Simulacra And Simulations

I’ve been around Frequency Festival between exhibiting The Lincoln Simulacrum, and I’ve been kidnapped by virtual clowns, learnt to dance in the House Of Mystery, I’ve seen angels glimpsed through the corner of your eye, I’ve been Ulrika for a mission by Blast Theory, whom I met to find out how this derive had been created using mobile phones and call centre server tech to create an interactive spy adventure game around the city.

I was also fortunate enough to meet with Chris and Impossible, who had created a similar sphere to our Light Space Modulator, and were doing similar things to Apparatjik, but they’d never heard of Apparatjik, and he was intrigued by this.

We’ve been at the eye of the storm, so I’ve been Cloudbusting over the weekend – my graphic novel Kickstarter has achieved another backer, and a friend of a friend has offered to write an article about it, which is really awesome!

So, we couldn’t get into the space to open up for the final day today, the door had jammed shut after yesterday’s Viking Biking Expedition, and we ended up calling out a locksmith just to get in!

I’d been sitting in the space observing how passing traffic was casting light, and I spent some time making some basic stencils to cover the window on the door. An Apparatjik on a bike and a space invader, and today the passing traffic projected these images onto the Light Space Modulator.

There was a performance by Rebecca Willoughby, and visitors had mostly been put off by the severe weather forecast, but we were all really pleased with the exhibition and the possibility for paid opportunities to follow.

Images and info are in this blog:

http://lincolnartistnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/

I’ve been saying this since January, but if I don’t get paid now, I’m now at risk of getting into debt, and homelessness.

I’ve been recommended to become a Bikeability instructor, on the back of the Viking Biking Expeditions, which I will apply for, and which should earn enough to cover the shortfall. Apparently, the council are desperate for Bikeability instructors, so if I don’t get this job I really will give up all hope…

After a visit to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau to try and get some help for a drop in income that amounts to £81 per week, and I wasn’t offered any viable support other than to give up self-employment, give up my career, as it clearly isn’t earning enough to pay the bills, and go and find some other job.

So I set about setting up The Lincoln Simulacrum installation, and we launched with our private view glossing over Susan Jones’ article about private views… ;-) And it went really well!

It went well in that people came to see the work, enjoyed the show, and I’ve been offered a possible commission / work for next March, and most visitors really enjoyed the performances and the work projected onto the Light Space Modulator.

http://lincolnartistnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/

I also got home to find that my application to work as an illustrator or a local t-shirt shop has been accepted, and amid promoting the new graphic novel Kickstarter project, today I’ve been adapting a print to fit the brief.

I relaunched the graphic novel Kickstarter fundraising pitch to coincide with the exhibition, and I imediately received an email from a fellow Kickstarter offering some useful advice and links to make it successful, it’s already received 2 backers, and is being promoted by various comics blogs and crowdsourcing PR tweets, so I hope it breaks its target!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/297268149/clou…

I spent most of Friday in Norman St Empty shop space, which was a very productive day!

I met an artist who seems very keen to participate with us and get involved. I had been thinking a lot about the Cube. I posted on Facebook a query to source a greenhouse frame or a garden gazebo. I’d been thinking it’d be ideal if I could create a sort of wendy house that can easily be constructed and taken down, and a greenhouse seemed ideal without a roof.

However, she’s offered the support of her husband, who is going to make the Cube for us.

We also have an offer of a lift to the Art Party Conference, so hopefully now at least 3 of us can go, and anyone else that’ll fit / wants to come with us.

Things are starting to happen, so I’m pleased. I went for last Friday’s bike ride feeling very positive, and the ride was fun as well, and this week’s Viking Biking ride on Sunday consisted of four of us, and not only was the weather glorious and sunny, but it was loads of fun!

It’s keeping me very positive, despite having to cope with worsening situation with eldest son.

Still not getting anywhere with son. Emotionally exhausting dealing with his teenage proclivities.

So, the Apparatjik bike thing – I seem to have sourced a few spare bikes! I just need to get them to the space to tinker with. No news about the ones in the police station, but I do hope to play around and create an Apparatjik Disco Bike of some sort.

For the Revival anniversary, I set up an LAN:LAB bird workshop for last Friday in the old arcade space. I was pleased to be joined by fellow Lincoln graduate Becca Reid, and she has a lot of ideas for art projects. For various reasons, I haven’t made much use of that space for some months, and I now have a couple of artists that will join me to have regular Lincoln Artists’ Network projects and events on Fridays to make use of the space. The Bird workshop was an excuse to invite people to come and make cardboard bird wings and beaks to create a flock of birds as part of the Outer Trial Bank project.

I’ve also set up regular bike rides, although it’s proving quite tricky to encourage artists that aren’t cyclists to come and join us! Cycling is one thing I do to relieve the frustration of all the failed grant applications and general failures…

Today I got a headache from staring at the computer screen, not doing what I should be doing; that is, what I’d planned to do today, so I decided to go out in the sunshine and go and check out the brand new Art, Architecture and Design Building, and go and see the MA Design show. In my wildest dreams I plan to do an MA in Illustration, when the magic funding fairy appears…. so I pretended to be a lost fresher, and went for a spy round the new studio spaces, as I had 20 mins to kill before a meeting with the manager of the Hilton hotel, to discuss the prospect of exhibiting art there. This is a fantastic opportunity for us, aside from my own work with various pop stars, the space is secure, with a large amount of guests and visitors – potential audience – and refreshments readily available, and with paid staff there to keep an eye on the work, we don’t have to worry about invigilation!

I’m quite excited about this, I’ve often followed the Artist Residence in Brighton and wished we could do something like that here, or something like The Thief in Oslo – this errs more towards the latter :-)

I sent my illustration of Michael Gove, a very carefully drawn piece of screwed up paper in the bin, with a broken pencil, to the Art Party Conference, but I wasn’t imagining being able to go. I inquired whether there was any funding to cover travel / accommodation, and was met with a negative, so that put me off.

Considering I face the prospect of a drop in income equivalent to approximately £81 per week, it would be best if I didn’t have to pay to attend, and it’d be a shame to miss out when Mum won’t mind having my son at hers, and he’s old enough to go on the train on his own now.