set-aside – a Sky.l.Ark project

set-aside – a Sky.l.Ark project

set-aside – a Sky.l.Ark project
2015

set-aside is a new artwork proposal by Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd of the drawing shed (originally put forward to the ArtAngel Open in 2014). set-aside is created on the ground within an urban soup kitchen and an island community and in the metaphorical ‘mile high’ space above city and sea. Working with the Alauda Skylark’s complex song, its stranger-neighbour dynamics, and the rich voices of the homeless and activists, asylum seekers and birders, Labern+Lloyd will explore through film, sound, social media and text, the critical need for the ‘set-aside’ in the C21st fracture of the [un]civil. Without making visible the dissonance on the ground, this ‘imaginative’ mile high space cannot exist.

THE FRAME

set-aside is a Sky.l.Ark project located in ‘spaces above’ that form an arc across the sky and metaphorically replicate the Alauda Skylark’s ‘mile high’ space – for things heard but not seen, seen but not heard, where humanity can be held in mind, where fear of the unknown is suspended, and the question is open for imaginative possibility, absorption, preoccupation and collaboration.

The east London soup kitchen has fed the homeless each night for twenty years and is threatened with relocation to a hostile environment at the edges of the borough; the local MP’s response is to advocate ‘triage’ not campaign.  Nearby, purposeful clearance of undergrowth on the common land at the edges of the skylark’s nesting ground prevents homeless people from sleeping there. Close to a lighthouse on an island off the Dorset coast is a prison recently repurposed as a detention centre for failed asylum seekers awaiting deportation. In the words of their local MP, ‘it’s still a place for incarcerating people, just different people, with no threat to local jobs.’ This is ‘the uncivil’.

The common land is home to the largest population of skylarks in East London; nearby, local people take their campaign against the closure of the soup kitchen to the high court. The patches of ground carved out of crop fields by island farmers so that birds such as skylarks can nest are visible beneath the lighthouse, itself inhabited by a disparate community of individuals who find freedom of expression through the arc of the birds as they map their paths between continents, creating maps of experience that echo a human diaspora. This is the ‘set-aside’.

And just like the skylark’s birdsong at breeding time, the work is a call and response across communities, extending the enquiry to the edges of the known where the poetry of this work hits the discomfort of the prosaic and bounces up into the mile high space.

THE RESEARCH

Labern&Lloyd have become parallel researchers alongside post-doctoral scientist Dr Elodie Briefer who has studied the skylark’s song, carrying out analyses and playback experiments in the field and amassing considerable material as a powerful resource. At one hundred metres high the skylark bird cannot be seen, while its voice can be clearly and distinctly heard. The song is described in terms of dialects (geographical variations) and complexity (ordering of acoustic units). Skylark males produce one of the most complex song among songbirds; geographical variation exists (dialects): in a given patch, males (neighbours) share several sequences of syllables in their songs, whereas males settled in different patches (strangers) have no sequences in common. Using playback experiments (broadcasting songs with a loudspeaker), Dr Briefer has also shown that dialect allows birds to recognise their neighbours and differentiate them from strangers,  reacting with low aggression to neighbours, compared to strangers (‘dear-enemy effect’). Re-organising syllable sequences within the song, she has tested how fragmented it can become before the bird no longer recognises its own voice – just two seconds of reordered syllables played back to the bird leads to a ‘stranger’ response.

Skylarks nest on the ground, and for Labern+Lloyd this is the grit of the project where the collisions of experience, ideas and form take place. Labern+Lloyd will collaborate with documentary film-maker and photographer Sebastian Sharples to collectively research and capture footage and edit film for new works. The artists will draw upon their own extensive work as socially engaged artists on housing estates, homeless housing projects, post conflict zones, refugee camps, transit centres, inner-city refugee programmes, HIV/Aids centres, Traveller and Gypsy sites. They will explore both the perceived and real fear of danger within communities which itself creates neighbour-neighbour, neighbour-stranger, stranger-stranger dynamics between people – this questioning and exchange beneath the mile high space feeding directly into the work.

THE SPACES

Labern&Lloyd will create a series of works in both inhospitable and aspirational ‘set aside’ spaces situated in two communities within the UK and held at the edges of city and sea:

  • A Soup Kitchen close to the housing estate in east London where the drawing shed has had its base since 2009, where a growing community of people silently line up for an evening meal, making visible for just one hour a day the local levels of poverty and homelessness. Here, Labern+Lloyd have volunteered, watched closely and joined with local housing organisations to think through the law and the human response.
  • A Bird Observatory at the most southerly point of the British Isles on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, a decommissioned lighthouse with its glass domed light space still intact, where Labern+Lloyd have already to begun work and develop relationships – noting the thousand skylarks landing unexpectedly on the island last winter, logged by the bird keeper as ‘refugees’, as well as the nearby Verne prison now detaining asylum seekers.

