Hannah Nicklin

2010: A Year in Art (Mine and Other People’s)

Me mid-June, with my freshly broken arm and super-attractive cast protector.

Mandatory end-of-year reflective blog post ENGAGE.

So, yep, here we are. And what the heck could you want more than my reflections on My Life in Art 2010 Edition? Exactly. This is going to be meandering and will probably miss things out, but is a rough account of art wot I have done, and art wot I enjoyed this 2010…

So, apparently I’ve actually done quite a bit of art stuff this year, despite the full-time PhD (and I managed to deliver two papers this year without having anything thrown at me, or getting thrown out) plus a broken arm in June… which still hurts actually. Half a year more and it should stop. Anyway, art!

In March I had my first full proper-play production at Theatre503 with Box of Tricks Theatre’s Word:Play – Awake was a short 15 minute conversation between a dying gamer and her avatar. It was an interesting experience, but I don’t really rate it as a piece of writing, I think I’d found a story but not really the right form; so I next moved from the stage to the street… In May I released my first experiment in sound-based pervasive work – Walk With Me, a 10 minute soundwalk for one to be done anywhere in the rain. I got some lovely feedback, handwritten notes, posted found items, and twitpics and photo albums from people who went on the walk. I then got to develop to 30 minutes worth of sound-walking for The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You in July, which although admittedly breathed it’s first breath out of Walk With Me, was this time built out of memories collected from people online. It was commissioned by the Green Room as part of the Hazard Festival, and I fell slightly in love with Manchester as well as learning a lot about working with a group audience, not just a single person. APPARENTLY YOU CAN’T HERD THEM. Who knew. Then Fierce‘s Interrobang allowed me to push my practice beyond the soundwalk (which I didn’t want to get stuck in as a form) into a 4 minute piece of live art called ‘Home’… OK it still used recorded sound. And was pretty damn authored. But it was a step, and I learnt a lot more about live art as a form. A brief art/academia mashup occurred for the TaPRA conference with A Soundwalk without Organs - a soundwalk done as part of a paper delivered which described the contemporary academic conference as completely useless in representing either academic thought or arts practice. FUN. Then it got to Autumn, and I got to make a soundwalk with a piece of entirely new music from the brilliant Lantern Music, Nightwalk York happened as part of the Take Over and Illuminating York Festivals in October/November. Finally towards the end of November Hibernate! a game for Larkin’ About took to the streets of Manchester, and I was at least able to push my practice a little bit further in terms of pervasive stuff… Continue reading…

Home.

My mum walking alongside the River Witham in Lincolnshire.

A brilliant and hectic week has just passed, highlights of which include the Playful Festival on Friday – where I learnt about the wonders of Minecraft, that games ≠ points, and about games people’s frustrations at badges and the ‘gamification’ of brands/sites, as well as getting a teensy bit grumpy at game designers’ propensity to play with and challenge all rules apart from those pertaining to gender-; a performance of Brian Duffy’s Modified Toy Orchestra after a spectacular Artists’ Brunch Sunday at the Edge in Birmingham; and a top meeting with the Nightwalk York music people - Lantern Music - ahead of our trip to reccy the area around the Minster at the beginning of October.

Saturday evening, as you may have seen, I had the immense pleasure to take part in Stoke Newington Airport‘s Live Art Speed Dating. An absolutely brilliant event, incredibly welcoming and supportive, and having spent 3 or so years in the West Midlands I can say an incredibly valuable effort by Fierce to get Live Art out into the heart of the Black Country. Having primarily hid behind pen and paper for the past 5 years, performing again was a bit strange, but mostly good. The piece I decided to do in the end was a very simple one, and probably still a bit writerly, but the base ideas of which are something which I think I’d like to work up further. All of the other artists’ work looked and sounded brilliant brilliant, and my main regret of the night was not getting a chance to see any of them!

‘Home’.

My ‘date’ happened down the back of the stage, in a dingy and dark little corner. It was lit by a lamp and a green emergency light, was called ‘Home’, and consisted of an audio track of me speaking for 3:30 about the fact that the growing consensus on sea level rise puts my county mostly underwater in 50-100 years, and what it feels like to understand that you might never be able to return to the landscape that to you, is home. This was listened to over headphones, whilst I spoke about 2 seconds behind the recording with the idea of disorienting the listner. The iPad I was playing it on (longest battery life available to me, 3 hours action, left it at 96%[!]) had a picture of the tree I centered the speech around on it. The final thing I did was to give them 30 seconds to write down the ten things they’d take with them if being evacuated, they could then leave that with me, or take it with them. The text was pretty short so I’ve included it at the end of the post if you’re interested.  Continue reading…

Nightwalks, Talks and Live Art.

