Anti Design Festival

Last time I blogged The Anti Design Festival was in its fourth day and I was a little unsure about how my work fitted into its surroundings and how well the audience were receiving it. As is usually the case with these things, I spoke far too soon. The day after that blog post was published we made some small, but significant changes to the work. When I say small, I really do mean small- we pushed the time of the first tour back an hour and put an extra sign up on the wall. But what a difference it made. From that point onwards, the audiences doubled, trebled even, in size. This size difference bought a new dimension to the work- rather than small groups being whisked around like lost lambs the audiences became bolder and more opinionated; a safety in numbers reaction to this crazy lady trying to sell them everything that moved. The size of the groups allowed people to see the piece for what it really was as well. Rather than feeling uncomfortable, self conscious and hurried they could see the performative elements and almost always gave applause's at the end- something that has never happened before.

The last few days of ADF also highlighted how anonymous my work actually is; I could walk between the audience or even on the tour with them and listen to what they had to say. Extending even beyond that, my name hasn't appeared in any of the ADF adverts or publications- the piece wasn't even advertised as work. Looking at my website as well, there isn't even a picture of me. Instead, documentation of lots of other people and my name- on the first day of ADF Cecilia Wee, the curator didn't even know what I looked like, something which is unusual for performance artists.
Whilst in reality most audiences do not know what the artist/writer/director looks like, my audience are rarely even given my name. But before you think I'm complaining about this observation I'm not- I genuinely like it.

One thing people have been asking me a lot recently is will I appear in my own work? Why do I hire actors to help me? Initially I had to get actors- in order to make my audience (tutors and university peers) to believe in my work they had to not know it was work. And if I had been there that would have failed outright. But now, I'm not sure. My audience has changed quite a lot and often the people who will see my work don't know me. So maybe I can be in it- it would certainly save money. But there rises another issue. I am an artist not an actor- can I perform the pieces as well as they can? Probably not...

So, (this is leading somewhere I promise) I am thinking about taking acting classes! No, seriously, I am. At the moment my 'thinking' has only extended to clicking on an arts jobs ad for classes, not even signing up for them yet but I am thinking about it! So I say, watch this space! I might make it onto my own website yet...

A isn't just for action, its for Anti Design.

This week London is playing host to The London Design Festival and with that, The Anti-Design Festival. Made in response to LDF, (sorry in advance for all the abbreviations) ADF is a reaction to '25 years of cultural deep freeze, and attempts to unlock creative fires and ideas, exploring spaces hitherto deemed out-of-bounds by a purely commercial criteria.' Showing as part of the festival, is my piece The End of Art.

For those of you who may not know, The End of Art takes the form of a guided tour, around an already existing exhibition. The tour is conducted by a sales rep and the piece explores what a world, where art is mass produced like fashion or furniture, would really be like. Quite often the audience are unaware of the piece before it takes place but, through attending the work, are invited to question what art is, or can be, and what the roles of the gallery or the institution actually are.

Being performed every other day, yesterday was the first run of the piece in the ADF space. Having re-worked the script to fit its new setting, the flow of the piece and the space in which it is situated work really well- its just the audience, or lack of one, that seems to be a problem.

I know it was only the first day, and being a Tuesday it was bound me to quiet- but if it hadn't been for my loyal friends turning up, there may not have been an audience. This is something that I am finding again and again- my work doesn't sit well in a conventional gallery setting. You may wonder why I've not noticed this before, but I've only ever put my work into this setting once before. Until that point it had been a small, specially invited audience who had no choice but to partake... Which leads me onto my next point. I need to make my work more theatre like, not less. By that, I don't mean I am going to have knee slaps, impromptu songs, stages or plot lines; I am not. Promise. But I need to find a setting for which my audience are invited, or are there specifically to see performance. Not within a space that is already fighting for the audiences attention, like the gallery space would.

Having seen Linder's Dark Town Cake Walk at Chisenhale, I am becoming more and more intrigued by performance that takes over the space like theatre, but maintains that 'fine art' quality. Similarly, (but annoyingly too late) I've just been enlightened to the work of You Me Bum Bum Train, in which the single audience member is whisked through a space in a wheelchair, becoming the protagonist in a number of weird and wacky scenarios (almost all of which are a secret).