Potential ‘other’ communities of interest will surface – voices challenging, beautiful, dissonant, unheard. Like the ‘set aside’ necessary for the nesting skylark’s safety, they are hard spaces to find, have to be fought for or literally opened up. These may also become new sites for contemporary art works.

THE FORM

Grappling with the [un]civil, and the set-aside, Labern&Lloyd will use sound, film, social media and text to create new works which open up questions that make possible the imaginative and the uncomfortable. Labern&Lloyd will ask, how can the song be re-choreographed, re-sung, relocated; how can the ‘set aside’ be re-formed, the civil reinstated – what is its shape?

Made in dialogue with both locations and communities, the works will be shown in the local, on-line, on radio, as projections and across the UK:

– Sound using recordings and playback, cut-in and cut-out text, including sound recordings from Dr Briefer’s extensive archive.

– Film made with film-maker Sebastian Sharples.

– Twitter – a ‘scored’ performative space (a form developed by Labern&Lloyd in E17 2012-14, and for the Text Festival Bury, 2014), embracing dislocation across the ether, inviting others in, asking questions that have always needed to be asked.

Sky.l.Ark – Artangel Open 100

Sky.l.Ark – Artangel Open 100

Sky.l.Ark – Artangel Open 100
2013

Sky.l.Ark is a series of ‘spaces above’ that form an arc across the sky and metaphorically replicate the Alauda Skylark’s ‘mile high’ space – for things heard but not seen, where humanity can be held in mind, where fear of the unknown is suspended, and the question is open for imaginative possibility, absorption, preoccupation and collaboration.

The project opens up through a call and response to find other communities and their spaces above which are hidden to the public and difficult, if not impossible, to visit. This is the ‘set aside’.

And just as the skylark’s birdsong at breeding time, a call and response will extend to other artists’ voices across the UK whose enquiry is on the edges of the known, where the poetry of their work hits the discomfort of the prosaic and bounces up into the mile high space.

THE RESEARCH

Labern+Lloyd will become parallel researchers alongside post-doctoral scientist Dr Elodie Briefer who has studied the skylark’s song, carrying out various analyses and playback experiments in the field and amassing considerable material as a powerful resource. At one hundred metres high the skylark bird cannot be seen, while its voice can be clearly and distinctly heard. The song is described in terms of dialects (geographical variations) and complexity (ordering of acoustic units). Skylark males produce one of the most complex song among songbirds; geographical variation exists (dialects): in a given patch, males (neighbours) share several sequences of syllables in their songs, whereas males settled in different patches (strangers) have no sequences in common. Using playback experiments (broadcasting songs with a loudspeaker), Dr Briefer has also shown that dialect allows birds to recognize their neighbours and differentiate them from strangers, reacting with low aggression to neighbours, compared to strangers (‘dear-enemy effect’). Re-organising syllable sequences within the song, she has tested how fragmented it can become before the bird no longer recognises its own voice – just 2 seconds of reordered syllables played back to the bird leads to a ‘stranger’ response.

Skylarks nest on the ground, and for Labern+Lloyd this is the grit of the project where the collisions of experience, ideas and form of the work takes place. The artists will draw upon their own extensive work as socially engaged artists on housing estates, homeless housing project, post conflict zones, refugee camps, transit centres, inner-city refugee programmes, HIV/Aids centres, Traveller and Gypsy sites. They will explore both the perceived and real fear of danger within communities which creates neighbour-neighbour, neighbour-stranger, stranger-stranger dynamics between people – this questioning and exchange beneath the mile high space feeding directly into the work.

THE SPACES

Labern+Lloyd will curate a series of works in both inhospitable and aspirational spaces situated ‘above’ specific communities within the UK and held at the very edges of the sea by two bird observatories, north and south:

  • the discrete roof eaves above a homeless hostel in Camden (Arlington, where they have been running ‘Irregular Bulletin’, print and social media workshops with Space Studios using cut-out / cut-in text and image)
  • On the housing estate in E17 wherethe drawing shed has had its base since 2009, Labern+Lloyd will build a new inaccessible physical space as a platform for the community to witness and engage in this project
  • In two bird observatories situated on islands at northerly and southerly points of the British Isles – Fair Isle in the Shetlands and the Portland Bird Observatory on the Isle of Portland, Dorset (a decommissioned lighthouse with its glass domed light space still intact and where Labern+Lloyd have already begun work and to develop relationships – noting the thousand skylarks landing unexpectedly on the isle of Portland last winter and logged by the bird keeper as ‘refugees’) – both inhabited by a disparate community of individuals who find freedom of expression through the arc of the birds as they map their paths between continents, creating maps of experience that echo a human diaspora.

