Issue 27 Oct 2010
BLANKPAGES
CONTENTS GET IN TOUCH WELCOME... COVER ARTIST SPOTLIGHT BLANKVERSE BLANKPICKS FEATURE BLANK MEDIA RECCOMMENDS CREDITS
BlankColour Created exclusively for blankpages by Liz West
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Welcome... There is a great deal happening on our cultural radars this month! The Liverpool Biennial is in full swing (www.biennial.com) and there’s the excellent Abandon Normal Devices Festival (www.andfestival.org.uk) the first week of this month, part of which is Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s unmissable exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. Check out our review feature inside these pages and get down there. And if you feel the need to put finger to keyboard, then get in touch with your thoughts about all this autumn action. Very exciting. What’s also exciting is our influx of new editorial talent here at blankpages. You’ll be familiar by now with the marvellous illustration work of Kevin Bradshaw, but he has many more talents for you to explore! Kevin is our new Fiction Editor. We have Abby Ledger-Lomas coming on board as our new Poetry Editor, and as quickly as she came, Corinna Iredale is set to leave. She’s off to South Korea, so taking her place is Matthew Hull. Over the next few months you’ll be getting to know our new regular contributors and I welcome them heartily. The cream of our excitement this month comes in the viscous form of our plans for BlankWeekend. You’ll see inside a little teaser for our celebrations of Blank Media Collective’s fourth birthday – a blankpages Presents literary night out, live art interventions on the streets of Manchester, a BlankSounds music extravaganza at the Kings Arms in Salford, to name but a few of the brilliant things we have planned here at the collective to fling us into our fifth year. Keep your eyes open for more info as the time draws near. The weekend is 12th - 14th November so keep it available for a Blank explosion!
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John Leyland, Editor
LIZ WEST
makes intensely coloured installation, video and photographic works from arrangements of found materials and consumer goods. In the work objects are densely arranged in orders or enclosed within constructed spaces, such as cupboards and shelves or in containers such as shopping trolleys and cabinets to form compacted colour masses or gradations. West is interested in the aesthetic of densely packed and richly coloured arrangements and displays found in shops, markets and museums. In her work, she creates sensory experiences in the form of richly saturated installations that immerse the viewer in a kaleidoscopic or optical environment. Systems of ordering, classification and coding are applied in the development and generation of work. Boundaries are established, which determine both what is collected and where it is collected from. In a recent series of photographs, manufactured colour found in the urban and domestic environment is grouped together to create colour charts. In these West is interested in the intense and concentrated colour found in synthetic materials and in artificial light.
Chamber Installations: West is concerned with the psychological influence of colour, its effect and sensory impact upon the viewer. In the installation Yellow Chamber a large collection of yellow objects were positioned to form an ambiguous landscape, produced using numerous mirrors which multiplied and extended the objects through reflection. The colour yellow induces feelings of optimism and warmth, however it is also associated with drug-use and warningsigns, it is overpowering when used in large quantities. Trolley Series: In West’s colour research she builds collections using invented systems, often relating to a certain colour. In the ‘Trolley’ photographs West has experimented with building collections of block colour in the supermarket, a place where colour is in abundance, in order to understand how colour may look in mass. In this work the subject matter of shopping and consumerism is a framework in which to act out abstract concepts of aesthesia and control with a collection of coloured objects. Being located in a trolley, this canvas inevitably references consumer society and disposable culture. 6
BlankColour: (part of the ‘Cataloguing Colour’ series) This work stems from an interest in ordering and cataloguing colour and objects. West set a project to collect purely coloured objects, disallowing any items that were made of more than one colour. West continually searches and collects coloured objects throughout the spectrum. For this project objects were carefully selected from the vast collection and ordered according to a colour wheel. The items are simply photographed against their complementary colour. The works read as a colour chart (depending on whether you focus on the object or the background). Photographing coloured items that occur within our everyday lives, in both the urban and domestic environment, highlights the array of colours that exist around us. West’s interest in colour theory is shown in the presentation of the images, as they are arranged in order of their gradation.
