Saturday 19 December 2009

Writing Live Score

Made as part of Writing Live ; an experiment in art, writing and performance.


Writing Live Score

Friday 18 December 2009

QUESTION TIME: PARTICIPATE OR DIE?





Today is the last day of COP15 talks

There is still time

PARTICIPATE OR DIE

Question Time asks: what is your question? What is hospitality to you? What would be your sci-fi scenario for humans surviving ‘in extremis’ in a post-global meltdown universe? Tell me about the recycling bin in your house?

Click here to find out more about Question Time

Find out about our interview marathon here

Checkout our Press section here


Question Time is an Open Dialogues project devised and produced by David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg and Mary Paterson. Associate Neil Bennun. Question Time is programmed within New Life Copenhagen, part the official art programme for COP15.


Follow the project and subscribe here http://feeds.feedburner.com/questiontime/cIkv

Monday 7 December 2009

Question Time - Participate or Die?



Question Time is a series of 1000 artist-led interviews, conducted throughout Copenhagen during the UN COP15 conference. In a context of inter-governmental debate and negotiation, Question Time explores an alternative approach to climate change based on personal knowledge, action, hospitality, ending, home, social sculpture, chance, future, starting, and the occasional wild card.

Question Time will hold daily open summits throughout Copenhagen - in cafes, homes, street corners, train stations and conference centres - at which ideas from the 1000 interviews will be shared and discussed, concluding with a daily statement of intent and the posting of interviews online.

Question Time asks: how do you think change occurs? What is hospitality to you? What would be your sci-fi scenario for humans surviving in extremis in a post-global meltdown universe? Where is the recycling bin in your house?

Question Time are David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg and Mary Paterson as Open Dialogues.
Follow the project and subscribe at www.questiontime.me or email info@questiontime.me

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Marina Abramovic Presents.....

Rachel Lois Clapham and Joanna Loveday have developed a collaborative text in response to Marina Abramovic Presents... at Manchester International Festival. See the text here, designed by Charlotte A Morgan.



Poetry Indoors

Monday 30 November 2009

Performance Matters



Image c- Tim Etchells

Performance Matters has launched! Performance Matters is multi-organisation AHRC programme (2009-2012) that 're-thinks why performance matters through the matter of performance'

There are some dialogue projects, viewable online, by related writers, artists and performance practitioners. These projects run simultaneously in between various Performance Matters discussion events, live presentations and symposia. Lots to see and get involved with and we are very excited that the programme has now started!

See the website >>>here<<< for more details on projects, people and activities you can join in with.

//////


Performance Matters is a creative research project exploring the challenges that contemporary performance presents to ideas of cultural value. The project asks whether such forms of cultural practice are now being taken seriously in culture more broadly, and how they may possess the potential to refashion understandings of what, and how, things matter in the contemporary world.

Performance Matters will comprise numerous events and activities: the bringing together of performers and writers in creative dialogue projects; an exciting series of practical workshops; two public international symposia; the publication of a substantial book; the development of two innovative PhD projects; and a series of talks focused around the project’s concerns.

Between 2009 and 2012 Performance Matters will move through three themed years of interlinked research activities, Performing Idea (2009/10), Trashing Performance (2010/11), and Potentials of Performance (2011/2012).

In the first year Performing Idea will investigate the shifting relations between performance practice and discourse, event and writing.
How to get involved

To register your interest and keep up to date with Performance Matters, send an email to info@thisisperformancematters.co.uk with the subject heading ‘Register me’.

Thursday 26 November 2009

WRITING EXHIBITIONS , 27th and 28th November at Stanley Picker Gallery

A lab on writing and exhibition making. Part of GUESS WORK GUEST WORK by David Berridge and Compulsive Holding
http://www.7point9cubicmetres.com/david_berridge.html


FRI 27TH, STUDIO 1, STANLEY PICKER GALLERY, 10.30-5.30

10.15-10.30 ARRIVAL
10.30-10.40 INTRODUCTIONS
JONATHAN KEATS, EXPERIENCE EXCHANGE
10.40 -11.40 STRATEGIES
ANNE CHARNOCK 20 minutes
MATTHEW MACKISSACK 15 MIN
11.40-12.40 ARCHITECTURES
KIM PATRICK - 15 mins
DAVID JOHNSON - 15 mins
12.40- 13.30 BREAK
MICRO-EXHIBITION: MATTHEW MACKISSACK'S "DIMINISHING RETURNS" WILL RUN THROUGHOUT THE AFTERNOON
13.30- 14.30 WRITINGS
TAMARIN NORWOOD 30 mins
FIONA FULLAM 30 mins
14.30- 16.00 LIVE
SCREENING: CAROLINE BERGVAL SAY:PARSLEY 15 mins
MATT GIRAUDEAU 10 minutes
MARC CAFFREY 30 minutes
MARIANNE HOLM HANSEN 30 minutes
16.00-16.15 TEA BREAK
16.15-17.20 DISCUSSION
17.20-17.30 MINUTES
PIPPA KOSZEREK

*

THE DAY WILL ALSO FEATURE TEXT PROVOCATIONS FROM OWEN HART AND MARY PATERSON; JONATHAN KEATS EXPERIENCE EXCHANGE WILL RUN THROUGHOUT BOTH DAYS OF THE EVENT.

SAT 28TH NOVEMBER, STUDIO 1, STANLEY PICKER GALLERY, 12-4

A SEQUENCE OF EXHIBITIONS BY:

IN THE CUBE:
ANNE CHARNOCK 12.10- 12.30
SAM CURTIS 12.30 - 12.50
JONATHAN KEATS 12.50- 13.05
TAMARIN NORWOOD 13.05- 13.35
BREAK 13.35-14.00
ALEX HETHERINGTON 14.00-14.15
THE WAYWARD PLANT REGISTRY 14.15-14.40
CONT3XT 14.40-14.55
MARIANNE HOLM HANSEN 15.00-15.20
CONCLUSIONS 15.20-15.50
OUTSIDE THE CUBE
TEXTS AND RESPONSES BY:
FIONA FULLAM
MARY PATERSON
BOOKWORKS
MARIANNE HOLM HANSEN
HYUN JIN CHO
OWEN HART

7.9 Cubic Metres is a gallery within a gallery. A temporary exhibition space, an architectural insert, a sculptural work, a collaborative document - James Carrigan’s 7.9 Cubic Metres is a curious coalescence of many forms. http://www.7point9cubicmetres.com/

Stanley Picker Gallery
Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture
Kingston University, Knights Park
Kingston upon Thames
KT1 2QJ
Directions to Stanley Picker gallery are here:http://www.7point9cubicmetres.com/directions.html

Live Writing from 10 Performances

Rachel Lois Clapham and Alex Eisenberg are at 10 Performances which is taking place at Roehampton University today.

Wednesday 25 November 2009

10 Performances (Scribbled Live)



10 artists + 10 texts + 1 = 10 Performances
at Roehampton University, 26 Nov 2009.

