Second thought best
It’s been a busy few weeks with starting my a-n Re:view meetings, co-curating an upcoming exhibition, viewing studios and looking after a six-week-old baby. I have had a bit of a creative revelation since my meeting with Lowri Evans and an awkward email correspondence from a museum open mic event. For this project I have always been split between two concepts, the museum connection seemed the most structured and the other less defined. My second idea is more visual creating a costumed character, like a mascot symbolising international exchange between Manchester and Tampere. After speaking to Lowri this second strand has become more crystalized in my mind and has more potential to go beyond Finland. Although Tampere is known as the Manchester of Finland there are other cities that make this reference. For example other cities known as ‘The Manchester of…’ are in Osaka, Japan and Ahmedabad in India.
For the past few years I have imitated foreign characters taking inspiration from drag/beauty queens and female hosts. The ‘host’ costumes can look pretty ridiculous, particularly the recent Sochi Winter Olympic ladies. They unfortunately looked like human plant pots. I have become more intrigued by how I can develop international relations on a local scale. Could the public make suggestions, challenges for me to achieve in each city. The work could be documented online or filmed, maybe even made into a stage performance further down the line. Since focusing more on this idea, connections between visual art and performance venues are making more sense. This also follows on from an awkward email conversation; a response from a museum open mic event that I thought would be a good opportunity to perform part of the Mansi character. Initially the organiser thought the project looked interesting, but didn’t get it! Oh dear I thought. This has made me question how creative can I really be in the museum, as they like to deal with facts were as my performance would be a creative interpretation.
Ideas for International Exchange
Get a local baker in Tampere to sell Eccles cakes
Plant the seeds of a Tampere plant in Manchester
Give basic Finnish lessons for free
Teach Manc slang
Demonstrate traditional/contemporary dance moves
Talk about the art scene in both cities
Be a tour guide for one hour
Welcome you from the airport
Parade the streets in costume
Have a special ritual re-enacted at every exchange
First Re:View Presentation
Last week I had my first a-n Re:View meeting with performance artist Lowri Evans and upcoming producer Catherine Shaw at Contact Theatre. I used my iPad with a PDF slideshow of my past work and Manse Project 15 brief outline. Ian Smith, designer and my lovely husband designed the A4 marketing leaflet, which I was really happy with the layout and stock it was printed on. I can use this portfolio leaflet to give out to my peers at future meetings and take them with me to Finland. In an age where we tend to communicate in digital media it was nice to have a physical object to give to people that represented part of my work. Lowri and Catherine commented straight away on liking having something to read, take away for themselves and give out to potential contacts. Ahead of the meeting I had skyped Catherine and already it feels like I have a second brain on the project which is a luxury as I am used to doing everything myself. She is producing new performance and intervention events such as Spectacle and Derelict (http://www.derelictlive.org). It was clear from our conversations together that like myself she is really passionate about intervention work. Catherine has also assisted Lowri on projects and programmed her performance work. Due to the short timeframe with Lowri on this occasion she has offered to skype, stay in contact through email and be available to support me during the project, which I am delighted about.
I only had an hour with Lowri as she is leaving the country in a few days time touring her performance The Secret Life Of You And Me in Brazil (http://www.thelowri.com/the-secret-life-of-you-and…). As the time was so precious I focussed on talking about three pieces of my work, my reasons for wanting to plan a larger piece and my Manse Project 15 ideas. I will email her further questions about her work, touring and funding which she can get back to me at a later date. Lowri seemed excited about the project and early on was making helpful suggestions to my questions and concerns about moving my practice forward. She could see similarities in both our practices and could relate to the frustrations of intervention work being a little undervalued in representation, promotion and pay. Although we both agreed that this kind of work is being more recognised and programmed although there is still a long way to go. In the past I have relied on the arts organisation to market my performances that hasn’t always been completed. Lowri suggested making sure I personally invite contacts for specific reasons to come and see my work, whether they show or not it’s still really important to do it.
As I am applying for an ACE research and development grant I was unsure whether I should be making a performance during that period. It might seem really obvious that I should but I have been focussing on planning, gathering research material, networking and observing performances. I had thought of inviting a small group of people to review the performance development, however Lowri and Catherine were encouraging me do this as an intervention at a programmed event. From my experience performance scratch events always want new work and I hadn’t really thought about approaching them to showcase a work in progress. This was a good suggestion as intervening the work in real time and space rather than in a studio environment is the best way to start testing, and reflecting on the development of the piece. I was questioned why I wanted to do this project, why was the Finnish connection important to me? If I could crystalize my reason why, that this could help focus the project more. Although as I am at R&D stage I feel reluctant to keep to one reason as generally my work is very open and tends to refine later as the project evolves, sometimes not even knowing until after I have made the work. These are some other points that came up during our discussion, lot’s to think about anyway…
Be clear on what you want from people.