Green Chamber (installation view)
Yellow Chamber (installation view)
Yellow Chamber (detail)
Red Chamber (installation view)
Blue Chamber (installation view)
ROSE BARRACLOUGH I have often been struck down with artist’s block, requiring something to simply present itself that would be both intelligent and brilliant, or indeed this was my desire. I decided that my brain could not function in this fantastical way and so needed a reliance on something more solid; a mechanical scientific structure that held nothing but facts, figures and possibilities, and a place where a ‘mistake’ could not transpire. I am the inventor of processes that instruct and design an artwork. Any responsibility of the artist as a designer of the finished product is taken away, leaving no personal bearing on the completed ‘art’, extending it instead to the agencies of chance, machinery, numbers and process. My aim, although unattainable at its extreme, is one of detached engagement with creativity. The ego of the artist is difficult to displace, yet it is possible to shift it slightly onto a lifeless mechanism. I have created drawing machines fashioned from vintage play toys and solar panels, both echoing the most conventional act of the artist; to draw. I create systems that can process an output of ‘art’, translated through bingo balls, the
vibrations of a speaker, or the displacement of a human form in a bath, into numbers, mathematical equations and results. This experimental nature indulges stepby-step processes, its system taking away the key personalisation of humanity that it derives from. The absurdity and human chaos can be found however, in its construct of domesticity and alteration of the everyday into the sublime, leaving it tarnished with a non-digital fingerprint. This irony is conveyed through its impossibility; as I am present within this writing, I am also involved in my work. Nothing can exist without a beginning, and to begin, one must first decide how, an instigation fulfilled through an initial choice, brought on by the artist.
Watch Rose Barraclough’s videos on YouTube
Rose Barraclough is a recent graduate from Sheffield Hallam University. Here she won the Sarah Beck memorial prize for ‘Innovative work in the field of sculpture’. In March and February she took part in a self-directed residency at the Banff Centre, Canada in collaboration with psychoanalytical artist, Jessica Ball. She now lives and works in Manchester.
Katie Keys is a 30-something nonIndigenous Australian Brit currently living in London, UK. She is Poet in Residence at Collective in Camden Town (www.turninglondonon.com/blog) and Twitters one tiny little poem each day at www.twitter.com/tinylittlepoems
Black Monday by Katie Keys
The city is falling into boxes of house plants, novelty mugs and photos of the kids, the panic of bills unpaid, and the breeze of 4,000 people searching the job ads at once, the revenge of hidden staplers and office stationery, the name tags, spare ties, and back-up heels, the bemused expressions, and still-warm Oyster cards for the too-early journey home, and instead of a golden handshake, a broken promise, and a security pass to hand in at the gate.
Prd&prdju By Dave Weaver Illustration By Michael Thorp
going n.fld. wth sis -cm up wth me - b cntry? lol! - d vst. bennet hshld. 5 daughts 1 vr fit - mum sug ball at n.fld -b w/e - d havn fn? - e nmu? - d dance? - e w/e - d whats yr prb? - e yr mum cmn - d aytmtb? - e 1nce my gd opn. lst -lst fr gd -d !! - e hi! - e hi! - w u knw d? - e d=bstd! - w lol! gtg - e b leav. n.fld! - j sis flt. -cows! & d! - e
hi e! -nifoc - c perv! - e mar me e & kp yr hse- c lol! - e gtg see ldy cdb - c w/e! -e mar c lst wk - cl pr u! - e cm & sty @ c's par & mt ldy cdb - cl ok - e d! why u here? - e ldy cdb my aunt - d lol! - e cn we b frnds? - d u hrt j! - e was rht to do fr b afaic! - d w says u bstd - e w is bstd! - d w/e! - e lts vst pemb. e - unc&aunt ok - e tht u wrnt here! - e pls mt my sis -cn we b frnds? -d cid - e
wtf? lyd rn off wth w - e w scrwd my sis! bstd! brb - d wycm? - e situ srtd -w mar lyd - d u payd? - e dnt tell yr dad - d thanku! - e wl u mar me j? - b ok! - j ws wrng abt evr -ws stk-up prat - d aytmtb? - e lv u - d ws wrng abt u 2 - e ?-d lv u 2! - e lts tell yr dad - d ok! - e
Dave Weaver is a graphic designer living in St Albans, England. He is a member of the Verulam Writers' Circle and has had short stories published in anthologies by Hertfordshire University and Kinglake Publishing, as well others on various webzines. He is currently working on a fantasy novel, Jacey's Kingdom, and Flowerchain, a book of interconnecting short stories set in modern day Japan.
the peeps Article By Michael Thorp
Ancoats, Manchester. Once a centre point of the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays a booming city suburb where many of the mills and factories are now converted flats and offices. It would be very easy to see the area’s significant history disappear altogether if it were not for the projects of artist Dan Dubowitz. Commissioned by New East Manchester, Dan Dubowitz is the Artist responsible for The Cutting Room just off Blossom Street. A newly built public square commissioned as part of the regeneration of the area. The square is overshadowed by four great megalithic structures each holding within them images of the decaying remains of Ancoats’ industrial past. However, it is Dubowitz’s other project in Ancoats that is perhaps the most intriguing.
