Hannah Nicklin

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.

A Video or Four

Just snapshots of my travels again, taken with my iPhone.

A snapshot from the #booparty

Sheltering from the rain, @maggiephilbin @documentally @quitexander @ihatemornings @philcampbell @barnstormed and more…

Hovercraft!

And Paddling ^_^

The Final Product

A piece written as the result of this experiment:

Listen to the Audioboo here

Let me know what you think! (RE product as well as process). It was a really, really interesting collaborative process, and the final product is by no means polished. But that’s not the point, is it :)

And the text:

I grew up here. But I don’t recognise it. It changes the land, the rain. After a while you just don’t see it.

I don’t know where all the water comes from. It’s like money, y’know, no one ever explained to me how there could be more in one place, and not use it up somewhere else.

Ice I spose. Like banks.

I wish you could see the sky.

It’s like darkness. Fuller than the sea. And warm. I don’t like that. It grates. The salt makes your face feel like its burning.

I lost you.

That’s a stupid way to say something, it’s not like a map would have been useful.

You died.

And I can smell you on my hair. You grabbed hold of it and you pulled me out of the water. Screaming past. Pushed me on top of the car. The red metal. It were slippery.

Very Titanic.

Do you remember that film?

I walked here. Everyone were walking in the opposite direction. I don’t know how many people I passed. The stones clinked on the path. People had used all of their words up. Wasted them shouting, saying ‘evacuation were ridiculous’ to committees of nervous looking councillors. There were always this feeling that somehow we’d be able to make it not true if we shouted loud enough.

And now they’re all the same – just a white sea of eyes walking past. Brown to me – your brown eyes. The way they, when you laughed. You look out of every face I see, but I know they’re not you, because they’re not laughing. And it’s not just you – because I know, I know now, you don’t realise. But we’re all connected. It sounds like hippy crap, but when you actually see people, when you actually see them, and this much, hurt, you feel it. You know we were always connected. Our breath. But now you breathe, and it doesn’t feel like you have. The air’s so wet.

I’ve given up on staying dry.

I’ve given up.