Can’t be there? Don’t worry, 10 Performances will be scribbled live on the day here:

http://www.scribblelive.com/Event/10_Performances_1

Log on to get text live and direct from inside the event by Rachel Lois Clapham and Alex Eisenberg

Rachel Lois Clapham and Alex Eisenberg will also be opening 10 Performances by presenting ‘10 Performances +1’.

///

About 10 Performances +1

+1 is a date, an invitation to attend. It is also to be welcomed in addition or by extension. You can tell a lot from a + 1.

10 Performances + 1 is a sympathetic critical response - a + 1 – to '10 Performances' by Rachel Lois Clapham and Alex Eisenberg.

Repositioning the surplus nature of a +1 - exploring it as fundamental, and asking how to be or write, +1 - 10 Performance (+1) will go before 10 Performances and anticipate the work whilst exploring some of the central themes of the day.


10 Performances is funded by the AHRC ‘Beyond Text’ student-led initiative. (www.beyondtext.ac.uk)


For more details on 10 Performances see http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/10performances/

Monday 23 November 2009

WRITING LIVE - continues


Image by Ryan Tracy: l - r Rachel Lois Clapham, GINA PERFORMA, Mary Paterson. The Bronx Museum, Sunday 15th November 2009.

Performa 09 drew to a close last night, 22nd November, with Scratch The Grand Finale. On the previous evening, Saturday 21st November, the Writing Live Group held our Writing Live Symposium at the Performa Hub, 41 Cooper Square.

Keep checking the Writing Live site for responses to this and the rest of Performa, and experiments in writing on, as, with or for performance.

Writing Live will continue into 2010. For now, it lives on through:

Writing Encounters, textual transactions between the US-based Writing Live 09 Fellows (Rebecca Armstrong, Tyler Coburn, Patricia Milder, Ryan Tracy, Kenny Ulloa and Peter Walsh), UK artists (Emma Cocker, Marcia Farquhar, Claire Hind, Johanna Linsley, Ben Roberts and Simon Zimmerman).

York New York, a commission of 101 postcards from York New York http://yorknewyork.blogspot.com/

Saturday 21 November 2009

This Too Shall Pass by Anna Livia Löwendahl-Atomic

This Too Shall Pass is a life-long artwork by Löwendahl-Atomic that involves the clandestine yet public exchange of screws from buildings across the globe. Documentation of the work is currently being exhibited in the group show SPUREN at Kunstraum t27 in Berlin.

SPUREN features work by Klaus Abromeit, Jasmin Höher-Kosel, Geraldine Hudson and Sabrina Jung, five artists who approach the topic of traces (SPUREN) in different ways.

The below text is the exhibition catalogue essay for This Too Shall Pass, written by Rachel Lois Clapham in dialogue with the artist.


////////

An Epically Pointless Proof of Life (art) OR This Text Too Shall Pass.

Initially I felt that I had made my life so easy. Do you think I could put the text up on my blog after it is finished? Because I only have to change a screw to achieve something, but then lately I noticed that often I don’t feel like changing a screw :(. I could include a link to the exhibition on the blog post of course. But I still have to do it, and those days I feel really useless. Yes a link would be great thanks. Why do you feel you have to do it? OK give me names, dates of the show etc. Because this project will go on for the rest of my life. So you feel if you stop, the project will have failed? And in order to do that I need to ..well to do it. If your life gets cut off in its prime you will have still finished 'the project'? Stopping is not even an option. Like if you are run over by a bus the last screw won’t go in your coffin then maybe because people won’t know to keep the screw you have on you, unless you make a will? This is true but I have a back up. …A back up? Someone is always responsible for organising the screw etc after I am gone. So they will be responsible for nailing you shut? Yes. They will go back to the last place where you removed a screw, pick it up, and that will be the one left. It’s out of my hands :). …The screw you replaced it with I mean. Literally. Forgive me, this is all very fatalistic, but actually the work seems not so much about death as it is living. Performance, or life, and death inextricably linked of course- performance only remains through its disappearance (its death). Bodily remains only become such through the disappearance of life. I feel like paradox is never far away from your work. They will go get the last screw I did which will exchange place with a screw from my coffin. In the end there will be one screw left over. Yes, it is about living. Living with something for a very long time and having it burn a hole in your bag or pocket. It’s also in some way a secret mission. Does this project give your life purpose? Actually, it’s a very meditative. It’s funny I was writing about it yesterday and I was thinking about the secretive nature. The work is sometimes performative and sometimes clandestine. Perhaps all durational art, life art, as it were is secretive as you can’t constantly be showing and publicising what you are doing. It is necessarily private, like most process (as opposed to product or performance). It begs the question of why and when you think of it as art, and not. How do you mean? Like if you make art in the studio when no-one is looking, that’s unseen, secret, made in private for a deferred audience. True. But there is something different happening in the making of durational or life art because the audience is nearly always un-anticipated in a major way. The work is made to be purposefully unseen as work. Another paradox. You find yourself ‘going through the motions' and not really treating it as an out of the ordinary gesture. But then you pull it into an exhibition, a moment, a conversation with me, and then it is witnessed as art. But is that something different from the work itself. That goes back to what I first said, that I thought I made life so easy for myself as I "only" have to exchange a screw to feel I achieved something. I am interested in how to leave a trace without adding anything. With this arrangement. Like subtraction, and addition = 0 but also more than 0. And also how the work is simultaneously epic but also maybe pointless. How a dug out hole, later re-filled, can be an inverted mountain but walked over without noticing. I love epic and pointless in the same sentence. This feels important.



Rachel Lois Clapham is Co-Director of Open Dialogues www.opendialogues.com

For information on Anna Livia Löwendahl-Atomic and This Too Shall Pass see http://annalivia.wordpress.com/

Thursday 29 October 2009

Is it a bird? A study room guide.

In (W)reading Performance Writing writer and Co-Director of Open Dialogues Rachel Lois Clapham has assembled twenty practitioners from diverse fields of poetry, theatre, visual art and performance on the topic of Performance Writing. This unique guide comprises of syllabuses, manifestos, scores, personal testimonies and practical exercises, many drawn from resources available in the Live Art Development Agency study room. It also includes a detailed subject area index. This publication is highly speculative and encourages an active read. A note on its reading can be found in the section Invitation to (W)read.

Authors included are Charles Bernstein, Caroline Bergvall, David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Emma Cocker, Mark Caffrey, Alex Eisenberg, John Hall, Claire Hind, Richard Kostelanetz, Johanna Linsley, Claire MacDonald, Rebecca May Marston, Marit Münzberg, Tamarin Norwood, Mary Paterson, Joshua Sofaer, Danae Theodoridou, Peter Walsh and Simon Zimmerman. Design by Marit Munzberg.

A one-off hard copy edition of the guide is available to be assembled/disassembled in the Study Room, or can be downloaded as a PDF from the Live Art Development Agency website.

