Click here to view the embedded video.

LifeCycle is a multi-screen audio-visual installation that explores the themes of change and transformation as they are understood and experienced by a range of people who live and work in the Coalville area. It was launched at the historic Century Theatre within Snibston Discovery Museum, Coalville, on 14th May, 2011. It was commissioned as part of Transform, a major arts program developed to transform how Snibston can be understood and interpreted.
It was subsequently shown at the Phoenix Square in Leicester in the DMU Cube Gallery for the duration of September 2011. For this installation it was re-edited into a 3-screen version to fit the dimensions of the gallery space.

LifeCycle reflects an ongoing interest in interpreting and re-articulating everyday life using film, audio and installation. This piece is based upon my journeys through Coalville, recording conversations with the wide range of people I met and capturing visual impressions of people and place. It is based upon notions of transformation and change - I asked the people I met to share with me their thoughts on the things and values we need to recognise; what we should treasure and preserve; what needs to come to an end and be let go of; what can we put at the heart of our culture and our communities.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a screen-based version of the film used for 5-screen installation presented at Snibston Discovery Museum.
The installation consists of 5 back-projection screens, 5 data projectors, surround-sound system, and is controlled by 3 Mac-mini computers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a screen-based version of the film used for the 3-screen installation presented at Phoenix Square, with some images of the installation below.

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Thanks to the participants:

Alison and all at the Coalville Market Cafe
Denis Baker
Sue Blackburn
Sue Brown
Anne Bourne
Rod Dring and all at the Coalville Air Cadets
Barry Gent
Goff Lewis
Claire Macrory
Mitch and the young people from the Positive Futures Project
Michelle Orton
Basilio Prataviera
Clark Robinson
Robert Robinson
Jackie Sykes
Lindsay Weaver
All at Coalville Market

additional thanks to:

Maurice Maguire, Curator Transform
Carolyn Abel, Curator Snibston Discovery Museum
Emily Todd, Coalville Town Centre Manager
Claire Macrory
Clark Robinson
Dan Poxson
The Staff at Snibston Discovery Museum
Chris Plant Colour Burst

To Be Home is a multi-screen audio-visual installation that explores different perspectives of community as it is experienced and understood by a range of people living in Birmingham. It was commissioned as part of Inhabit and was showcased in the Pavilions, Birmingham, 24 March – 4 April 2011.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

In Britain there is a rich ocean of what may be described as amateur groups, who bring together many different people, engaging in a seemingly endless range of pursuits and interests. For this commission I was invited to spend 6 months with a tiny selection of the many groups from across the Sandwell area, in heart of the West Midlands conurbation, to make video portraits and audio recordings. The result is For the love of it, a 3-screen installation where a pool of sequenced images and sounds converge to celebrate the creativity and passion of the many people I met and spent time with.

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The individuals from each of the 11 groups I worked with reflect this love of it in their unique own way, but also share several qualities with each other. As the above definition implies the amateur groups takes no real material reward in financial terms, but the practical, social and emotional rewards are many. The very act of taking part in a particular activity with like minds and kindred spirits allows the individual to be both celebrated and appreciated through their own particular talent – and often the opportunity to lose themselves by contributing to a greater whole. A common thread that runs through all of these groups is the sense of ‘togetherness’, perhaps meeting one of our most important needs, as well as the sense of participating in an active and creative community.

In a media dominated culture that tends to encourage spectatorship and passivity rather than participation and engagement, For the love of it is a testament to the need we all have to feel like we belong and to engage in activity that we can be passionate about and we can lose ourselves in – something that has little or nothing to do with the emphasis on material reward and personal gain of contemporary society, that may indeed function as some kind of antidote.

You can read Caitlin Griffith’s short introduction to the project here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

]]> http://www.intentional.co.uk/art-projects/for-the-love-of-it/feed/ 0 http://www.intentional.co.uk/art-projects/small-wonder/ http://www.intentional.co.uk/art-projects/small-wonder/#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2008 10:45:55 +0000 geoff http://www.intentional.co.uk/?p=106 The installation Small Wonder is based around the reflections of twelve participants who discuss the place of spirituality in their own lives. The participants are influenced by faiths and traditions that include Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Atheism, and Bahai. The installation consists of nine resin-glass screens suspended as a grid onto which a sequence of multiple images are projected. Nine speakers with a red light attached are suspended around the space while four larger speakers are located in each corner.

