Level Head Martin Hamblen Whitstable Biennale 2016
- Level Head – a ten day project performing the phrase level headed through balancing a 6ft spirit level on my head at various locations in Whitstable.
- I will perform Level Head daily; inserted into audience’s everyday routine to be encountered casually, ‘as and when’…
- And be at site-specific destinations, decided through mutual curatorial suggestion, at set times of the day (to be advertised appropriately).
- Level Head is a durational performance adaptable to a variety of indoor and outdoor spaces (weather permitting).
- Level Head is low-tech, self-sufficient, socially engaged (I’m happy to talk to an audience about contemporary art whilst performing contemporary art) and conceptually motivated (as part of my practise I perform phrases, do the saying).
- Level Head is a subtle spectacle on a micromental scale.
- The £1000 budget would cover travel, the fees and daily living allowance of performing five hours a day (one hour on, one hour off, alternating between 8am and 9am starts) for ten consecutive days[1].
- I have recently completed a three hundred and thirty hour performance of the phrase ‘a penny for your thoughts’. Sitting on a pavement wearing a suit, my ‘stage’ framed by a hazard taped hula-hoop, the gesture of giving juxtaposes a stereotypical street exchange with a saying rarely seen, only said, creating an anomaly which questions expectations, sparks curiosity and incites collaboration.
- My recent exhibitions include Feel Me[2] (2015) at The Birley, Preston and Literacy (2014) at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester. In 2014 I performed Level Head in Manchester, at Hazard, balancing a 6ft spirit level on my head for five hours and in 2013 I performed 29,028[3] walking “two steps forward, one step back” for sixty eight hours up and down The Harris Flights; a temporary installation of stairs leading from a public square to the first floor of The Harris Museum and Art gallery in Preston, organised by In Certain Places.
- Performing Level Head for fifty hours at Whitstable Biennale 2016 would be an ambitious new work.
[1] Would it be possible to rent a spare room/floor from someone you know?
[2] http://www.corridor8.co.uk/online/review-feel-me-the-birley-preston/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNyibU4DYnM
Hello,
Thank you for applying to Whitstable Biennale’s 2016 Open Call.
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