It would be very interesting to know how many residents of Ancoats realise they are living alongside a permanent public art exhibition. The Peeps are an ingenious series of works that include both sculptural and video based installations in a multitude of locations throughout the intersecting streets. There are no maps, no signs, there is no ticket desk or hourly tour. Bar a few enigmatic posters this is an exhibition that relies solely on the inquisitiveness of the public and truly rewards the nosier people out there. Stumble upon a Peep and you may get a glimpse of floating crane-like structures, golden cogs and gears slowly turning or a rotating, or a shimmering fan blade. Each Peep is reminiscent of the area’s industrious 20
past; they often feature snapshots into the past of the very building it belongs to. There is a great sense of delight upon finding a peep and often they appear in the most innocuous of places, it is a real challenge to find them all in one afternoon. So if you fancy an adventure and want to see some public art that really embraces the history of it’s surroundings, look no further than The Peeps.
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BlankWeekend Manchester 12-14 November An ambitious showcase of more than fifty artists across fourteen venues, BlankWeekend is an explosion of art and creativity across the city of Manchester. As Blank Media Collective enters its fifth year of supporting the work of emerging artists from the UK and beyond, BlankWeekend champions these exciting individuals and events and introduces inspiring new projects and future greats. A celebration of all things Blank since 2006 and a toast to things to come! Take an innovative urban art trail through the city, accessible 24 hours a day, experiencing work in prominent window displays. Engage with unexpected live performances in bustling undisclosed city centre locations. All this plus a literary night out, BlankSounds gig, photographic exhibition and artist-led workshop. This is truly the biggest project Blank Media Collective have yet undertaken.
To kick off BlankWeekend, celebrate literature and performance at Kro Bar on Friday night with blankpages Presents... featuring among many others; a public address from the first female Pope (Bernadette I), on-the-spot improvised poetry from Reverend Conor A and up and coming alternative blues from Old House Playground. BlankMarket Open All Hours is an exciting opportunity to purchase works on display in prominent window spaces throughout Manchester city centre. Follow the map night or day to find your favourite from a selection of over one hundred and fifty works, then simply visit BlankMarket online shop, click, pay and receive. Purchasing a unique contemporary work from an emerging artist has never been easier or more fun!
Heading over into the Salford borders on Saturday night, BlankSounds at the Kings Arms promises a mash-up of prog-infused post-rock mayhem! Including live sets from Day For Airstrikes and Stoke-on-Trent’s finest, Eyeball Eyeball, this gig continues the groundbreaking aural experience which BlankSounds fans have come to expect. On Saturday afternoon BlankWeekend presents an opportunity for the younger generation to get creative with Arts Council award-winning facilitator Naomi Kendrick’s Elephant Workshops at one of Manchester’s newest creative venues; MadLab. Throughout Saturday and Sunday afternoon live artists and performers will be engaging the unwitting general public with their unexpected, incidental interventions. Find your inner beard and look out for the re-emergence of Pope Bernadette I on the streets of Manchester among many other challengers of traditional notions.