Extracts taken from the participants form the basis of a twenty-six minute atmospheric surround-sound track that runs on a continuous loop. The visual centre of the installation is the multi-screen projections of evocative, elemental moving images of Inverness and the surrounding Highlands. The resin-glass screens are double sided, inviting the audience to move around the installation and explore it from different perspectives.

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a short extract that captures the video and sound used in the installation:

Click here to view the embedded video.

view some audience comments

Small Wonder was produced during a three-month arts residency in Inverness, Scotland as part of The Other Side of AIR. The installation was first shown in Old High St Stephen’s Church Hall in Inverness during November 2007. Old High St Stephen’s were a key part of the residency who supported the project with both financial and practical support. The Other Side of AIR residency programme was also supported by The Lottery Fund through the Arts Council Scotland and Highland 2007.

The project is based around extracts taken from seven people who talk openly about their own thoughts and experiences around love. The audience are invited to explore elements of these conversations by directly engaging with each orb. As the audience comes into relationship with each orb they begin reveal the words of the participants – the closer they move towards to the orb the clearer the words. Simultaneously the orb’s blue light begins to get brighter as the audience moves closer.

The seven orbs are linked together through a series of audio soundscapes that dynamically move across the space. As these sounds shift around the space they are subtly echoed by each of the orbs blue lights. When there is no audience interacting with the installation it still has a level of activity, randomly choosing to play different sound and light variations.

Images from the exhibition.

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This short movie gives some sense of the project.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Images made during the making of the project.

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Where do I go from here? is an installation comprising of 60 suspended speakers, each with a tiny blue light attached, surround three pools of water that are lined with broken slate. In the pools a video image, depicting elements of the social and urban landscape of northeast England, is intermittently projected, while the space itself fluctuates with the murmur of voices and sparse abstract sounds. The voices are those of refugees and asylum seekers, currently living in the UK, who share their thoughts and experience, and try to make sense of their life.

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The short movie below gives some sense of the installation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Exhibition Introduction by Mark Robinson

‘This, then, is all. It’s not enough, I know.
At least I’m still alive, as you may see.
I’m like the man who took a brick to show
How beautiful his house used once to be.’
Brecht (trans. John Willets)

Two sample headlines from the front pages of the Daily Express during the last few days: ‘ASYLUM: WE ARE BEING INVADED’, and ‘REFUGEES: FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES’. I didn’t read any further, just caught a glimpse when picking up my Guardian, whilst passing early morning pleasantries with Mohammed who runs my local garage. They echoed through breakfast, as I listened to John Humphries and various politicians talk as if the country were under siege by people we must keep out at any financial or human costs, rather than struggling to cope with the aftershock of conflict and oppression. Literally not a day has gone by whilst I have been writing this piece when the ‘problem’of asylum has not been on the news.

It’s clear that some people are engaged in a war. Far from creating art in a protected cloister at Durham Cathedral, Geoff Broadway has found himself reinventing the residency as something if not on the front line, then at least somewhere in the war zone, with himself a kind of the war artist or reporter gathering and manipulating stories and images. Stemming from his discovery of a 12th Century Knocker which could be used to request sanctuary for up to 40 days, (no one was refused, all had to give up their own clothes and stay within rooms at the Cathedral) he has looked outwards from the Durham Peninsula at one of the most pressing changes in local life since the closure of the pits: the dispersal to the North East of a growing number of asylum seekers and refugees from some of the many troubled parts of the world: Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Bosnia, Croatia. The week after an Iraqi Kurd had been murdered in Glasgow, and after reading those headlines, listening to a rough cut of the voices heard in this exhibition was a sobering, humbling and uncomfortable experience. I suspect it will be likewise for those visiting this exhibition.

‘The individual concern thus becomes all the more necessary, indispensable, magnified, because a whole other story is vibrating within it’. In what sense is the statement always collective even when it seems to be emitted by a solitary singularity like that of the artist?’

Deleuze & Guattari

The voices you hear are ‘deterritorialized’ in a much more literal sense than that used by Deleuze & Guattari. These are people whose land has been taken from them, and who are expressing themselves in a foreign tongue. Their comments thus become fascinatingly paradoxical: at once naïve in their expression, and thus ’sincere’, the haltingness of the English adding extra layers of poignancy (perhaps unwanted layers), but also artificial and constructed in a way mother-tongue testimony might not be. Although the individuals here speak passionately, bitterness is only apparent in one or two: those whose English is most impressive. It is as if the control of language allows for this expression, this emotion; as if a more rudimentary facility somehow keeps those negative emotions in check, or merely from being expressed or heard. Of course, much of the testimony betrays the wordless fear and loss that night and silence bring. Broadway’s installation, poised on the cusp of dark and light, silence and confession or testimony, is an eloquent evocation of the hope and despair implicit in the double-edged concept of refuge.

