Seismic Movements

Collective Self-Consciousness

ANNE TALLENTIRE AND CHRIS FITE-WASSILAK DESCRIBE THE DEVELOPMENT AND DEVIATIONS OF HMN – A QUARTERLY SOUND-BASED TEST CENTRE EVENT, RUNNING IN VARIOUS VENUES THROUGHOUT LONDON SINCE 2015.

The Village Club, Barrow Housing Estate, London – the location of hmn19; photograph by Anne Tallentire; courtesy of hmn

EVENTS ARE, by nature, limited in scope: cemented into a time and place, only a certain amount of people can make it or fit in. As a way of delivering ideas and reaching people it can seem proscribed, delineated. But it also enables a particular kind of atmosphere and connection, sharing those very limitations with a group of other people for a moment. Exhibitions tend to carry with them an optimism of exposure, that any number of unlimited people might encounter the show, despite the circumstances and choices that led to the works that end up appearing in front of an audience. Which is to say, both events and exhibitions are subject to the same whimsical forces, but still appreciated in very different ways. Hmn arose out of a mutual desire to try and foreground the energies that go into making new work: the temporary gestures, the uncertain movements, the unsettled tests. These are aspects usually lost in the desire to present a finished, professional, confident artwork – but things we both felt were essential parts of the work that we treasured. Working backwards from this urge, we attempted to create a set of boundaries that might enable this to be explored. An event, with its specificity and need for focus, as well as its very disposable or temporary nature, seemed the necessary choice. Having worked, respectively, as an artist and a curator and critic, we both had a sense of what we didn’t want – the format of a ‘performance night’ set in a gallery or studio meant certain habits and pre-expectations for both artists and audiences that we wanted to avoid. So we decided: a set time period, which both the participants and the audience would be aware of; in changing locations, no galleries or studios, so that everyone involved (us included) would remain unsettled; and no documentation, so that participants could feel free to try or fail without that kind of consequence, but also that people who attended wouldn’t divest themselves into taking pictures, video or online posts during those few minutes. Seven minutes seemed like a good mid-point: long enough to get lost, short enough to stay concentrated. We ended up describing it as ‘sound-based’ so that people coming along would understand it was time and attention-based. We don’t ask participants to tell us what they’re doing, only if they want to chat about ideas – we are part of the audience, too. Our guiding principle has always been to promote, pursue and work with doubt.

The first hmn was in February 2015, in a library spare room, and we are later this year having the 20th edition of the event. The most recent was held in a housing estate community hall; one person made an interactive synth sound-work based on people calling and texting their phone; another took the seven minutes to fill pistachio shells with beeswax, to give a sense of the range of modes one evening might bring. Neither of us planned to keep it going for so long, but the thing has seemed to create its own energy and momentum that carries itself. We have run from a loose invitation system, asking people we encounter or sometimes hardly know, or people who seem that they might benefit from this sort of aside or test space in their work at this time. In such a career-oriented space as London, it felt necessary to partially formalise the real energies that drive artistic exchange, to try and encourage an ecology of informal but serious attention. Several things have become clear over the past five years; one being that hmn is an austerity project. It is low-fund, based on a system of exchange, where we provide a platform and conversation in exchange for someone to share their time and ideas. In a climate where opportunities are given mostly to those who already have the means, it has been rewarding to create another sense of circulation.

The other notion that has emerged as being the true centre of the project is simply the issue of attention. Quietness goes many directions, in being something someone can ask for, but also something that people, together, create. We are ostensibly ‘sound based’, and every event inevitably has a sonic element; but the main material of hmn has been the thick sense of attention that is shared between attendees and participants alike. The contributions on each evening frequently require us to place ourselves in view of what we imagine is about to happen. The spaces we use are generally everyday public venues – community halls, libraries, outdoor walkways or public greens – more often than not, located in unfamiliar off-track parts of the city, almost generic spots that are rented, moved-through, used by lots of different people. The spaces quietly emphasise impermanence in place and time, removed from the more knowing expectations and habits associated with art-making. In such spaces that do not readily offer the certainties and conventions of an art venue, this can create a collective moment of self-consciousness and uncertainty that prepares us differently for the act of attention. It is this sense of attention, fragile and tenuous, that turns a group into something cohesive, that creates the links between a wider group of people, that in turn has created a wider sense of what we might call a community or a web.

Just like all events and series, hmn is just a short thing in time, one that we hope kickstarts new energies and work, and engenders and continues long-running conversations. The model is not precious or proprietary, and in times like these is a method to proliferate and mutate, to encourage the creation of alternative gatherings and alternative institutions and ecologies. Like Dublin’s Foaming at the Mouth series, which we took inspiration from, or Tai Shani and Anne Duffau’s Dark Water events also in London, Pre-ramble in Glasgow, and the No Matter poetry and performance events in Manchester, long may such public conversational and casual spaces for trying out ideas continue to spread: hesitation for all!

Anne Tallentire is an Irish artist based in London. annetallentire.info

Chris Fite-Wassilak is a writer and critic based in London. cfitewassilak.wordpress.com

Contemporary Imprints

JONATHAN BRENNAN REPORTS ON THE MULTI-MATRIX PRINT SYMPOSIUM WHICH TOOK PLACE AT THE MAC, BELFAST.

