LOTUSLAND : PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Here you can view all the images we created from the LOTUSAND : THE MUSICAL movie that we produced with support from the a-n professional development bursary.

Calling out..

We are looking to share our journey, and collaborative process with students, and members of the public, as we feel the element of collaborative play within contemporary art is an area that has been marginalised.  We are open to hosting workshops, creating site-specific work on site within your institution, presenting our project and its contextual frameworks, and/or screening past work with a Q&A.

website: www.facebook.com/lotuslandcambridge

LOTUSLAND FUTURE
From this developmental period of reflection, exploration and discussion, we are currently in the beginnings of designing an augmented reality app for LOTUSLAND. Alongside Karen Eng, a long time collaborator and supporter of LOTUSLAND, we have been in discussions with Yana Buhrer Tavanier, (co-founder/director of Fine Acts, TED Fellow, and Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts) as well as Wedge Martin, (technologist, entrepreneur and CEO of GeoPapayrus) to re-develop the GeoPapayrus app, or build a new one, to enable artists to reclaim monetised/corporate space through digital interventions using video, sound and still image.  They enthusiastically support our idea, and wish to encourage further development of this idea, with hopes of future involvement within their organisations.

Initially we would develop the app using pre-existing content made through the various LOTUSLAND happenings throughout Cambridge, Wysing Arts Centre, and London. This would allow us to adapt the app so that it would be user friendly.  The aim would be to share the app as a social platform to access particular projects, but also enable artists to create their own spaces within spaces they create themselves. It is very much in line with the idea of geo-cacheing, but celebrating queer, digital content.

In cities such as Cambridge, where space is very limited, difficult to access, and expensive, the LOTUSLAND app would enable an artist to ‘install’ their work wherever they wished.  For example, LOTUSLAND ESTATES explored estate agencies, and the ideal creative space, so with the app, we could place our videos in the windows of every estate agent in Cambridge, turning the bland, beige city into something a lot more queer.

LOTUSLAND’s work resides within multiple queer frameworks, and to use both urban and rural locations throughout Cambridge and London, would enable a visibility within spaces that seem to actively reject such queerness.

We hope the LOTUSLAND app will empower artists to make their work visible in any location regardless of any bureaucratic or financial limitation.  Whether they are site-specific responses using digital animations produced over various gaming platforms, moving image interventions, curated shows, audio/visual graffiti, etc., their audience would be encouraged to be inquisitive and explore spaces they feel exclude them.  And ideally with technology that is user-friendly and accessible.

LOTUSLAND : THE MUSICAL
We began our selection process, finding a handful of videos with the most in-depth narratives and characters. We then framed them within this ‘Professional Development’ process, creating a John Dee style oracle that embodied the need to look into the future, to understand LOTUSLAND and what is out of our control. The main character, Rosey Stoner, starts off as an isolated creative entity, who dreams of the world outside, and yearns to develop through external validation. They are unaware of what they are, and their power within – they are our rosetta stone, that they are the key to their own deeper understanding of their mode of operation.

We continued the filming over the week and invited artist, Mark Scott Wood of OUTPOST (Norwich), who became part of the film along with Norwich-based filmmaker, Sam Tring.   We then created a mummers-influenced play using scripts from our past work. Completely improvised, this three act play documented Rosey Stoner’s journey outside their isolated creative space into an urban landscape, where they are full of enthusiasm, taken advantage of by a ‘corporate piggy’, but in the end triumphs over their exploitation becoming professionally developed and self-sufficient. Mark and Sam’s involvement directly progressed this part of the production, allowing our professional relationships to become stronger in what could have been viewed as an alternative corporate team building activity.

We then took our week worth of footage and edited what is now titled LOTUSLAND : THE MUSICAL, bringing together the documentation of  our development as a collaborative production unit.

Professional Development

In August 2017, we had the privilege, funded by an a-n professional development bursary, to spend a week at Philip’s studio at Wysing Arts Centre to try to gain a deeper understanding of how we function as an ‘institution’/collaborative group.

Initially, we commissioned an astrological chart based on LOTUSLAND’s date, time, and place of origin from artist/illustrator/astrologer Rae Lahn. This was one of the most useful tools of the developmental period. It enabled us to compare our perception of LOTUSLAND with its astrological aspects, which in time began to widen and deepen our understanding of the project.  When we began filming and creating LOTUSLAND THE MUSICAL, we also used excerpts of the text from the projects profile were used as script within the film and the digital video stills posted throughout this blog.  Part visual manifesto, part motivational, part self-help, part-zine; these phrases from the astrological reading put into context how our project views itself, works with others and its ideal location.

We began our focused week of development with artist, Lucy Steggals, of the Saturday Museum, where we came to the decision that LOTUSLAND’s (professional) development comes through our collaborative production, where further  production decisions are also guided by the space – the place – not particularly the institution, but the actual place itself.  Our discussions continued to uncover that LOTUSLAND wants to be seen while it creates, where visibility is an act of sharing; an act of bringing people together to build an ethereal, momentary community, much like the Saturday Museum.

Also through our discussion, the more we tried to pin down a static critical framework of operation, the less the project worked, made sense to us, or inspired us.  LOTUSLAND is very much rooted in intuitive action versus thoughtful reflection. The queerness it embraces enables this disregard for introspection. We also confronted the question of what does it mean to ‘professionally develop’ a project that actively pushes away the neoliberal, corporate-obsessed ’Professional’.

So after the first two days guided by discussions with Lucy, and creating an initial video tackling what ‘Professional development’ means to LOTUSLAND,  we decided to re-stage past LOTUSLAND video work within the rural setting.  Giving us a mode of production congruent to LOTUSLAND’s values that enabled reflection and intuitive action.