The installation also freezes patterns of movement of the people whose voices we hear, but also of the water, clouds and sky they inhabit. It gives the illusion of a still point on a journey, the darkness and stillness providing almost a mythical quality. The night by a pool thinking of what has been left and what might await. It is a moment of both optimism and fear, the duality within the flight of the refugee. (Just as the truly unlucky people don’t reach a place of refuge, the truly despairing maybe don’t even try. The Afghans feared by Eurotunnel and the Government are both desperate and optimistic.) The title of the piece makes clear the reference to journeys. Read in one light it holds out an appearance of choice, almost an ironic echo of Microsoft’s slogan ‘Where do you want to go today’(capturing globalisation’s neat paradox perfectly, the surface freedom of choice in a world of plenty, the hidden monopoly and enforced purchases from the company shop). In another light there is the edge of trapped despair. (Interestingly, the viewer is very controlled in Where do I go from here – compelled to enter the work in a certain way, not given any freedom over what is heard or seen, in contrast to earlier, interactive work which the viewer could ’steer’).

The title is the question the asylum seeker may ask before leaving their home, and the one they may ask themselves- or indeed the authorities – in the temporary homes assigned to them in this country. It is a question which is impossible to answer, given the small amount of power and autonomy of the refugee. (Most viewers will give the same answer, smugly or guiltily, or both: home.) Those earlier ‘asylum seekers’who sought security at Durham Cathedral exchanged danger or persecution for confinement, one echoed by Broadway’s piece. Contemporary immigrant asylum seekers suffer a similar dilemma, dispersed according to government policy to precisely the places in Britain where they are often least able to settle- where they experience the kind of racist abuse described in the piece, inflamed by tabloid prejudice and politicians-siege mentality and careless language. (The exhibition opens in Sunderland, where the British National Party received worrying levels of support in the recent General Election, and where the BNP recently organised a march to protest against asylum seekers.)

‘Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.’
W.H. Auden ‘Refugee Blues’

Broadway has a fascination with the base elements of life: salt, earth, sand, sky. Where Do I Go From Here? consists of three pools of water, with the recorded voices of asylum seekers now living in the North East played through a number of small speakers, each with a light attached to it, reflected in the water, which is edged with slate native to the North East. Upon this water plays a repeated film consisting of resonant images of those elements as found in the North East -the hard edged spring sky, the beach at South Shields with its own fugitive pleasure seekers passing by, the cold cold sea.

John Berger has spoken of the sky in the photographs of Sebastio Salgado, an artist whom Broadway admires enormously. Berger describes how its beauty is not simply a compositional element, but a constant reminder of the last resort of the poor, the migrants Salgado portrays. The sky, the heavens, will always accept the pleas, the appeals, the sleep, dreams and nightmares -though whether they reply is another question. Where do I go from here unites sky and earth, sand and water in a search for some court of appeal which will hear the truth from the refugees Broadway has met. The piece is very much concerned with elementals, including the pain described, making the highly wrought nature of his work, which is made possible only by the advanced technology of the western world, almost self-contradictory.

‘But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears -dissolution, disappearance.’
Zadie Smith

Broadway says he is ‘only political with a small p’, though this is clearly not true in any sense than it is always true for an artist: this is work dealing with one of the most controversial and politicised issues in Britain today. (It is simplistic to think asylum is simply a matter of compassion or otherwise. It is ruled by political and economic priorities. Why else would Canada accept, for instance, 82 % of applicants from Sri Lanka as refugees according to UN definitions, whilst Britain considers only 0.2% of applicants from Sri Lanka eligible.) Perhaps this is what he means by that: this is not a sloganeering work. There may be pity here, but it is within the viewer not the work. (Wilfred Owen’s -The Poetry is in the pity- applies but only so far.) This is not simplistic oppositional art, it has a belief in order and beauty, and in honesty in language. The work lets people speak through themselves in clarity and some atmosphere of tranquillity. Visitors to the installation must guess at the long hours of conversation and trust building involved in achieving the materials for this work. Like Owen, Broadway’s work breaks through the clichés of representation in order to freshen perceptions dulled by degraded language and imagery. It also seeks to preserve unofficial truths. For all the acres of newsprint, and the hours of tv and radio devoted to asylum, the stories of refugees, the very heart of each person’s journey – are seldom heard.

