On going places and never giving up

LOW PROFILE Never Give Up (2013) site specific installation at Exeter Phoenix

Plymouth-based LOW PROFILE staged their 12-hour performance DRY RUN part 2: How to save your skin when disaster strikes without warning last Saturday as part of their show 'Against All Odds' at Exeter Phoenix  (24 May - 6th July 2013).

During this performance, they read, learn from and test each other on the advice offered in a 1960's publication - The Book of Survival.  It all took place in a building decked out with a giant window work encouraging passers-by to "Never Never Never Never Give Up" and with a small, displaced safety curtain draped across its reception space.

I only dipped in for an hour but learned a lot about avoiding avalanches and escaping burning buildings. (And also, I guess, about surviving as an artist.)  The tone of the Q&A dialogue between the two performers veered from funny/absurd to calm/weary to nervy/hyper, recalling Forced Entertainment's Quizoola!  It was good to see a durational performance where endurance was essential to its meaning (rather than a masochistic/macho add on).

Down the road at Spacex, Layla Curtis is showing 'Antipodes' (18 May - 13 July), based around a curation of paired public webcams worldwide. Drawing attention to what's happening on opposite sides of the globe isn't a new idea, but there's something pleasing about the haphazardness of relying on someone else's live footage and the odd correspondences (and blips) that occur.  It's shown alongside an intense video piece Tong Tana with amazing binaural sound, filmed from an tiny HD camera sewn into the hat of a hunter in Borneo and showing you the forest from his point of view.  Borneo is antipodal to the UK and the contrast couldn't be greater.

Fund-a-mental findings

I've always considered working with funding organisations an integral part of professional practice, but my experiences over the past year are making me think again about how to negotiate this relationship.

I've been working on two projects in parallel. The first, Foreign Soil started out as a bit of an experiment, an unfunded diversion from my core practice. And it's ticking along nicely.  I'm not sure where it's headed but the journey so far has been a real process of discovery. Work is getting made, insights are happening and, as a result, I've been able to engage very widely with other people, including a range of generous collaborators.

The other, which has the working title Solid Air, is still mired in administration. It relates to my long-term core practice around transcription of bird flight. I've been developing this particular phase for over a year, pursuing funding, commissions and gallery shows in a more traditional way.

It's based on 3D printing, an expensive process, but one I had the chance to experiment with last summer and would like to use again.  It's the only way I know of getting the complex bird flight data I've sourced and modelled into a tangible form. I've now pitched the idea to various arts organisations at least five times - not including the presentations and proposals I've made to potential collaborators and sponsors.

I'm not saying this is unusual for a professional artist, but I am beginning to question whether it's good for the work - and for me. I've talked about and written about Solid Air relentlessly for 12 months but - apart from my first prototype and a few test drawings - I haven't been able to make any of it. Time and again I'm forced to describe the idea, the process and the likely outcomes. Worse still, although nothing much exists yet and I don't know what I'll discover when I do make it, I have to speculate on its likely critical context and imagine how I'll engage the public.

I'm determined to make this work - it's had a lot of interest and good feedback.  And the very fact that some people can't quite get their heads round it suggests it's showing them something they haven't thought about before. But I have to admit that the struggle for funding and support is destroying its momentum. By the time I've explained it for the umpteenth time, I wonder if it needs to be made any more.

I went to a talk by photographer Jem Southam the other week and he spoke a lot about finding meaning through making - using photography as process of discovery, rather than “trying to put things into the picture”. All good stuff, but it seems to me this is a privilege that's only afforded to established artists. Or those who opt out of the funding game.

I don't know which of these projects will turn out to have the most value or meaning in the long term. What I do know is that one of them is actually happening and the other is still only an idea. It makes me think very seriously about the way should approach my practice in the future.

Wolverhampton wanderings

A selection of works from The Library of Lost Books  is currently on show at the Bessant Gallery, Wolverhampton,  25 April - 23 May 2013.  The show includes my contribution Mutter Erde. http://gabriellehoad.co.uk/mutter_erde.php

Creative collision

Exeter is rapidly becoming a real hotspot for innovative theatre. This includes many performance and participatory activities that don't take place in buildings, so the crossover into fine art practice is very pronounced.

