collaborating with myself

‘The real issue is not how do you find your voice, but how to get rid of it’ – Phillip Glass

Can this be the benefit of creative collaboration?  Not according to Sally Potter. It’s ok to relinquish your voice if you have one, but some of us don’t have had that privilege. If you’re lucky enough to have a voice, own it and celebrate it! Collaboration is all too often an excuse to mask the embarrassment of claiming authorship for something she argues.  Mmm, now there's something to argue about…

This and other ideas on creative collaboration were shared in a panel discussion at Central St Martins, an event part of Dance Umbrella 2013 held earlier this month, where a number of speakers working across film, theatre and dance talked about the subject from directed collaboration to shared authorship. Working as I do in participatory settings, this was of interest to me and not least because of my recent involvement in a couple of projects with Entelechy Arts.

One of these is Ambient Jam, a unique programme of movement and sensory-based work with adults and young people who have profound and multiple disabilities. Many company members have physical disabilities combined with learning disabilities preventing them from expressing in words their experiences, interests and needs. In these sessions, the body and its senses provide the ways and means for expression and communication through improvisation, social dance and live movement. The multi-sensory workshops and short term projects that arise from them lead to a creative dialogue between all involved.

Contributing to these workshops, primarily as a visual artist, has challenged my understanding of what participation and creative collaboration is.  In a situation where verbal communication cannot be relied on, who facilitates what, who leads who, and whose creativity is explored isn’t so clear anymore. You have to forget what you know, loose your ‘voice’ as it were, and be completely in the ‘moment’ for the creative exchange to be meaningful. The outcome is you do find your voice in unexpected places. As the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan put it in the talk referred to above, to hear music we sometime need to stop playing and simply hold the flute to the wind.

What have these pictures got to do with any of the above you may ask? Well, images of Ambient Jam can be seen on this link, meanwhile I've illustrated here images taken while dismantling my installation at Nottingham Castle. Even when working alone, we are collaborating with our memory and our acquired knowledge. The dismantling of the work led to the production of objects that were the result not only of a collaboration between myself, but also the material I worked with, the site and the weather.  The process was planned and methodical, but they were also happy accidents that were embraced and lead to what you see pictured here.

in the studio with me

portrait by David Sandison

Very nice to have thoughts about your work written by someone else for a change, so I’m seizing the opportunity to post these here, as published in The Independent on Saturday. Enough said, over to Karen Wright…

it ain't nothing without you...

'Art isn't what you make, but what you make happen'
- Jeremy Deller

When working on participatory projects, the challenge always is to know how much information to impart to the participants. Saying too much can result in diminished creative input from the group. So how do you get the most from the participants? How do you best capitalise on their creative ambitions while also managing artistic control over the piece? How do you make on the spot decisions when exploring new creative ideas? These are some of the questions I asked myself during the Delve Deeper Intensive with Helen Carnac and Laïla Diallo last month at Siobhan Davies.

Choreographers by nature of their work are likely to be more familiar with this than other artists. I was most impressed with Laïla’s delivery of various tasks she set to the group: economical, measured, open ended.  It prevented us from ‘end-gaming’ what the outcome would be and helped us embrace the unexpected while also valuing the minutiae of whatever we were doing.

A large part of my installation in the Make Believe exhibition at Nottingham Castle, separate from the weaving between trees (see previous post), involved using fencing pins in the lawn, as you would pins in a lace pillow, to produce ‘lace’ around the grounds of the castle.

To prepare for this I practiced various stitches in the studio on an actual lace pillow and drew up a pattern to follow when making the work on site.  However as soon as we started, the pattern had to be scrapped. The action of working the sisal twine using custom made bobbins to cover the grounds lead me to rework the pattern I had and make up new stitches as we worked our way across the lawn.  What guided me through this was allowing the participants to find their own way of working with the materials and each other. This improvised method, based on set manoeuvres, proved the best way of making the ‘lace’ in the end.

It’s nice to think that with a different group, the outcome would have been very different, and without anyone, the piece could not have been realized at all.

taking on the squirrel super-highway...

A gardener once told me the best way to catch squirrels is to hose them down with water. Their tail gets so heavy they can hardly move. You then seize that moment to throw a blanket over them and grab your humane rodent trap or shotgun, depending on your persuasion, to remove the furry vandals from your garden. Problem solved!  That’s the theory anyway…

follow the red path...

... and the blue one to the left,

My current installation Panoramic Pathways at the Nottingham Castle Museum was damaged the other week due to squirrel activity. It seems one of the stitched pathways crosses over a squirrel super-highway and some sisal was gnawed.  These furry foes hate change apparently and evidence of this on their patch is likely to be challenged.  They stop minding after a year apparently, but that’s no good to me given the work is up for a couple of months only.

duck under...

... and swoop over,

then take a breather and enjoy the view.

As the hosepipe method is not an option on the castle grounds, I went up to Nottingham and repaired the piece with Helen Ansell, one of the volunteers who originally helped with the making of the installation. Together we worked out the most efficient way of doing the repairs, exchanging tips and drawing/ writing these down as instructions for further reference. We’re now ready to take the bushy tailed vandals on!

zig-zag your way along...

In the meanwhile, posted here are a few images taken by John Hartley during the making and filming of the piece.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride…

... and finish with a flourish!

panoramic pathways

Here is a sneak preview of Panoramic Pathways (Nottingham City Lace), my contributing installation for Make Believe, a forthcoming exhibition opening this week at Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery.

The work was produced with the assistance of a group of volunteers based in and around Nottingham. Many thanks to them once again for all their help; the piece simply couldn’t have been made without them. Excluding material used while researching and experimenting, nearly 50 kgs of twine (15kms) was stitched between trees on the castle grounds to produce the piece. In case you were wondering, this is the reason why sisal twine has featured repeatedly in recent dailymades. 

I won’t give too much away with more images just yet as the show is still to open, but there might be more of these coming in the next few of posts, so keep your eyes peeled…  For more info on the exhibition, visit the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art or the Nottingham Museum & Art Gallery website.  Better still, come see the exhibition!

lost in lace

Inspiration lies only round the corner. While in the process of developing my forthcoming installation at the Nottingham Castle Museum (see previous post), I now see now lace patterns everywhere! Here are some examples, alongside actual lace patterns.

This project is truly taking me on a new path of discovery, but might it also drive me round the bend?  No matter, I'm loving being lost in lace in the meanwhile!

knots for Notts

I spent two glorious days in the sun the week before last in the grounds of Nottingham Castle, overlooking the city and rehearsing the making of my next installation for the museum’s forthcoming exhibition Make Believe: re-imagining history and landscape.

The city’s history and connection with lace making informed my contribution to the exhibition: a large scale lace installation created on the lawn around the castle using fencing pins and rope. Helped by three assistants and a group of enthusiastic volunteers, we rehearsed the making of the piece by using our fingers and hands to stitch between trees. We then proceeded to do something close to formation dancing, acting as human bobbins, holding lengths of yarn and winding these around the (metal fencing) pins as you would on a lace pillow. Click here for footage of the rehearsal on the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art website.

Many possibilities and challenges were revealed as we worked and talked about what we were doing and at the end of the two days, I came away from from the activity with a head full of ideas which I’m now processing. I’ve now ordered nearly two hundred fencing pins and can’t wait for the next time I am up there with this lovely group.

Thanks so much to all the volunteers who helped rehearsing the piece, and to my assistants Jess, Sarah and Rossella.  You were all great!