Potential ‘other’ communities of interest will also be sought – voices challenging, beautiful, dissonant, unheard – the growing community of people silently lining up for the daily soup kitchen in E17; a trans-gendered community whose ‘set aside’ space has been ‘carved out’, wrestled from the mainstream, an example of the ambiguous, the shape-changing spaces that people create for themselves; the Algerian community, now economically active as migrants to east London but experiencing acute and hidden levels of homelessness. Social media will be used to make a call-out, bringing the artists’ attention to unique spaces above these specific communities. Like the ‘set aside’ necessary for the nesting skylark’s safety, they are hard spaces to find, have to be fought for or literally opened up. They may become new sites for contemporary art works – perhaps only to be visited by the communities of interest beneath.

THE FORM

Labern+Lloyd will work with residents of the homeless hostel, housing estates, transgender, Algerian and birding communities and so on, to develop both audio and visual conversations, using recordings and playback, cut-in and cut-out text, opening up questions that make possible both the imaginative and the uncomfortable. These artworks will be created using both sound recordings from Dr Briefer’s extensive archive, and new recorded sound developed within communities. Other artists will extend this conversation.

Lloyd+Labern will choreograph social media Twitter as a performative space (as currently used by the drawing shed in E17 and other locations), sharing their thoughts across the ether between locations and inviting others in, asking questions that have always needed to be asked.

Sound works will explore possibilities for Stranger-Stranger, Stranger-Neighbour, Neighbour-Neighbour held within the structure of the skylark’s song. Labern+Lloyd will ask, how can the song be re-choreographed, re-sung, relocated; how can the ‘set aside’ be formed, what is its shape? Between each location and community of interest, the artists will choreograph Sky.l.Ark, playing out new voices in a multiple arc across each other, acting as the physical ‘metronome’ of the work, tempering in the mind’s eye of the audience, the song re-sung.

Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery

Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery

Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery
2015

somewhere image

www.somewhereresearch.wordpress.com

Some[w]Here Now invites artists, local people, and others interested to join the drawing shed for open conversations at Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park, exploring how artists may work collaboratively, with ‘local’ communities and in ‘public’ places, in the context of Now.Co-hosted by a collection of artists, local residents, critical theorists, architects, activists, public and mental health professionals, THE DAY OF SMALL CONVERSATIONS invites participants to talk openly about ideas of ‘social responsibility’ in regards to collaborative making and to collectively question the role of contemporary artists within opposing cultures of resilience, resistance and regeneration.
The frame will be set by the drawing shed‘s playful and critically informed Some[w]Here contemporary arts project over three housing estates in Nine Elms, and will feature video documentation, materials and research gathered over the past nine months of the project. The estates – known locally as ‘the island’ – are situated in the shadow of the Battersea Power Station Development, London SW8 close to the gallery; an area that throws into question the very meaning of public space and value of community in our contemporary society.
THE DAY OF SMALL CONVERSATIONS will be co-hosted by a number of artists and thinkers, including Sally LabernBobby LloydJordan McKenzieBarby AsanteDaniella Valz GenProfessor Adrian RentonCara CourageDr. Debra Benita ShawShahed SaleemDr Chris Wood, and Lois Keidan and Katy Baird (Live Art Development Agency). The days agenda will then be shaped by all of the voices in the room, with conversations passing between small groups throughout, looking towards future possible projects, shared actions, and collaborations. Please bring thoughts, questions, agendas and an openness to unpick.

 Amidst these conversations there will be a large communal picnic lunch provided in the park and a drinks reception at the end of the day for further conversation and informal networking. the drawing shed will also launch the Some[w]Here publication:  Manual for Possible Projects on the Horizon.

Pump House Gallery is wheelchair accessible on the ground floor only. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss access requirements.

For more information, please email: thedrawingshed.projects@gmail.com 

Mary Osborn   07792292605

THE SOAPBOX ARTS LAB

6 – 8 June | 11am – 5pm
Pump House Gallery

Some[w]Here Now – THE DAY OF SMALL CONVERSATIONS follows the drawing shed’s The SoapBox Arts Lab taking place at the gallery in the three days preceding. Here the artists will be taking over the gallery for individual and collaborative making of mobile soapbox structures. These will further be used as a platform for conversations on June 9. The SoapBox Arts Lab is free; please turn up on the day to join in, or email for further information.