For further information about BlankWeekend please visit www.blankmediacollective.org/blankweekend 23
BLAZE
The Lowry 1st - 2nd October Blaze is a high-energy theatrical show of non-stop dance from some of the world’s hottest DJs, B-Boys and street dancers www.thelowry.com
MANCHESTER FOOD AND DRINK FESTIVAL 2010
1st - 11th October The Manchester Food and Drink Festival 2010 is bigger and better than ever. From the Chilli Lovers Fair to Lunch in the Suburbs. www.foodanddrinkfestival.com
UN-CONVENTION
Salford, Various Locations 1st - 3rd October Salford based music industry event, UnConvention is a global grassroots music event and community – that meets physically and virtually to share ideas; discuss and debate cutting edge issues around music, technology and creativity. www.unconventionhub.org
SALFORD FOOD AND DRINK FESTIVAL
Various Locations 2nd - 10th October There’s plenty going on over the duration of the festival and at the Food Fayre so whatever your tastes or budget there’s sure to be something to tempt you. www.visitsalford.info/foodfestival LIVE ART MONDAY
THE MANCHESTER WEEKENDER Various Locations 1st - 3rd October 48 hours of some of the most unusual cultural experiences you’ll find anywhere in the UK www.creativetourist.com/weekender
Contact Theatre 4th October | FREE A talent showcase featuring performance, comedy, poetry, video and interactive installations. www.wecurate.co.uk
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IN THE CITY
Various Locations 13th - 15th October Over three days In The City combines a daytime hub of industry debate with a city-wide live festival, gathering the music industry in Manchester and providing a forum for the hottest discussion topics, while showing the public and cheque-waving A&Rs some of the best emerging musical talent in the world. www.inthecity.co.uk MANCHESTER LITERATURE FESTIVAL
Various Locations 14th - 25th October Writers will be travelling to Manchester from as far afield as North Africa, China, Scandinavia and the United States to take part in this year’s festival. The distinguished line up of guests includes UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, beloved novelists Bernard Cornwell, Caryl Phillips, Lionel Shriver and Barbara Trapido, and award-winning screenwriter Heidi Thomas. www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk
GREAT NORTHERN CONTEMPORARY CRAFT FAIR 2010
Spinningfields 21st - 24th October Great Northern Events is a not-for-profit company established to champion and promote high quality craft via the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair at Spinningfields. The event, which attracted 6400 visitors in 2009, is back for its third year providing cutting edge contemporary craft to buy direct from over 150 selected designermakers in ceramics, glass, jewellery, interior and fashion textiles, wood, silver, furniture and more. Visitors can spend the day in a relaxed yet stimulating atmosphere, chat to the makers and find out the story behind the work. www.greatnorthernevents.co.uk
MANCHESTER COMEDY FESTIVAL
Various Locations 18th - 31st October The tenth Manchester Comedy Festival. This year the festival is longer than ever for the first time it’s a whole two weeks in length - and in that time there are over 200 shows in 30 venues across Greater Manchester. www.manchestercomedyfestival.co.uk BUY ART FAIR 2010
Spinningfields 28th - 31st October This years Buy Art Fair will feature around 60 galleries who will show the work of over 300 artists. Buy Art Fair offers an exceptional opportunity to meet with some of the artists exhibiting their work. This is a chance to really understand the meanings behind an individual’s work and create a real bond with the piece you want to buy. www.buyartfair.co.uk
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To include your event in next month’s issue email editor@blankmediacollective. org with your event title, location, date, time and a short description (100 words).
Recorders
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Manchester Art Gallery 18th September – 30th January “In Recorders, artworks hear, see and feel the public, they exhibit awareness and record and replay memories entirely obtained during the show. The pieces either depend on participation to exist or predatorily gather information on the public through surveillance and biometric technologies.” (Rafael Lozano-Hemmer 2010) Recorders is the major new exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery by Rafael LozanoHemmer. A critically acclaimed electronic artist, he is interested is in creating platforms for public participation; subverting technologies such as computerized surveillance.
You have your fingerprint read, empty your pockets for the contents to be scanned and imprinted on a conveyor belt, you are filmed by a computerised tracking system and displayed on a high resolution screen. The key to Recorders is participation; visitors guide and inspire creation and become a part of the art work. There is precedence within each installation that notes the lack of privacy and the accepted levels of intrusion in society today. From instant sharing and reaction to camera phones, reality TV to the internet the artist is concerned with how easily we give and hand over information:
“A creation happens in the process of viewing”
“My strategy often is to materialize this computerized surveillance, to make it evident, a kind of Brechtian ‘noticing of the knots’.”
The exhibition comprises eight interactive installations, including three world premieres. Each Recorder urges visitors to engage, to leave their trace, to explore the limits of technology and art in society.
Recorders encourages participants to reveal while at the same time highlighting how normalised society's obsession with exposure has become. Lozano-Hemmer describes Pulse Index 26
(2010) as “a landscape of skin”; 509 magnified fingerprints on a plasma screen to which the newest participant's is added, all pulsating to the individuals' vital signs. A stunning doorbell to the show. In Microphones (2008), 10 vintage microphones have been modified so that inside each is a tiny loudspeaker connected to a network of hidden control computers which track and record past and present visitors' voices. When you speak into one of these microphones, it records your voice and immediately plays back the voice of one of up to 600,000 previous participants. This arrangement allows you to understand the interaction but it also creates an experience that is out of your control. Microphones is an absurd conversation, willing participants to perform, to be a part of the on-going record and a part of a history of voices. Co-commissioned by Manchester Art Gallery and Abandon Normal Devices (AND), People On People (2010) is inspired by portraiture and shadow plays. Recorded images of other visitors are projected an a massive scale onto your own shadow.