////

The Live Art Development Agency houses a Study Room as a key resource and is a free, open access research facility used by artists, students, curators, academics and other arts professionals. The Study Room can be used to view artist’s work, read publications, undertake research projects, find out general information about Live Art, opportunities and networks. The Study Room houses one of the largest publicly accessible libraries of Live Art related videos, dvds and publications in the UK and for many people the resource is one of the only opportunities to view documentation of performances that they were unable to experience ‘live’. As part of the continuous development of the Study Room the Agency commissions a range of artists and commentators to write personal Study Room Guides to help navigate users through this resource. The idea is to enable Study Room users to experience the materials in a new way and highlight materials that they may not have otherwise come across.


Click
here find out more about the Live Art Development Agency Study Room and download other available guides.

Thursday 22 October 2009

A room with a view




"As part of the A-N Interface series on critical writing Rachel Lois Clapham has produced an experimental text which explores the nature of the Interface online writing community. What does it mean to write within Interface’s green and white walls? Writing, for Rachel Lois is a process that should look at itself as much as its object of study. This text is in three ‘takes’ and can be read in any order >>>>TAKE ONE<<<<, >>>TAKE TWO<<<< or >>>>TAKE THREE<<<<"


Rosemary Shirley
Editor A-N interface
Visual arts exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Seeking Administrator

Live Art Development Agency, London
Seeks new full-time Administrator

The Live Art Development Agency is the leading development organisation for Live Art in the UK, offering resources, schemes, projects and initiatives for the support and development of Live Art practices and critical discourses in London, the UK and internationally.

The Agency is seeking a new Administrator following Maria Agiomyrgiannaki’s imminent departure to develop her work as a producer and project manager.

This is an exciting opportunity for a dynamic individual with strong organisational skills to join the Agency and contribute to its future.

The Administrator coordinates the Agency’s office and resources, and contributes to the effectiveness of its programmes and activities including the Study Room and Unbound, an online shop. The Administrator is responsible for the day-to-day running of the office and company bookkeeping, and works on specific projects and schemes.

This is a full-time position, offered at an annual salary between £18,000-£20,000 depending on experience.

Please email info@thisisliveart.co.uk or phone +44 20 7033 0275 for the full job description and application requirements, or download them as a PDF from www.thisisLiveArt.co.uk

The Administrator post includes a broad range of responsibilities, and as potential applicants may not have had past experience in all of these areas, the Agency may be able to take a flexible approach as to how this post and its responsibilities are best filled.

Deadline for applications: Wednesday November 4, 2009.

www.thisisLiveArt.co.uk

Live Art Almanac - Vol. 2




Call for recommendations and submissions for The Live Art Almanac - Vol. 2 An international publication of writing on and around Live Art

Deadline: 31 December 2009

The Live Art Almanac Vol. 2 is a publication produced and published by the Live Art Development Agency (London, UK) in partnership with Live Art UK, Performance Space 122 (New York, USA), and Performance Space (Sydney, Australia).

The Live Art Almanac Vol. 2 will be published in 2010 and will draw together recent writings about and around Live Art* – from reviews, interviews and news stories, to cultural commentaries and “private” communications. It aims to be both a useful resource and a good read for artists, writers, students and others interested in Live Art.

Recommendations for, and submissions to, The Live Art Almanac Vol. 2 may be any length up to 5,000 words. The material must be engaging, provocative, and thoughtful writing on and around the contemporary cultural landscape in which Live Art practice sits and must shed light on the various debates and ideas in circulation within that landscape. You may submit your own writing but we really want you to tell us about interesting material you have read. The submission must have been written between July 2008 and December 2009.

The first Live Art Almanac primarily contained material about and by British-based artists and writers. The Live Art Almanac Vol. 2 will be published in English, but encourages international submissions as well as texts in translation previously published in other languages.

Details of the first Live Art Almanac >>>here<<<<

For more detailed information on this call for recommendations and submissions visit www.thisisLiveArt.co.uk

Recommendations should be emailed to contact@thisisLiveArt.co.uk with ‘Almanac’ in the subject line. The deadline for all recommendations is 31 December 2009.

Please also contact contact@thisisLiveArt.co.uk if you have any questions.

The (first) Live Art Almanac is available to purchase from Unbound - www.thisisUnbound.co.uk - for only £5.00.

*The term Live Art is not a description of an artform or discipline, but a cultural strategy to include experimental processes and experiential practices that might otherwise be excluded from established curatorial, cultural and critical frameworks. Live Art is a framing device for a catalogue of approaches to the possibilities of liveness by artists who chose to work across, in between, and at the edges of more traditional artistic forms.

Please also refer to “What is Live Art?”: www.thisisliveart.co.uk/about_us/what_is_live_art.html

Tuesday 20 October 2009

CALL OUT FOR UK WRITING LIVE ARTISTS



Are you an artist, performer or writer engaged in live and interdisciplinary art?

Are you interested in collaborative and experimental approaches to writing? Would you like to be part of a trans-Atlantic art writing community?

If so, you could be part of Writing Live UK.....




ABOUT WRITING LIVE

Writing Live is a trans-Atlantic contemporary critical writing programme developed by Open Dialogues, Performa09 and the Space Between Words. The programme launches in New York during Performa 09 and moves to the UK in 2010.
Writing Live is an equal community of peers who understand the importance of intergenerational dialogue, artist communities, collaborative process and unknown product

US Based Writing Live Fellows are Rebecca Armstrong, Rachel Lois Clapham, Tyler Coburn, Patricia Milder, Mary Paterson, Ryan Tracy, Kenny Ulloa and Peter Walsh. As a group they will participate in workshops, develop work together in order to put pressure on how to critically compose, punctuate and re-write performance and Performa 09.

Please read more about Writing Live programme here http://open-dialogues.blogspot.com/2009/09/writing-live-launch.html.

GETTING INVOLVED

We are currently looking for expressions of interest from 8 UK based art writers to join the Writing Live community for an experiment in trans-Atlantic working for Stage One of Writing Live. UK writers will share work with the US based Writing Live Fellows and take part in task based writing commissions during Performa09. By inviting people to test this relationship we want to collaboratively explore how Writing Live can develop in the UK in 2010.

The a UK Writing Live artist you will;

- Gain access to the work of Writing Live
- Become part of a Trans-Atlantic art writing community of peers
- Participate in a series of creative task based writing commissions in November
- Be instrumental in shaping Writing Live UK 2010
- Take an active role in Writing Live UK 2010 (meetings, publishing, public symposia)


We are looking for 8 experienced UK based art/writing practitioners; artists with portfolios that include critical/creative art writing projects, skilled collaborators with a proven knowledge of performance, Live Art and its history.

To participate, you will need to be able to:

- Inspire the Writing Live Community
- Commit to the overall aims of Writing Live
- Dedicate time to sustaining relationships and developing new task based textual work with other members of the Writing Live Community
- Document and upload any work in progress onto the Writing live website.
- Commit to being an active member of the constituency for Writing Live in the UK in 2010, alongside Performa, Open Dialogues and Space Between Words

Being a UK member of Writing Live is a long term collaborative commitment, your participation will help us shape what Writing Live might be in the UK in 2010. As such, it is not possible to predict exactly what will happen in the long run, or how much time you will need. But for now, we need UK Writing Live artists to dedicate a few hours thinking and writing time to Writing Live every week over the month of November.

