GMT-5 Birmingham

Okay I am in the space waiting for Camilla to arrive via Skype and in the meantime I have got soem photos of interesteding places near The Wig. I shall share them with you.

On Monday I went to a canal spot in the pouring rain under Livery street bridge. The acoustics were great and I recorded the rain falling. I found out later that Birmingham has more canals than Venice and that of course you can go by canal from Birmingham to London, even to Hackney Wick where my studio is located: even here I have a connectioniwht my performance home.

We also encountered a Carnegie library:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libr…

Or at least what I think is a Carnegie library set up by Scottish millionare Andrew Carnegie. However theere is no info on Wiki relating to this particular structure. I will go there tomorrow before the performance to find out the history of the place. Nearby there were two tower blocks seperated by a road, and knowing of the areas associations with JRR Tolkiens LOTR trilogy, joked that they were the two towers. Then nearby I found a closed pub called The Twin Towers in a complex of shops related to these blocks.

I have thought up possible performances for both of them, and want to find out more about them. So many public and private spaces in Birmingham make great platforms.

This is bad. I have started this blog with the intention of outputting lots of info about GMT- but I cannot juggle performing and blogging at the same time :(

I am in Birmingham with the lovely Home for Waifs and Strays, a project set up by two artists: Kate Spence and Aleks Wojtulewicz in Birmingham to bring performance to the city. I am awed and astounded in equal measure at the poor and wealthy areas of the city, the scale of the buildings and the canal systems that work through Birmingham.

I came here because I wanted to be displaced. I have been doing a series of performances with my friend Camilla Brenson called GMT-. we share each other’s days over Skype live in front of an audience. This time it will be between Birmingham and Peru. I have been here since Sunday night. So much has already happened: exploring the city with Kate, locating the canal system, spending the day at The Wig, visiting Museums, St Margaret’s St at Birmingham Uni, taking part in a Companis dinner party.

I am finding that to assert my identity in a new place I must acquire things. I have been doing just this and the best thing about the brevity of the stay here is there is not time for hesitation, no doubt I will be exhausted after. I already feel the rush of production and its exciting! I am anxious because I can sense an identity in my work forming.