Kaleider is one of the organisations driving this movement and, a few weeks back, I accepted an invitation to attend one of their 'Open Fridays'. It was odd walking into someone else's office space just to hang out and eat a packed lunch, but they offered a warm welcome and good conversation.  And it turned out we had a little more in common than I first thought. Their work as producers and mentors of live performance is rooted in a concern with climate change, the fiscal crisis and the end of oil.

So a month later I was back delivering an informal talk: the first proper public articulation of my ongoing project Foreign Soil. This documented attempt to grow edible dessert bananas outdoors on a Devon farm is meant as a provocation for thoughts about the sustainability of our food supply.

From there I was coaxed into joining their Ideas Lab - designed as development tool for writers and performers applying for Kaleider commissions, but in fact a really exciting forum where environmentalists, activists, artists, performers, educators, poets, actors, directors and many others met to share ideas.

All the stand-up, quick-fire brainstorming and improvised role play was hard work for me - an artist who thinks on paper (or with her hands) and who looks to research and reflection for ideas rather than riffing with other people.  But it was good to see how another group of artists went about their business and to share in their amazing energy.  It was also a great opportunity to network with like-minded people - and much more may come of that.

Questions of reputation

I feel it's time to retire my blog about the Exeter Studios Project on a-n.co.uk Artists Talking. It's now five years since I stopped writing it (seven since I started) and, as many of the issues are out of date, its educational value for other studio start-ups is on the wane.

More importantly, I'm not the same person who wrote that blog. I was a new artist and so desperate for workspace that I ignored my instincts about some of the people who volunteered themselves as directors. I started writing the blog as a way of logging our progress, raising our profile and gathering support. Much later, as part of a genuine attempt to rescue a project I'd sunk my heart and soul into, I alluded to some (and only some) of the very serious problems in its legal, financial and general management.

Although I stand by what I wrote, I don't want people judging me now on the basis of it. You can still find out about the Exeter Studios Project here. It's also featured in an article on artist-led activity and an article about blogging, both by Jane Watt. I'm also very happy to talk in person about my experiences - please contact me via my website.

The lure of endurance

Forced Entertainment Quizoola!

A live webcast of two performers sitting side by side, asking and answering a series of questions, proved to be compulsive viewing over the weekend. I was watching Forced Entertainment's 24-hour performance Quizoola!  Spanning comedy double-act, trivia quiz, psychoanalytic exchange, philosophical investigation and much more besides, this bizarre Q&A shifted mood minute-by-minute from friendly, flirty teasing to hostile, sinister interrogation - with moments of sadness, exhaustion and vagueness in between.

It was brilliant stuff but it made me wonder what is it about endurance that we find so attractive in a work? Epic durational events seem more and more common in the arts, especially in live art (see Marina Abramovich for one extreme example), but are also evident in other cultural spheres (from telethons to ultra marathons).

Are they a reaction against the increasing short attention span we seem prepared to offer any activity? A reflection of the relentlessness we feel in our own everyday lives? Perhaps they're a sign of a decadent society, so pampered we demand pain and exhaustion as entertainment? Or do they grow from the often misguided notion that if something's worth doing it's worth doing even more of? 

I don't know the answers, but it seems only appropriate that Quizoola! should raise so many questions.

Quizoola! took place in The Pit, Barbican as part of SPILL Festival of Performance, 11.59pm 12 April - 11.59pm 13 April 2013.

Enter the ecoids

My banana-growing project Foreign Soil entered an exciting new phase last week, with a field trip to the site of my future plantation: West Town Farm at Ide. I was working with Chris Hunt, an MRes Digital Art and Technology student at Plymouth University, to install a number of data loggers loaned by i-DAT.   

Known as ecoids they allow remote sensing of environmental factors such as light levels, temperature, humidity and wind strength. We're running a month-long pilot project, to see how the technology gets on with the farm and the farm gets on with the technology. If things go well, we'll install them across a wider area for a longer period of time in the hopes of finding microclimates where tender plants might thrive. http://britishbanana.blogspot.co.uk/