PHG_logo-1the drawing shed logo copy 2

PrintWandsworth logo current copy

Cultural Wellbeing 2013

Cultural Wellbeing 2013

Cultural Wellbeing 2013

bride and bike01.small

Image from post 2011 riot exchange on the estate during the E17 Art Trail.

In September 2013, we were invited by Wandsworths Arts Council to join other artists, academic and cultural commentators and leaders Cultural Well Being Provocation Lunch on SW11 to discuss what the term ‘cultural wellbeing’ might mean and how it can (or not!) be useful for the work of arts and culture leaders. Bobby gave one of the provocations in response to the questions.

The key objectives of this project were to explore and come to some fluid conclusions about what we mean by cultural well-being in Wandsworth and further afield – moving towards a possible working definition.
The questions were:

  • How can a clear understanding of cultural well-being inform work across a broad range of areas including: Public Health, public realm and environmental design, place-making and regeneration, participatory arts practice…?
  • How can we most effectively measure and evaluate the impact of ‘cultural well-being’ initiatives?

This is the wdwth_wellbeing_final-3 document that came out of the process.

Some[w]Here Research

Some[w]Here Research

Some[w]Here Research – 9 ELMS – Wandsworth

thedrawingshed.SomeWhereNow

www.somewhereresearch.wordpress.com

the drawing shed’s new project Some[w]Here Research is underway, opening up new imaginative spaces through engaging residents across the Wandsworth estates of Patmore, Savona and Carey Gardens.

Together with performance artists Jordan McKenzie and Daniella Valz Gen and designer-makers George Williams and Nozomi Nakabayashi, the drawing shed will be working in and between the three estates’ public spaces, activating these outdoor spaces within and across the estates through the visible process of making a series of mobile structures. Exploring the history of the area, including the old soap box factories and go-kart culture, and learning from older people living on the estates Some[w]Here will explore the platforms from which stories are told and conversations take place across the estates, cultures and generations, with the PROJECT BLOG – www.somewhereresearch.wordpress.com – providing further space for residents to share and explore old memories and new ideas. Rethinking, reworking, reusing, retelling, remaking.

9elms03.webSurveying the scene on Thessaly Road

9elms6.webBeautiful garden path on Savona

9elms7.webWhose in goal on a sunny afternoon

9elms13.web9elms08.webOut and about – all things mobile

9elms09.webOver the wall to Covent Garden Market

9elms11.webWatching Battersea Power Station changing before their eyes

#BasicSeven7

#BasicSeven7

#BasicSeven7

#BasicSeven7 is an ongoing project for co-lead artists Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd of the drawing shed and was originally funded by London Borough of Waltham Forest, Hoe St Ward Funding alongside the UCL Bartlett Wild Screens research project (see below) which allowed us to extend and deepen the use of social media as a creative tool, holding complicated conversations around the issues of work, mental health and housing, inviting personal and network responses to questions of responsibility for homelessness.

the drawing shed artists fed into project engagement through their historical experience and community contact with people living on and off the streets in Leytonstone, in Hoe Street, Waltham Forest and in Camden – so as to ask the following questions:

• Can the situated screen and online social media (twitter) and Instagram be of any relevance to particular challenges such as a community discourse on street homelessness?

• Does the use of Instagram and other Social Media as a creative tool allow the drawing shed artists to synthesise and transmit ideas related to their own critical practice and engage a wider audience as participants in major debates of our time?

http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/graduate/screens-in-the-wild/Artists-in-Residence

HOMELESSNESS

Under the banner of Irregular Stage, the drawing shed  worked on two projects in London in relation to homelessness:

• Irregular Bulletin was a 6 month residency at Arlington House in Camden, with Space and One Housing, using the drawing shed’s mobile PrintBike alongside the Social media tools Twitter/Instagram with long/short stay residents, January-July 2013;

this is linked and feeds into/is fed by:

• Basic Seven#7 which took place in E17 in Waltham Forest as a series of critical and inclusive arts events/workshops/exhibitions and encounters on the theme of ‘homelessness, housing, mental health and work’, February 2013 to January 2014

many joined the conversation:

#homeless   #sitw @wordinthehand @wildscreens

the drawing shed tested out these questions initially  during March in the following four locations:

·       Tuesday 5th March 1.00pm – 4.00pm –  Streets of Leytonstone E11

·       Tuesday 12th March 9.30pm – 12.30pm –  Soup Kitchen and homeless hostel, Walthamstow,         E17

·       Wednesday 13th March 10.00pm – 1.00pm –  Islington, N1, we proposed to work alongside a         long-term Arlington House resident selling The Big Issue but inclement weather deferred.    

