation and intent. We also talked about Cheryl Cole.
I haven’t enjoyed such an indepth & relevant discussion about live art for I don’t know how long, and these young people have inspired me with their intelligent slant on the world.
We looked at all sorts of practice and performance, the wild and the wonderful to the discreet and the quiet. We sent our secrets to ‘Post Secret’ and declared ourselves all officially artists.
It amazed me the way this group took up (often quite abstract) concepts and ran with them, referring stuff back to their own life experiences and reflecting on how this might take shape for an audience. This was way more than I could have dared hoped for a first session.
The conversation naturally turned to ‘Transient Living’. What does this mean? What does it mean to US?. The group spoke about their experiences of being insecurely housed and what the issues are personally. Individual stuff, but with themes so common to all of us. We decided we wanted to focus on this aspect and saw the analogy of the ‘shared house’ fit really well with what we mean: The shared house is a structure, a communal dwelling. In the case of these particular young people each inhabitant shares a commonality of homelessness, the same set of issues. However, once the individual doors are shut there are so many individual lives being led, with their unique set of problems, hopes and fears. We decided this was really important to get across, and had some great initial ideas about how we could communicate this. But first….
We had to find a name!
An hour later and we got a taste of why people pay ad agencies…
We wanted to communicate all the above in a catchy, memorable & descriptive way. Many rejects (some to stupid/rude/abstract to mention) were, well, rejected before we came up with something solid, something multi faceted, something fitting…
SEDIMENTARY
Watch this space for how it beds in….
Oh yes, those medals are on order for all.
Photos of Neil Callaghan and Simone Kenyon building their Currah for their 'Museum of Floating Objects', with the help of Rory at Bristol Harbourside
2nd of October 2010
Collaboratively written text between Liz Clarke and participants from 1625 Independent People for 'Sedimentary'.
13th November 2010
A corridor.
Three rooms.
Three doors.
The audience view through cracks in the doors.
They are voyeurs into someone else’s life.
Inside the rooms are uniform… same bed, same wardrobe, same chairs.
Listen closely and you might hear the occupant’s thoughts.
One room a pile of brown envelopes: meetings, appointments, bills, reminders, more bills, more appointments, more reminders. The pile gets bigger and bigger until it engulfs the room
An exercise using text to spark a physical devising process….
ENDURING
RAW
METHOD
MOMENTS
CURIOSITY
AWARENESS
Concrete details
Ready made senses
Architecture
Form
Webs
Meaning
CLOUDY SWING NERVOUS BREATH CURTSEYING SMELLY FISH CONTRIBUTED
Blown Skeleton
Essence
Memory
Chalk
Original Kings of England Call Out
MUSICIANS WANTED
F I D D L E R S B A N J O I S T S L U T I S T S D U L C I M E R I S T S
G U I T A R - FA N C I E R S S I N G E R S M O R R I S M E N C L O G G E R S
PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO CLAP JUMP AND STAMP THEIR FEET WHO
(WITH LOVE) WILL TEAR APART AND PUT BACK TOGETHER AGAIN
THE FOLK TRADITIONS OF THE SOUTH WEST OF ENGLAND
PART OF IT WILL BE MUSIC AND SONGS; PART OF IT
WILL BE TALKING; PART OF IT WILL BE DOING A DANCE.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BELONG TO THIS BAND EMAIL
NEILSIMONBOWES @ GMAIL.COM
THEN WE WILL
1/ HAVE A THINK ABOUT WHAT SONGS TO DO*
2/ LEARN THEM
3/ COME TOGETHER ON THE EVENING OF THE
12th NOVEMBER TO MEET EACH OTHER AND
REHEARSE, BEFORE DRINKING
4/ MEET ON THE SATURDAY AFTERNOON AND GO
THROUGH IT ONCE MORE, AND THEN
5/ FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY THE BAND WILL
PERFORM A SET (20-25 MINUTES), BEFORE
SPLITTING UP
WE WILL HAVE BEEN A RAMSHACKLE MADE-UP BAND, CAREWORN AND
LOVELORN AND VERY LIKELY DRUNKEN. THE KIND OF BAND YOU HAD TO
SEE LIVE. SLIP YOUR SCRATCHED SONG FROM THEIR CIVIL HEARTS.
SONGS:
“Come All You Worthy Christian Men” “The Death of Queen Jane” “ Seventeen Come Sunday” “I’m a
Man That’s Done Wrong to His Parents” “The Undutiful Daughter” “Time to Remember the Poor” “The
Forsaken Maiden” “I Went to My True Love” “The Two Sisters”
click on: www.greenjack.btinternet.co.uk/songs.htm
