Exciting thing! Andy Field and I are up to stuff again, returning to the Arts Council England’s (ACE) State of the Arts Conference this year, much more integrally than how we were part of last year’s; this time we’ve been able to help shape the way, where, and with whom the conversations happen. Live blog! Artists bursaries! Actual conversations on themes! Some very exciting and challenging live bloggers feeding in and back everything said by everyone! All in all it looks like a massive leap for ACE, in a brilliant and totally important direction. A bit below from mine and Andy’s statement of intent:

“Before, during and after State of the Arts 2012, we will be hosting this online space as an important new facet of the conference.

We want this to be a place for anyone with an interest in the arts to share their thoughts and ideas. A carnival of voices discussing anything and everything about the state of the arts in 2012. In particular we hope that this site might allow people who can’t make it to Manchester for the day of the conference to have a really meaningful impact upon the event.”

Read more on our intent over here, see who all our livebloggers are here, and start submitting your thoughts on the main themes of the conference (along the top of the page) on the submit page.

To get you all started we’d love to start a little ‘art is’ meme – I found a really lovely mine of ‘art is’ images on flickr which I’ve been using to title each opening blog post that’s up there now, and we’d love to know what your answer is to that question is (positive, negative, or indifferent), so, how to join in:

• Find an image that for you says something about what art is and why it is important.
• It can be a picture, or a picture of an event, or a diagram. It could be something you find on the net (though preferably creative commons), something you take a photograph of, or even something you draw yourself. It doesn’t really matter.
• Send it to us as an image post on the submit page
• Tell other people to do the same.*

*plagiarising Andy a bit with these instructions. Sorry Andy, it’s late and I’ve been staring at the website way too long.

THAT’S INTERACTION, THAT IS.

So just over the 3 week point in the Umbrella Project (it’s 5 weeks long) and things are just about starting to get to the point where I’ve enough time to blog. Biggest realisation from this experiment was how more than slightly ridiculous collecting the material for, transcribing, editing, recording, collaborating on, testing, mixing and releasing 3 soundwalks actually is. Including running events and trying to run a bit of digital awareness raising, too. Phew. Think a concerted amount of the ‘you can download and do these things’ work is going to have to happen afterwards. We’ve another day out with our big inflatable dome thingy on the 12^th (the last day) so I think that’ll be a good point to do that.

So yes, all the story collecting trips are done, although you can still leave your stories of journeys via the number on the umbrellas up until the end of this week (when writing happens).

The first soundwalk – Evening – is done and available for download (designed to be done after dark outside the bigger of the two Betty’s Tea Rooms) the download link and full instructions (do grab those too) can be found over here.

The second soundwalk – Daytime – will be released on Tuesday (designed to be done sitting down somewhere in the pedestrian bit of Parliament Street, at a busy time of day, lunchtime, or a Saturday). That will be up on the same download page.

And the final soundwalk ‘Commute’ will be released on the 10^th, with event days for Daytime on the 5^th, and Commute on the 11^th. Join us on those days if you’d like to get the chance to talk to me or Tom (artistic producer on the project) about it.

Also, worth me putting down in pixels, how absolutely positively brilliant everyone at Pilot have and are being on this, to take the risk on what is still being termed an experiment (learning an awful lot creatively as well as logistically, which would make a re-mount/developed version quite drastically different, I think) in the first place, as well the incredible support in kind, and actual bodies-on-the-ground support etc. Would probably be curled up in a ball weeping if it wasn’t for them. So THANKS, PILOT.

And here’s some pictures (facebook link) of story collection days to amuse you, and a trailer for the first soundwalk (making the second trailer tomorrow).

*collapses*

Oh, and if you don’t know what any of this is going on about, head over to this video, or the site.

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!

splacist (splā sĭst)

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. With more practice and less wine. Think space, place and splice. Though still with a bit of wine.

Developed empirically by whoever’s interested.

WE ARE THE SPLACISTS

We will own this city.
We will take it back.
We will link and shift; across time, space, people, places and processes.
We will weave throughout the fabric of people’s lives.
We will unpick it.

We will expose and re-see.
We recognise our observation affects the outcome unavoidably.
We will affect and be affected.
We will glory in the moment, the collage, the marking and then passing on.