·       Tuesday 19th March 1.00pm – 4.00pm  –   Streets of Leytonstone E11

We continue to work on this project and earlier in 2014, we attended a day of presentations and discussion involving many partners across London, led by the Christian Kitchen, a group local to E17 who run the soup kitchen whose pitch in the centre of Walthamstow and remit to support both hungry and homeless families, was being challenged by the Local Authority. Stella Creasy MP joined the debate.

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

the drawing shed invited residents, passers-by, friends and other organisations to participate in their mini youth festival, ‘Festival Here’, on Sunday 1st July 2012 from 12pm to 5pm on the green area at the intersection of Prospect Hill and Attlee Terrace (E17 3EG).

Festival Here was led by the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project with the support of Roisin Feeney, performance director from The Albany, Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd from the drawing shed, and “…Ask Freda”. The day centred around the girls’ new performative work that used film, Twitter and den-making. The girls have been using the quad spaces and streets of Attlee Terrace to explore how teenage girls use ‘public’ spaces, how contested these spaces are (who owns them?), and how they can feel safer to use local spaces / streets – redefining and examining their rights to be more visible within their communities.

the drawing shed invited artists EMILIE TAYLOR and SINEAD LOFTUS to make interventions and socially engaged works as part of the festival, while  ClayOven provided more than 70 pizzas for over one hundred local residents, passers-by and invited guests. The project was supported by Walthamstow School for Girls, Asham Homes, Waltham Forest Council and Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project. It was funded by Arts Council England and Hoe Street Community Fund.

For further information email thedrawingshed@gmail.com

PERFORMANCE PROJECT. For more information Click Here

Conflict Resolution with YIAG

(Waltham Forest Youth Independent Advisory Group)

Guest Artists: EMILIE TAYLOR and SINEAD LOFTUS


DOHA FOUND OBJECTS PROJECT, 2011

DOHA FOUND OBJECTS PROJECT, 2011

DOHA FOUND OBJECTS PROJECT, 2011

SADAA / FRAMEWORK IN CONTEXT:

‘Sadaa Thakerat al Makan’ is an Artist-led Arts Project Proposal, delivered by Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd of the drawing shed following a site visit to Doha in January 2011. It begins with the Collection of the found objects taken from the demolition of existing buildings – homes, businesses and social spaces from the Musheireb, Qatar’s earliest suburb (1951) – to make way for a new sustainable architecture at the heart of Doha (2015). The most recent residents being the migrant workers who make up the majority of Qatar’s population, who have been moved out to develop the Musheireb. In response to this ‘In between Space’ that has been thrown up as the present communities move out, Labern+Lloyd began a dialogue about ‘How Newness Enters the World’ – to reflect this cultural regeneration – as future ‘culturally sensitive’ (” middle eastern”) community spaces in the city’s Musheireb are created almost in front of their eyes.

In recognition of the lack of residential status of the migrant communities, whose presence is imperative to the Qatari ruling class for the servicing and development of the richest state in the world, Labern+Lloyd wanted to work both with the uncertainness of identity that comes from the both the assumed birth right of the ruling elite and the lack of rights of the migrant population: without equal human rights, there is no recognition of the value of diversity within a nation however rich it may be, and no space for cultural identity to develop or differences to be celebrated or recognised. The proposal of an international residency programme alongside the development of a mobile artists’ studio came out of the visit; it is ideologically different in context and intent, to the externally perceived current Qatari project of collecting and curating ‘Contemporary Middle Eastern Art’ from across the region as a means of constructing and underpinning a national arab identity for Qatar.

In the context of the new Musheireb development in the city of Doha and complementing the newly launched Mathaf, The Islamic Art Museum, The Knowledge Enrichment Centre, the proposed Cultural Forum and so on, a rigorous piece of work took place in partnership with the drawing shed during the four day site visit in January, and begun a year a half ago as an idea proposed by Isaa Al Mohannadi. The summary of this proposal is for a project with a discrete identity that feeds into, interfaces with and would take its own part in underpinning the overall Musheireb Art Strategy for Doha.

The  Artist-led Arts project sets out, at its heart, to foster and develop dialogue between the diverse communities of Doha in recognition of its migrant nature. It suggests that using the potency and inspiration of the found ‘objects’∗as a rich resource, the Project will support, reinterpret and create both a new ‘architecture’, metaphorically (and influence physically), and art works that are poetic, contemporary and questioning – where the porosity of territory, time, memory and identity are explored through art making and participation by the whole Doha ‘community’.

