One corner of the studio is covered with crumbled silver blankets that I brought back from the field yesterday.
When seen at night the piece did what I hoped it would do – created something that glittered and sparked. I am really pleased with how it looked. People were intrigued and interested in it which is always a good sign! I also had some good conversations (in my Swedish!) with people who passed by during the day while I was setting up. One man really liked it and suggested that each blanket could represent a different person and how all the different ‘people’ needed to work together – ‘like in life’ (that’s what I understood that he meant). He also made the point that because it was silver and without its own colour it reflected back the colour of the person who looked at it, he really thought that that was really good. I would guess that he was from India or Pakistan and his comment made me wonder about ideas of art and inclusivity … or art and exclusivity …
I am really pleased with the actual material – the silver blankets. They work visually and conceptually for this piece. More than just being visually interesting the foil blankets, which are design to protect and identify someone (something) vulnerable, gave the piece a poignancy and specificity to its location and the other events on the field that evening.
If I had had time to try different options for the lights I would have positioned them differently so that people could get a good effect without having to walk around the work. However it was not really an option to move them once it was dark!
So artistically the piece was a success, however there were technical and administrative problems that have given me a lot to think about in terms of future projects.
I did not understand everything behind the scenes and, perhaps naively, trusted everyone’s calm confidence. I had explained my lighting requirements to the man who was supplying the lighting for my installation as well as the marque and stage where people would be talking. He in turn had spoken with the event organisers and confirmed that they had sufficient generators. It turned out that on the evening one generator was faulty and another produced only enough power for one of my floodlights. This meant that while people were on the stage speaking my installation was not fully illuminated. There was nothing that could be done about it and there was no point in making a big fuss. Of course I was disappointed but I also had to be realistic about the practicalities of doing something with no possibility of rehearsal and which depended on the goodwill of a lot of hard working volunteers whose priority is their campaign to save the field from re-development (which was the focus of the presentations on stage) rather than exhibiting artworks.
Another difficulty was the lack of administrative support from the studio and I am really grateful that Birgitta took on so much in addition to organising her own event with children from local schools. The producer who was invited to take over this and two other projects at Wip:konsthall felt unable to take the work on at such a late stage which left us without anyone to organise things from the artistic side. Birgitta and I sent out press releases and promotional material but it needed a professionals focus and time.
There is a second part to the piece which is a presentation at Wip:konsthall in early January. I am going to start working towards that now so that I have the best chance of it being successful!
For the future:
Understand the full technical requirements of an artwork and it’s presentation, and double check that everything is suitable, working and compatible.
Start to build up my own contact and mailing lists.
Make time to rehearse as much as possible – use models?
Assistance – include in the budget!
Research in to the historical aspects of All Saints Eve and Hallowe’en have been very interesting – things for another blog ….