We reject your beginning, middle and end.
We will work on and across edges. We will push them. We will blur them.
We will trace and leave traces.
We will work with you, not for you.

We reject your shopping centre, your pavement, your cultural quarter;
We will under mine pre-defined spaces. We reject them.

We will fail spectacularly, vitally, elegantly.
Our practice will be open, although it may not always be out in the open.

We will make exchanges.
We will make adventures.
We will reveal beautiful moments.
We will reveal the ugly.
We will hold your hand.
We will whisper in your ear ‘let go’.

We will reclaim the city, not for you, but with you.
We are you.

WE ARE ALSO THE TECHNOLSPLACISTS

We will not be technosplacist when being splacist will suffice.
We will never underestimate the power of cardboard and masking tape.
We will not be afraid to get our hands dirty.
We will not be afraid to do without digital at all.

We will use ‘digital’ as tool and material, not as veneer.
We recognise ‘digital’ is not necessarily something ‘other’.

We will make and share our own tools as appropriate.
We will collaborate.
We will be generous.
We will be porous.

We will re-reveal technology as used by private interests.
We will hold them accountable.
We will put it to our own uses.

We will cut, and we will paste.
We will undo.

We will be artful. We will be skilful. We will fail usefully.

We will find our own energy sources.

We will pervade.

An attempt to map the entire world, alphabetically, in a day. To name every country in its own language, and to collect a story for every country, and to place it, correctly, on the map, from memory. Using cardboard, paper, pens and post-it notes, and with the help of the audience, Third Angel and mala voadora build a portrait of the world, as it was, as it is now, and as it might be in the future.

You can see a slideshow of the  pictures I took below, or go and read Alex’s seriously brilliant account of the day. Do it, do it now.

First up, a 7 minute taster of the WHOLE DAY

And for the more dedicated or mix&match viewer, a playlist of videos of each provocateur:

Aa-ah. Falling behind in June content already. Just dropping by quickly to nudge you in the direction of something that Andy Field and I have been scheming (on, about? Never used the word ‘scheming’ before). A return of the Flash Conference we sprang at State of the Arts earlier on this year. Now much bigger! Much longer! And with creative as well as thinky inputs!

Basically it will be hosted by Forest Fringe in Edinburgh, on the 21st of August. We have been gathering questions, speakers, performances, and innovative-ish ideas for holding different level of dialogue, and will bring them all together in a cornucopia of discussion of the ideas of performance, what it means to be ‘fringe’, the state of the world, and how the arts thread through that. And as ever, we’ll be posting audio of all the provocations, will hopefully have livebloggers, and will definitely try our damndest to replicate the conversation online, and feed everything both ways across the virtual/real membrane. Ticket will work on a pay-what-you-can model, and we’ll even do lunch. Hold the date, eventbrite will be out soon.

Copy!

This day is not about railing against authority or the great institutions of the arts. It is a day for everybody to gather at the edges of those big institutions and organisations, on equal terms. To ask daring questions and suggest implausible answers. To share a spirit of generosity and a galvanising sense of hope; that despite or perhaps because of the political, financial and environmental circumstances in which we find ourselves, the arts can and will play a part in imagining and realising a better possible future.

We’re still looking for partners to help support the event, so if you’d like to help (in exchange for your logo on every available surface) do drop us a line. And if you can offer your time over the event to help live blog/document the conversations, or if you have a pro-camera (something along the lines of a Cannon 550D) you could lend/come up and use, please DO let me/us know.

Finally, today is the last day to get a question in for the voting next week. 2 of the 4 questions that will frame the whole event are going to be from submissions. So PLEASE do submit. Everyone has their bugbear, wondering, pet peeve, or great ambition for performance, and the questions will be anonymous, so you can be as controversial as you like. Even if you can’t quite form a question, please just send us some thoughts and we’ll shape it into something that could provoke a discussion…

Think that’s that. I’ll be back later this month posting various talks that I’m giving places. Hopefully interesting ones. The TEDxYork stuff should be at least. I actually checked out the site the other day and was bowled over by who else is speaking. Feels very odd to be on the same platform as people like Bill Thompson, Daniel Bye, and Tassos Stevens. I like the theme, too; A New STEAM age. STEM plus ‘A’ for arts. GEDDIT?! Yeah.