Where the rush of nostalgia and construct would flood in, artists could instead bring big questions to the most potent and the most (seemingly) trivial objects, poetic interpretations, decoding, ideological challenge, imaginative friction and new meanings, reflecting sentiment and not sentimentality. These would be ‘transmitted’, passed along if you like, into public spaces, with an intention of creating mostly temporary art works in public spaces, community spaces, and by doing this, keeping the conversation open …. this report was of course written before the Arab revolutions across the Middle East and in this sense the agenda for many has shifted dramatically, though perhaps not for Qatar as yet.

Read the project’s report: THE DRAWING SHED FOUND OBJECTS REPORT_PROPOSAL

AN ASSEMBLY OF OPINIONS

AN ASSEMBLY OF OPINIONS

AN ASSEMBLY OF OPINIONS

the drawing shed’s PrintBike work “An Assembly of Opinions” was shown throughout August across the window of the People’s Supermarket WC1, as part of the Adhocracy Festival, August 6-7, 2011 @ Rich Mix, Bethnal Green, E1 (www.adhocracy.info/).

FOR THE CENTRAL WINDOW, Labern+Lloyd mono-printed images of food aid, barricades of white sacks, body bags, oil… as ‘one offs’ in repeat patterns on British newspapers carrying stories of world political crises …

The use of the mono print acts as a contradiction to the continual occurrence of media reporting on the ‘natural disaster’ of man made world famine, creating a work that is eerily poetic, ghostly even & draws the viewer in to read critical fragments of reportage juxtaposed with recurring  world famine & so exposing/inviting the connections.

On July 28th, the drawing shed artists Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd took PrintBike to The Peoples Supermarket (www.thepeoplessupermarket.org/) to workshop on the street for eight hours. Inviting members, shoppers and passersby to make a mono-print of a staple food found in the shop, while at the same time drawing focused attention to the war and famine in Somalia, the day generated an incredible two hundred prints. Yellow paper and black ink were used as a visual connection with the supermarket’s own branding and the work linked to the shop’s appeal for donations for Somalia through the DEC East Africa Crisis Appeal.

THE THREE WINDOWS: “AN ASSEMBLY OF OPINIONS”

SOME[W]HERE

SOME[W]HERE

SOME[W]HERE

https://somewhereresearch.wordpress.com

Rethinking, reworking, reusing, retelling, remaking

the drawing shed worked on a project Some[w]Here  on the three housing estates Patmore, Savona and Carey Gardens in Nine Elms, London referred to locally as ‘the island’, the land-locked social housing area opposite the now infamous Battersea Power Station site, with the new American Embassy being built on its flank, to be surrounded by an insulated, ‘double skinned’ layer of privately owned flats for a new richer community.

Our project Some[w]Here explored through the metaphor of the Go Cart and the Soap Box, both migration and the fluctuating gifts of memory in relation to early street play (imagination, resilience, survivability) and the first days of work (alienation) for current residents who have come to live in the area from all over the world.

It was this critical friction of an artist-directed discourse between older estate residents, men and women of 68 – 98 years, that informed the content of the work: contemporary go cart inspired objects and mobile Soap Boxes, built on the streets with architect-makers George Williams and Nozomi Nakabayashi whilst live/performance artists Jordan McKenzie and Daniella Valz Gen made provocative interventions, and we as lead artists created quieter works as individuals triggered by this multi-layered approach and the ‘unfixed’ organic methodologies of the collaborative works we make.

Both this very accessible ‘public’ work and the disruption of the streets created the rupture in dominant ideas that flowed into these quieter individual responses. In this liminal space, and in the case of Nine Elms, a physical in-between space too of an echo chamber within which we found a ‘Point of Resonance’,  creating performative and film-based works as individual artists – like the project’s poetic body piercing.

ARTIFICIAL SUNSHINE

ARTIFICIAL SUNSHINE

ARTIFICIAL SUNSHINE

Following our summer residency in Bury with The Public Typing Pool, we were commissioned as part of Bury Light Night, October 10th 2014, to make a new research work, Artificial Sunshine. We flooded the street and exterior of Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre, Greater Manchester, with a ‘Smog of Black Light’ from 8 large UV floodlights located behind metal barricades (an aesthetic and safety choice). These mirrored the spectacle of the world’s first 8 electric streetlights that marked the beginning of Blackpool Illuminations in 1879 and now in 2014, purposefully uses the spectrum of light invisible to the human eye.

