Searchlight David Cotterrell 1
Searchlight David Cotterrell
Searchlight Š 2009 Civic Works Press, the artist and authors. Designed and edited by David Cotterrell and Dan Dubowitz Imposition by Alan Ward, Axis Graphic Design Photographs by David Cotterrell, Dan Dubowitz and Mark Pinder Texts by Rebecca Geldard, Dan Dubowitz, Ben Hall and Robert Slinger Printed by EBS, Verona, Italy Print manager: Alessandra Agostini First published in the United Kingdom in 2009 by Civic Works Press Civic Works Limited 95 High Street Edgeware Middlesex London HA8 7DB All opinions expressed within this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-9545980-5-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity. www.cotterrell.com www.civicworks.net www.sunderlandarc.co.uk www.sunnisidepartnership.co.uk www.callforartists.org
Contents
5
Foreword
Ben Hall and Dan Dubowitz
9
Searchlight David Cotterrell
9
Research and Experiments
23
Misinformation and Technical Challenges
33
Connecting Components
46
Second Sight
Rebecca Geldard
53
56
Afterword Dan Dubowitz and Robert Slinger
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Why did a group of people end up inflating a US Military spec balloon in the middle of a ravine at 3am on a cold and wet Thursday morning in March 2005? What possible relevance was there to the 15-year regeneration vision involving over £1billion of private investment? The installation was an event. Not just a happening, a one off, it was an event in Sunderland’s cultural heritage and history that marked the beginning of a creative narrative that reverberates around the city today. Much is made of the ‘landmark artwork’, the permanent icon that signifies a city’s, a region’s, a country’s cultural ambition; in Sunderland such an object-based approach has been set aside and the city has focused on process-led projects and accepted that creativity and innovation play a pivotal role not just in the cultural life of a city but also its economic future. So just how do you weave this in to the future plans of a city? In 2003, Sunderland arc found itself wrestling with this concept. Charged with leading the regeneration of a significant area of a city that had suffered the collapse of its traditional industrial base of ship building, coal and glass, its aim was to create 10,000 new jobs, attract significant levels of private investment, build thousands of new homes and tackle the economic fortunes of the city. Sunderland was asking the question: “What part could ‘Art’ play in the city’s physical infrastructure?” The relatively new (at the time) concept of involving artists at the outset of a redevelopment seemed an appropriate response to this question. Successes elsewhere in the country such as in Glasgow’s Gorbals had clearly demonstrated that the thoughtful
and innovative engagement of artists throughout a project’s lifetime could engage local communities meaningfully in a way that surpassed the limits of conventional public consultation exercises. Key to answering this question that led to the concept of a ‘cultural masterplan’, and ultimately to this project, was the recognition that one site alone could not bring about a ‘renaissance’ by itself. Unlike Glasgow, a former City of Culture, which could rely on its wider existing cultural infrastructure to provide a context and support for any new project, Sunderland’s cultural fortunes could perhaps be best described as mixed. It was recognised at an early stage in Sunderland that any strategy for involving creativity in the regenerative process would need to examine the fundamentals of the city and take a considerably wider view on a solution than the knee-jerk formula of commissioning physical sculptures to generate cultural icons. What was needed here was a response that took account of the cultural structure of the city, its fine art, glass, photography schools for starters, its galleries, the lack of infrastructure for studios or venues for events and installations, keeping creative graduates and young lecturers in Sunderland to build their careers. First of all there was a need to engage in a cultural dialogue and develop mechanisms and places for this to flourish and grow. In 2003 Sunderland arc appointed Civic Works to review the situation and work together to address these issues. What emerged was a blueprint, a framework that has subsequently provided guidance to regeneration projects far and wide. The starting point for the project was the recognition that public art has a bad name;
one that it richly deserves. Public art that is bolted to walls, appears on roundabouts or at gateways to a city, serves as a stark reminder of the failure of somebody, somewhere to involve creative practitioners at critical stages in the design process. Such work does little to engage the community or the wider public in the transformation of a place’s identity. It was recognised at an early stage that the idea of identity would be the primary concern for any artworks programme. Finding ways of engaging and easing the community through this transformation in Sunderland’s psyche, in parallel with the physical redevelopment, became the overriding priority. The outcome was a shift in the brief – away from the conception of an artworks programme focused on delivering permanent objects – towards a programme focused on effecting a transformation of identity in Sunderland. The starting point for this new brief was a series of mechanisms for involving creative practitioners in regeneration projects in Sunderland at the earliest stages. It was agreed to suspend the idea that the outcome of such a programme should be art. Projects realised would be understood as regeneration projects: the seamless integration of landscape, architecture and the public realm. This shift in thinking banished the word ‘artwork’, and a new approach to involving artists in regeneration was born: The Cultural Masterplan.
