It is preparation time again for Friday’s event and tomorrow’s workshop. I have a group of 20 children in attendance for tomorrows meeting which is good. It seems that if you are doing a community based arts project for a location there are two good strategies for getting people into the space: invite school groups or youth groups and go where the people ar.e. Groups are great because everyone knows each other and there is more chance of obtaining higher numbers if you can get past the organisation; going where the people are means that you can work in a drop-in basis with people, promoting your cause (if any) or the space you have the funding for and connecting new communities. Drop-ins within a space are risky as you are never quite sure how many people will turn up, but if your workshops are good then you can build up a fan base over time and before you know it you’ll be understaffed!
I will be making all the tiles tomorrow so the clay is soft enough for maximum detail, only 30 to make! In the photo at the top you can see Carol’s and mine. They are unique and really fun to make. I like that the residency has resulted in not only making performance work, but has led to a few different responses taking in different approaches to processing and presenting information: either in a very material, process based sense of using clay or in a digitised, non-linear form of a video which can be transported and viewed in any number of locations.
Yesterday I went to FACT’s Open Curate It talk – the internet of things and the stuff of experience. Concept linked to concept: The Cloud-of-Messages, The-Egg-of-Running-Down-A-Corridor. It is really interesting that the internet is integrating itself into our experience even more completely, not in an invasive way but in a more passive complete fashion. it is not like the Futurist Manifesto hailing Modernism with a car crash. It is social. It is like shaking hands.
So I am thinking of using twitter in my next performance, compressing Owens poetry and making something different using the format of tweets on twitter. I am thinking of inviting people to make a photo album collected from people’s camera phone photos of my performance as a document. But I am unsure quite how to go about this. In the meantime the projector is set up and is amazing. If you need a loan projector make friends with the former headteacher of a local school, that’s my advice.
Well, lots in store for Friday night. I will be at the Liverpool Art Prize tomorrow night in Metal if anyone is there.