It’s a picture. Of a cake. That I made. For my friend Andy’s 21st Birthday.

In unrelated matters it’s the last day of the month and I have only filed 3 of my 4 monthly quota’d blog posts.

Chapter two went well, will post it up here, maybe in sections, maybe when it resembles something akin to the English language. The Umbrella Project looking more and more exciting, with an upcoming test of the message system which will play with some collected stories –  more on that soon, too. I’ll probably be talking about related matters at Ted X York in a few weeks (eep!)

Oh, and if you’re in the East Midlands this Thursday, I shall be chairing a really exciting event being run by Broadway Media Centre – as part of their Making Future Work project they’re hosting several ‘Future Work’ events. I shall be introducing the Making Future Narrative event at LPAC in Lincoln, expect 10 minutes of blistering hyperbole followed by a couple of hours of overly complex ‘you’re running out of time’ gestures. I want them to look like the baseball code they use as a comic vignette in American TV shows.

And finally, here’s a cryptic clue to something I’m going to be doing avec the insanely talented Steve Kilpatrick in London at the end of July. It may or may not involve 22 performers.

This is just a quick reaction to one of the three pieces I went to see in London last Saturday. Blogging has gotten slack as things are a bit hectic at the moment as over the next 3 weeks or so I will be writing chapter 2 for the PhD (The Soundwalk and the City, since [I might as well pretend] you asked); as well as jaunting all over the place. Jaunts include the Debbie Pearson/Chris Goode Word Festival double bill, 3 pieces at ‘Mezze‘ in Leeds, Mapping the City in Hull, taking part in the As Yet Impossible Symposium (which I’m incredibly stoked to be invited to) in Manchester, an Ontroerend Goed piece at WAC, a two day hardcore/punk festival in Lincoln, a new format/writing session in Lichfield and the exciting possibility of charing a ‘Making Future Narrative‘ event in my home city (that last one tbc). Plus meetings with various folk about exciting things future-orientated. It’s properly awesome, but I’m struggling for time a little bit. And should probably take a break… er. Sometime.

Anyway, I saw 3 things in a Massive Theatre Day with the lovely Megan Vaughan; Little Eagles (RSC, new play, Space, Communist Russia), Chekhov in Hell (Dan Rebellato, described very well by @danielbye as a ‘satire on the grotesqueries of our culture’. Funny, but ultimately defeating) and the London Word Festival audio/library piece The Quiet Volume.

I by no means am going to talk fully about the piece, but I did want to note one particular aspect of my reaction to it because it’s interested me, and has me thinking a bit. It was actually the piece that I enjoyed and engaged with least, and this is a kind of attempt to try and learn from what it was that had that effect:

1) I cannot stand ‘sticky’ voices – that horrible sound you get from a cloyingly dry mouth. Intentional or no, the piece had two voices (the second much worse) whispering stickily in my ear for half an hour which made me feel pretty ill-disposed to their story.

2) The lack of bodily autonomy (it was only really my head and hands that moved) made me feel pretty trapped by the piece.

3) I was recovering from a migraine, so it was difficult for me to focus very easily on words, and especially to scan passages of writing quickly, both of which were required by the piece.

4), and this goes together with above point, and is what’s been swimming around my brain the most; how very important how you are goes towards these participant-centric pieces. Because I was pissed off. Really pissed off. I’d lost two or three days worth of useful work time to the migraine, I was hot, hadn’t slept properly for a few nights because of neighbours, was worried about trains, I’d been feeling isolated and a bit lonely… and now I had to listen to some sticky person telling me what to do. In my own head! How dare they?

Or so a small contrary voice piped up every time I was given an instruction.

There’s a massive problem when you use the second person in audio pieces, certainly The Quiet Volume was playing with the idea of putting a voice inside your head, but by not offering any real degree of autonomy or agency (I feel) early on, my (admittedly stubborn) mind refused to play along. I got bored of its instructions. I became distracted by other thoughts. I refuted it telling me how I felt, or that I was unable to imagine things that I was perfectly capable of imagining (apparently I couldn’t imagine a table in a cottage or something). I think this certainly had a lot to do with the mood I went in with, but I’m convinced that there are ways of easing people into that second person – and a large part of that has to do with allowing the participant to own the ‘you’, before being more and more guided by it. There was only one path through this piece, with little room to wander between signposts. I felt that had I been swept along a little more, this journey into and through texts, sounds and spaces might have grabbed me. As it was, my participation was perfunctory.