Cultural Masterplan for Sunderland The principle of creating a spatial masterplan to generate a framework for an architectural response to a regeneration site is well established and has been proven to work. A cultural masterplan, by identifying and 5
establishing a series of core principles for the flexible engagement of professionals in creative fields at the outset of the regeneration project, would establish a framework for cohesive and relevant creative involvement in all aspects of the redevelopment. This methodology of embedding the cultural masterplan alongside a spatial masterplan would set in place a mechanism for the deliberate and meaningful engagement of artists at the outset and through a scheme’s development. Importantly, this would effect and manage a genuine transformation in an area’s identity rather than relying on the ‘hope’ that this would happen at the end. The Cultural Masterplan however did not just look at a single site. To truly realise the impact of creativity on a city, the Cultural Masterplan had to consider and recognise the interdependence and relationship of not just all of the regeneration sites, but the city’s cultural provision as a whole. The solution was to lay out a set of four Core Principles that were flexible enough to grow with the City, provide the fundamental infrastructure to deliver a sustainable creative agenda, whilst proposing a flexible method of commissioning creative practitioners to deliver it.
The Four Core Principles Masterplanning Culture A commitment to effecting a cultural transformation of the city through physical regeneration rather than hoping for it to happen later. A planned approach to delivery in parallel with, and inseparable from, the spatial masterplan. Percent for Innovation A radical shift in the involvement of art in regeneration. A new approach that moves
away from physical artworks that embellish architecture, to the involvement of artists and other creative practitioners in the mechanism of regeneration from the outset on a city-wide scale. City of Creativity Individual projects and the programme as a whole looking for ways to establish Sunderland as a place were unexpected things happen and creativity is apparent in all aspects of the city’s development, leading in time towards Sunderland’s new identity as a Creative City. An audit of, followed by investment into, the infrastructure that allows artists to practise sustainably, through the delivery of new studio space, new exhibition venues, as well as by providing a continuity of commissioning.
complete, David Cotterrell was selected and commissioned in late 2004 to create an artwork for Sunderland under the working title Hobo. The following book is a presentation by David Cotterrell of the regeneration project, Searchlight, followed by an essay about it by Rebecca Geldard. Following the success of this pilot programme, and the rolling out of the regeneration of Sunniside, a run down area adjacent to the centre of the city, the first full phase of the cultural masterplan is now being implemented. This book finishes with a brief afterword introducing what the Cultural Masterplan will do next. Ben Hall and Dan Dubowitz 2008
Call for Artists The establishment of www.callforartists.org, a city wide procurement tool that shifts the commissioning of artists away from ‘selection by committee’ to allow uncompromisingly ambitious and challenging practices to be appointed.
The First Steps This cultural masterplan programme between 2003 and 2005 gave Sunderland the opportunity to coordinate literally hundreds of otherwise disparate and distinct projects. Delivering these enigmatic and diverse cultural projects under one umbrella, the combined effect of the masterplan programme is far outweighing the sum of its constituent projects in creating the sense that unusual and unexpected things are happening in Sunderland and that it is becoming an interesting place to visit and be. The first phase of this cultural masterplan, in effect a city wide pilot programme, was started in 2003, with Dan Dubowitz as lead artist, and after the first call for artists was
7
research and experiments
9
11
13
15
17
19
21
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23
25
[[point(74, 136), 180], [point(151, 151), 251], [point(136, 169), 325], [point(132, 181), 392], [point(106, 196), 458], [point(130, 203), 539], [point(119, 199), 651],
[point(129, 207), 2782], [point(121, 199), 2862], [point(127, 156), 2949], [point(125, 149), 3033], [point(111, 179), 3070], [point(116, 189), 3965], [point(122, 206),
4032], [point(118, 214), 4122], [point(122, 204), 4192], [point(122, 192), 4517], [point(123, 198), 4608], [point(123, 186), 4750], [point(117, 193), 4821], [point(115,
201), 10159], [point(135, 172), 10232], [point(120, 175), 18942], [point(131, 176), 19804], [point(60, 189), 20168], [point(90, 160), 20243], [point(138, 168), 20662],
[point(106, 168), 21496], [point(99, 167), 21631], [point(128, 178), 22160], [point(126, 163), 22387], [point(123, 187), 22574], [point(123, 193), 22651], [point(146,
173), 22932], [point(106, 166), 24224], [point(119, 167), 24777], [point(133, 193), 24873], [point(99, 174), 27253], [point(113, 152), 27379], [point(123, 175), 27575],
[point(113, 212), 27825], [point(123, 168), 28045], [point(94, 171), 30450], [point(136, 168), 33789], [point(104, 169), 39310], [point(109, 178), 39395], [point(89,
184), 39479], [point(171, 110), 39647], [point(171, 148), 39723], [point(157, 169), 39805], [point(103, 159), 44665], [point(115, 151), 44726], [point(113, 180), 44801],
