Chinese Arts Centre Residency
On Friday I met Phil Davenport before our meeting at the Chinese Arts Centre to chat about our ideas, which just seem to be naturally flowing. It’s really nice when you have that creative spark with a person and I feel our vision for the tour is developing every time we meet. Phil is eager to use his spreadsheet concept and to expand it so it can weave through the gallery creating an installation in the space. I suggested how we could cutout sections within it and how I could use the physical gaps to speak through. We are eager to use the unusual spaces, which the public usually does not have access to such as the bedroom and the store cupboard that offer smaller enclosed rooms. I am really excited about developing performances for these smaller spaces as there is no way of avoiding physical intimacy. We talked about marketing and Phil had a really interesting idea to create bank notes and intervene them in different ways into the environment. Our work has been advertised in The Chinese Arts Centre autumn/winter programme and it was lovely to finally see them, the copy reads:
Whisper residency artists, Nicola Smith and Phillip Davenport will be developing and showcasing Ghosts move about me patched with histories this November/December. Both artists have previously taken part in the artist residencies in Chongqing and will be using the residency space here to reflect upon their experiences in China. The pair will be using Chinese Arts Centre’s residency space to trace what they describe as ‘the broken edge between different cultures and the beliefs that leak through’. Their project will use smell, taste, hunger and desire to track these ideas. Nicola will act as a deliberately misleading tour guide, taking visitors through an environment created by the pair using scripts devised by her and Phillip. Ghosts move about me patched with histories will be an immersive experience filled with two of the most powerfully coded objects that human’s encounter: money and food.
I have been thinking about my wardrobe as a tour guide and I feel that I want to move away from the obvious formal look. In my recent performances I have been playing with identity by putting on an unplaced sort of European accent, which has worked well. When I have put this accent on people have asked me if I am Polish or Spanish and are unclear if I am really putting it on or if I am really foreign. I do not want to imitate a stereotypical Chinese look, however I am interested in how people judge and want to place a person simply by the way they look and sound. I bought this book in a charity shop firstly the title grabbed my attention, ‘Race’, Culture & Difference then I was taken in by the front cover image of a woman with a band of fabric across her face. The band is making it difficult to read her face, is it an oppressive or antagonistic gesture? It could be read as both.