Which I think is a really useful thing to ponder on. Beware that tricksy second person.

N.B. I’d warn against any of this discouraging you from doing the piece, in fact I’d love you to tell me how you felt about it – and if you think your mood going in affected how you listened to it.

The title’s a Pratchett joke. It’s the name of the mountain where all the gods hang out in his sort-of-comedy-fantasy Discworld. Not that I’m casting myself as a god in this reference, you understand. More I needed a title, and this kind of worked, whilst hopefully making those of you out there of equal dork status feel a warm ‘one-of-us’ glow in your collective bellies. Mmm. Glowy.

Manifest(o)in’ am I? Well, yes, collectively, with that there Nikki Pugh (and provoked by Paul Conneally); who I had the great pleasure to finally meet in the flesh last Tuesday. I’m rushing around like a very busy person at the moment – heading off to Belfast this weekend is knocking out a lot of my ‘doing stuff’ time – so I haven’t had time to talk about the Fierce evening of testing new work/ideas that I attended. It was really brilliant, though; I particularly spent the night with a vibrating gps creature, you can read more on that here. Anyway, as Nikki highlights over on her blog post, we were both struck, whilst being in each other’s physical presence, how lonely our practice can sometimes make us feel. Naturally our response was to write a SPLACIST/TECHNOSPLACIST MANIFESTO over googledocs a couple of nights later. Now all we need is to pretend that the next big revolution is all our doing, spend the rest of our days spilling wine over our faces, and we’ll already have outdone the Situationists by dint of actually having done some stuff.*   **

Anyway, head on over to Nikki’s piece and read her context to the manifesto. Or look a whole paragraph down to read the thing itself. Also: JOIN US.

In other news, you can see my face on this website, and I’ve been reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves in a vain effort to, as my supervisor put it, ‘learn how to punctuate’. Look! I put semi colons in this! I’ve moved into the over-confident sprinkle-it-liberally-and-some-will-hit-the-mark phase, I’m sure it can’t be long before I start actually writing Proper English.

Manifesto-in’:

WE ARE THE SPLACISTS

We will own this city.
We will take it back.
We will link and shift.
We will affect and be affected.
We will look, and be seen.
We will expose and re-see.
We will glory in the moment, the collage, the marking and then passing on.
We reject the beginning, middle and end.
We reject your shopping centre, your pavement, your cultural quarter.
We will build our own constructs.
We will build our own bridges.
We will find the edges and push them.
We will fail spectacularly, vitally, elegantly.
We will span.
We will look up, down, under and behind.
We will leap.
We will invite others to do these things too.
We will make exchanges.
We will make adventures.
We will make beautiful moments.
We will reveal the ugly.
We will hold your hand.
We will whisper in your ear ‘let go’.
We will run, skip and jump.
We will be motionless.
We might dance.
We will dream.
We will be generous, but we may subtle about it, too.
We will reclaim the city, not for you, but with you.
We are you.

WE ARE ALSO THE TECHNOLSPLACISTS

We will learn how to use the tools that make the things we want to happen happen.
We will help others learn wherever we can.
We will construct our manifesto – collaboratively – online, because the Internet is also a space :)
We will shift between space, online and off, taking on the form and the arena that suits us best.
We will bodily augment the layers of virtual space, story, marketing, capitalism, that exist in the city, with our own stories.
We will hold the data-harvesting done in the city in the name of ‘games’ (foursquare, loyalty cards) accountable.
We will find our own energy sources.
We will learn how to flex the central nervous system of the city – the data streams in its weather detectors, CCTV, red light cameras – for our own aims.
We will release all that we can via creative commons, so that they can be reclaimed, remixed, re-purposed.
We will cut, and we will paste.
“Plagiarism is necessary, progress demands it.”
We will pervade.
We will not be technosplacist when being splacist will suffice.
We will never underestimate the power of gaffa/electrical/masking tape
We will be artful. We will be skillful. We will fail usefully.

fin

*and having females involved.

**I’m taking the piss, lots of my PhD is on the SI, please don’t come out of the woodwork now, Situationist sticklers.