So with this in mind, I think I am going to begin rethinking the setting for my work; as currently the traditional gallery space isn't working (or so far this week it isn't.) Wish me luck with the rest of ADF and I'll keep you posted. Although at this rate we'll have to think of a barmy army-esq name for my lovely loyal friends who always and without fail turn up. Thanks guys!

If in doubt, ask Deleuze...

"Art is not a notion but a motion. It is not important what art is but what art does." - Deleuze.

Well, well, what a turn up for the books; my proposal has been accepted and my work will be shown as part of the London based Anti Design Festival in September. As I still don't seem to have got my head around the idea of making new work yet, I am going to be showing my final university piece , 'The End of Art' and reworking it slightly so it fits the context, but how exciting!

Lately, I have become rather preoccupied with the idea of making new work; for some reason it seems intangible and out of reach- without the constraints of a module specification where does one even start?! If I am writing things down am I writing them for myself or to hand them to someone to check later? Do ideas need to be written down to be validated? Why all the questions and not art? It seems to have been an inescapable and tiresome circle.

I decided to ask Hakim Bey, but without so much as a spark of an idea his ramblings didn't help me much. So I thought I would give Nietzsche a try. Unfortunately my new local library only seems to stock extraordinarily large quantities of Twilight, Maeve Binchy and Point Horror- so Nietzsche has to wait. And thats how I stumbled back across Deleuze and Guattari. Those of you who know me know that 'A Thousand Plateaus', while loved by some (mainly my old housemate Sam) was my nemesis at University. For some, now unfathomable, reason (known colloquially as Sam) I decided to write my biggest essay on this book. I failed. My lecturers at the time said it would be a book I would later return to and use; I laughed and said it would go on the fire. But now, I hate to admit, I have been reading it again, and those two have some interesting things to say. (Damn you Sam!!)

Last night I found myself trying to decide what to buy first; a new sketchbook, 'The Society of the Spectacle' (Debord), or 'Anti Oedipus' (bloody Deleuze). I soon abandoned the idea of buying anything when I got into a chicken and the egg style debate with myself about which one is needed to make work first. (oh by the way while we're on the subject of chickens and eggs scientists have worked out which one did come first). But surely all of this is good; its the beginning of something.

I may have mentioned before that I took part in Arts Admins 'Interference 2010' workshop in June. The self publication made from that week came back on Thursday. 'A is for Action: a glossary for art and activism'. I know that not all of the interferers have managed to see it yet, but it is amazing- well done to everyone who helped make it happen. As we only have 50 copies I very much doubt many of you will ever get to read it, so I thought I would give you a few of my favourite sections;

A: 'Art runs away as soon as someone says its name; it loves to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what it is called.' - Dubuffet

Q: Questioning. 'The question of art is no longer one of aesthetics but of the survival of the planet' - Platform

H: (just because there is a picture of me dressed in a giant hope sandwich board on London Bridge)

and J: 'Just fucking do it."

Its rather funny that I, the woman who wasted three hours trying to work out which form of book to buy first, find the 'J' entry so profound. However, I think I am going to take inspiration from it, stop dawdling and just fucking do it.

Jumping, or rather more accurately tripping up and falling, into the pool of 'adult life.'

I'm sorry. I have been useless. I haven't blogged for over a month. Probably almost two, but hey who's counting, whats a month or two between friends.

So, I did it. I graduated. Well, technically I haven't- the hat and witch cape come next week, but I have a grade, a few letters behind my name, an empty bank account and an army of people fighting to ask that question loved by all graduates; 'so what are you going to do now?'

I would love to say I made the transition of student to graduate smoothly, maturely and with dignity. I didn't. I hung on to student life by my finger nails; I drank more cider than I ever thought I was capable of (and that is a lot), I smoked other peoples tobacco (what student buys their own?), I went to bed at 7 every morning, I crawled to uni meetings and I lived on pizza for three weeks solidly. And then the inevitable happened; I actually finished. Then, quicker than I could even think about things, I was back in Essex with my parents making appointments to sign on. A distinct fall from grace.

But things haven't been too bad. Whilst I am living, indefinitely, with the parents, on the dole and penniless, I have actually been doing some rather interesting things with my time. (But don't tell the job centre.)

