Simon Ralph Goff and I are working on an extra little addendum to the Umbrella Project at the moment; a 6-track EP, with 3 shorter versions of the instrumental music behind each soundwalk, and 3 re-workings of the stories I found in the city for a shorter form performed over that music – about 4-6 minutes max. I sat down to work on that tonight, and this came out. I’m not sure if it’s quite right for any of the specific walks (commute, nighttime, daytime). But it is sort of about all of them. Perhaps we’ll make it a 7th track? Maybe this will just rest here. Largely unedited, fresh draft stuff, but I wanted it to have a life beyond my harddrive because there’s some ideas I like here, so here it is.

//

The city is a dream. A dream that lingers long after sleep has passed.

The kind of dream that hangs on the edges of our visions, reminds us of loves we have lost, people who have slipped past our fingers, that makes the places we walk through seem like the childhood homes we revisit in the night; that we turn a corner in and somehow certain things just aren’t right.

The city is a dream. It is the happenings of a thousand people’s days – arguments, small glimmers of kindness, tired stumblings, forgotten tasks, lists lost, and cracks in the pavement skipped – shaken up together, working their way out. The city is not a thing, it is a state of being – empty cities are ghost towns; they die. All that’s left are the dusty walkways where you struggle to recollect what has gone before.

The city is dreaming, it dreams you as you dream it. The city caresses you as you move through it, it lifts you and reaches into you in the way of an ex-lover visiting in the night. Insidious. Something you cannot extract yourself from. You are in the city and the city is in you. When you leave you relish the escape, but quietly know you’ll feel the pull to return to the neon visions of the night before long.

The morning commute is where you see this state. Also, motorway service stations. Those places between the dream, and awake.

And the city slips like dreams do too, one moment a rushing street, another a palace to consumption, the next an empty place designed only for passing through, then those nooks and crannies where old refrigerators, crisp packets and fallen bricks build up. Tombs to broken buildings mount next to the back walls of places that throng with coffee and china and steam and laughter.

The city sees you. It sees you and forgets you and feels your footfalls. The city remembers that it has missed you. Can’t imagine how it forgot. You touch its walls and stoop to pick up a glove that someone has lost.

You look at the glove. Small, but adult, probably a woman’s. You see the ghost of her running for a bus and dragging her purse from her bag, the glove falling to the ground unnoticed.

You hold it for a little longer than you expect. Then place it on the wall next to the pavement.

You look at the glove. Small, a child’s perhaps, you see the ghost of a harassed parent, barely maintaining consciousness through a haze of caffeine. The child throws it off and the pushchair runs over it. You briefly feel the milky texture of an infant’s skin. You gently place the glove on a nearby post box, then move on.

You look at the glove. And suddenly tears are falling from your face. Tears for the place you were 2 hours ago. Tears for all you have been holding back, all you continue to have to. All of the learning to un love someone. All of the extricating yourself from something with which you fit so well. You hold the glove tighter. Then fold it into your pocket.

For months later, when you feel like you’re falling, you reach into your pocket and grasp the slightly coarse fabric of that grey lost glove. That gift from someone who didn’t know they would give it.

You are never lost. Your hands are held by ghosts. The city sees you, in its dreams. Greets you like a friend both long and never forgotten. Still there when you wake up.

//

image shared by Jeff Youngstrom on Flickr via a CC license.

#Dust was a first artistic response to the Splacist Manifesto. #Dust was a collaboration between writer/theatre maker Hannah Nicklin and artist Nikki Pugh. #Dust was a commission by MADE. #Dust is a fragment of a city.

There were two main components to #Dust, first the Dust Balls, and secondly the Dust Motes.

The Dust Balls are large fragments of the city. They are formed out of open source electronics, clay, hope and optimism. They begin by introducing themselves to the listeners, and instruct them to point the device in different directions in order to ‘pick up’ stories of individuals in the areas surrounding them. Depending on the timing and direction in which you are facing, different stories will be heard.

They are heavy, and designed to be listened to by two people at once – the weight and bulk of the object meaning that two are required to support it. The two people sharing each experience of overhearing the stories should be strangers.

The Dust Motes are small fragments of the city. Memories, secrets, and moments lost, dropped, found, discovered, gifted, stolen and spread throughout the city. All are from Real People. Be very careful with them. Select ones you like the feel of. Keep them safe.