TO APPLY

To apply, please send no more than one A4 page biography (not CV). Include links to and/or samples of your art writing projects to opendialogues@gmail.com by 26 October 10am.

BACKGROUND

Open Dialogues

Open Dialogues is a UK based writing collaboration, founded by Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson, that produces critical writing on contemporary art. www.opendialogues.com

Space Between Words

Founded by Claire MacDonald, Space Between Words is an international collaborative network engaging with writing across the expanded field of literature, art and performance – including visual and language poetry, digital writing, performance, theatre, film, music and dance. http://www.thespacebetweenwords.org/

Performa

Performa, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization established by RoseLee Goldberg in 2004, is dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century.

Writing Live Background

Writing Live brings together an international group of young critics, curators and artists to generate writing material related to PERFORMA07. Writing Live is a continuation of the ongoing Not For Sale public education series, which features artists, authors, and critics discussing the current issues in performance and new media, and the related task of writing about and art and artists whose work encompasses several disciplines at once. Writing Live develops previous Not For Sale activities including Writing on Performance and New Media - a two part symposium during PERFORMA05 and the PERFORMA Summer Workshops of 2006. Directed: RoseLee Goldberg & Defne Ayas. Co-ordinated by: Rachel Lois Clapham (Writing Live Fellow), Rebecca May Marston (Writing Live Fellow) and Mary Paterson (Writing Live Fellow). Writing Live 2007 was part funded by Arts Council England.

Writing Live 2009: US Director Defne Ayas (Performa), Associate Patricia Milder. Curators Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson in association with Claire MacDonald.

Writing Live 2009 is hosted by Cooper Union University and The Bronx Museum and is supported by Arts Council of England










Thursday 15 October 2009

AN ASSEMBLING #1



AN ASSEMBLING #1 is now available for free PDF download at www.scribd.com/ESSAYINGESSAYS

AN ASSEMBLING #1 featuring experiments in essaying from:

David Berridge; Rachel Lois Clapham; Emma Cocker; Alex Eisenberg; Fiona Fullam; Alex Hardy; Éilis Kirby; Jenny Lawson; Patricia Lyons; Pete McPartian; John Pinder.

Assembled by David Berridge as part of ESSAYING ESSAYS: A TEMPORARY COLLECTIVE OF READERS, one of seven projects by the FREE PRESS collective exploring economies of ideas and alternative modes of dissemination and exchange.

Proposals, provocations, projects, scores and ________ for the always to be emerging, shifting constellation(s) of future ASSEMBLING's are welcome, inparticular proposals which come with their own form and method of distribution.

Contact essayingessays@gmail.com

ESSAYING ESSAYS IS A >>>FREE PRESS<<< case study

10 PERFORMANCES



Image; Sto Theatro, courtesy 10 Performances

26 November 2009, 12:00 p.m., Jubilee Theatre, Roehampton University, London

10 PERFORMANCES is a text-based performance project that explored the nature of performative writing and its relation to the staged event of performance. 10 artists will contribute one written work each. Sharing a concern with language “not as a text, but, as an event”, as Tim Etchells*, the artistic director of Forced Entertainment, has aptly noted, the project explored the notion of writing as a way of performing as well as the ways that performance is being elaborated through linguistic and writing processes. The main aim of the artists participating in the project is therefore to expand the forms and ways that one can “make writing perform” (Della Pollock, 1998:75).

The day consisted of 10 text performances by;

Mark Caffrey (Queen's University, Belfast, practice-led research student)
Barbara Campbell (Australian based visual and performance artist)
Robin Deacon (UK based performance artist, writer and filmmaker)
Matthew Goulish (USA based artist, funder member of Goat Island company)
Akillas Karazisis (Greece based director, writer and actor)
Johanna Linsley (Queen Mary University of London research student)
Cathy Naden (UK based performance artist, funder member of Forced Entertainment company)
Tamarin Norwood (Goldsmiths University of London, MFA student Art Writing)
Theron Schmidt (QMUL research student)
Danae Theodoridou (Roehampton University research student)

+1 live response by Rachel Lois Clapham (Writer and Co-Director Open Dialogues) and performer Alex Eisenberg.

See our +1 performance here


Also here



And on Scribble Live here


10 Performances is curated by DanaeTheodoridou and Justin Hunt
[AHRC Beyond Text Student-led Initiative Grant] www.beyondtext.ac.uk. To view the scripts of all the live works click here.

Friday 11 September 2009

WRITING LIVE LAUNCH



Question

What is the future of experimental critical writing and how is it being informed by its past?

How might the practices of different generations – from avant-garde pioneers to recent graduates – be brought into contact?

How might live/visual/textual practitioners, artist scholars experimenting with writing’s forms, and artists working with text come together?

Response
Writing Live...



ABOUT WRITING LIVE


Writing Live is a Performa education project produced by Performa, Open Dialogues and thespacebetweenwords in connection with Performa 09.

Writing Live is an equal community of peers working in the intersection between art, writing and performance, focussed on international and intergenerational cultural exchange.

Writing Live launched at Performa09, where 8 US based Writing Live Fellows participated in workshops, worked with Performa09 artists, and contributed to a curated platform of experimental critical writing in collaboration with Performa09.


To see  a partial Writing Live 09 archive on the Performa website go to :

http://performa-arts.org/blog/what-we-do/biennials/performa-09/scoring-performa/

http://performa-arts.org/blog/what-we-do/biennials/performa-09/the-community/

http://performa-arts.org/blog/what-we-do/biennials/performa-09/writing-encounters/

http://performa-arts.org/blog/what-we-do/biennials/performa-09/writing-machine/

http://performa-arts.org/blog/what-we-do/biennials/performa-09/diary/

Contact Open Dialogues for full programme content.

Writing Live 09 Symposium





ABOUT

Open Dialogues

Open Dialogues is a UK based writing collaboration, founded by Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson, that produces critical writing on contemporary art. www.opendialogues.com

Space Between Words

Founded by Claire MacDonald, Space Between Words is an international collaborative network engaging with writing across the expanded field of literature, art and performance – including visual and language poetry, digital writing, performance, theatre, film, music and dance. http://www.thespacebetweenwords.org/

Performa

Performa, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization established by RoseLee Goldberg in 2004, is dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century.

Writing Live Background

Writing Live brings together an international group of young critics, curators and artists to generate writing material related to PERFORMA07. Writing Live is a continuation of the ongoing Not For Sale public education series, which features artists, authors, and critics discussing the current issues in performance and new media, and the related task of writing about and art and artists whose work encompasses several disciplines at once. Writing Live develops previous Not For Sale activities including Writing on Performance and New Media - a two part symposium during PERFORMA05 and the PERFORMA Summer Workshops of 2006. Directed: RoseLee Goldberg & Defne Ayas. Co-ordinated by: Rachel Lois Clapham (Writing Live Fellow), Rebecca May Marston (Writing Live Fellow) and Mary Paterson (Writing Live Fellow). Writing Live 2007 was part funded by Arts Council England.