But if the refugees are preserved, what almost disappears in this work is the artist himself. However, although concerned with the stories of others, the work has a number of other resonances. Firstly, there are echoes of Broadway’s previous pieces The Salt Passages, which looked at contemporary voices from Teesside, exploring the virtual reality of multimedia montage, and The Glass, where his interest in global economics and representation of individuals and cultures within them came into sharp focus. There are also, however, echoes of Broadway’s own situation as an exile. He is currently without firm home base, and has over the last several years been resident in Derby, Middlesbrough, New Zealand and Durham, carrying out his practice in a variety of artist residency situations. Where do I go to from here? takes on another layer as a title when applied to the artist about to leave the Cathedral residency. This may be a second level reason why Broadway was attracted to the themes of exile and refuge. It is certainly the case that on his return to Britain in 2000, after a year in New Zealand he was struck by the rise in intolerance towards asylum seekers, the prominence of asylum as an issue, and the increased numbers of refugees in the North East. It was as if time had been compressed as in his installation and the changes and developing fault lines could be seen with new clarity. In a way this work attempts to reproduce some of that sensation for the viewer.

‘You are impertinent, they said to me.

I’m not impertinent, I said; I’m lost.’

Brecht ‘Emigrant’s Lament’

Broadway is uneasy with the work being tagged as ‘oppositional’, although the longer I delayed writing this piece the political significance of a work dealing with this subject, containing this material, in the North East of England in Autumn 2001, has become greater and more urgently needed. He is concerned with composition and making and manipulating, and does not attempt to hide it. This is a highly wrought piece of work, despite the rawness of the tales which can be heard. It is concerned with the creation of beauty, with, therefore an aesthetic of pleasure and sensuality rather than a simplistically mimetic one of dislocation and anguish. This seeming contradiction bothers Broadway, makes him uneasy about exploiting people who are now his friends, but he is ultimately not prepared, as an artist, to give up striving for harmony within the experiences shared with him. He does this by putting aside straight realism or documentary for something more exploratory, juxtaposing words and images within a contemplative setting which demands both physical and emotional commitment from the audience.

Much of our reaction to the ‘problem’ of asylum seekers stems from an ignorance which this work may do a little to combat. Its chances of doing that rest, I think, not on the testimony of the voices you will hear, affecting as that is, but on your willingness to kneel or crouch low enough to let stories be whispered into your ear in the dark, and to look at the sea and the sand and the sky projected upon the water, and your ability to imagine that this is both a mirror (refocus: you can see yourself, and the night sky of exile behind you) and a wishing well. This contemplation is your only place of refuge, of appeal. This is not a sensationalist work, or a liberal work appealing for special treatment, it is essentially a tool of compassion, of feeling with, made for feeling with. This is the sense in which Broadway’s nervousness about his own political agenda is resolved, and what makes this a truly suitable work to emerge from a residency at Durham Cathedral. If the World Heritage Site of which the Cathedral is the centre means anything it must surely include a link back to the traditions of shelter, succour and compassion which Broadway identified in the Cathedral’s Sanctuary Knocker. The North East must, whether it relishes the prospect or not, find ways in which to continue this tradition in the 21st century, rather than similarly ancient strains of ignorant intolerance.

Mark Robinson

The Installation

The audience are invited to enter a darkened space that contains 60 empty light sockets suspended in the air. In the space a surround-sound audio track plays atmospheric sounds combined with a person talking.

The audience is invited to participate by choosing a bulb from a box and make their own inscription on its surface using a permanent marker. The bulb is then inserted into an empty light socket, illuminating the personal message. As the audience engages with this work so the space is slowly filled with illuminated bulbs and messages.

[View with PicLens]

The Gallery of Learning

This project was first shown as part of the Gallery of Learning exhibition at the Lighthouse Media Centre, Wolverhampton on November 10th 2005.

This exhibition marked the culmination of a 9-month process where 6 artist-researchers worked in 6 high schools across the Black Country. Each artist aimed to explore, through their own chosen art form, the many kinds of learning that takes place in Creative Partnership projects developed between teachers, artists and pupils. The exhibition encouraged the active participation of the audience, and intended to actively share with them some of the learning and realisations that had taken place in each of the projects.

