Young People inspired by 2012

In the northwest we have formed a legacy producers group of young people from manchester, liverpool and lancashire who are working as a group to research and develop a programme of youth led activity for 2012, celebrating the games and youth culture. So far they have created a number of film works as part of this research, the links to which are here:

Light write http://www.vimeo.com/4536984

slowmo                  http://www.vimeo.com/4537037

lads                    http://www.vimeo.com/7374509

ethos             http://www.vimeo.com/7792042

partners                http://www.vimeo.com/7792218

ANAT presents Super Human – Revolution of the Species Symposium

I attend the Australian Network for Art and Technology symposium – Super Human: Revolution of the Species which took place at BMW Edge in Federation Square in Melbourne Australia (I was on holiday and just could not resist this research opportunity). Day one of the programme which i attended included presentations and keynotes by Barbara Maria Stafford (USA), Michele Barker (Aus), Dolores Steiman (Canada), Kathryn Hoffman(USA), Ju Gosling (UK), Kathy Cleland(Australia), Natasha Vita-More(USA), Tine Gonsalves(Australia), Mari Velonaki(Australia) and Reva Stone (Canada).  Here is a range of programming notes i made during the day regarding programming around body and economy theme

 

1. ANATOMY AND ART, MEDICAL REPRESENTATIONS, EMBODIED PERCEPTION

• Bodies and pathological collections are often in storage as invisible heritage collections
• Wider representations of the body moving beyond the mono (ideal) body – who we are (under the skin) and other types of  coporeal spectacles
• Reveries of the body – this is what the olympics is – anatomical spectacles
• Art/history/science exhibitions – ie anatomical collections
• Cabinets of wonder – movement/user navgation through the displays, clustering as a way to present objects; baroque forms of interaction. We have lost ways of moving in relation to looking. The eyes are distant in virtual reality. It is hard to get people moving in exhibition space
• Getting people moving – a 2012 theme
• Challenges of exhibiting stored works.
• Telling stories about humans
• Use of new media and domes and technologies
• Showing human remains
• How human body has been displayed in past and how we can do that today with new media is an opportunity
• moving beyond 19th century views of body to it being a living system and a metabolism not a fixed object or carcus/skeleton
• Visualising energetics in science and art – how can this be done – needs collaborations with the health and healing practitioners/communities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. DISABILITY, SUPER HUMAN RIGHTS, PROSTHETIC BODIES,  HUMAN ENHANCEMENT

• Scene setting and definitions – what we mean by term disabled
• Technology enhancing the body
• issues of inclusion and reality of human condition
• images of the disabled – charitable or medical
• accommodating the needs of diverse bodies
• art as therapy and art as a creative process
• prosthetics dont match nature
• lack of support is the issue not the impairment itself
• value of non enhancement
• use of paralympics to spotlight issues – access to understanding the issues and our way of thinking
• What do we gain from being disabled?
• Can art and science change the world?
• Activist or arti
• How far can we split our identity – we need a mainframed identity- multiple selves in multiple environments
• Dont enhance or extend me – i am (im) perfect as i am.

 

 

 

Book reference – Don Ihde – Bodies in technologies
Robbie Cooper Book – phenomenlogy – feel and experience

Fighting Irishmen

A 2012 inspired exhibition in Belfast. Great example of linking to 2012 – in content and branding. Think it would go down very well in Liverpool. Any takers?

Like Never before on Belfast’s town hall

Part of Northern Ireland’s Legacy Project, Connections – carnival and ariel performance with Fly Butterfly – the first time the facade of the town hall has been used for ariel work.

October 2009 in Belfast

I have just arrived in Belfast to the Europa hotel where the US President Clinton stayed. As I stood outside its entrance and looked at what was around me, I wondered if the area had reminded him of any american town or perhaps a third world country? Shabbiness, consumer chain stores and grand old British architecture make up Great Victoria street. The Belfast Festival at Queens  is on.  Sponsored by the Ulster Bank and invested in by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the posters lining the street tell me that ‘everyone has a place’.  Its a misty day and I had an early start. My bed is beckoning before my 4 day agenda kicks in.  I am here for the monthly culture team meetings of London 2012 which are scheduled across the year and across all regions and nations. A perk of working on a UK wide project.  I am intrigued to see how Northern Ireland is embracing 2012. Do they see it as London only? How are they taking part? What might the opportunity mean for this part of the UK? Belfast on first impression is a lot like Liverpool to look at. Indeed, Liverpool is only a short hop and full of the Irish and its culture. Is Belfast full of scousers too? I love how the ID of the UK nation fuses and melds over geographical and political territories and my experience of living in the Northwest and being of the UK.