Writing Live 2009: US Director Defne Ayas (Performa), Associate Patricia Milder. Curators Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson in association with Claire MacDonald.


Writing Live 2009 is hosted by Cooper Union University and The Bronx Museum and is supported by Arts Council of England















Monday 7 September 2009

Notes on NOTES- Scoring Notes on a Return



Image- Rachel Lois Clapham, Scoring Notes on a Return Gesture 013



Image- Rachel Lois Clapham, Scoring Notes on a Return Gesture 014


Notes on NOTES
was a writing residency in which writers Rachel Lois Clapham, John Dummett and Matthew Hearne worked in the Laing Gallery from 4-5th September to make notes in response to the Laing’s Notes on a Return exhibition.

Each note was a live, public and imperfect fiction of Notes on a Return that explored how to notate, house and return to the live. The public interacted with the writers in several drop in sessions and the residency ended with a live session entitled ‘The Final Word’



Image- Rachel Lois Clapham, Scoring Notes on a Return Gesture 046

Scoring Notes on a Return, a project for Notes on NOTES by Rachel Lois Clapham

Ultimately speculative, a score lies in between action and object, performance and document; it is a singular record of action past or imagined and a call to future performances.

Over the two days of Notes on NOTES I worked on how to compose or punctuate performance by re-arranging objects and visuals in the space and collecting prompts from audience members in order to collectively develop a score for Notes on a Return.

‘The Final Word’ was an electric fan which blew into the space, automatically deciding the final arrangement of the score.

The score currently remains as a collectively authored blueprint for future writing on Notes on a Return.



Image- Rachel Lois Clapham, Scoring Notes on a Return Gesture 089



Image- Rachel Lois Clapham, Scoring Notes on a Return Gesture 082



Image- Rachel Lois Clapham, Scoring Notes on a Return Gesture 058




Image- Rachel Lois Clapham, Scoring Notes on a Return Gesture 064




Image- Rachel Lois Clapham, Scoring Notes on a Return Gesture 126




For more details of Notes on Notes and Matthew and John’s work please see http://open-dialogues.blogspot.com/2009/07/notes-on-notes-on-return.html

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Seeds and Bridges

Announcing the 2009 season of 'seeds & bridges'. All the events explore ideas of space and sound / architecture and sonic structures.


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Saturday 3rd October
@ RED gallery, Osborne street (behind Primark), Hull
7pm, free entry

John Grzinich (Estonia)
Max Shentelevs (Latvia)
Simon Whetham (Bristol)

*3 artists working with sound, finding interesting things in our daily spaces and places, combining field recordings with everyday objects and small instruments and even a laptop !. Their work has appeared on various labels and in galleries and concerts all over the world*


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Saturday 7th November
@ Holy Trinity Church, marketplace, Hull
12 noon to 4pm
free entry

Patrick Farmer (percussion, stones)
Sarah Hughes (zither, stones, drawing)
Shayla Reynolds (installations)
Jez riley French (surface vibrations, stones, small objects & instruments)

*an afternoon exploration of the sound and spaces of Holy Trinity Church, including installation & sound + a performance of Christian Wolff's seminal text score 'stones' + a new score by Jez riley French*



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Saturday 12th December
@ Ferens Art Gallery, Victoria Square, Hull
2.30pm, free entry

Philip Thomas (piano)

*a rare solo recital in Hull from one of Europe's leading interpreters of contemporary piano works. Philip is senior lecturer in performance at Huddersfield University and for this special performance he will perform graphic scores by Cage, Wolff, Cardew & also one of the four specially commissioned photographic scores for seeds & bridges 2009 by Jez riley french*

visit: http://seedsandbridges.blogspot.com/ for more information.

Thursday 27 August 2009

QUESTION TIME





QUESTION TIME
‘towards an alternative statement of the way forward on climate change’

QUESTION TIME is a series of 1000 interviews, conducted throughout Copenhagen during the UN COP15 conference, towards an alternative statement of the way forward on climate change. In a context of inter-governmental debate and negotiation, QUESTION TIME explores an alternative approach to climate change based on anecdote, neurotic behaviors, misunderstandings, and gossip.

QUESTION TIME involves four UK artists, ranging in mood from the mildly neurotic to the apocalyptic, looking to discuss climate change with as wide a spectrum of Copenhagen residents as possible, mapping its presence in the individual and collective psyche. Each day, parallel to the conference, the four artists will conduct a series of programmed and random interviews across the city - in cafes, conference centres, parks, street corners, shopping centres, museums, universities, and domestic residencies.

Initially, the questions will be our own - formulated as a pack of 30 playing cards, dealt out in ever new combinations at the start of each conversation. But, of course, each encounter will bring new (mis-) information to light. So each day ends with a public summit at which the days discoveries are presented, and the next days questions are formulated. In the manner of the COP15 itself, we will each day use the material we have collected to formulate a statement on climate change and the way forward for us, Copenhagen, and the world.

These summits will be open events, held in various locations around the city, with a feel that combines performance, seminar, poetry reading and a shared meal - an alternative, convivial, artists led version of the discussions taking place at COP15. The unfolding statement will appear online as a series of podcasts, adapted with new material daily. The accumulated questions will map a web of concerns and also provide a score for future research projects into the area of climate change.

QUESTION TIME will conclude with a final summit, to which all participants will be invited to share in a final declaration. The final summit will also launch the next stage of the project, where each artist develops their own project - be it performance, exhibition, event, or written text - from the archive of material collected throughout COP15.


QUESTION TIME is a collaboration between David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg and Mary Paterson as Open Dialogues. QUESTION TIME is programmed as part of New Life Copenhagen, featuring in the official United Nations COP15 artistic programme.


BACKGROUND

Open Dialogues

Open Dialogues is a UK based collaboration, founded by Mary Paterson and Rachel Lois Clapham, that explores critical writing as debate and practice. www.opendialogues.com

New Life Copenhagen

Produced by Wooloo Productions, and cntered around themes of activism and transnational communities, New Life Copenhagen comprises of 5.000 people living in and around Copenhagen opening their homes to 5.000 environmental activists during the UN Climate Change Conference in Denmark this December.

New Life Copenhagen will utilize this large-scale human meeting as its exhibition platform on which to stage participatory art works by artists Superflex (DK) and Signa (DK/A) among others. More details about the festival can be found at the Wooloo Productions online network http://www.wooloo.org/festival or at http://www.newlifecopenhagen.com/index_lofi.php

The UN Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15)

From December 7th to 18th 2009, representatives from 192 nations will gather in Denmark for the UN Climate Change Conference to reach an agreement on a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. In addition to the large number of official UN delegates, thousands of activists and Non-Governmental Organizations are bound for the conference. More details on http://en.cop15.dk/

If you are interested in contributing to QUESTION TIME either during or after New Life Copenhagen and COP15 please contact opendialogues@gmail.com

RITE

Rite, write, rote, right and sometimes wrong....