These motes were spread around the area surrounding the carpark where the first section happened. Groups of 3 went out to collect Motes, which they were then asked to look after carefully. At the end of the walk back to MADE’s office, they were asked to make a decision. Keep it, or crush it and see if anything was inside.

Why Oh Why: This collaboration started with a number of aims; challenging Nikki and Hannah as artists (Hannah to work with more fragmentary narrative directly augmenting a city, Nikki to work with narrative and examine interfaces), challenging the perception of how space is inhabited, considering Birmingham as inhabited architecture, picking up the fragments that you often walk by, to consider our ways of getting at the world; a consideration of the map view and the street view. As well as responding to the Splacist Manifesto, which is concerned with these things and more.

The Brief: After starting with the manifesto and the aims above, we wrote ourselves the following brief. Out of this the idea for #Dust emerged. “Make something that examines interfaces and how to create resonance in space and place. Looking at fabric pre-woven and overlaid; of narrative/moments, that heats and lights and races hearts.”

Fragments and the city. Cities are made up of the people who move through them; without them they are like crab shells. In this metaphor, we are the crab meat. And to confuse it. Crab meat made up like that bar of soap your grandma used to make out of all the ends of other different coloured soaps. Maybe we should dispense with the crab soap. What I’m trying to say is that we are everything that a city is. That cannot be reduced to a map or a single path through the place. #Dust aims to bring to life (in a very small way) a very small part of the patchwork of experiences, moments, breath, that is being-in-the-city.

Read more: We are also dedicated to being open about our processes, so to follow the blog posts that accompanied the making process, head over onto npugh.co.uk/tag/dust/ and hannahnicklin.com/tag/splacist

I am making something with Nikki Pugh called ‘Dust’. It is a response to a manifesto that claims we will make things with you, not for you. This is one of the ways it’s with. You can read about where the project is at right now over here. If you can offer me a story, it will be made into a Dust Mote. Things that people will find and keep. The stories will also feed into and inform the longer-form narrative fragments in the work. Head over here for full context.

And because this is a two way thing, here’s a couple I will submit:

Object 1: A porcelain badge, square with rounded corners, the transfer of a rabbit with a balloon on the front.

This object broke. It was the last thing in my daily life that came from the boy whose hair smelled like raku firings. It fell off my bag in St. Pancras about 3 years ago and shattered. I still have the largest fragment.

Object 2: A small plush rat.

[no picture]

Bought because it looked lonely. Bought just before something went completely, bafflingly wrong. Now hidden.

…

I need some less emo objects, huh?

So, here we are, 1/3 of the way into work for the MADE splacist commission (1 out of 3 days). In case you don’t read my blog RELIGIOUSLY (RSS, yo), Splacism is manifesto’d over here, and it’s that manifesto that MADE have challenged me and Nikki Pugh to respond to in an actual piece of actual art/experience/whatever. The manifesto also includes the notion of being open about process, so here we are.

Post its. Lots of them. That’s the main gist of it. We did some looking and walking and poking outside as well. But the ideas were post-itted. It’s a method I learnt from Alexander Kelly, and is brilliant for streamlining an idea. Like a portable brainstorm where as relevancies and relationships shift, you can re-place ideas. Move them onto a next stage. There are 3 here:

1) what are we doing and why

we summarised the manifesto points (yellow)
we summarised what MADE had asked us to do (green)
we summarised what we wanted to do (pink)

2) write this as a brief

We then took this and turned it into a brief, here you can see things that moved forwards from the manifesto points and self-challenges; Interfaces, resonance and fragments/particles. Heat and lights, the fabric of a city, and racing hearts. Space, and catalysts for narrative. And a story I told about an Edgelands speaker describing the storming of a stage (“an act I had only previously seen on a football field … they needed to feel the resonance there”)

2.1) The Brief

Does what it says on the post it.

3) Respond to the brief.

This is our main thinking space directly to the brief, the thing in the middle is what we settled on making. Another thing, too, but that would spoil a bit of it, so we’ll tell you afterwards. We wanted to push the idea of stories you walk by, of moments and fragments forgotten, floating around a city (Motes…). We’re going to make a device for you to listen to them. But it will also challenge the interface of the headphone piece, it will be tactile and awkward and breakable and intimate. There will be some things never found. You will scan the city from above, and then search its streets below. Also we will provide hot drinks.

And then we named it: Dust.

