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| Ambient Jam at West Greenwich House |
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| London Bridge |
Sometimes a plan goes completely
out the window, and there’s no avoiding it. No matter how prepared you are,
things crop up and all you can do is let go and do your best to steer the change of
course. Take
weeklyweaves for instance, it’s hardly a weekly post is it? And it is
not for lack of work being produced... Ideas for posts come and go and might be revisited at some point, meanwhile the
production of
dailymades, always a priority, has merged with current projects
and proposals. One of these is a series of objects created for
Entelechy Arts’
Ambient Jam sessions and well as a project at Oakleigh School in North London,
part of the Little Boxes of Memories touring programme.
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| Ambient Jam at The Albany |
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| String, tape, plastic and paper |
I’m writing this fresh out of an
Ambient Jam session, more of a training session on this occasion, designed for
all of us facilitators to try out new things, push ideas forward and feed back
to each other.
The latter is
always a challenge; the sessions are
profound experiences with all communication and activity relying on touch,
movement and sound. Words always fail me afterwards...
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| Ambient Jam at The Albany |
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| Between Worlds at The Barbican |
As briefed, I
planned to present something to the group. This would take the form of a
question about the use of specific materials and props during sessions. I
filled my bag with a few essentials: cellotape, string, fabric, balloons, paper
roll, elastic rope and plastic bags. This is my Ambient Jam toolkit, though a
reduced version of it on this occasion. I aimed for less be more and not a
bore. To answer my question I’d set a simple task: pick a material, play with it, pass it on.
Charles would stop playing his
instruments for 5 minutes also so we could hear sounds generated by the
materials. For once I’d take the opportunity to sit out I’d sit out and observe
and reflect.
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| Fashion project at Camberwell college of Arts |
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| Sock rope |
Did this happen? No! We all got
stuck in straight away… The elastic came out, we wrapped ourselves in it,
balloons were blown, yoga mats were used as blankets and thrown around, bodies
moved in all directions in and around the space in different groupings, and
parts of the moveable stage were stacked up together in seemingly precarious
ways to create slides and a high plinth (and there I am worrying about the
health and safety impact of using elastic!).
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| plastic bags |
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| Plastic bags and balloon |
Though my question was never
stated as such, it was answered – I tried new ways of working with materials
and saw others do the same. As
with any research, one question leads to many others… A whole set was created
by the end of the session, and though the memory of this will stay with us,
objects won’t, in this configuration at least. The next Ambient Jam session
will start again with a clear space. Might there an alternative to this? Can an
end not be our next beginning? Can the transformation and change of all these
physical elements in space not be about building down as much as building up,
and thinking creatively about undoing as well as doing? What about the ecology
of all this: can the salvaged materials left behind from one session not be
transformed into a new set of objects used in the next? Or has this happened
already? Over to you Ambient Jammers…
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| Ambient Jam at The Albany |
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| Rehearsal space and prop at Cecil Sharp House |
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| Rubbish in my studio |