[point(150, 133), 44891], [point(127, 133), 44962], [point(115, 167), 45371], [point(144, 152), 45453], [point(124, 171), 45527], [point(133, 167), 45808], [point(113,
177), 47398], [point(133, 164), 47462], [point(128, 165), 47537], [point(164, 158), 48438], [point(61, 163), 48534], [point(97, 180), 48631], [point(107, 145), 48767],
[point(121, 149), 50632], [point(141, 171), 50724], [point(120, 130), 50833], [point(88, 217), 50930], [point(128, 99), 51006], [point(108, 172), 51227], [point(137,
180), 51342], [point(119, 174), 52330], [point(129, 156), 53505], [point(133, 151), 53615], [point(114, 161), 54207], [point(110, 166), 55010], [point(127, 163), 55064],
[point(110, 171), 56285], [point(125, 185), 56356], [[point(122, 158), 60], [point(74, 149), 120], [point(156, 151), 180], [point(140, 161), 240], [point(130, 139), 300],
[point(120, 149), 360], [point(107, 149), 420], [point(132, 143), 1258], [point(109, 140), 1366], [point(117, 128), 1445], [point(118, 145), 1564], [point(119, 149),
1655], [point(118, 159), 1718], [point(98, 160), 1960], [point(149, 157), 2085], [point(140, 157), 2255], [point(122, 173), 2396], [point(118, 175), 2422], [point(89,
166), 2545], [point(114, 173), 2742], [point(104, 182), 2861], [point(136, 180), 2990], [point(105, 176), 16431], [point(122, 165), 16604], [point(120, 185), 16762],
[point(150, 184), 18725], [point(121, 188), 18971], [point(103, 189), 20447], [point(151, 184), 20594], [point(129, 208), 21069], [point(131, 171), 21224], [point(124,
27
Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been sighted.
Action is being taken on your behalf
Airborne monitoring stations are being installed. Do not be concerned. Be vigilant. http://www.hobo.cc/sightings
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connecting components
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Second Sight
Occupational hazards: the making of David Cotterrell’s ‘Searchlight’ The billowing jellyfish form of a US military balloon clinging to the sky over Sunderland does not signify a rent in the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and America. Rather, it marks the first phase of a cultural plan to make visible a political struggle of a more local kind. This elaborate mode of surveillance turns the notion of intelligence gathering on its head. Many of those that congregate to witness this curious event are simultaneously present on both sides of a contentious territorial division: standing to watch footage of their shadow selves beamed from the balloon like the Bat-Signal, not across the sky, but a formerly ‘no-go’ area of public land. The most accurate way to describe David Cotterrell’s madly ambitious ‘Searchlight’ project is by eliminating all the things it wasn’t. It was not singularly anything, whether piece of public art in the conventional sense, site-specific ‘work’, event, or technical process; in fact, such was the temporality of the results that, at times, it barely constituted a social intervention at all. ‘Experiment’ is perhaps the only label that comes close to describing its many operational phases and forms of being. It was a first, though, in many respects. The evolution of the idea involved the breaking of new ground in different contexts: from the project’s off-map chartering of public art territory, to the planning and implementation to facilitate the first flight of a military balloon-cum-aerial-camera run through a proprietary computer system. Most importantly, though, ‘Searchlight’, as a venture of many parts, provided first evidence of community action in several inert geographical sites for a very long time.
Site or territory? Cotterrell is compelled by and therefore prepared to navigate socio-political structures beyond his front door – not an easy thing for an artist to do – to skirt the line between personal creative objectives and other people’s histories. As such, many of his projects have developed out of periods resident in a given UK site or other country. Early undergraduate questioning of the public/private divide prompted Cotterrell to claim a section of the River Itchen, in Winchester (with a floating piece of picketfenced real estate) and advertise it for sale in the local press. While ‘South Facing 4.3’, a 2006 work that offers a future glimpse of Shanghai should the current urban development trend for luxury high rises (angled in accordance with Chinese governmental regulation at least 15 degrees south) continue, featured in the group exhibition ‘Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China’ at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art 2007/8. The political resonance and technical invention of Cotterrell’s works bring to mind Chris Burden’s sculptural visualisation of the relationship between power and technology. Though best known for his body political ‘actions’ of the seventies, the American artist’s focus has since been on issues of power beyond individual control. His science-driven enquiry has sought to make palpable the numbers generated through political processes in works such as ‘All the Submarines of the United States of America’ [1987]. The newly unveiled ‘Urban Light’ at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on the other hand, an installation of 202 restored LA (and other American city) pre- and post-depression era street lamps – brings a sense of old world romanticism to the institutional spectacle as a means of engaging residents with their history and all that urban design reveals about societies through time.
