“LOUDER THAN BOMBS” Art, Action & Activism

Stanley Picker Gallery and the Live Art Development Agency present

“LOUDER THAN BOMBS” Art, Action & Activism

- 9 February to 27 March 2010

- 7 Weeks, 7 Residencies, 7 Ways to Activate Change

- STEVEN LEVON OUNANIAN & THOMAS THWAITES ÁINE PHILLIPS / SEAN BURN / ANSUMAN BISWAS / STACY MAKISHI & YOSHIKO SHIMADA / PRICK YOUR FINGER / THE VACUUM CLEANER

“Art that cannot shape society and therefore also cannot penetrate the heart questions of society, [and] in the end influence the question of capital, is no art.” Joseph Beuys 1985

Over the course of seven weeks, the Stanley Picker Gallery in Kingston is handing over its entire exhibition space to host a series of week-long Live Art residencies – details below.

Co-curated with the Live Art Development Agency, London, through an open call for proposals “Louder than Bombs”: Art, Action & Activism is an ambitious programme of public workshops and live events that will focus on challenging social, political and global issues of the day, addressed through the seven invited artist/activist’s individual working practices and the Gallery audience’s direct participation and responding involvement.

Its title borrowed from a compilation album by iconic anti-establishment beaus The Smiths (in turn borrowed from Elizabeth Smart's extended prose poem By Grand Central Station I Sat down and Wept), “Louder than Bombs”: Art, Action & Activism addresses the highly charged political possibilities of Live Art that have been taken to new levels by a new generation of politically invested artists who are blurring the boundaries between art and activism in exciting and engaging ways.

Please visit www.stanleypickergallery.org for further information on the artists and the exact times and details of public events, workshops and activities taking place during each residency.

Stanley Picker Gallery, Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, Kingston University, Knights Park, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2QJ

t 0208 417 8074 e picker@kingston.ac.uk

Gallery Open: Tues - Fri 12-6pm; Sat 12-4pm

www.stanleypickergallery.org

Tim Etchells at Gasworks

Tim Etchells, Art Flavours (2008). Photo credit: Tim Etchells

Gasworks presents the first solo exhibition in a London public gallery by Tim Etchells, which brings together two works previously unseen in the UK.

Private view, Thursday 4th February

Exhibition runs 5th Feb - 28th March 2010 http://www.gasworks.org.uk/exhibitions/detail.php?id=522

Tim Etchells (1962) is an artist and a writer based in the UK. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, and is the artistic director of the world-renowned performance group Forced Entertainment. He has collaborated with a range of visual artists, choreographers and photographers and his work spans performance, video, photography, text projects, installation and fiction. He is the author of Certain Fragments (Routledge, 1999) and published his first novel The Broken World with Heinemann in 2008. He has exhibited widely in venues including MACBA, Barcelona (2009), Göteborg Biennial (2009), Art Sheffield (2008), Manifesta 7 (2008). He is currently Legacy: Thinker in Residence (2009-2010) at Tate Research and LADA in London. For more information see: www.timetchells.com and www.forcedentertainment.com

EVENT:

Wednesday 3 March 2010, 7-9pm
Instructions: Tim Etchells in conversation with Ant Hampton

Artist and writer Tim Etchells will invite performer and writer Ant Hampton to discuss delegation and collaboration across different fields of practice. The two practitioners will reflect on how different strategies for relinquishing control of the final outcome are embedded in their work and on their relationship to improvisation and incompleteness.

Gasworks, 155Vauxhall Street, London SE11 5RH

+44 (0)20 7587 5202

Review of 'Useful Knowledge to Know' By Chloé Déchery and Chris Eley

Photo (c) Toby Farrow

Camden People's Theatre, London. Wednesday 30th September 2009

There are three things you need to know about Chloé Déchery. One, she is French. Two, she is a lecturer. Three, she is not a dancer.

Alone onstage, Déchery repeats this refrain throughout Useful Knowledge to Know, an hour long duet between her and the sounds and images provided by Chris Eley. But the show is less about knowledge, than how it is delivered. Together, Déchery and Eley quote from a collection of frameworks for knowledge, including theatrical forms (dance, storytelling, lectures, and the now-ubiquitous performance-lecture) and languages made up of movements and words (English, French, British Sign Language). The result is a cumulative network of ways of understanding whose forms – if not their functions – feel familiar, like a half-remembered dream.

But this is a troubling kind of dream – the kind in which sense disintegrates before your eyes. There are three things you need to know about her, Déchery insists again. The trouble is, none of them tells us anything. She is a Frenchwoman speaking English. She is a lecturer who addresses us informally. She is not a dancer, but she makes the gestures of dance. Perhaps there is a gap between what Déchery says, and what Déchery means, like the story she tells about two lovers who speak different languages. In this story, it is not difference that defeats meaning, but the similarity between words. One lover, for example, understands the business of an ‘affair’ in French; but the meaning of the word in English, breaks the other lover’s heart. The tragedy is not that words have different meanings, but that each person assumes there is only one.