This is my agenda:

Saturday 17th October

12.00 – 3.00 Music Stage in City Hall Grounds with Love Hate racism and Homely Planet radio featuring:

12.30 Colenso Parade

1.20 Joe Lindsay

2.00 Ten Gallon Hat and the Big Salaute

2.45: The Ugly Bug Ball

2.30 – 3.oo Caterpillar Parade

3.10 Fly Butterfly ariel performance spectacle on City Hall facade with Ruby Colley playing orginal sound track

3.30: Announce City Hall open

3.35: Music and Dance Performance Beat Dancers, Beat n Drum, the ireland drummers and maSamba music set

5pm: Meet up with Creative Programmers

8.00pm: Waterfront Hall with seamus heaney and Michael Longley celebration with the Ulster Orchestra for Belfast Festival at Queens.

Sunday 18th October

8.30am pick up NITB/DCAL Tour of Northern Ireland – causeway coastal route, giants causeway visit, lunch at Dingiven Castle, quick walking your of Walled city of Derry, visit to Tyrone, arrive at Ulster American Folk Park and Fighting Irishmen Exhibit returing to Belfast for 5pm.

8.00pm: Old MUseum Arts Centre – bodies, buns and boyfriends – Ponydance Theatre Company

11.00pm: Pony Dance after party at the Menagerie

Monday 19th October

12.45pm – pick up

1.00pm – Titanic Pump House Tour

2.00pm – 8.00pm; LOOCG Agenda for Creative Programmers Only meeting

8.00pm – Belfast City Hall – The Unforgettable Choir with Oh Yeah Music Centre and Belfast Festival at Queens

Tuesday 20th October

9.00 – 4.00: LOCOG Agenda – full team

2.30pm – networking lunch with Northern Irelands 2012 projects, partners and stakeholders

4.00pm: Depart

Abandon Normal Devices – 2009 was big stuff

AND 2009 - Strange Attractors (KMA)

Something remarkable took place in September liverpool – the delivery of a community connected, socially engaged, academically contexted  and artistically highbrow event – Abandon Normal Devices, presented as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad and commissioned for WE PLAY – the Northwest’s cultural legacy programme for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. And, like the layers of a Russian Doll, this 2012 programme and festival should be commended for its weaving together of so many layers  of interaction and experience.  Symbolic of our cross and transdisciplinary age and appropriate to a city and region renowned for border crossings, pioneering, trend setting and leading industry ( health and music are  of particular note too), AND is part of continuing the long NW tradition of invention.

The AND programme had many strands – film programme, gallery exhibitions, public realm projects, community/fringe events, salons, conferences and workshops, talks and masterclass programmes. I did not get round it all by any stretch but for me the most successful elements were the public realm projects and the salons – for very different reasons.

The fulcrum for this festival could be found in the salons  -

AND Salon - Desire

a series of four lunchtime debates engaging top level international speakers who as experts in their fields were challenged to discuss sporting, scientific and technological advancements and issues in the context of art, culture and the London 2012 Olympics. These salons provided the glue that made the diverse array of events within the AND programme make sense in terms of cultural programming for a sporting event.  But it was when Natasha Vita-More (a transhumanist from the USA) was speaking at the ‘Compete ‘ Salon and said that it was the science and the military sectors that were funding research for the development of the human enhancement sector that the works in AND  which related to themes of war and social justice – for example, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Primitive exhibiton and Krysztof Wodiczko’s War Vetern Vehicle -

Wodiczko -War Veteran Vehicle

made complete sense in relation to the AND theme of normality and the North West’s 2012 cultural programme strand of  body and economy for which AND was commissioned.

Having experienced the full five days of the festival,  I came away knowing that AND was a very important initiative for the Northwest and the whole of the UK, creating a much needed platform for new cinema and digital culture, development and debate.  Not bad for year one or for legacy of the 2012  Olympics.  This region does need a festival like this and so does the new media and digital culture sector in the UK.

There was a disconnect in my view between  the film programme and all the other work, thematically i could not work out how it was tied in and neither did I see a great film (although this is by no means a comment on the programme as I barely touched the surface of seeing the full offering.  But i did see a few of them  and, from discussion with many others who has seen other films, there was the general view that the film programme was not as strong as the other activities or connected – it seemed like it has a different artistic vision and intent altogether.

Surprisingly, for a programme focussed on film and digital culure, AND was in fact a testament to the power of live shared experience. You can go see a film anytime but you won’t see a polish artist driving a war vertern vechile cum mobile cinema around Liverpool that often in a lifetime. Great stuff! I look forward to more AND events, the next phase rolling out over Lancashire and Cumbria in April 2010.