‘Searchlight’, built around the idea of automated projection, prompts specific comparison with Polish artist Kyrstof Wodiczko’s ‘Public Projections’ and the machine-controlled sculptures of American modernist figure James Seawright. Wodiczko’s often politically contentious video projections on major public buildings are described in the tome ‘Art Since 1900’ as “explicitly distinguished from the urban decoration of ‘art in public places’”, alluding, perhaps, to the conceptual ground broken by temporal art interventions in comparison with more traditional public art works. Seawright, on the other hand, has paved the way for exploration of automata as a natural extension of sculptural practices. ‘Watcher’ [1966], for example, consisting of tiny lights and antennas that respond to each other and the movement of people, makes the human condition in the electronic age a palpable physical experience, primarily because of Seawright’s innate sense of invention as opposed to any singular political directive. The notion of art object as intelligent machine has become an important part of Cotterrell’s practice and, like Seawright, often deployed in a technologically
focussed manner that appears quietly subversive, certainly less politically strident, one might say, than the (early career) works of Burden or Wodiczko. Naturally, there are distinct differences between Cotterrell’s gallery and public art projects, but all bear evidence of his engagement with local politics, geography and a vanguard sensibility to new media. As an artist he appears wary of predefinitions of any kind: whether the bureaucratic processes that govern societies or the academic frameworks through which we learn to process and convey experience. Inside/outside, author/ ownership, public/private, are a few of the polar absolutes he has tested with a view to challenging accepted truths. This circumspect view also extends to Cotterrell’s modes of making, which he describes as “connecting systems that weren’t meant to fit together.” There is a reason his recent monograph was titled ‘The Impossible Project’, for he appears to straddle the limitations of the physical world with a vigour bordering on contrarianism, often developing bespoke technological systems and mechanical devices to compensate “when nothing off the shelf would do.” Though such feats of engineering are rarely visible when viewing Cotterrell’s works (whether a jet of water shot 12m in the air, or a projection of a steam train that appears to travel into the gallery along a plume of dry ice), their innate theatricality often provokes a “how did he do that?” response. But the real drama, should there be any, is kept behind the scenes to allow for the public suspension of disbelief. Cotterrell, especially in the public art arena, exercises his ‘smoke and mirrors’ predilection with caution and it is essentially only through after-event or post production analysis that one is able to garner a sense of the grit and determination that went into pulling them off.
The act of encountering a work of art is inextricably bound to the notion of spectacle. And those designed for the public realm, by nature of their historical and geographical contexts – traditionally as social monuments installed within communities – inevitably become the subjects of spectacular intention. They are, for the most part, consciously designed to activate the sites in which they sit and, though for the better, often in ways that speak more about the personality of the artist, or historical legacy than the population or contemporary issues relating to site. In issue 188 of The Art Newspaper, Turner Prize 2003 winner Grayson Perry was quoted as saying: “There is so much public art now, most of it bad. These cultural tanks are parked on the lawn of society.” Cotterrell appears aware of the public currency of the demonstration or show and, at times, to purposely exploit expectations of them, never though, to the point of engineering a spectacle for its own sake or as a vehicle for immortalising the creative act. Cotterrell is one of several key UK artists challenging the commemorative or obtusely beneficial possibilities of public art and its traditional form – sculpture. The inherent sense of intellectual and material enquiry of their studio practice is extended into municipal territories with regenerative purpose. These artists’ projects are no longer limited by the long-held conventions of monumental sculpture, but take the form that best conveys specific interventional agendas and suits the logistical demands of a site. The globalisation of the art world and proliferation of international art residencies have certainly contributed to the development of the discipline, but despite the negative spin of recent comment, one could still argue that the UK is home to some of the most progressive, art- and socially critical public sitespecific initiatives.
London commuters, for example, are unlikely to forget Brian Griffiths’ temporary colonisation of an out of use platform at Gloucester Road tube station in 2007. In ‘Life is Laugh’ everyday mundaneity, the anti-climactic ghost train experience and sculptural monument collide in a 70m-long installation featuring a disused caravan and a large-scale toy panda head, farcially pinned like the evil protagonist of ‘Eraserhead’ as if under construction. The 2006 Liverpool Biennial, meanwhile, included an improbable feat by Richard Wilson: a radical intervention that saw a section of a city centre building turned, literally, inside out. The 8-metre ovaloid slice performed a 3D oscillation on its giant industrial rotor, like a window opening and closing at intervals during daylight hours.