This is a phenomenon that Déchery calls ‘false friends’. She warns us that the ambivalence of false friends makes them dangerous, but reassures us that the story is fiction - an untruthful way to describe wavering truth. Weaving deftly between different kinds of knowledge and use in this way, Useful Knowledge to Know dissolves the possibility of one true meaning, which means dire consequences for the very fabric of life and love. It also means that the artists have to stage a kind of magic trick – to produce the problems of language, while retaining the language to speak.

Of course, dissolving one true meaning is not the same as dissolving meaning itself. Déchery’s personal refrain, for example, has a partial relationship to the truth, but it is a relationship nevertheless. One, she is French. Two, she is a lecturer. Three, she is not a dancer. Even when her actions step away from these details – through contradiction, perhaps, or irrelevance – the details still frame everything that Déchery does. Is it more or less thrilling to see dances snake through the body of a non-professional? Is it more or less inviting to be greeted, informally, by a woman who lectures to a stiff-seated hall? Once Déchery offers a piece of information, it is impossible to forget. Everything else that happens must be strung back to these ideas, and they create a kind of reputation; an ever-present reputation, which supersedes any claim to truth. They become fact, for the time being, even if it is of a demonstratively non-factual kind.

While Useful Knowledge to Know explores the weaknesses of communication systems, then, it also creates a communication system of its own. As well as her refrain about herself, Déchery tells the audience about the rest of the show. She performs gestures that are coming up, and describes the shape of what’s to follow. At one point, she strokes the back of a chair and tells us that she will do ‘this’, ‘later on’. Heavy with physical concentration, her act is rooted to the present. But her words expect the future. This pattern of anticipation is like the structure of an academic essay – in which the introduction outlines concluding points. And it is like some kinds of physical comedy – where the punchline is signalled well in advance. But here, it is performed using speech and gesture. The result is a compelling internal logic that both drives forward Useful Knowledge to Know, and contains its audience’s attention. The piece constructs its own method of communication, in other words, which not only draws the boundaries of imaginative space, but also keeps the audience inside.

And yet every so often, the performance stops.

Déchery steps towards the audience. The lights rise in the auditorium and we are lifted out of the safety of darkness.

Déchery urges the audience to consider our surroundings – look at the people sitting nearby, listen to the rise and fall of our breath. For a few tense moments, the responsibility of being in this space is thrown to the collection of strangers who came here to watch.

Eventually, Déchery retakes control. The lights dim and she returns to centre stage.

Like other elements that combine to make the show, these moments of near-rupture are repeated. Each time, they break down the ‘fourth wall’, the imaginary theatrical barrier that separates the passive audience from the active performance onstage. And it is at these moments that Useful Knowledge to Know comes closest to complete disintegration. Shifting nervously in our seats, the audience senses the delicacy of this whole performance, and the structures of meaning that are its subject. Déchery is suddenly vulnerable at the edge of the stage, and Eley’s visuals are no longer in sight.

What would happen if I ignored the performers? What if I lay on the floor with my fingers in my ears? What really stops me from breaking this experience into tiny, personal fragments, and running away? The architects of the performance have suddenly surrendered control, and now no-one can see what the building was made of.

The answer is as simple as it is small – willing. The audience is sitting here because we want to listen and watch. We are all willing to acknowledge Useful Knowledge to Know as a way of communicating, even before we know what it communicates. In this context, what counts as ‘useful knowledge’ is not that Déchery tells us she’s French, for example, but that she is addressing us at all.

It turns out that the duet between Déchery and Eley needs the audience’s willing to come to life. It amounts to a kind of faith, or perhaps a reputation, and finally makes sense of the show’s tautological title. You might think that knowledge is, by definition, known. But the knowledge that this show refers to is constantly coming into being – not as fact, but as a type of productive communication. That is why, when the performers throw responsibility into the audience they not only threaten the sovereignty of the show, but also generate its power. If communication is based on an act of faith, then the shiver of danger that the performance might collapse, is also the incentive to believe that it will continue. When the lights dim and the performance returns, I lean forward to believe with greater conviction.

written by Mary Paterson

OXHOUSE the alphabet is launched!

image: M is for Memory, by Mark Caffrey

An online alphabet made for and about the digital native; by Clare Adams

http://tinyurl.com/OXHOUSE-ALPHABET

A digital native is a person for whom digital technologies already exist when they are born, and hence has or will grow up with digital technology such as the internet, mobile phones, social networking sites etc.

Showcasing works from 26 diverse artists from all over the world in a variety of mediums from performance to illustration, who have responded to the following:

What are and will be the implications of the digital world on our digital natives?