Greetings all, hope you’re enjoying the cooling down of the weather and the reddening of the trees. Autumn always gets me excited, not just because I can make crumbles and gravy dinners with more than usual impunity, or because it means the approach of my birthday, but also because it feels like the beginning of new endeavours. School years, university; Autumn makes me want to purchase stationary. And in the spirit of new endeavours, I have three very exciting things to tell you about…

One: I will this Saturday (25^th September) be performing a piece of Live Art in Stoke Newington Airport’s Live Art Speedating as part of Fierce, Birmingham’s Interrobang. Lots of words there that might not make sense to everyone. Go look at the poster, and check out this video, for more on what it’s all about…

Two: I shall also be talking at the Coventry Pecha Kucha on the 12^th of October on Theatre in the Age of the First Person. 20 slides of 20 seconds each. See here for more info. Other talks, too, I’m particularly intrigued by the ‘safe sex with robots’ one.

And three: I’m very excited to announce a new soundwalk! Nightwalk; a guided walk through the light and dark of York will be happening on Wednesday 27th & Friday 30th October at 7pm. The event will be free, and is happening as part of the Take Over and Illuminating York festivals. I’m especially thrilled because this will be my first collaboration with real music-making people, the brilliant Lantern Music. Hopefully it will mark the beginning of a beautiful collaborative relationship. The site for the piece is http://nightwalkyork.tumblr.com – do share it, and join/invite people to the Facebook Event. And follow me and @umbrellaproject on Twitter for whisperings from the writing process.

So there you go, lots of exciting things to lead me up to the beginning of November, and the prospect of launching a very exciting country-wide project come next Spring… but you’ll have to wait to hear about that.

Imagine

Imagine if the land and housing in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Essex, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Cumbria, and Durham was entirely wiped out by flooding.*

That’s what Pakistan is dealing with, 1/5th of it, “ravaged by floods“

“The water was up to my neck, then my nose, I only survived because our men took me by the arm and lifted me up,” she told me. “We walked for two hours like this. Ever since the running away my belly has hurt all over. I don’t know if the baby inside me is alive or dead.” Saeed Bibi from the Punjab

DONATE HERE

Meanwhile the hottest weather on record in Russia has wiped out ONE THIRD of their grain crops.

They’ve had to impose a ban on grain exports, which will raise prices across the world, hitting the poorest, hardest.

That previously linked article comes with a handy explanation on how both are caused by a shift in the jet stream, the instability of which has been linked to climate change:

“The World Meteorological Organization says this “unprecedented sequence of extreme weather events … matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming.”  NASA says July 2010 is “What Global Warming Looks Like.” ” (source)

Even the DAILY FREAKING MAIL has changed it’s stance to ‘global warming is happening, and it is our fault‘

Donate to Pakistan relief efforts, because you should. Donate, because you can. Donate, because this will soon be us. Donate because Western lifestyles have contributed directly to this. For whatever reason, whatever you believe, please, reach out, £5, whatever you can. Donate.

And all this comes as the so-called ‘green’ Coalition government are side-stepping their promises on climate change action, including an incredibly damaging broken promise RE power provision, and the mooted selling off of our conservation land and country side. Not only will reneging on green policies like this mean being hit severely by EU penalties, if the coalition government carries on like this a greater cost will soon be at their feet. The sooner and better we act, the lower the human and monetary cost the world is hit with. The later and more half heartedly they act, the greater the risk that  it’s not long before we won’t have to do any imagining.

*that’s one fifth of England, mind, I don’t know how many counties there are in the UK. Also, it’s 1/5 of counties, not of land, I did try to pick coastal ones, as we’re more likely to be affected by storm surges and sea level rises. They’re also mostly low-lying. But I will freely admit this may not be exactly 1/5 of land or population. I hope you accept it as a quick way of making a point, if not, feel free to do the maths and I’ll happily amend it.

[images off the BBC, via the linked articles, I always try to use CC images, hopefully these will be seen as 'fair use' as quoting the referenced articles, however I will take them down if wished]