‘God’s Eye View’ Sunderland arc, has shown a serious commitment to public art over the past few years. Cotterrell’s project was the first of a series of ‘temporary art interventions’ designed as part of a larger initiative for the North East by Dan Dubowitz (the lead artist in this project) in collaboration with Ben Hall, the Director of Sunniside Partnership. The artworks programme, provocatively titled ‘Hobo’, was focussed on activating derelict or disused local sites in ways that would re-engage the community with their environment and oil the wheels of the regeneration process. A major bone of contention at the heart of this project (and many other of Sunderland’s cultural initiatives) has been the former Vaux Brewery site that covers a large proportion of potentially public territory between the city’s current hub and the river. The area was effectively closed off by Tesco shortly after it shut its doors in 1999 and remains publicly inaccessible. The supermarket giant remains engaged in a planning dispute with Sunderland City Council and Sunderland arc over how the land should be used. 47
The most significant local factor, however, has been the decline of Sunderland’s glass, coal and shipbuilding industries, which has had a slow but devastating impact on the economy and social landscape. The community, disenfranchised following the loss of traditional skill sets and subsequent unemployment, understandably began to turn their backs on the River Wear and the architectural reminders of the past along its route. The economic situation has improved from the low point of the eighties – post Margaret Thatcher’s controversial moratorium on shipbuilding in Britain. Cotterrell’s maverick approach to making came to Dubowitz’s attention during a 2002 public art project in the Glasgow Gorbals. In 2004, Dubowitz commissioned the London-based artist to test pilot the ‘Hobo’ programme, and they set about devising a plan to project images onto Sunderland’s ‘wastelands’ unsure how such a challenging idea would be realised. During the investigation process, Cotterrell developed and formalised the proposal into what was to become ‘Searchlight’: an extraordinary social and material investigation comprising temporary projection works, deployed over a period of a year in several very different city locations. Sunderland is a city littered with monuments to yesterday’s industrial history (as ‘Hobo’ with its itinerant allusions observed), and the last thing it needed was another permanent reminder of how life had changed – in many people’s opinion, for the worse. Having spent time exploring the city by bike, Cotterrell noticed that it had continued to grow and develop following the demise of heavy industry, but away from the river – normally the life-blood of any society. The first major question the project faced was how to get people to think about these spaces again, “to turn back towards the river”, as he put it. Cotterrell, as an outsider, also had to be careful of how his own politics might influence
the making process and thereby external description of the social reality in Sunderland. But tentative navigation through the minefield of political correctness might easily result in mediation to the point of banality. There was no getting around the fact that the already well-publicised Tesco debacle (as a matter of protecting public interests and making a stand for civil liberties), was a political issue, but it was vital that whatever message Cotterrell chose to convey was not misconstrued as the artist claiming the regeneration hot potato for his own ends. Without the interest and engagement of the local people there would be no project. The first art-activated site was not Vaux, as one might imagine, but adjoining parkland Galley’s Gill: an isolated and therefore rather publicly unsafe area of Sunderland with cliffs that drop sharply into the Wear. However, it was the issue of how to overcome the legal and socially sensitive problem of inaccessibility that led Cotterrell to develop his first projection device. After much experimentation with various bits of equipment at home in London and other places, he was left with many more questions than answers. What to project? Anything he chose would inevitably come with its own contextual baggage that could divert attention from the aim of the project. How could this technically be achieved – with cranes? But then how truly temporal an experience could a static image provide? Surely, though, movement would be out of the question? And how to minimise the level of spectacle, to focus the event on (and maintain it within) the community? The importance of neutrality, in defining the project’s reference points, left Cotterrell with two possibilities. Essentially both were about the re-colonisation of these largely empty industrial spaces – providing some proof that ‘intelligent life’ could exist in even the most barren climes.
The first involved the projection of images from space – an as yet uncolonised territory – the second, superimposing encyclopaedic (historically verified) evidence of urban activity. The latter proved the more technically viable choice, but Cotterrell was anxious to avoid the role of puppet master, as one who had created a Sim City with little or no relevance to the location. Coming back to the idea of inactivity, or stultified movement, he began to explore how one might extract and present evidence of people moving in urban spaces in the least prescriptive and intrusive manner. During his experiments, Cotterrell discovered that an object, if filmed from a certain angle and projected in negative, could appear optically correct. Using this technique, a human image projected at 73 degrees could deputise for the shadow of a person standing on the ground. The interactive possibilities of this curious fiction brought, paradoxically, a sense of integrity to the work. For however artificially intelligent the process, the source was a real being with whom it would appear one could interact and not a computer-generated apparition. Cotterrell realised that to achieve the ghostly quality required to precipitate interplay between simulation and viewer, he would need to focus on the behavioural aspects of any potential film subjects. It made sense to source the people required for the film element of the piece from the Sunderland community. Cotterrell, with the hands-on support of Hall and Dubowitz, approached a wide selection of the demographic, recruiting school kids, taxi drivers, office workers and many others to take part (on a need-to-know basis) in a series of filmed activities at Groves Gantry, a large local warehouse. A number of local people were also trained as operative assistants. Taking a viral approach to the tricky issue of advertising,