IN A PAST – which now feels very distant, but was in fact only weeks ago – when the term ‘social distancing’ had only just been coined and the concept of having to self-isolate was inconceivable, a symposium took place in Belfast, focusing on what seems the very opposite of self-isolation: multidisciplinary artistic practice. Co-ordinated by the Belfast Print Workshop (BPW), in partnership with Seacourt Print Workshop and Ulster University with funding from Belfast City Council, the event, which took place at The MAC on 13 March, featured speakers and panellists that exemplify contemporary multidisciplinary printmaking.

Introduced by Meadhbh McIlgorm (artist and BPW Manager) and Suzanne Lyle (Arts Council of Northern Ireland) and chaired by me, this day-long symposium seemed timely, if not overdue – the last printmaking event of this scale in Northern Ireland was organised by Seacourt a decade ago. That symposium was concerned with the value and preservation of traditional techniques in an increasingly digital culture, whereas this one (entitled ‘Multi-Matrix’) sought to respond to contemporary concerns – namely the trend towards multidisciplinarity among printmakers, through both necessity and desire.

Artist-researcher Tracy Hill (Artlab, University of Central Lancashire) described how the physical location of her department within the university sees her mixing with designers, rather than fine art students, while the university has a multidisciplinary ethos in general. Her process is always informed by research and while printmaking is a significant element of her practice, she doesn’t call herself a printmaker, but rather allows each project to dictate the process used. One of her ongoing projects involves the use of Faro scanners (devices used primarily by the construction industry) which, in the words of the manufacturers, “touch and sense place” in 360 degrees. Hill manipulates the vast amounts of data gleaned from these scans to create wall drawings and large intaglio prints of up to three metres in size.

Artist Ann Donnelly (Northern Ireland Screen) and Seacourt Print Workshop Director, Emma Drury, spoke about the application of print processes in the wider field of health and wellbeing. They described their current project, which uses footage from the Digital Film Archive, in conjunction with printmaking, in workshops with dementia sufferers. Noting down statements triggered by archival film clips was useful for those with cognitive problems who tended to forget ideas between sessions. These textual snippets were reproduced in letterpress rescued from a local newspaper office and used as a way to ‘anchor’ participants and as springboards to create artworks.

The work of Małgorzata Warlikowska (Academy of Fine Arts, Wrocław, Poland) relates to the human condition in the modern world, including personal experiences and women’s rights. Employing a dizzying array of processes – ranging from screen-printing, ceramics and embroidery, to welding, linocut and enamelling – her practice involves bodies of work that can span several years and multiple iterations, playing with archetypes from art history or popular culture. Marilyn Monroe is a recurring motif, as are media clippings and slogans, while one particular series seemingly updates the male torso, referencing antecedents like the Belvedere torso and Brancusi’s Torso of a Young Man.

The printmaking practice of Andrew Folan (Head of Print, NCAD) explores the way print can extend in time, showing an evolution. One example is his Palimpsest Project in which students are invited to re-work old plates: “every time you work the plate, you print it before working it again [thereby] opening up the possibility of time-based printmaking”. In the early 2000s, Folan found an uncanny analogue in rapid-prototyping (an early application of 3D printing, in which material is deposited in successive layers to build three-dimensional forms) to the stacking of intaglio prints, in creating the quasi-architectural forms he was engaged with at the time. Folan’s more recent work sees him working in virtual space with the 3D-modelling and animation software, Blender. In his recent ‘Prometheus’ series, an animated virtual budding flower, which can pass through itself much like a Klein bottle, is paused at certain key frames and printed. In this way, a digital animation finds a physical manifestation, returning to this notion of print extending through time.

Of all of the guest speakers, Sumi Perera’s range of disciplines seemed the widest apart, at least on a superficial level. In a former life, she worked as a doctor in Sri Lanka before returning to the UK to undertake postgraduate studies in virology, as well as an MA in Book Arts – at a time when the trend was towards minimalism and conceptualism. She generates multiple series by combining hybrid printmaking techniques including a range of intaglio techniques, lithography, screen-printing, laser cutting, engraving and sandblasting. She is “not precious about disciplines” and raised a question about whether the term multidisciplinary itself has lost its usefulness, suggesting that perhaps the term ‘post-disciplinary’ is now more appropriate.

A panel discussion, titled ‘Print Across Disciplines’, with artists and lecturers Majella Clancy, Pauline Clancy and textile designer Ruth Crothers looked specifically at the theme of multidisciplinary printmaking in Northern Ireland today, with reflections on where things might go in the future. As well as thematic echoes between all of the speakers, certain recurring themes emerged throughout the day, focusing on the general perception of a return to traditional practices and the hand-created mark alongside the adoption of digital techniques. There was also a consensus that to be multidisciplinary, one needs to have a discipline to bring to the table to begin with, and a question as to whether all of this really is new, or if it has roots in movements like the Bauhaus. The day closed with a showcase of works from BPW and Seacourt members, alongside pieces from Belfast School of Art students and symposium guests, offering a chance for discussions to continue, in accordance with the latest social-distancing norms.

Jonathan Brennan is a multidisciplinary artist based in Belfast. jonathanbrennanart.com