Book tickets (for free) here, and look out for the next bit of open process on Nikki’s blog, which will be all about building and testing the protoype listening device.

Summary/Tl:dr version:

WHO: Made by me and Nikki Pugh, with some other people, commissioned by Made. For anyone to do. At least one aspect of the experience (out of 2) is highly suited to people with hearing and vision impairment. Those with mobility issues should be fine if in a wheelchair, top walking distance is 10 minutes. Top walking around time half an hour.

WHERE: on top of a car park, in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham, and for a couple of blocks around.

WHAT: You are invited to listen in to the whispers of strangers. A large dusty device that catches different voices depending on where you point it. Like a satellite dish, but made of clay and big and round. You will also be sent out in search of Motes. #Dust Motes are a mystery. For now.

WHY: To challenge us as artists, to challenge the perception of how space is inhabited, to pick up the fragments that you often walk by, to consider interfaces, ways at getting at the world; the map view and the street view.

HOW: Using clay, memories, arduino, audio, our brains, and the bodies of people.

“But otherwise I think the only way that you can have a big impact if by changing people’s views, by actually getting hold of their heart and squeezing it and saying; look at this. And I think as you say, it’s having the story that triggers the emotion in the individual, which then says ‘yeah, that’s not right, we need to change this’. Because you won’t get, there’s too many pressures on people, and I think this is where capitalism wins through most of the time; there’s too many pressures on people to stand out, to stand up, to say ‘no’, and I think by doing what you’re doing in terms of the stories, you know okay you can only get some people but that can make a big difference, than, you know, you as an individual amongst 200-300,000 people making a lot of noise down the street.”

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2011/11/my-dad-and-stories/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2011/10/other-projects/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2011/10/other-projects/#comments Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:08:17 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=2468 Deep in the middle of Umbrella Project goings on at the moment (small reflections and links to follow) but just wanted to post about a couple of very exciting things I’m doing (almost straight) after (gulp).

The first is my first more traditional performance piece in a good few years. A small work in progress for an audience of 8-10 (due to venue size, I’m sure it will scale eventually) at the Flanagan Collective’s ‘Little Festival of Everything’. #Littlefest (all donation based ticketing) will be taking over the Fauconberg Arms in Coxwold, North Yorks, and a lot of the villagers’ homes, too, and filling the pub and surrounds with around 100 pieces of art&performance. Ace. I’ll be joining people like Rash Dash, Belt Up, Pilot, Chris Thorpe and loads others to present a piece I’ll be working in for about 4 days prior. A Conversation with my Father.

Here’s the copy (I suck at copy)

An early work in progress born out of a conversation between an ex-policeman and his protestor daughter. A conversation about fear, grey areas, them and us, duty, and standing up to protect what you think matters. An intimate piece for a small audience at a very early stage of development, please come, watch, and offer feedback.

It’s on 6 times over 2 days, and will probably involve video or projection of some kind. Maybe just sound. I’m not sure. I’m filming a conversation with my father on the 7^th, and basically working something up from there. Hopefully it’s going to be pretty interesting, and is kind of addressed at both sides of the fence, protestors and non protesting public/police officers. More of a question about the fence in the first place, really. WATCH THIS SPACE. And come to Yorkshire for the weekend to see it.

The other super exciting and slightly unnerving (that’s how I like my life) thing I’m doing is a collaboration with the BRILLIANT Nikki Pugh. Who is the person who’s going to teach me to hack and solder properly. One of these days. You may or may not have noted that we’ve been working on a Splacist manifesto – well MADE have invited Nikki to lead (I think I’m helping) a workshop on the manifesto, and commissioned us both to work on our first practice-as-response to it, which is free to come and see/do (though ticketed, head here for more info)

Copy wot I did not write, and is therefore far superior:

Who are the Splacists? Will introduce the context for, and development of, the Splacist manifesto as well as reporting findings from the What are the Splacists? activities conducted earlier in the day. There will also be an opportunity to experience work developed in collaboration between artists Nikki Pugh and Hannah Nicklin. This work has been commissioned by MADE as part of Learning Spaces Living Places 2 and represents the first in direct response to the manifesto. The evening event is your chance to experience it first-hand and be a part of it.

Splacism is a contemporary mode of practice proposed by Paul Conneally. A new set of ideologies defined by Hannah Nicklin and Nikki Pugh. A hop, skip and a jump away from phsychogeography and the works of the situationist international. Think space, place and splice. Developed empirically by whoever’s interested.