Cotterrell and Dubowitz set up different channels of communication between the project and the public to facilitate rather than engineer local response. A fly poster campaign hinted with Roswellian irony at possible sightings of craft, providing details of an online place for speculation. Stories were ‘planted’ via local media, but not to fool, rather, to inspire curiosity. The aim was to create an event through Chinese whispers – a network built upon local hearsay that could in some way selfprophesise or impact how the venture evolved – certainly in the way it might become embedded within the community consciousness. Those issued with black clothes and balaclavas at the warehouse had received few absolutes other than a trip to the neighbouring National Glass Centre – an institution working hard to keep the area’s industrial history alive; the roof of which was to serve as a handy flat surface from which to film. Cameras attached to pulley systems and cherry pickers captured, against the weather-beaten odds, the curious antics of this unwitting public art militia. Acting coaches were hired to devise and oversee a range of exercises that would help participants forget the unwavering gaze of mechanical eyes and perform believable everyday actions. The raw material was then digitally manipulated to a necessary level of abstraction to erase any giveaway personal or location-specific details. A military balloon seemed, on paper, to solve the issues of how and from where to project. As an object, it represented both the romantic and sinister motivations driving the development of aviation technology. The political resonance of this and the project title, however, in reference to the light-reflection device developed by a British Major General to facilitate night raids and blind enemy bombardiers in WWII, and as the moniker of an anti-fascist magazine, could be perceived as fuelling agitprop
suggestion. Then there’s the ‘pop-in-pullout’ philosophy that at times describes both well meaning, but ultimately redundant acts of funding body philanthropy and self-serving military manoeuvres alike. Essentially, though ‘Searchlight’ entirely conveyed the physicality of the project and its difficult mission. A high vantage point was critical. But getting and keeping this complex piece of equipment airborne proved a logistical bridge too far for serious consideration as a longer-term option. When the proposed site became a real geographical entity, naturally many other factors came into play. Cotterrell and his team, armed with much knowledge but little actual experience of balloon flight, couldn’t have pre-empted to what extent local atmospheric conditions might hamper the venture. Despite the lack of activity along its banks, the Wear certainly has its own very dynamic environmental life in play. During the tricky period of operation, which involved the additional remote piloting of moving camera heads and mirrors via computers in the projection and recording of data, the eddy air currents of the location would give the engineering capacity of the balloon a proper run for its money. Buffeted this way and that, the mobile projector appeared like an erratic scanner on a dual broadcasting/reconnaissance mission: an Orwellian presence in the sky periodically showering the land and people below with an eerie superhuman presence. In light of its eventual 4am crash (it was up for a total of 20 hours over two days), one can imagine evidence of these potentially sentient beings replayed in the minds of those who witnessed the flight, like the spectral harbingers of technical doom.
gravitational pull of the earth. Upon impact this ‘hovering aspirin’ – one member of the public’s blog description that gives rise to the neat but misplaced analogy of public art as pain relief for social ills – dramatically shredded, scattering evidence of its existence across the landscape. From a ‘God’s Eye View’ it’s possible that these fragments might have deputised for inhabitants. Fitting, perhaps, that the by-products of an art intervention could unwittingly become such poetic ‘landmarks’ – an incidental Burden-style statement on the ‘numbers’ involved in the events that have shaped the area’s recent past. One can get carried away with the symbolism of it all when much of the decision-making comes down to logistics. The balloon as a temporal notion in the minds of the community, and even in future local lore, has far more resonance as an idea than a very real espionage device. The neatness of all the associations coming together is that bit too sweet, voiding the suspension of disbelief and alerting us more to the intelligence behind the process than the situation the project was seeking to highlight. Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that Cotterrell was or should be motivated by purely altruistic
The military device, in league with the elements, may have flouted the many rules of its operators but eventually lost its freedom fight to the 49
concerns – inevitably, the more one attempts to bury the dirty notion of ego the more visible it becomes. Understandably, the biggest internal driver for Cotterrell in completing this project was the expansion of his practice – exploring the possibilities of new media in challenging sites.
much techno tinkering and manual toil three weather-proofed rigs were constructed and attached at points to the bridge’s sturdy frame (operating on timers between dusk and dawn each day) and positioned over different sections of the site and the water itself.
Essentially, though, this aerial experiment fulfilled its task – as a kind of message delivery device – to the letter. It certainly captured public imagination (significant numbers of people witnessed its first flight) and brought attention to a previously avoided site better known for anti-social as opposed to high-cultural pursuits. After weighing up the technical problems, public dangers and spectacular visibility of the military balloon, however, it was eventually decided that fixed projector positions were the way forward.
But the plan was always geared towards the exploration of multiple sites – in fact, Cotterrell has described himself and those who made the project physically possible as “virtual ramblers”. And, having garnered public attention, he felt that there were other interesting parts of the city that could be activated to local benefit. Once the rigs had been fine-tuned to the point where they could effectively self-maintain from any location, he decided to relocate the project to the comparatively urban Sunniside Gardens – a neglected Georgian square earmarked by the council, in partnership with Sunderland arc, for substantial redevelopment within the ‘Sunniside Quarter’ of the city. This part of the project, as the culmination of Cotterrell’s research processes, was essentially ‘the work’.