Forthcoming in October 2009, RITE is the result of a nine month collaboration with Critical Communities, a New Work Network and Open Dialogues project exploring the practice of critical writing on and as new work (interdisciplinary and live art).

Featuring the work of the Critical Community, RITE is a collection that brings together 18 original texts by UK based art writers that enact expanded acts of criticism, question the essay form, use language as material and attempt to work the different ways that writing can be on or about new work.

Contributors include Emma Bennett, David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham and Alex Eisenberg, Emma Cocker, Hannah Crosson, Amelia Crouch, Chloe Dechery, Tim Jeeves, Emma Leach, Johanna Linsley, Joanna Loveday, Charlotte Morgan, Mary Paterson, Jim Prevett, Nathan Walker and Wood McGrath.

RITE is commissioned by New Work Network, designed by Wood McGrath, edited Open Dialogues and produced by the members of Critical Communities with external editorial advice from Maria Fusco. It includes a foreword by New Work Network and introduction by Open Dialogues. All material is copyright the authors and Critical Communities 2009.


To find out more about the project click Critical Communities

Digital Documentation and Performance


Open Dialogues were invited to participate in Digital Documentation and Performance, a series of three one-day events on the topics of creating, managing and delivering digital documentation of performance work. The events were hosted and devised by JISC Digital Media and University of Bristol Department of Drama 23-25 September 2009.


Lifecycle list of audience member's experience c. Liz Clarke

ABOUT CREATING DIGITAL PERFORMANCE DOCUMENTATION


‘Creating Digital Performance Documentation’ featured a range of practitioners working in the field of performance including Dr Paul Clarke - Research Fellow 'Performing the Archive: the Future of the Past' University of Bristol & Arnolfini, Becky Edmunds - trained a dancer and choreographer and who now practices as a dance videographer, Open Dialogues - a UK based collaboration, founded in 2008 by Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson, that produces critical writing on contemporary art, Paul Hurley - an artist who since 2003 has been making an ongoing series of ‘becomings-invertebrate’, Heike Roms - Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies Aberystwyth University, currently researching the AHRC-funded ‘Locating the early history of performance art in Wales 1965–1979”and Sarah Whatley - project leader for the AHRC-funded Siobhan Davies Archive.


The lifecycle of a real-time durational performance - ‘Becoming Snail’ by PaulHurley – was used as case study; the creation, management and delivery of documentation from the performance was tracked over the three days: through digitisation, accession, structuring, delivery, annotation, tagging and curation by users.


Interior. Some lines made in response... c. Julien Warren


ARE YOU STILL THERE? : SKYPE CHAT [10:00:19] – [10:31:20]


For ‘Creating Digital Documentation of Performance’ we - Rachel Lois and Mary - jointly delivered a paper on the Open Dialogues critical model; a how, why and what we produce online of and for performance - be it documents, documentation doc/u- . The paper – entitled ARE YOU STILL THERE? : SKYPE CHAT [10:00:19] – [10:31:20] - discussed how digital & online technology is central to our practice and analogous to our critical model in terms of blogging, ‘Flash’ publishing, durational writing events and collaborative writing. The paper also reflected upon the non-venue based, dialogic nature of Open Dialogues, and its collaborators, and how this relates to an online archive for performance. A short excerpt is below.


ARE YOU STILL THERE? : SKYPE CHAT [10:00:19] – [10:31:20]


4.WRITING IN PARALLEL


Open Dialogues also lead a practical workshop session entitled ‘4.Writing in Parallel’ in which participants applied our methods to the performance ‘Becoming Snail’ by Paul Hurley. The session asked participants to choose one of four words: Interior, Mucous, Lifecycle and Metamorphosis (words taken from the fourth sentence of every ‘Becoming Snail’ google hit as of 28.08.2009) and use it – as prompt, proposition, object or not - to write through ‘Becoming Snail’ for the conference audience. The resulting community of texts – devised to be in parallel to, rather than as a response, record or document of ‘Becoming Snail’ - is linked by #JDMperform09 and hosted by Internet Archive.


MUCUS c. Rachel Lois Clapham


At The Edges c. Mary Paterson


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Other material from the Digital Documentation and Performance conference can be accessed on JISC Digital Media or via #JDMperform09


More on our critical model here
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Saturday 15 August 2009

Open Dialogues in the Live Art Collection

Open Dialogues are part of ‘The Live Art Collection’ - The Live Art Development Agency and the British Library’s UK Web Archiving project.

The Live Art Collection was initiated in late 2008 and is maintained by the British Library in collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency, London. The Live Art Collection is part of the UK Web Archive which is a corpus of websites selected by leading UK institutions for their historical, social and cultural significance in the UK, for the benefit of researchers. Snapshots of each title, known as instances, are taken at suitable intervals. The archive is free to view and has already collected over 4,000 selected websites since it was set up in mid-2005.

The range of websites in the Live Art Collection includes organizations supporting and promoting Live Art; artists’ websites; artistic or project-driven sites; blogsites and online spaces for critical reviews and commentaries; and online archival sites relating to Live Art. The Live Art Collection reflects some of the diverse practices and approaches of artists today and the curatorial, cultural and critical frameworks that exist to support, promote and comment upon Live Art and the ephemeral nature of this area of practice.

The collection is free to access and can be viewed by visiting the online portal at http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/collection/26312782/page/1

Websites represented in the Live Art Collection have either been selected by the Live Art Development Agency or have been successfully nominated for archiving. They have been selected as organisations and individuals websites and blogsites that are primarily concerned with Live Art in the UK, and are gathered with permissions from the website content owners. The Live Art Development Agency and the British Library are always interested in further nominations for the Live Art Collection. Further information can be found at http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/info/nominate


The British Library, National Library of Wales, JISC, Wellcome Library and National Archives collaborated to build the UK Web Archive. This initiative is a partnership between the Live Art Development Agency and the British Library.

Sunday 2 August 2009

Review: True Riches, curated by Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton

This article originally appeared in A-N Magazine, June 2009'

by Mary Paterson

http://www.ica-liveart.org.uk/home.html

True Riches is an exciting and ambitious programme of live art events inhabiting every space of the ICA throughout 2009. 25 artists were invited to take part, and across the works proposed there are exhibitions, lectures, discussions and residencies; ideas for shared meals, shared games and interactive experiences; work that touches on cinema, dance and theatre; art that is high concept and low concept, and even a piece that hopes to define the gap between the two. “There is an argument as to whether this event would be more accurately described as middlebrow or at best uppermiddlebrow,” says the programme about Shunt’s Highbrow event. “A brow height exit poll will be employed to resolve debate for future presentations.”

