Hannah Nicklin

Live Art and Intrigue

I owe you apologies, dear blog, I have been directing my internet energies at another domain. But, Lo! I return! eth. Or something. Look, I come bearing a lovely Vimeo of the highlights of the conversations, installations and performances of the jam-packed Inbetween Time programme.

It was an amazing, chock-full, exhausting (chilly) and exhilarating experience, and I’m still reeling a little. I probably should do a full on summary, maybe a top 5 (or 6, I like even numbers) of shows/events that most affected/ grabbed/intrigued me, but right now my life involves catching up on everything that had to stand still whilst I was in Bristol; PhD, real life, artistic stuff, and also, y’know, Christmas.

But I promise I’ll be back soon, if not with something think-y, then maybe with something like a short story, it’s been a while since I did something frivolously creative.

In the meantime, how about heading over to the live blog at www.ibtlive.newworknetwork.info and checking out what I got up to? There are almost 10 posts per day, plus far more on the New Work Network twitter account. Props (you heard me) to all the amazing people at both New Work Network and Inbetween Time, an amazing lot of people who were fascinating and supportive in equal measure.

And look out in coming days for me frantically trying to fill up my ‘at least four blog posts a month’ quota with some ramblings about it, you lucky folk.

Teasers and Talks

The first edit of the full soundwalk which is happening in York on the 27th and 30th of October is done, and I thought I’d try and tempt a bit more interest. So for your delectation (listen through headphones, and click through to the HD version for the best sound) the Nightwalk, York teaser trail:

Available on the Youtubes here.

The writing was (as usual) pretty hard until I clicked with a main through-line, something which is hard to find until you actually get writing (I find). So I kicked myself off by writing five stories about different kinds of dark and light; A story about mistaking planes for stars, a story about sitting on a bench under a tree in the streetlight with a stranger, a story of a power cut and light and dark from your childhood, a story about bonfires, and a story about walking at night and being able to breathe better. Then I set out finding out what connected them all. I think this has more clearly become the idea of reclaiming our dark cities – something which I’ve thought about a bit since Reclaim the Night, and the Vampires pervasive game that I played last year. So after testing for timing etc., I shall also tighten the connection up with some additional pieces of writing.

Working with Genuine Musicians this time has been a mix of total awesome and middling daunting. It was so good to have something entirely new and bespoke, but at the same time it’s so beautiful in places that I struggled to believe that I could do it justice. Hopefully I have. How will you find out? By adding yourself or inviting a nearby friend to the facebook event, and checking the website for more info. That’s how.

Finally, in upcoming shenanigans, I shall be speaking at a Pecha Kucha in Coventry this Tuesday on Theatre and the Age of the First Person (which I’m beginning to think should be called the Renaissance of the First Person). You can buy tickets and see who else is speaking here. I’m particularly intrigued by ‘safe sex with robots’. Good title.

York Wanderings

And Lo. I returneth from York. Where I ate my first pasty*, and walked around the Minster embarrassing Simon of Lantern Music by talking loudly into a microphone. The music for Nightwalk York is almost complete, so we took it up to York to test out a couple of possible routes, get a feel for the place, and capture enough that I can carry on the writing process from home. The music is absolutely beautiful, and I’ve got a little taster here for you, complete with some of the images I took whilst wandering around the routes. See if you can spot Simon looking not at all embarrased *stares at the sky*.

Do listen/watch in HD – the sound quality is much better.

To find out more, and to attend #NightwalkYork, follow the hashtag, visit the site at http://nightwalkyork.tumblr.com and join/invite people to the facebook event.

Writing continues, and is somewhere, I think, between a love letter to late Autumn, and a revision of the bad press that darkness gets… I have a feeling the piece will start with a match strike. Fun recording session that I think will involve fireworks to come too. Stay tuned, and do share the piece if you know anyone up North who might be interested.

*cheese and onion, since you ask, and yes I chose an odd place to do so.

Rain Reminds Reflections

Behold! The video of The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You. It’s also on the updated site which contains some choice quotes from participants too.

I thought it would be good to reflect on the process of putting together #rainreminds in a slightly structured manner, as it could be a useful case study in successfully putting together and marketing an event, almost solely online, in a very short amount of time (two weeks). So here we go, headings and everything:

The provocation:

‘We have 100 umbrellas, and a finishing slot in the (pervasive gaming and interactive arts) Hazard MMX festival. We want to do something like a flashmob, we need good pictures.’

This is what I was given to begin with from Larkin’ About and the Green Room, Manchester. The requirements were something impactful in the city, interactive, that involved group action, and good photo opportunities. Having just completed http://walkwith.tumblr.com , the opportunity to work simultaneously with a number of participants was a good next step, so I suggested a soundwalk for up to 100 people. Duncan Speakman’s subtlemobs are the closest to what I was thinking of. The umbrellas led me to ideas and significance of rain that I’d been developing with Walk With Me – the idea of how we used to need rain to make things grow led me also to the idea of spaces like Picadilly Gardens, and how we inhabit these transient spaces differently when young. Then I thought of kissing in the rain, and how it’s quite a ‘young’ relationship thing to do. (as one of the stories I went on to collect put it: “As we get older we tend to get a bit more pragmatic. Instead of lingering on wet pavements, enjoying a romantic embrace, we are more likely to head for the warm and the dry, where we can get on with the more urgent act of fucking.”) So I went and started making.

The process – making and marketing.

I started out by having these as two headings, but really, for the most part, they were one and the same. The very first sniff of the piece in public, was also me testing out my ideas. It all began with a small twtpoll, which discovered that nearly 60% of people (50 answered) had kissed someone in the pouring rain.

From finding this I decided to try and collect some of these stories, so I set up a tumblr site that allowed anyone to submit to, named or anonymously, stories to be shared under a creative commons license. In approaching a piece done by many I wanted my piece to reflect different kinds of experiences. You can see (and still submit to) the collected stories at http://rainonymy.tumblr.com. This is where I first found the title of the piece, people were able to naturally follow up ‘yes I have kissed someone in the rain’ provoking a memory, by then writing down, and the ideas of kissing in the rain, and story telling were tweeted and blogged far and wide. Continue reading…