My stay in Nottingham was cut short due to being given a place on the 'Interference 2010' workshop, run by Arts Admin in the east end. Over a week twenty individuals, working across the arts and activism came together for a week of mischief, pirate radio, self publication and intervention; blurring the lines between what arts and activism are, can be and ultimately can do. Over the last few months it has dawned on me that my work is political. It may be done in a tongue in cheek, humorous way, but there is an underlying social comment there. It might not be as loud and proud as activism, but it is most certainly in there. Somewhere.

So, I went out into London Town and made mischief. With the help of The Space Hijackers we bought spitalfields market to a standstill, under the guidance of The Vacuum Cleaner we gave the high street in Angel something to think about, a day at Grow Heathrow taught me a thing or two about permaculture, we turned London Bridge into a spectrum line, asking commuters to place them selves at either hope or despair, or even somewhere in between. And then at the end of it all we made a self publication. A busy busy, but amazingly enjoyable five days.

Combined with that I've been spending a lot of time down at Chisenhale Gallery. If you haven't been before, get yourself down there. Its an amazing space with a lot of really interesting stuff going on.

Last weekend it played host to a 13 hour improvised performance by Linder, a theatrical over the top amazement, exploring the role of the fairy tales and the protagonist. http://cteditions.posterous.com/

But, whilst all of this has been busy, inspirational and most importantly fun, I am at a loss currently at how this will inform my own practice. Despite having all of the tools, a list of feedback and a million things to apply for I'm not entirely sure how do go about kickstarting this making process, or even where to begin. Maybe for now I'll revert back to the student way of doing things and just keep plodding through my mammoth to do list and leave the making for next week. Yes, that seems like a sensible thing to do.

Oh, and I still haven't found that pesky CRB. Maybe that should go straight to the top of my priorities. Or we could leave that for another day too...

The Beginning of the End

Four days left of my fine art degree, shocking how quickly time flies... But enough of reminiscing about things, thats just pointless and boring.

Leaving university is going to be an odd one, like riding a bike for the first time without stabilisers; you know you can do it but there is that nagging fear and doubt. What if you can't? Today, having just completed my final writing task, I found myself beginning to make new work. I've not even finished the current piece yet so it may be jumping the gun slightly but what the heck...

Today I watched the fantastic channel 4 documentary 'Erasing David' (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/erasing-david/4od) and its managed to both excite and scare me in equal measure. According to the programme the UK is now in the top three surveillance states in the world, coming third to China and Russia. There are also an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, one for every 14 people. Our information is held in multiple databases, from the NHS to Virgin Media. Every web page we visit and every phone call we make is stored, by our internet/phone provider, for a minimum of 12 months. It seems that my favourite film, 'The Lives of Others' is becoming less of an entertainment medium and more a day to day reality.

But, apart from feeling like an unwilling contestant on big brother, how does this really affect me/art/stuff? Well for a start I really need to track down that CRB check I sort of forgot about... hmm.

My work is very much concerned with borders and boundaries but this has really got me thinking. Off the back of this programme I began looking at Frank Ahearn's website 'How To Disappear' (http://www.frankahearn.com/) which, while full of interesting hints and tips seems a little bit ironic. Surely, if all of our internet searches are saved, using the internet as a way to disappear seems a little silly, but I digress. Ahearn states that the key to disappearing is to take every piece of information on us that is out there and destroy it beyond belief- but having just glimpsed the sheer amount of stuff on me that is out there that is no easy task.

Getting the information that is held on us however does seem relatively easy; a letter or phone call requesting 'subject access' will get all the details sent to you. But, unfortunately its not held on one single database, each company needs to be contacted separately. So that means to even begin getting hold of this information I would need to contact both of my banks, my previous bank, the student loans company, the DVLA, the criminal records bureau, the passport people, Nottingham Trent University, Virgin media, Orange etc... and thats before I even begin thinking about online services I have used, hotmail, facebook, amazon... Suddenly it doesn't seem that simple does it?

But I did say that that I need to make some work, and I do have a whole summer stretching out before me. Maybe I should begin to try and track some of this information down? I am quite blase with my personal details; as a student with no real permanent address I am quite happy to fill my details in and check that terms and conditions box without giving it a moments notice.

First things first I think I'll find out what Orange hold about me. Having held a contract with them for three years now I'm sure they have a nice wad on me, and to be honest I'm not too keen on jumping in at the top with the banks or even worse the criminal records bureau. So, watch this space!

Right, now to track down that CRB...