Invisible City – New work in Schiedam

I’ve arrived!

So i’ve packed, and I’m enroute to Scheidam. There’s no production happening at Ruimte in Beweging over the weekend, so I’m taking a 2 day break in Amsterdam.

The life of an artist means that even a holiday brings with it work interests – that’s a good thing though I think. Uitmarkt is on in Amsterdam this weekend (http://www.amsterdamsuitburo.nl/uitmarkt/english) – that’s the cultural opening season and today i’ve caught some open air concerts. Also saw this exhibition on the way round the city: http://www.artpocalypsecollective.com/ Maaike Ann Stevens drawings, reliefs and sculptures – her use of greyboard as a drawing/construction material made me think about how I could use that with may recent ‘Tearing Space Apart Drawings’ (http://claireweetman.blogspot.com/2011/07/tabloid-…).

Tomorrow will hopefull bring a bit more Uitmarkt, and some gallery visiting. I’ve also been reading some news items on the Invisible City website about some of the artists already working there. I’m looking forward to meeting them all on Monday and getting to work: http://shadowingcities.com/2011/08/artists-of-invi…

Been catching up on some admin and shameless self-promotion before I go to Holland. Set up a mailing list with Mail chimp, so that will be interesting to see how that works. If you’d like to join my mailing list go here: http://www.claireweetman.co.uk/contact.html or you can find me on twitter @claireweetman

Back to information about Invisible City though: I’m planning on producing a series of work that i’m titling Motus:Immotus – these are based on my experience of producing a drawing I called Static:Moving, whilst I was working in Linz last year with POST (www.postliverpool.com)

I had produced a drawing in the same way as Passing, Watching, Waiting, Following, and was very happy with it. However, the drawing is intended to be about movement, and the results often feel static, with my use of outlined silhouettes pinning down the passage of people rather than documenting their transit. The second drawing that I produced on the day (Static:Moving) featured less heavy working of the surrounding architecture and I decided to focus on only moving my pencil across the paper when the person I could see on my projection moved. So i’m set up with a live feed camera projecting onto the paper and i’ve got my back to the audience/subject.

I found the most interesting part of making this drawing, the part when I wasn’t drawing at all. A few people gathered to watch what I was doing through the window –

My pencil line follows a point on their body.
They stop.
I stop.
They wait for me to do something.
I wait for them to move.
They wait for me.
I wait for them.
With my back to them it felt as though I waited for a good five minutes, but it was probably much less.
I can see them on my projection looking puzzled.
My arm is getting tired waiting for them to move with my pencil poised at the point I stopped.
I want to turn around, but resist.
Eventually they figure that i’m not going to do anything, so they turn away and leave.
My pencil follows them on their journey – they never see this.

I felt that this interaction was closer to what I was trying to achieve than the result in the PWWF drawing and it is that interaction and documentation of movement that I will try to achieve in motus:immotus.

I will do this by using the following processes:

-Only make marks when the subject is moving.
-Select a point on the person’s body and follow that across the image.
-Not concentrate on the background and context of the location
-Consider how I can make the intervention more of an event; there will be lots of performance based work happening at Invisible City, so i’m hoping that’s a positive influence
-Consider how I can use this work in collaboration with the other artists in Schiedam
-Consider the media I use to make the drawings; it might be good to use a more liquid medium and possibly a more absorbent surface to accentuate the difference between points of stillness and passages of movement.

Hmmm, that seems like a useful list to print out and take with me, a sort of reminder of process – that’s probably what i’ll do.

Today i’ve been working on two drawings with the same subject in preparation for the work I will do in Schiedam. The first, which I finished today, I have been working on over the past 3 weeks, the second i started and finished today. Both drawings are a continuation of my ‘One Minute’ series that I produced in 2008, and are based on 60 seconds of video that I filmed at a fantastic bookshop in Porto last month.

The Lello bookshop (google it – it’s amazing) has the most amazing architecture, with a staircase that contorts and twists back on itself. It was only because there was a rule on no filming that i made some sketches which led to a colleague of mine suggesting that I make another ‘one minute’ drawing based on the view from the top balcony. I returned and asked permission to make a 60 second film – the owner told me to be quick and now I have these drawings.

The first drawing followed the heavily worked fashion that the other drawings in the series did, and within it I started exploring my use of hand cut stencils to create graphite powder shaded areas – it has resulted in a drawing somewhere between the others in the series and my more recent PWWF drawing. I felt that this first drawing focused to heavily on the architecture and the context of the space and not enough on the lines documenting the movement of the people through the space.

Today’s drawing has just used stencils and graphite for the background, and I’ve tried to concentrate more on the lines – I’m not entirely convinced by it, but I think that the more restrained use of detail in the backgrounds will be something to draw from when I work in Schiedam next week.

Yesterday (Mon 22 Aug) marked the first day of the production period for Invisible City, an event that will be staged in Schiedam, NL on 2, 3 & 4th Sept 2011. I’m one of the artists who has been invited to take part in the event, although I don’t start work in Schiedam until next week.

I’m aiming to write about how I got this far, the work i’m planning on making, how the event is funded and i’ll share some of the work that the other artists are producing. So, to start:

What is Invisible City?

www.shadowingcities.com

“Invisible City is the first project of Shadowing Cities, a cooperation of Liat Magenzy, Fiona Weir and Ans Kanen. Artists, builders, architects, actors, dancers, players and thinkers are invited to react to the notion of the moving, invisible city. Its goal is to put the spotlight on Schiedam by means of art and culture. For the first time the city will be flooded with artists from all over the world. Invisible City aims to free Schiedam from the shadow of Big Brother Rotterdam.

Ruimte in Beweging on Boterstraat is the central point of Invisible City. Several entrances give acces to the building. It has a large, open main space and some seperated smaller spaces. Each has its own atmosphere and peculiarities. For Invisible City, the building will be transformed to a city in itself, a shadow city.

The individual visions of the artists form a city installation, an integral work built up from personal views of the city. The way the city dweller moves around in a city, the way a city is discovered, is the way a visitor of Invisible City discovers the town that springs from the artist’s imagination. Nobody will take the same story home.”

How did I get involved?

I responded to this advert in a-n last November –

www.a-n.co.uk/jobs/single/814051

– with a proposal to re-visit a piece of work called Passing, Watching, Waiting, Following that I had previously realised at the Bluecoat in Liverpool and In Linz, Austria. See www.claireweetman.co.uk/pwwf.html and http://www.claireweetman.co.uk/weetman_pwwf.html

Fiona, Liat and Ans got back to me in December 2010 to tell me that my proposal was selected and over the past 8 months things have come together until today there is just a week until I start work in Schiedam.

Things to do

So that this blog is both informative for you and useful for me, here is a list of things that I still need to do before I leave for the Netherlands:

-Make some new test drawings in the studio using stencils to try and establish a balance between the background(context) of the image and the lines documenting movement (content)

-Pack all the equipment that I need to take with me

-Edit some drawings that I did as part of a design brief for Ruimte in Beweging

-Send mailing list update & update personal blog

-make sure that I mention that this project is Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, in all publicity.