Cotterrell wisely chose to ride the new wave of public energy towards the Wear and stick with Galley’s Gill as a site for experimentation. The handy vantage point of the footbridge over the river also offered vital structural support for any independent projection kit. Another trial flight was launched, using the spare balloon and footage recovered from the wreckage, but after
However, the low-key deployment and quiet, contemplative nature of the installation feels akin to the slow release of air following a period of effort, as opposed to the fanfare toot one might associate with the completion of a work of art. A gentle reward, perhaps, following the project’s evolutionary chaos. This open space corralled by buildings, which once went by the pastoral moniker ‘The Shrubbery’, made for an ideal projection site. The area was designed by nineteenth-century urban planner William Jameson to provide domestic respite from industrial riverside bustle and is described in Sunderland Council’s planning document as “the only area of open ‘green’ space within an otherwise ‘hard’ urban landscape.” Cotterrell was aware of future plans for the site and felt that the work, in
its itinerant capacity that by default brought attention to the history of the place, might in some way bridge the gap between the regenerative process and the community. The presence of something ‘other’ in this case, might signify the advent of change, but could also bring attention to and, importantly, provide a link back to the way things were. The critical role of these pieces was to brush the sight lines of public consciousness in a way that would alert those passing to their surroundings without actively altering the everyday nature of the location and their purpose. Cotterrell, with this in mind, gradually introduced his “discrete projections” over a period of three months; one alien eye at a time. Each projector rig simultaneously casting moving disks of light and human activity from different angles onto the square. Away from the drama of the balloon and the overt politics of the Vaux site, the simple visual poetry of the piece – its subtle re-siting of a community presence – was finally able to surface. In daylight, these works might simply have registered in the minds of the public as a trick of the light or tired eyes. But, for those in the know, insubstantial humanoid forms appeared to slip between the slats of drain covers and meld to the shadows of variable vehicular or architectural entities. At night, however, the inventive 1:1 scaling of the projections really came into play. From a distance, curiously dispossessed individuals could be witnessed, like a vague commuter presence or a gathering of Haruki Murakami’s detached human shadows (see ‘A Wind-up Bird Chronicle’), crossing streets and loitering around kerbs. Close-to, they might have passed beneath feet undetected like an errant slice of silhouetted cine action. From the high, night vantage points of the rigs these simulated, yet essentially real, members of the community assumed the guise
of insects – freely traversing the borders of their Petri dish zones. While many who negotiated the square were blissfully unaware of the inky cut outs partially absorbed by the local architecture (especially at the beginning of the project and during the day), others were given cause for shock, delight or bemusement at the improbable evidence of human activity mingling under streetlights with their own. And, of course, as local knowledge of the work grew, so more people would purposely alter their routes to find out what all the fuss was about. The works were gradually deactivated (although the technology still exists in situ ever ready for another turn about the square) as if, mirroring their arrival, receding slowly from public view. There is something curiously New World about the title ‘Searchlight’ that applies to this aspect of the project as a mythical or imagined force that departed as quickly as it arrived, leaving everything changed. The focus of the wider Cultural Masterplan project has changed from its ambitious 2004 mandate to roll out a series of temporal projects across the city. This has less to do with the lowering of bars, it would seem, than the legality of urban planning. It sounds improbable that an outside commercial entity would ever be able lock-up a large enough proportion of a city to effectively halt its future development. But it took five years’ worth of red tape negotiation by Hall and Dubowitz to get to the point of being able to implement the pilot ‘Hobo’ project: ‘Searchlight’. During this time, the political structures of the organisations involved have changed to the extent that the masterplan that is being rolled out is taking on quite a different shape. But, perhaps, this is no bad thing. As Dubowitz explains: “One of the core challenges is to establish a programme that is flexible. A cultural masterplan is a framework
for transforming a city’s identity by way of its physical regeneration. One of the frameworks for Sunderland was to expect the unexpected.” The blind faith and determination it took to persuade public bodies to run with this vanguard cultural scheme and make ‘Searchlight’ a reality appear to be filtering through the community in myriad, if less publicly obvious, ways. Hall and Dubowitz’s masterplan has been adapted to fit a smaller section of the city – the Sunniside quarter – which in many ways makes their inspiring public art model more easy to view. While there are plans afoot for future commissions, their commitment to approaching cultural development ‘from the inside’ has forged strong local business and creative relationships that have contributed to the development of a burgeoning art scene. Where once the majority of local artists ‘commuted’ from Sunderland, to find studios and form creative alliances, there is evidently now a two-way street between cities. The cultural activity of Sunderland may be more geographically concentrated than presently ideal, but with the ongoing battle for the city’s centre, this consolidation of different schematic strands appears a canny organisational move to secure the city’s cultural future.