Wearing black ‘festival’ wristbands printed in UV ink, a cross-generational public shifted the barrier of the spectacle by activating the work itself in an extraordinary series of intimate encounters with both the artists and UV light, as the public themselves became the work. Each person was invited to wear a black wristband or presented with sheets of paper to hold into the black light, printed in UV ink with numerous short texts and only readable standing within the work itself, illuminating information often obscured or hidden from the public gaze – historical, political, scientific, imaginative, poetic.

For its first iteration in Bury we immersed ourselves in the ‘smog’ itself, with texts gathered from widely random threads of inter-web searches fed by daily news briefings and reports. These ranged from current scientific research on the health implications of light pollution and interruptions to circadian rhythms (our new city LED street lights impacting essential melatonin production, pernicious effects of light pollution on animals) to media or state blackouts on information about war or terrorism, international and domestic to scientific work exploring the universe with references to astronomical ‘perfect black bodies’, new stars, life in space….

Through the metaphor of Black Light, we investigated emergent collective and imaginative threads of resistance – acts of civil disobedience, scientific cooperation – so as to engage with how we hold agency or take responsibility for a new ‘civil society’. From UV exposure of human debris to the making visible of big ideas, we explored both individual and collective actions, experiments and explorations – such as the democratic naming of a new galaxy after the amateur stargazer who spotted it earlier this year, 10 billion light years away from Earth.

The artists – through the metaphor of BLACK LIGHT – investigated emergent collective and imaginative threads of resistance in forms of the social, the scientific and acts of civil disobedience in exploring how we hold agency or take responsibility for a new ‘civil society’.

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

Residency: TEXT FESTIVAL BURY, MAY 3 -AUGUST 9, 2014

As part of Text Festival 2014, the drawing shed, aka artists Lloyd+Labern, set up THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL: a selection of old manual typewriters in Bury Sculpture Centre for a residency spanning the Laurence Wiener exhibition; Over the months they invited the local Bury public to take part in a number of events, interventions and opportunities to slam the keys, copy those carbons, make new music, write a love letter, settle an old score, make overtures to a community, create the only page of a novel, type out an apology, make a flat plan sculpture, write a poem, type alone, write together.

Event: Twitter: #un_civil

Exploring the [un]civil in contemporary society, Lloyd+Labern worked with a group of artists and writers to construct a score for a performative text work using Social Media Twitter for Neighbour : Stranger, a collaborative live art writing project. Opening up a space in the commons of the ether, the work was a call and response that extended the enquiry beyond the physical space of the Gallery, where the collisions of experience, ideas and form could take place, and the poetry of this work hit the discomfort of the prosaic and bounced up into a mile high space. Screened in real time in Bury Sculpture Centre, exhibition visitors and artists were invited to join us in the ether, or on the typewriters in response to the emerging conversation.

The Exhibition:

the drawing shed artists Labern+Lloyd were in residence at intervals over the months of the Laurence Weiner exhibition, creating several new works in collaboration with the Bury public and through provocations with local artists. Inspired by scientist Dr Elodie Briefer’s research on the SkyLark’s song and its split-second nuanced changes in recognising both Strangers and Neighbours, the artists made a number of new visual works using the Typewriter and its Carbon Copy investigating the [un]civil in times of austerity and migration.

 

The Public Typing Pool – Call Out : for Typewriters:

“Iris Murdoch wrote on a Bijou Erika…..Allen Jack Kerouac an Underwood portable, William Burroughs a Remington or whatever he could get his hands on. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used an Erika Ten Portable, Françoise Sagan a 1950’s Smith Corona Portable, George Perec an Underwood 5, and Anne Sexton a Royal Quiet Deluxe…. Ginsberg loved an Underwood 5 or was it a Remington No5?

The Public Typing Pool will work with local groups and will be open to the public to enjoy throughout May, June, July and August! Do you have an old Olivetti Lettera 32 / 22, or a Remington or a majestic old Smith Corona ….all makes, sizes and shapes are welcome!

Bury Art Museum is making a Call Out for old manual Typewriters – if you have one you could donate to create the Public Typing Pool as part of this project to launch Bury Sculpture Centre. Your story about your typewriter can become part of the artwork…!”

 

 

Man walks into The Public Typing Pool at Text Festival in Sculpture Centre Bury; he speaks to no one and sits down at one of the manual typewriters donated by a public call out, and he writes for 40 minutes: 

‘I Loved Her’

He then gets up and walks out leaving the typed sheet, the copy and the carbon. Beautiful.
Neighbour : Stranger

BLACK LIGHT – CRITICAL SHELTER©

BLACK LIGHT – CRITICAL SHELTER©

BLACK LIGHT – CRITICAL SHELTER©

 BLACK LIGHT – Critical Shelter©

the drawing shed 2014 -2018

Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd are lead artists of contemporary artist-led organisation the drawing shed based on two housing estates in East LondonThey propose to work with a small number of partners to create a number of iterations of BLACK LIGHT- Critical Shelter© – a new research arts project that works with a ‘smog’ of Black Light as a further development of the artists’ Artificial Sunshine work, Bury 2014.

