Having used the first half of my a-n travel bursary to speak to artist run spaces outside of London about their intentions and organization, I decided to use the second half to take The Future is a Collective Project to some of the spaces that I had made contact with during this time. Accordingly, I have run sessions with artists in Wigan, at Cross Street Arts, and in Newcastle at Newbridge Projects. These were part of the overall research conducted collectively, session by session, for The Future is a Collective Project. So far, we have collectively studied the following:
– Lynn Hershmann Leeson’s video interview series, Curing The Vampire, 2008, and exploring Helene Von Oldenburg’s online project, The Arachnomantic Archive (this has since been taken offline)
– Isabelle Stenger’s 2008 essay, ‘Experimenting with Refrains: Subjectivity and the Challenge of Escaping Modern Dualism’.
– The 1980s film adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s sci-fi novel, ‘The Lathe of Heaven’.
– The work, ‘Futures and Fortunes’, of artist collective, Fourthland.
– ‘Power-Over and Power-From-Within’, the first chapter of neo-pagan witch, Starhawk’s book ‘Dreaming in the Dark – Magic, Sex and Politics’.
– Written excerpts of Beowulf in Old English and in translation; clips from the TV show Vikings; excerpts from Marsden’s own book ‘On Sledge & Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers’; issues of Girl’s Own Paper; and excerpts from A Tale Of Two Offas (Vitae Duorum Offarum).
– Anna Homler and Steve Moshier’s LP, Breadwoman & Other Tales.
– A chapter of Riddley Walker (Russell Hoban 1980); Simon O’Sullivan’s essay, ‘Myth-Science as Residual Culture and Magical Thinking’; and prehistoric rock art in Northumberland.
– An essay on Greek Rebetiko by Yiannis Zaimakis called ‘Bawdy Songs and Virtuous Politics’ (2009).
– Audre Lorde’s essay ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’; ‘Material Memoirs’, a chapter from Stacy Alaimo’s book ‘Bodily Natures’ and the music and methodology of folk musician Shirley Collins.
– Sections of the texts, ‘Householding amid global crisis’ and ‘Queering the intimate’ by V Spike Peterson.
– “The waking dream in ethnographic perspective” by Douglass Price-Williams.
The notion behind The Future is a Collective Project is essentially what it says on the tin and to this end it has been invaluable to be able to take the discussions outside of London and to a varied audience. These conversations have also been continued beyond the art world and outside of standard notions of knowledge sharing. The session in at Newbridge Projects in Newcastle was extended with artist, Verity Birt, to include a local female community choir, SHE Choir, and a couple of workshops held at Neolithic sites in Northumberland using vocal improvisation to share thoughts and feelings about the history of the sites. In Wigan it was extended with artist, Anna Smith, to include a sharing of ideas with the attendees of a local karaoke night; talking about Ancient Greek wine cults in relationship to karaoke nights.