AND has the potential to be a highly topical and  debate driven long term programme of work and its worth mentioning one of its  programming methodologies as exemplary which was the integration of socially engaged practice into the programme. This was was very positive. Amongst the most community connected elements were the Small Cinema, Kino Caberet  and Kazimier party. When a producer knows its audience and is that audience you get very authentic work and experiences. AND gave a platform  to independent arts organisations  in Liverpool, invested in them to deliver events they had seeded but on a new scale and the results were good. These events could be promoted from the fringe to the core of the festival – the future of production is in hands like these and strategic partnerships such as AND have a role in supporting the professional development and practice of local organisations – and over the longer term.I can just about imagine what they could deliver  in 2012 if a 3 year relationships were established and committed to. This is the beauty of the Olympics – it gives us a four year programming perspective.

AND is providing a time, place and space for artists to grow and  is doing very valuable work linking in the new and emerging in form and content with the established and international. This is what LOndon 2012 should be enabling.

Issues raised which I personally found of interest to Olympiad programming:

• Youth and time- the 24hr world of youth culture
• Desire – abandoning normal desires – ie an impulse or indulgence
• Device - not just technical but can be explosive, a political mechanism -  Deviant devising
• Sport changing our perceptions of normality.  (It it was not for the olympics such debates would not be happening in AND,  in Liverpool, right now).
• Enhanced performance
• GET REAL- Disabled perfrmers will very soon be able to outperform able bodied performers as a result of advances in technology and we will need to look at a change in terminology
• What is artifice?
• New norm – we are all disabled.  Old norm – able v disabled. Unable, Able, Disa bled. Ultraabled. Do we want our children to be stronger and better? Most of what seems natural has been acquired or learned.
• Super enablement
• Future – less biological and more nano based – what can we become?

Acceptance of perfection – What might we lose?

1. Abandon your resistance to change and evolution

2. Abandon device of judging too quickly and segregation of cultures into groups

3. A film is never finished only abandoned

Masterclasses – can they also be radio programmes?

Abandon Normal Devices – Hand From God

In case you thought the body was just a physical entity, think again.

Check out this blog: http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/october/hand-from-above

Sports engineering, normality and abandoning normal devices

Check out this blogpost on the Abandon Normal Devices festival http://sportsengineering.blogspot.com

Association with 2012

It is at the olympic and paralympic games that cutting edge innovations are showcased and excellence comes to the fore, defined in that  moment of history as where humanity is at in relation to what can be achieved. Cultural projects that align themselves to the Olympics associate themselves with this  status and level of achievement and production and yet, it seems that getting projects to contextualise themselves within this international context is more than difficult. I believe that the reduction of association to a logo is restricting understanding of the wider vision and bigger picture. If projects want to use 2012 to advance and develop, then making the connection – in content, partnership and and in branding terms  is a non brainer.  Why don’t projects inspired by the Olympics want to associate themselves with it? I  believe that if people went to an Olympic games and fully personally experienced it, they would want the link all over everything they do at all times.

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Abandoning Normal Devices feels very good!

On Wednesday 23rd September Abandon Normal Devices (AND) was launched – a new festival of cinema and digital culture for the northwest and the London 2012  games and from over here i would say have no fear -  the benefits of London 2012 are being manifested here in the Northwest. I saw it first hand and its live!

The AND civic launch held at Alma De Cuba in Liverpool was buzzing with over 400 people. I would hazard a guess that at least a third were from outside of the region. VIP’s and artists were also bussed in liverpool and the festival from Lancashire and Cumbria, reflecting its positioning as a regional festival.  Many areas of the arts world benefit from celebrity fu**ing and the AND launch was no exception with Ken Russsell about and i heard Tilda Swinton was turning up.

The opening night film was Humpday ——- visceral filmmaking, intimate dialogue, human stupidity laid bare and the reality of our existence – that fear of transcending real boundaries – gently laid out many of the themes and issues that AND will debate, research and engage  through its programme. AND also presented and AND Commission – KMA’s  Strange Attractor’s – a playful interactive piece which got bodies all moving together in shared public space, creating and interacting with image through bio feedback loops and systems. An easy and accessible interface, dramatic visual creations, and a fun live shared experience with real people in real time and real space. Joyful digital!

AND is here to engage the public and artists in debate around normality – challenging us to abandon our normal devices – be they social, technoligical or cultural – and this theme and focus is at the heart of the programming. The opening night was a very good start.