True Riches is also never going to happen. It is an imaginary programme, created in response to the closure of the ICA’s Live and Media Arts department, announced last year. For many who work in or around live art, this was difficult news to take. As Lois Keidan points out in her proposal for True Riches, Sixty to Nought, the ICA has a strong and vital history of supporting performance (not least because of Keidan’s own directorship of the organisation in the 1990s) and while the closure of the department prevents this relationship from growing, it also fails to acknowledge the significance of its past. What really stung for artists and others working in this field, however, was an email from the Director of the ICA, Ekow Eshun, explaining the decision. The ICA is facing financial strictures, he said, and Live and Media Arts can no longer justify its costs. This is because, “it’s my consideration that, in the main, the art form lacks depth and cultural urgency.” The artists Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton clearly read this as a challenge, to which True Riches is a vigorous reply.

Some of the proposals engage directly with the situation at the ICA. Geraldine Pilgrim’s Black Box will flood the ICA theatre with water and oil, and set the oil alight. Viewers will watch from the fire exit recess – an audience for the “flood of ideas that have filled this black box space over the years” as well as a congregation in mourning for histories forgotten, and futures not lived. The Centre of Attention will gather a group of people to serenade the ICA like a bitter lover, singing Live don’t live here anymore at its entrance. And when Shunt/David Rosenberg suggests Moving In, a Real Time Property Happening, in which “a vast assortment of varied crap” is rolled through the ICA and into the lower gallery, is this a way of saying that live art has depth? Real depth if you want it – cases full of it, delivered right to the depths of your building.

Other proposals are simply suggestions for projects that could be housed at the gallery. Mobile Academy’s London Trading Zone, for example, is a version of the Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge – a system to facilitate and frustrate exchange which has taken place across Europe, including at the Bluecoat in Liverpool last November. True Riches’ artists have not only imagined that the ICA will invite them in, but also that the institution will throw all its resources behind each piece of work. Christine Peters’ The Living Archive hopes to invite over 70 artists to join a 6 month residency, to which “ICA has fully committed itself – financially, infrastructurally and staff-wise.” The result will be a method of ‘Slow Production’ whereby thought, knowledge and exchange can grow without all the familiar constraints that limit time and money. Indeed, many of the proposals reach out to other artists, artworks, speakers or participants to help create the work. Bill Aithchison will curate a series of discussions for ICA Conspiracy Week (charting various conspiracy theories), for example, and Goran Sergej Pristaš will show a season of performances, screenings and theory for Cinematic Modes of Choreography (exploring the relationship between dance and cinema).

This enthusiastic and varied approach eloquently describes the range of cultural activities that are spun, or spun into, by events that are called ‘live art’. It is also what stops True Riches from being a sulky reproach to the ICA. The context naturally illuminates all allusions to marginality and segregation in this work. Are the social outsiders in Gary Stevens’ The Sceneshifters versions of live artists, forced to work in the shadows of an institution? Is Shunt’s The Information, in which “big ideas get pounded into shit-sized nuggets that we can more successfully hide if hiding GOD FORBID should become necessary”, an allegory for the fate of live artists, pushed under the cloaks of other artforms in an attempt to survive? After all, part of Ekow Eshun’s defence has been that live art will continue to be programmed in other ICA departments – suggesting that artists must insinuate themselves into a different discipline in order to be seen or heard. But its pure exuberance means True Riches is not a petition to an ungrateful master. Instead, it is a book brimming with opportunities that lie just out of reach, a programme for a parallel universe in which only one thing is altered – the ICA’s willingness to be involved.

As such, True Riches is a quiet kind of manifesto, the kind that whispers into the audience’s ear and garners their support through an act of private collusion. Like all programmes, this one speaks in the future tense about something that hasn’t happened yet. But unlike other programmes, True Riches’ future lies in the reader’s imagination alone. In other words, the programme form is not only a strategic approach – an impersonation that has been successful enough to solicit real visitor enquiries; it also embodies a kind of engagement with the audience that is often associated with live art. In the book Programme Notes (published by the Live Art Development Agency in 2007), the only recurring theme in a collection of disparate essays on ‘experimental theatre’ (which, if not live art itself, is part of the same family) was the desire to get under an audience’s skin. And many of the projects inside True Riches also reflect this attitude – from a collaborative exhibition by Home Live Art, to an archive of memories by Janez Janša.

Has True Riches, then, achieved that most elusive of states – a definition of what live art might be? It is certainly strategic, cross-disciplinary, engaging and social. It is certainly political, experimental, mainstream and accessible. It is certainly, one might say, deep and culturally urgent. But of course its variety lets it slip away again, slithering off the page as you turn from a lecture programme to a dance piece, from a guided tour to a film screening, or from a protest outside the ICA to a dog guarding the building from live art.

Ironically, it is this diverse and often strategic approach – the readiness of live art to sit beside or between familiar disciplines and relationships – that gives Eshun his reason for closing the department: live art will live on in relation to other artforms. And of course, if True Riches constitutes one side of the argument with the ICA, then the artists have an advantage. With all the resources he could imagine, and no-one to please but his peers, let’s assume that Eshun could also create a programme of live art to inspire and delight on this scale. It’s also because live art is supported enthusiastically elsewhere – by organisations like the Live Art Development Agency and Live Art UK, at venues like Arnolfini, Bluecoat and Chelsea Theatre (to name but a few) – that the programme is so easy to imagine in the first place. Those pieces that have not already been produced feel so real because they really could be - coming to a non-ICA venue near you soon.

But imagine, for a moment, how barbaric is would seem if the ICA cut its film department, or decided to stop supporting visual art. It’s a tribute to a sector sometimes criticised for performing its own marginal position that True Riches is a positive and forward looking response to what would otherwise be a devastating blow. It’s also a testament to the fact that the ICA stopped being important to live art some time ago. And for this reason True Riches is best read not as a defensive response to bad news, but as a hopeful glimpse of a future that may well be. It sticks two fingers up at the ICA but, more effectively, it waves in a host of ideas to inspire makers and audience members alike. Good news, then, that “a second season,” as the programme promises, “is already in the planning stages.”

FREE PRESS - Till Poems




image (c) cross-section July 09.















FREE PRESS - TILL POEMS
June - October 09

TILL POEMS is action, performance and writing. TILL POEMS is temporary. TILL POEMS likes dialogue, DADA, Concrete Poetry and creating with pre-authored products. TILL POEMS has a manifesto. TILL POEMS is subversive shopping, poetry readings and action scripting. TILL POEMS is coming to a supermarket near you soon!

Till Poems is a >>FREE PRESS<< case study. Participants are Dave Ball, Rachel Lois Clapham, Nicola Singh, Monika Dutta, Anna Williams.

A QUESTION OF BIOGRAPHY

ANSWERS

Dave Ball; Dave; Berlin; artist; ground coffee; Swansea; Contemporary Art Theory; How to Live; book of English jokes in German; splendid; cauliflower; depends who's asking; folding bicycle; artist (that's a job, isn't it?); ...sometimes forget that euros aren't worth the same as pounds and then when I remember feel like I've inadvertently saved some money.