Both really exciting things to lead up to Christmas, which I fear may have to be the point at which things settle down a bit and I spend 7 months or so actually finishing my PhD. Hm.

People have been telling me stories, and I will get to them. But I want to start with the silences. The inarticulacies. The people who don’t feel like their lives are worth putting into words. The people who asked ‘why me’? The lack of light, the darkness on the edge of city nights, the things on the edges of saying.

Event details for the first soundwalk will be released on Monday…

videos!

It started like this: I was in London for a coupe of weeks, sometime just before Spring…. sprung. It was tipping it down, quite late at night, I was walking under one of the arches near London Bridge, on Bermondsey Street. It must have been a Friday night, because there were a lot of people dressed up going places. I saw a girl, she was shivering and wet and doing her level best to shelter her  hair and makeup from the rain. I wished I had a second umbrella to give her. I wished I had given her mine.

It now looks like this: from the 7th of October ’til the 12th of November umbrellas will be appearing all over York. In certain places. You may also see me, at certain times, on certain days, standing in front of a big inflatable thingy, ready to offer you a biscuit, a cup of tea. The umbrellas that you might find, or that I might give you are free to take, to use, to pass on, and then to drop off, so other people can use them. Think of it like a Boris Bike system for umbrellas, except that it’s free. I’m giving hundreds of umbrellas to the city of York, all I want in exchange is their stories. The umbrellas each have a number on, if you call that number, you’ll be asked a question. Leave a story, any story, in response, and over the 5 weeks I will be producing 3 x 20-30 minute sound pieces to be listened to in certain parts of the city. Free to download, or to pick up a ready-loaded mp3 player from York Theatre Royal or the Central Library.

I’m being helped to do this with the magnificent music of Simon Ralph Goff (who’s been collecting and manipulating found sounds from around the city, and turning them into instruments), the production of the brilliant Pilot Theatre, who as well as offering an incredibly generous amount of support-in-kind, also brought Arts Council money on board, and the germ of the idea itself was developed under the mentoring of the FutureEverything accelerator program, and forms part of my PhD-as-practice with (and where I am also supported by) Loughborough University.

So many hands. Helping me make this thing, which I hope will be an experiment in connecting people, small kindnesses, and voicing a city. Get excited. I am. (I’m also equal parts nervous, but I don’t think you need to share that too.)

The main site for the project is up now: umbrellaproject.co.uk, and you can also follow @umbrellaproject on Twitter and ‘like’ it over on Facebook. At the moment there’s basic info, but as soon as downloads are released, and event dates for the walks, and my visits to the streets of York are announced, you will find details about them in all of those places.

And for now? pass it on…

Playing around with leaflet design for my and Steve’s Zero Hour sound piece.

Extra material in case the journey is longer than the sound…

I was originally going to release this info a bit later, but turns out people are already booking (the very limited) tickets, and didn’t want anyone in my networks to miss out.

The Zero Hour Bus Tours are 4 pieces of audio loosely themed along the lines of ‘the apocalypse’, designed to be listened to on the N11 night bus (London) between the hours of midnight and 3am. The journey will take roughly 35 minutes.

They are a Forest Fringe commission for the In Transit Festival 2011.  Along with Steve Kilpatrick on sound I have been writing one of these experiences.

You can buy tickets for any of the 4 different ‘tours’ (and the rest of the festival) on this site, and below are the direct links to the times and dates of my and Steve’s piece. The piece is gently interactive. It might ask you to do small things; look out the window, hold onto a handle. Nothing that might make you look silly.

The tickets are free, but limited; for mine there are only 6 per journey. As we are being only ‘tolerated’ by TFL, you will have to pay for your bus journey (£2.20 cash, £1.30 Oyster). My journey is from World’s End, to Liverpool St. Further instructions will be provided after you have bought your ticket.

MON 25TH JUL, 2011 12:35am

MON 25TH JUL, 2011 1:05am

MON 25TH JUL, 2011 1:35am

WED 27TH JUL, 2011 12:35am

WED 27TH JUL, 2011 1:05am

WED 27TH JUL, 2011 1:35am

I am still looking for a few more volunteers to help me on the night, there are more details about that here. Please get in contact ASAP if you are available on the above dates/times, plus the weekend before, and interested in running around London in exchange for a drink, £10 expenses, and all the costume items that I might furnish you with.