Gen Doy New Collaborations Bursary 2014

I’ve decided to work outwards from my base in London and visit the nearest sites first. These are a historic tree which you can enter through a small door built into the tree, and a grotto built by a Quaker in the eighteenth century. In this way, if i have to go back to the sites with my film collaborator and film and record again, it will be easier to do this than start with the less accessible sites. We’ll have learnt more by the time we get to the sites in Norfolk and Suffolk.

I’ve already had several discussions with Lynn Dennison, who is working with me on this project. We’ve been talking about the themes and issues linking the various sites I selected to perform in and resppond to, and how we might do this. One of the main themes is the way that humans influence and interact with natural sites, making them more or less “natural” and why this is not static but evolving. For example in another of the chosen sites, Greenham Common, nature and plant life have re-colonised (if that’s the right word) areas where struggles related to war, violence and gender occurred.

In the historic tree, the interior was carved out and apparently made big enough for a meeting place….why?and at the grotto, an artificial addition to nature incorporated “dead” nature in the form of shells. The porch of the grotto was actually being demolished some years ago when a preservation order was served, and the porch restored. so layers of human invervention, both creative and destructive, resonate at this site.

I also discovered (through Wikipedia, that i always told my students not to cite as a source, although sometimes it’s a useful starting point) that the person who built the grotto was a poet and a writer on poverty in the 18th century. I’ve ordered a book of his poems online, and am thinking of singing some of his writing at the site, either stationary or wandering around…..why stationary? why wandering around? Lynn and I need to experiment and think why one and not the other? or a mixture of both? Another issues i’ve been thinking about is how to have the speaking or singing voice present alongside a film or projected image without it sounding like a soundtrack. And if the voice part is performed live, should its source be seen or not? this also has to do with the intervention/non-intervention in the landscape/natural location I feel. …an unseen intervention but a heard intervention?

Also I’ve been contacting people to allow us access to the sites where this is necessary. No reply from the National Trust at Orford Ness as yet.

I haven’t yet started by collaborative bursary projects but I thought I would start the blog because, in a way, the project started when i wrote the application and formulated ideas, and set them out along with the budget.

Applications…success? failure?

I was excited and happy to be awarded a bursary. So many times we as artists apply for things, and it’s a disheartening process when lots of applications fail, or, more often, are never even acknowledged by the receiving organisations or individuals. It’s good in some ways to write applications, even if unsuccessful, because you are always thinking of new ideas, problems to do with your work that need addressing, the cost of things, can you do this on your own or do you need someone to work on it with you etc etc. However on the other hand rejection and being ignored can be disappointing, especially if you think you have a good project which deserves support! Also after spending days writing an application/proposal you can feel that you have actually done the work but of course you haven’t. There is nothing to show for your efforts and nothing to put on your website or to exhibit.

But sometimes weeks later you look at the proposal again, perhaps with a view to using some of it in another context, and you see areas of weakness in it. Or you realise it was perfectly good and you should try again. You learn from writing down your ideas and presenting them for scrutiny to tohers, but you also need to learn by making the work and trying to install it in different ways. There’s a limit to what you will learn from just writing! But writing helps me think. I learn from reading and writing as well as making, or perhaps i should say that for me, reading and writing is part of the making, as is investigating locations and visiting them to “feel” and hear them, and researching their history .

My collaborative bursary project

I’ll copy and paste some of my application in here to give you an idea of what I’ll be investigating with collaborators over a period of a few months this summer and early autumn.

I want to undertake this collaboration to investigate the relationship of my voice, and vocal sounds, to different landscape sites. I work with sound, my voice, and field recordings in installations, and want to collaborate with a professional singer and a video artist. I’ll explore the relationship of the body to landscape space and significance using sound and the voice. I became interested in this through hearing Schubert’s Winterreise song-cycle performed. A singer wanders through an emotional winterlandscape, his songs conveying his emotions and loosely linked narratives. I want to explore with the professional singer and video artist ways in which my voice can explore responses to spaces and places with song, words and also what is in the voice which goes beyond words.

How will my voice relate to natural sounds in the landscape? Water, trees, birds, animals etc. What are various acoustic spaces in different sorts of landscape? I want to visit sites which offer different possibilities of collaborative response, both in terms of the voice, and in terms of imaging the site-specific performance through moving images. How can the imagery go beyond the picturesque and the rustic, and offer something more challenging, as may the vocal interventions?

I want to work with the professional singer in her studio in London, preparing for visits which follow with the visual artist. I have selected sites of natural, historical and political significance. (The names of the sites have been ommitted here until I do the work).

These are natural, but also cultural sites. The collaboration will allow me to develop more ambitious work than I can do as an artist working alone, benefit from advice and fresh ideas, explore in more depth the relationship of sound and image, undertake performative responses to sites of different acoustic, natural and historical significance, and explore how the artistic investigations “in the field” can be best presented to art audiences/gallery visitors.

So far, I’ve been trying to arrange a visit to Orford Ness but have had no reply so next week I will phone again and sent another email to the wardens there. I hope it can be arranged successfully! I visited Orford Ness last year. what an amazing place. How could an artist fail to make interesting work there??? I’ll find out!