Rachel Lois Clapham, Poo, Bradford, curator and art writer; a bag of crisp salad; Manchester; Contemporary Art Theory, Goldsmiths College 2007; Curator ‘Nahnou-Together Now’ at Tate Britain; a large sequined handbag; marginalia; Two large glasses of Shiraz; live writing, performance criticism, improvisation and the porosity of text; A pair of ill fitting black pants; Co-Director of Open Dialogues; ...never have any cash or change.

Monika Dutta; Mo/Moses; None; Make stuff; Bus ticket; South London; Fine Art Media (1993); audio visual performance ‘Cirrus’; A book on audubon's bird studies in Dutch; Minki; Predator sticker booparra; The persistence of personality after death of the body; Cool kits dinosaurs 3D skeleton puzzle and dino factfile; None;... wonder if I should.

Nicola Singh; Knickers; Newcastle upon Tyne; performance artist, musician and curator; a spider plant; Newcastle upon Tyne; BA Music Performance and Visual Arts, Dartington College of Art; ‘A love affair with the National History Museum (do something to make your Mam proud)’ 2008; Parma Violet flavored cocktail; dour; Marina Abramovic by Kristine Stiles, Klaus Biesenbach, and Chrissie Iles, 2008; Actuations, Bachelard’s ‘Poetics of Space’ and Gertrude Stein’s ‘Tender Buttons’; faulty dress; Wunderbar Festival 2009, People Show Workshops, Switch Performance Company collaboration, Allotment Residency; ...am mostly very fond of them.

Anna Maria Williams; Tick: Llanvihangel Crucorney (nr.Hereford); Visiting lecturer Documentary Photography and Documentary Film and Television/PhD researcher/Client Liaison officer(charity); 10 nails (masonry); London; MA Documentary Photography, Newport; ‘Territorialisation’ (ongoing); Shoes in Berlin; Yes; Suesse lust 2x 2.19 ; Site-specificity- impact upon community, collective memory and the communal archive; Multi-way push-up bra; preparing first paper for international conference; ... enjoy anticipating the purchase more than the actual transaction itself, which can be rather disappointing having robbed me of the potential for expectation.

QUESTION

Name; the name your family or partner calls you (nick-name); the city you live in; what you ‘do’ (one word or two); the last thing you purchased with cash; your home town; MA course you did recently; a job title/name of project you are proud of from 2008; last impulse buy; favorite word; an item off a receipt currently in your wallet; current research interest; the last item purchased that you got refunded for; what job you are doing now; when buying things I '……………' ;

Friday 31 July 2009

Notes on NOTES...


image - Arco, Bookwork/C-type prints, 2008 © Sam Belinfante


Open Dialogues is taking part in Notes on NOTES…; a collaborative writing residency with Matthew Hearn, John Dummett and Rachel Lois Clapham

NOTES on a Return is a series of events and exhibitions recalling a sequence of live artworks which took place at the Laing Gallery in the late 1980s.

The programme brings back works by Anne Bean, Rose English, Mona Hatoum, Bruce McLean and Nigel Rolfe. Five UK and international artists - Sam Belinfante (UK), Sofia Greff (Germany), Graham Hudson (UK), Meg Mosley (UK) and Viola Yesiltac (USA/Germany) - have also been commissioned to make new works that respond to the five original 1980’s performances.

Together, the exhibition based archival recollections, new commissions and symposium are all part of an open question or in-process experiment in how to house ephemeral practice and return to or re-enact the live.


Notes on NOTES

Notes on NOTES is a writing residency
in which Rachel Lois Clapham, John Dummett
and Matthew Hearne will collectively make an imperfect fiction of Notes on a Return in a series of live, drawn and public actions.


Rachel Lois Clapham ‘Scoring Notes on a Return’
Ultimately speculative, a score lies in between action and object, performance and document; it is a singular record of action past or imagined and a call to future performances.

Exploring how to compose, punctuate or re-write performance Rachel Lois will publicly make a score for Notes on a Return using materials gathered from artists and audiences over the two days of the symposium. The resulting score will be used to produce a written response to the five newly commissioned performances in Notes.

Visitors to the exhibition are invited to contribute to the composition of the score in whatever way they wish. All contributions will be acknowledged in the final published text.


Rachel Lois Clapham has a BA Fine Art/Art History (2000) and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory (2007) from Goldsmiths College. Previously editor of Live Art UK’s Writing From Live Art, and Arts Council funded Writing Live fellow for Performa Biennial, New York, her writing on performance related practice is published in the UK and internationally. She works across exhibitions and gallery education, most recently curating Nahnou-Together Now an exhibition at Tate Britain (June -Sept 08). She is currently Co-Director of critical writing initiative Open Dialogues and writes a regular column 'Inside Performance' for Dance Theatre Journal. Current interests are collaborative live writing, scores and the porosity of text. www.opendialogues.com


John Dummett ‘My very first Incunabulum’
Through working on and annotating a facsimile of Mel Bochner’s seminal 1970 conceptual artwork; ‘Language is not transparent’ John Dummett will print a text composed of the transient, ephemeral, and unstable fictions that together constitute memory. This live printing process will draw upon what is made visible and legible during the 1,050 minutes of the Notes on a Return symposium.

(Incunabulum is the Latin for "swaddling clothes" or "cradle" and can refer to the earliest stages or first traces in the development of anything. In printing, an incunabulum is a book, or even a single sheet of text that was printed— not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe.)


Working with text, writing and discussions,Dummetts' practice is a live collaborative process which performs the act of thinking and critical reflection. Over the past 10 years he has worked internationally exhibiting works at the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, Irish Museum of Modern Art and at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.


In 2009 John has worked on bodies of writing which have explored urban green space (The Architecture Centre Bristol), the significance and value of thinking in contemporary society (National Review of Live Art) and how shared codes of behaviour mark public space (Limerick City Gallery). He is currently undertaking a 6 month research programme supported by Longhouse in Birmingham.


Matthew Hearne ‘Notes on an Index’
Whilst accepting the subjectivity of our individual response to an event, action or intervention, as we process our thoughts, polish our vocabulary and perfect our grammar the indexical link between first impression and written response both diminishes and collapses.

Within this fulcrum, this margin, this middle ground however there exists the potential to develop and rekindle this connection. Exploring the process, connection and the immediacy of the writing with the aid of type-writer – formally used by Rob le Frenais in Anne Beans 1997 performance at the Laing – and a sheet of carbon paper, the medium, like the live work itself, will become the message.


Matthew Hearn is a writer, curator and sometime artist. He is currently undertaking an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award in partnership with University of Sunderland and The Locus+ Archive. Having worked with Locus+ since 2002 this current body of research led to his involvement in researching and curating the Locus+ Archive exhibition This Will Not Happen Without You and has also fed into the development of Notes on a Return.

Thinking, talking and writing about archives and the need, means and process of documenting ephemeral practices he has fed into a number of recent initiatives including, Per-Forming the Archive and Arkive City in collaboration with University of Ulster, Belfast, and Rethinking Archives, Arnolfini and UWE, Bristol.












Notes on a Return is supported by Arts Council England