What gift would you give to the digital native about to be born into our digital world?

Each artist proposed a piece of work for a letter of the alphabet then came up with a word to represent the letter and made a piece of work in response with a message or definition for the digital native.

OXHOUSE marks a time in history where subsequent generations born will not remember life before the digital world. The alphabet is a guide to our own feelings about this from ACTION to ZERO and the things in between... distance, luggage, memory, thread, yet ...

curated by Justin Allen, supported by The Arts Council of England

Question Time - Participate or Die?

Question Time is a series of 1000 artist-led interviews, conducted throughout Copenhagen during the UN COP15 conference. In a context of inter-governmental debate and negotiation, Question Time explores an alternative approach to climate change based on personal knowledge, action, hospitality, ending, home, social sculpture, chance, future, starting, and the occasional wild card.

Question Time will hold daily open summits throughout Copenhagen - in cafes, homes, street corners, train stations and conference centres - at which ideas from the 1000 interviews will be shared and discussed, concluding with a daily statement of intent and the posting of interviews online.

Question Time asks: how do you think change occurs? What is hospitality to you? What would be your sci-fi scenario for humans surviving in extremis in a post-global meltdown universe? Where is the recycling bin in your house?

Question Time are David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg and Mary Paterson as Open Dialogues.
Follow the project and subscribe at www.questiontime.me or email info@questiontime.me

WRITING EXHIBITIONS , 27th and 28th November at Stanley Picker Gallery

A lab on writing and exhibition making. Part of GUESS WORK GUEST WORK by David Berridge and Compulsive Holding
http://www.7point9cubicmetres.com/david_berridge.html


FRI 27TH, STUDIO 1, STANLEY PICKER GALLERY, 10.30-5.30
10.15-10.30 ARRIVAL
10.30-10.40 INTRODUCTIONS
JONATHAN KEATS, EXPERIENCE EXCHANGE
10.40 -11.40 STRATEGIES
ANNE CHARNOCK 20 minutes
MATTHEW MACKISSACK 15 MIN
11.40-12.40 ARCHITECTURES
KIM PATRICK - 15 mins
DAVID JOHNSON - 15 mins
12.40- 13.30 BREAK
MICRO-EXHIBITION: MATTHEW MACKISSACK'S "DIMINISHING RETURNS" WILL RUN THROUGHOUT THE AFTERNOON
13.30- 14.30 WRITINGS
TAMARIN NORWOOD 30 mins
FIONA FULLAM 30 mins
14.30- 16.00 LIVE
SCREENING: CAROLINE BERGVAL SAY:PARSLEY 15 mins
MATT GIRAUDEAU 10 minutes
MARC CAFFREY 30 minutes
MARIANNE HOLM HANSEN 30 minutes
16.00-16.15 TEA BREAK
16.15-17.20 DISCUSSION
17.20-17.30 MINUTES
PIPPA KOSZEREK

*

THE DAY WILL ALSO FEATURE TEXT PROVOCATIONS FROM OWEN HART AND MARY PATERSON; JONATHAN KEATS EXPERIENCE EXCHANGE WILL RUN THROUGHOUT BOTH DAYS OF THE EVENT.

SAT 28TH NOVEMBER, STUDIO 1, STANLEY PICKER GALLERY, 12-4

A SEQUENCE OF EXHIBITIONS BY:

IN THE CUBE:
ANNE CHARNOCK 12.10- 12.30
SAM CURTIS 12.30 - 12.50
JONATHAN KEATS 12.50- 13.05
TAMARIN NORWOOD 13.05- 13.35
BREAK 13.35-14.00
ALEX HETHERINGTON 14.00-14.15
THE WAYWARD PLANT REGISTRY 14.15-14.40
CONT3XT 14.40-14.55
MARIANNE HOLM HANSEN 15.00-15.20
CONCLUSIONS 15.20-15.50
OUTSIDE THE CUBE
TEXTS AND RESPONSES BY:
FIONA FULLAM
MARY PATERSON
BOOKWORKS
MARIANNE HOLM HANSEN
HYUN JIN CHO
OWEN HART

7.9 Cubic Metres is a gallery within a gallery. A temporary exhibition space, an architectural insert, a sculptural work, a collaborative document - James Carrigan’s 7.9 Cubic Metres is a curious coalescence of many forms. http://www.7point9cubicmetres.com/

Stanley Picker Gallery
Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture
Kingston University, Knights Park
Kingston upon Thames
KT1 2QJ
Directions to Stanley Picker gallery are here:http://www.7point9cubicmetres.com/directions.html

Live Writing from 10 Performances

Rachel Lois Clapham and Alex Eisenberg are at 10 Performances which is taking place at Roehampton University today.