The Gallery of Learning developed out of an idea by Noel Dunne, who both led and supported each stage of this ambitious project up to its completion. The other artists taking part were Sandra Hall (performance), Roz Goddard (poetry, installation), Julie O’Neill (performance), Vicki Stinchcombe (installation), Rebecca Hardy (video). The exhibition was actively supported by members of Birmingham’s Creative Alliance, many of whom help both install each artists work and document the proceeding. It was also supported and funded by Creative Partnerships.

Background to Behind Thought the Light Shines Bright

For the Gallery of Learning I worked with St Thomas Moore High School in Walsall, and the journey of English teacher Rebecca Adey. Through several recorded conversations Rebecca reflects upon her changing perceptions of creativity and experimentation as she worked with several artists.

The idea for this light-based participatory project arose from the popular image of new ideas and understanding as being like ‘lights going on’ – something that happened often during this project. The title was taken from one of the messages inscribed on the light bulbs. For me this message captured the essence of what I feel is one of the foundations of the Gallery of Learning: creativity is not to be found in the sole domain of artists but is right at the heart of life, sitting behind all ideas and thoughts like a clear light.

Elders is a light and sounds installation produced over a period of 12 months whilst I was resident artist at Jubilee Arts, in West Bromwich, England in 2002-03.

18 participants from the local area who were all over the age of 60 recorded conversations with me about their own perspective on life and what they felt that they had learnt as they moved into their later years. Motivated by an interest in the mixed and often negative perceptions of older people in western culture, Elders shares elements of wisdom and experience of the 18 participants in the form a dynamic light and sound installation.

The installation comprises of 18 purpose-built speakers that stand in a semi-circle. Attached to the rear of each speaker is blue halogen light that directly responds to the sounds that pass through that particular speaker through the means of a sound to light unit. The installation is an 18 channel system controlled by Logic Audio, allowing extracts of the recorded conversations and other audio move across the installation.

The participants also collaborated in the making of a series of portrait images of key aspects of their lives and the surrounding area in which they live. These have been shown along the project as an audio-visual slide show.

This movie gives a sense of what the installation looks and sounds like, along with some examples of the portrait images that were made.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Writer and artist Brendan Jackson and cultural theorist Giles Peaker have written introductions to the project.

Brendan Jackson: Words from the End of Time
Giles Peaker: Between Hearing and Listening

This project was supported by artist Cath Tarbuck who undertook several of the recorded conversations and the portrait photographs. Artist Bobby Bird made a significant contribution to the building of the installation.

Perfect World is a project that explores diverse perspectives around themes that are central to social life – globalisation, war, love and perfection. Participants from different backgrounds were invited to reflect aspects of our complex society through recorded conversations. In the film featured here I worked with Angela Hind to invite passersby in West Bromwich to respond to questions such as: ‘Is it possible for us to transform the world into a better place? What about love and human nature? Are you happy?’

Perfect World was commissioned as part of Bit Parts that showcased a range of digital media projects, and funded by ACE WM

Click here to view the embedded video.

I participated in this project with seven other commissioned artists to work in the ares of photography, film, light installation, willow sculpture, electro-acoustic sound, built structures and performance poetry to create a vibrant and dynamic context for the performance. The other artists included Iris Bertz, Lynette Clee, Jerome Harrington, Annie Mahtani, Kimberly Trusty and Keir Williams

The project was based upon the legacy of the historic glass factory which had far reaching consequences for both the local area and the development of glass for the industrial age. Kindle explain:

‘Chance Brothers Ltd was a major manufacturer of sheet, optical and decorative glass and achieved global success spanning two centuries from 1824 – 1967. Examples of Chance glass can be found on the faces of Big Ben, the walls of The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park and in decorative windows in the White House. Research into Chance history will take you around the world; their lighthouses can be found on the shores of India, Singapore and Zanzibar.’

[View with PicLens]

My contribution to this project was to incorporate archival and personal images and words from former Chance’s employees into a suspended light installation. The installation was a combination of 30 bare light bulbs and 30 images that were printed onto fabric and hung around another 30 bulbs. Each of the images were layered with words taken from recorded conversations with over 20 people.

Thanks to Kate Hadley for help in the manufacture of the cotton prints.