People On People uses border control technologies and custom-made software with face tracking to scan, track and playback filmed and live images. “After September 11 it was crucial to address a new breed of surveillance technology where the machine itself had imbued prejudices and attempted, for example, to detect the ethnicity of people or to compare them against a database of suspicious individuals.” With the subversion of such apparently oppressive technology, People on People creates a playful experience, while posing yet more serious questions. Are we being trained to accept such intrusions? LozanoHemmer says he wants to “make critical or poetic use of the technologies of control”. He asks, how do we project our presence and our absence?
“My work underlines the fact that space is not ‘neutral’, that overlaid on it are many disparate realities, and that the exploration and acknowledgement of these co-present planes of experience may be beautiful and disturbing.” 33 Questions Per Minute (2000) is a computer program that can generate 55 billion grammatically correct questions at a rate of 33 per minute. The piece comprises 21 LCD screen ‘detonators’ which display these questions. For each to be displayed consecutively it would take 3000 years. A keyboard invites the public to add their questions into the mix. These seemingly innocuous devices hide a politicised intention. The internet ban in Cuba inspired Lozano-Hemmer to present this installation at the Havana Biennial. With 33 Questions Per Minute the Cuban authorities would be unable to distinguish the authorship of the questions posed. Like the Turing Test this installation is able to camouflage the system’s producer. There
are multiple meanings within this piece, as well as presenting a computer programme which can act and make its own choices, the overload of quick fire questions displayed is clearly commenting on the amount of information that is distributed in our daily lives and how much actually saturates. The most sensory experience comes within the Pulse Room (2006) where 100 incandescent light bulbs uniformly hang in the exhibition space. An interface at one end of the room has a sensor that detects the heart rate of participants who grip the device. Once your heartbeat is detected the room is plunged into darkness and the one nearest light bulb relays your pulse into light. Watching your heartbeat is immensely intimate yet soothing. After a brief few seconds it is transferred through the bulbs in diagonal formation alongside previous heartbeats creating a sea of flickering lights above. This work was inspired by the film Macario, directed by Roberto Gavaldón in 1960, where the protagonist suffers a hunger-induced hallucination in which every person is represented by a lit candle 28
in a cave. The Pulse Room completely immerses you as you contemplate the pulsating lights which represent those who have passed through the exhibition before you. The magic of this installation comes as you can follow your own heart and truly be reflected in the art. “Participation is a vehicle for transformation” says Lozano-Hemmer, and Recorders is certainly testament to this in itself and perhaps it (and he) goes some way towards transforming some perceptions of contemporary art. Recorders is multileveled, friendly and accessible in the best way and Manchester should be proud to be hosting such forward thinking works. Recorders: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer runs at Manchester Art Gallery until 30th January 2011. Free Entry www.manchestergalleries.org Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival runs from 1st - 7th October 2010. www.andfestival.org.uk
Trolley series, Š Liz West 2010
greenroom, Manchester Liz West | Katie Louise Dixon | David Morris
Ambience of Play www.blankmediacollective.org/ambienceofplay 29
28 October - 18 December 2010 Public Preview: 27 October, 6-9pm Free Entry
Blank Media Collective Team: Director: Mark Devereux Financial Administrator: Martin Dale Development Coordinators: Dwight Clarke & Annette Cookson Communications Coordinators: Stephanie Graham & Dan English Information Manager: Sylvia Coates Website Designer: Simon Mills BlankMarket Coordinator: Michael Valks Exhibition Coordintors: Jamie Hyde, Marcelle Holt, Claire Curtin, Rachael Farmer & Taneesha Ahmed Live Music Coordinator: Iain Goodyear Official Photographer: Gareth Hacking
blankpages Team: Editor: John Leyland Editorial Assistants: Corinna Iredale & Matt Hull Fiction Editor: Kevin Bradshaw Poetry Editor: Abigail Ledger-Lomas Music Editor: Dan Bridgwood-Hill Visual Editors / Designers: Henry Roberts & Michael Thorp Guest Illustrations: Kevin Bradshaw
BLANK MEDIA IS KINDLY SUPPORTED BY
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