Invisible City – New work in Schiedam

So it’s 12 hours since I started making work this morning and I think i’ve accomplished a lot and resolved some of my earlier thoughts about trying to do too many things. I am doing lots of things, but I am refining them into separate pieces of work and revisiting methods and processes from other pieces of work – i’m not inventing, i’m recycling and refining.

As I mentioned earlier, i’ve resolved the problem of a too-small projection by using a mirror to reflect the image and extend the projection distance – genius! I’ll use that again.

I have tightened the rice paper on my screens by damping it and blow drying with my tiny, tiny hairdryer. I’ve also made sure that they fit securely and tidily in the doorway

For the rest of the afternoon i’ve been going through my photos of Schiedam street furniture and making some sketches. I’ve scaled them up and cut some stencils for me to rub graphite powder through onto one of the drawing surfaces i’ll use tomorrow.

The drawings that I will make will be too large to send home I think, but I have made some smaller studies that i’m really happy with and I think will look good framed, so that is something else that I had been wondering about that is sorted.

A brass band has just arrived in the space to rehearse for tomorrow – it’s amazing the breadth of things going on here, yet the crossovers that there are between different art works and different disciplines is amazing. It will be really interesting to see how everything comes together across the weekend.

Only 23 hours and 40 minutes left…

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It’s all getting very exciting here. Elmer Koopmans and Andrea Jacobs’ sculptural chairs have arrived today and I can’t wait to climb up them. Mali Klein’s ‘City Dress’ is installed, and I caught a quick glimpse of Julieta Ortiz de Latierro’s animation.

It is great that there are so many people working here – I’ve found a solution to the projection problem (see image 5 yesterday) and have used a mirror to double the projection length and therefore the size of the projection on my rice paper screens.

I also took the opportunity to get up early and go to Schiedam Centrum station to take some 1 minute films during rush hour. It might be inaccurate to call it rush hour as there was no rush to be seen – only intermittent streams of people walking from tram to train station. I’ve got some films that i’ll use later though and i’ve also taken some pictures of street furniture that I plan to use in at least one of my drawings.

I’m going to spend the rest of the day working out what, where and if to draw onto any of my 3 pristine surfaces. All of the technicalities are sorted and it’s only drawing and interaction that I have to concern myself with now.

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Wednesday 31 August

Notes from my sketchbook today:

200-6=194/2=97
150-6=144/2
41cm down, 48 cm in
77/2=38.5
101.5+97=198.5
200cm
296-200=96/2=48

Reposition the camera? – Ceiling Mounted?

Screws into wall?
Camera mount on front
Screen off doors
Hardware shop/screws, washers, plugs
Drill?

List of things I still need:
Cable ties (tick)
Permission to mount the camera on the bracket above the pipe

Screws, Washers, plugs (crossed off)
Check I have enough rice paper/fabric for a 1.5m frame?
Tiny screw for attaching to dowel (crossed out)

Also to do.
Series of 1 minute videos from same location e.g Schiedam Centrum. Rush hour/daytime/nighttime
Ideas about including architectural elements from elsewhere in Schiedam in the interior drawings.

Generosity of other artists for tools and wood.

So full of ideas, places to respond to.

Rice paper How To:
Paint frames
Glue paper (should be sandwiched betwen 2 frames)
When glue has dried, spray each screen with water
Blow warm air until it tightens
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Tape Temporarily
Straighten roll of paper
glue
unroll
trim once dry
if any wrinkles or sagging spray lightly with water on the wrinkled area.

Rice paper drying.

Passages from J. Tanizaki;s In Praise of Shadows

—>Shadows, Half light, Shoji Screens
= Ryoanji screens
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Interesting how I keep returning to materials and methods.

Cables – lay across front for screens
lay inside for back wall
Staple fabric to frame.
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Something I didn’t think of. Projector does not project large enough to cover the screens–>

(Drawing of how projection does not fit – later overlaid with a possible solution)

Could project smaller panels? Like in novas (can then slice em up and take em home)

Tonight: make some tests with pencil, pen ink, grey ink drawing on all 3 substrates.
for use on/with architectural details

Am I putting too much/too many processes into these 3 days.
Good to take the opportunity to experiment in a space.

—>I work best in response to a space.

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Work in Progress, Tuesday 30 August

Today I went to work out how to produce my work in the space I have in Invisible City. As I am using a projector, I have a space off the main hall. I’ve been experimenting with the projector in that space, with the cameras that I plan to connect to it, with drawing surfaces and also thinking about making some test drawings.

I’ve ventured into Rotterdam (on a day where i’ve felt a little clumsy due to leaving my mobile behind not being able to open the apartment door with the key, trying to board a metro with a train ticket and dropping the tube of rice paper that I bought from one art shop whilst leaving another.) I’ve bought inks, paper, fabric and a possibly uneccessary brush. But the fact that Rotterdam had 2 amazingly well stocked art shops (where you can buy hunks of marble and potters wheels next to the pencils canvases and paints) meant that I gave into my weakness for spending money in anything resembling a stationers.

I’ve since made some test marks on each of the types of paper that I bought and considered ways of setting my intervention up. I’m mulling over it this evening and will have a meeting with Liat and Ans from the Shadowing Cities production team in the morning.

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So, I arrived last night for a group meal at Ruimte in Beweging where I met many of the artists involved in Invisible City – the inevitable repetition of who I am, where I come from and what I am planning on making circled around the table as each conversation happened, and it was good to put faces to names and project descriptions that I had previously read on the website.

So far I’ve met:

Mateja Bucar
http://www.dum-club.si/mateja/zelenaluc/green_ligh…

I’m sharing an apartment with Mateja (who’s from Ljubljana, Slovakia) and i’m really interested in her performance that is planned for some pedestrian crossings around Schiedam. I’ve seen her rehearsing with a group of dancers today and we’ve been chatting over dinner about how she will use the crossings – i’m wondering if there is a link between some work I have done with drawing on pedestrian crossings or bridge crossings previously (www.claireweetman.co.uk/crossings.html)

Daan Den Houter
http://www.daandenhouter.com/

Daan is working on ‘Money Floor’. Today I have seen him devote himself to routing €1cent sized recesses into 20 panels of wood – tomorrow he will begin to lay both the floor and the coins.

Ozlem Uzun
http://ozlemuzun.blogspot.com/

Ozlem will install homely furniture in a bus stop on the main street in Schiedam, making an unexpected intervention for the public who use the stop. I learned last night that Ozlem has had to get a permit from the council to be able to do this – i’m not sure if that would be the case at home, but i’d probably go ahead and try without asking. Ozlem will be filming the intervention and screening the documentation as part of the weekend’s events. Chatting to Ozlem I also learned what a small world it is – she knows one of the Istanbul based artists that POST met in Austria last year, and has also met another Liverpool based artist whilst she was in Lyon – by heck we get around do us Liverpool folk.

Jan De Bruin
http://www.artnews.org/artist.php?i=4329

See Jan’s video below. Jan will be reporting on the Invisible City as it unfolds

I’ve also met many of the other artists, and i’ll describe their work as I learn more about it over the next few days.

Jan De Bruin reports on Invisible City