What am I trying to achieve?
Call MOSI maybe I am speaking to the wrong contact to programme my work.
Use a known strategy in the performance such as the ‘tour guide’.
Why not explore second strand developing international relations between the two cities.
Be clear on vision of project even if it is over a longer period.
Multiple roles
Developing the ‘Manse’ characteristics I love the idea of a split personality and this represented in two very different looks. Yet again the theme of a mixed identity keeps coming up in my work. This makes reference to my own personal family tree with relatives who lived in India, immigrants we believe were from Portugal. As a child and teenager my darker features would attract positive and negative attention. I am also very interested in how we perform various roles in our daily lives such as mother, wife, manager, artist, educator, to simply serving customers in a bag shop. Although I do love to look at performance artist work, I am much more inspired by the daily performance of everyday life and popular culture characters. It is important for my performance to be more than something that is just looked at. I want to combine my creativity, research, and educational elements into an engaging performance. Could I somehow use alternative scripts, which are suggested by the audience? What if people could write an alternative use for an object from the museum? I see a character split into two people. I perform in side profile two different stories from the Cotton Mills in Manchester and Tampere.
I have my first a-n, Re:view meeting with Lowri Evans in a week’s time to present my work to her. Unfortunately due to her work commitments I have had to push our meeting earlier in the month as I originally planned on presenting to a number of people at the same time in Manchester. However this is not possible so I will have to do individual presentations. With my bursary I want to design a mini portfolio to give to my peers. My lovely husband has recently designed the Joana Vasconcelos exhibition graphics and I particularly like the colour, A4 folded, 4-sided guide. This is the sort of thing I want to produce to handout at my meetings. I have just had a baby and adjusting everyday to life with a new person in the world is taking a bit longer to get back into work mode. Although I am eager to keep on top of my project as art is such an essential part of my well being. Seeing my peers individually has made me realise how I want different information from each of them. I don’t want to bombard each person and I feel a feedback, emailed form would work best to reflect and get back to me at a later stage.
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Re:view Bursary News
I am delighted to have received the a-n Re:view bursary to research the planning stages of the Manse Project 15. This means I can start arranging meetings with my chosen peer group in Coventry, Manchester, and Tampere. The bursary will help me develop a live art project across both performance venues and museums. Having a budget to work with will allow me the time to conduct meetings with Producers, Artists and Curators who can review my past work and advise me on my future larger scale project. Generally my performance pieces are short and seen at micro performance events such as Hazard and Emergency in Manchester. However I feel as a mid-career artist I want to work on a larger scale piece, across multiple venues, which requires further support and proposal development. I want to focus my time on a more ambitious project, which is artist led rather than adapting performances to a brief.
I have mainly focused on talking to performance peers as my arts education has been in Fine Art and I feel I would really benefit from having more focused discussions in the performance field. This award will also provide the opportunity to discuss how a performance character can be integrated into the museum programme and curated at cultural events. Feedback from my meetings in the UK will help inform how I present my work to future partners in Finland. I intend to make an Arts Council application for Research & Development in May, 2014. I have made successful ACE applications in the past, however I was last funded on an artist led project in 2010. This will be the first time I will apply for R&D only. Due to this I feel I need advise from my chosen peers on the different stages of the application process. I hope the research from the Re:view bursary will support a strong ACE application in 2015 for the realisation of the work.
#Marketing Manse
With my project being split between research & development then the realisation of the performance in 2015, I feel marketing will play a key part in raising the profile of my work. I would like to start a twitter feed purely for the Manse Project that will feature research bites and use it to develop the tone of voice of the Manse character. I want to go and see the Tampere International Theatre Festival in August and there is an open invitation to perform at one of the Fringe events called OFF Tampere. There is also The Great Nocturnal Happening across the city for one night only which I could participate in (https://teatterikesa-fi-d.aldone.fi/in_english/the…). This could be a good opportunity to showcase past work or test out the early stages of the development of the Manse performance.
There will be a huge performance audience throughout the weeklong festival of over 80,000 people, which I want to tap into. Could I also use printed marketing or maybe an object to hand out to people with details of how to follow my project? I have been looking at cotton bobbins, which are beautiful, tactile objects even though in the mills if one of them popped of a machine it could really hurt you. I prefer the wooden bobbins to the modern plastic ones. My background was in Graphic Design & Advertising and I love how they use intervention to promote products. I do feel connecting and using a mix of object based marketing, intervention with social media would make my project more accessible to people. However it is important to me that whatever marketing I use is well designed, creative and not an after thought.
I have also received some good news, which I will share very soon…