shackles in ways that, perhaps more accurately, bring the social situation into view. ‘Searchlight’, as a now autonomous set of reactivatable components in situ, appears – like the forces behind the project – hunkered down and ready for action, whenever that might be. Rebecca Geldard April 2008
To attempt to define what ‘success’ means in the context of a public project such as ‘Searchlight’ and assign gradable criteria to determine this, is to fall into the trap of the ‘legacy effect’ that Cotterrell and Dubowitz in their different roles have sought to avoid. There is something almost Situationist about their slow burn, sci-fi invasion of the public realm and communitydriven stance. Curiously, the physical rescale of the overall project echoes Cotterrell’s strategic move from Galley’s Gill to Sunniside Gardens. In both cases, geographical (re)location – away from the eye of the urban planning storm – has released each concept from inevitable political 51
Afterword
The Cultural Masterplan got the ball rolling for Sunderland, setting out a framework to effect a cultural transformation by way of physical redevelopment in the city. David Cotterrell’s ‘Searchlight’ brought to a close the pilot programme, and the city has subsequently decided to embark on the first full phase of the Cultural Masterplan in the city’s Sunniside district. The redevelopment of this quarter adjacent to the city centre undertakes to remake the public realm, starting at its heartland, the Georgian Sunniside Gardens, and then on and around St. Thomas Street to improve connections to the city centre. At the time of going to press, the new gardens are complete and winning awards, the programme for the next phase of the public realm, and the provision of studio, residency and installation spaces for artists is well under way. Lead professionals including landscape architects (Robinson Landscape Design) and engineers (lighting planners Lightfolio Ltd.) are being brought together by the cultural masterplan’s new lead artist Robert Slinger (Kapok) to develop this next phase of works called the Meridians. A host of artists are involved selected from the cultural masterplan’s www. callforartists.org website. The results of their collaboration will soon initiate a permanent transformation of the urban landscape of Sunderland, with artworks by Kapok, sound artist Bill Fontana, furniture designer Charlie Davidson and video artists SDNA integrated seamlessly into the streetscape. The notion that public art need not be a supplementary ingredient in the urban landscape, but can actively and concretely influence how people inhabit public space has become the expected norm in Sunderland
thanks to the adoption of Sunderland’s Cultural Masterplan. Likewise, embedding artworks into the public realm and treating the design of the everyday as an opportunity for creative invention, has built on the discussions opened up by the Cultural Masterplan and “Searchlight”. The result is the development of a methodology for creating public realm, the Meridians, which might provoke a passer-by to comment, “I am not sure where the Art is, but this doesn’t feel like any other street I know.” The legacy of the Masterplan and “Searchlight” has been the mainstreaming of this new way of integrating Art into urban regeneration, the projects and their underlying methods having now become current policy and the accepted norm in Sunderland. As the ongoing public realm projects for Sunniside come to fruition in the coming year, the opportunity this presents for the creative input of artists as a major factor in the vitality of the city will become increasingly apparent. Dan Dubowitz and Robert Slinger 2008
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Acknowledgements
Searchlight is an artwork by David Cotterrell. It was developed and delivered in collaboration with Lead Artist Dan Dubowitz and Director of Sunniside Partnership Ben Hall. It is a site specific artwork for the City of Sunderland from 2005 to 2007.
Searchlight is the pilot project for Sunderlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cultural Masterplan. The Cultural Masterplan was developed by Dan Dubowitz, Civic Works Ltd as a Sunderland City Council, Sunderland University, Sunderland arc and Sunniside Partnerships joint venture.
The Artwork
The Cultural Masterplan
Artwork Collaborators:
The Core Partners:
Stuart Ainsley Davis Bain Gary Bell Nadia Benchagra Sarah Bennett Bethesda Free Church Martin Brooks Sheila Brownlee Helen Carty David Chambers City of Sunderland College Elijah Cotterrell Ray Dolby, Control Lighting Graham Dorrington Pickle Ellison ESPA Jimmy Fox Howard French Peter Gray David Green Keith Green Tricia Green Ian Hall Doreen Hardy Head Light Jon Heads Yvonne Hendry Adam Hicks R Higgins Sandra Hollywood Charlie Hope Maciek Hrybowic Jordan Kaplan Kathleen Davis Stage School Howard Kennedy Nam Nam Li
Maureen Little Little Mary Davy McCready Carl McGray Adam Mcintyre Claire Mclaughlin Emma McRoy Linda Milburn Anthony Mills Brian Moore Claire Mordue P Nebbia David Pavey Ruth Petrie David Ralston Pal Reay David Sinton Liz Stephenson Sunderland CVS Sunderland Mind Sunniside Partnership Sue Sweeney The Glass Centre University of Sunderland D Urwin James Usher Kyle Walls Project Partners Arts Council England, North East The Art Studio The National Glass Centre Thornhill School Tuner & Townsend Project Management
Sunderland arc Sunniside Partnership Sunderland City Council One North East Tyne and Wear Partnership University of Sunderland Cultural Masterplan Collaborators Eric Bainbridge Ian Banks Robert Blackson Chris Dixon Hoss Gifford Lorna Fulton Carl Hagemann James Hutchinson Tom Macartney Katherine Pearson Alison Redshaw George Snaith Grainne Sweeney Kari Vickers Keith Whittle Kay Wilson Pam Young