BLACK LIGHT actively engages its audience in the work itself through a humanist enquiry, illuminating critical information often obscured or hidden from the public gaze – historical, political, scientific, imaginative, poetic – with a particular preoccupation with climate justice and migration.

As we entered the UNESCO International Year of Light in 2015, BLACK LIGHT drew upon photonics as inspiration to rethink the hidden. This is in the context of technology which moves humanity fast forward into new worlds, and may appear to be only future-oriented, but in reality is bound up with the permanent crisis of contemporaneity.

 

THE CONCEPT

As a starting point, and following our Text Festival Bury residency 2014 with The Public Typing Pool© and our Twitter based performance #un_civil, Labern&Lloyd were commissioned for Bury Light Night, 2014, to make a new work, Artificial Sunshine, Labern&Lloyd’s SkyLark project 2014-15 http://www.thedrawingshed.org/sky-l-ark-artangel-open-100

Mirroring the spectacle of the world’s first 8 electric streetlights that marked the very beginning of Blackpool Illuminations in 1879, this on-going creative enquiry purposefully used the spectrum of light invisible to the human eye, Ultra Violet, the same light emitted at the beginning of the life of all stars, of all known biological life.

The artists flooded the streets with a ‘Smog of Black Light’ from the Fusiliers Museum across to Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre in Greater Manchester;  Set squarely behind metal barricades (an aesthetic and safety choice), 8 huge UV floodlights echoed the culture of 1879, contemporary festival and protest.

Thousands of the cross-generational public wearing black ‘festival’ wristbands printed in UV ink, shifted the barrier of the spectacle by activating the work itself in an extraordinary series of intimate encounters with both the artists and UV light, as the public themselves entered and became the work.

Each member of the public audience as they entered the street was invited to wear a black wristband or presented with sheets of paper to hold into the black light, printed in UV ink with numerous short research texts, and only readable by standing within the work itself.

For its first iteration in Bury we immersed ourselves in the UV ‘smog’, with texts gathered from widely random threads of inter-web searches fed by daily news briefings and reports. Ranging from current scientific research on the health implications of light pollution and interruptions to circadian rhythms with our new city LED street lights impacting essential melatonin production; the pernicious effects of light pollution on animals and climate justiceto media or state blackouts on information about war or terrorism, international and domestic, toscientific work into the universe with references to astronomical ‘perfect black bodies’, new stars, life in space and …. http://www.thedrawingshed.org/artificial-sunshine-bury-night-light

Through the metaphor of BLACK LIGHT, we investigated emergent collective and imaginative threads of resistance – acts of civil disobedience, community organisation and scientific cooperation – exploring how we hold agency or take responsibility for a new ‘civil society’.

From UV exposure of human debris to the making visible of big ideas, we explored both individual and collective actions, experiments and explorations – such as the democratic naming of a new galaxy after the amateur stargazer who spotted it in early 2014, 10 billion light years away from Earth.

 

THE FORM

BLACK LIGHT will have its starting point on the housing estates in E17 held within purpose built ‘critical’ shelter structures some of which will be carried and reconfigured in other settings; The shelter, which holds an ideological form, will become an active, participatory work-shopping space where we shall create the imaginative and critical response to framing spaces within which we can explore the tipping points of climate justice and human migration and the urgent need for changes.

UV ink will manifest as part of the structure of Critical Shelter, with image /texts screen-printed for example onto large sheets of black / white / transparent / paper / material, which will be used to ‘paper out’ the venue spaces at each setting. Each time the installation of work will mutate and develop to suit its space, its new audience and its multiple ideological drivers as set by the artists’ ongoing and deepening research created by an active participatory project at each venue.

 

THE VENUE SPACES

Possible Venues currently being researched include:

  • Housing estate
  • Museums with growing relationships with their local host communities
  • Scientific Institution
  • Gallery project space
  • Street festival of light
  • Bird Observatory
  • Immigration Removal Centre

 

PARTNERS

So that the work is fully located within a contemporary arts and science context, the drawing shed will work with, and is in the process of researching:

  • a creative producer
  • a ‘critical’ shelter partner
  • an arts and science organisation
  • a scientist
  • a leading anthropologist
  • a significant cultural partner of a major new gallery