ARTISTS TALKING

# 50 [11 August 2009]

Holding post - just for info.

I'm home - decided I needed a break and some time to get my domestic stuff back in line.

I'll write about the project, what went right, what went wrong, in a day or two when I have the energy to construct sentences again, properly.

Then I'll be able to tell you about Interpol looking for Tom, the paranoia, the  mis-information and the other funny and frightening bits I've not written about in this public forum.

Hopefully, some sort of analysis about the business of working with public money and the conflicts of having many players with different agendas.

I've started to collate archive material (emails, pics, videos). There's definitely work to be done with all this - after a decent break. Maybe you'll see it at some point, with me behind a microphone in a room above some pub in Peckham.

Back in a few days.

Justin, Eero and Ania are furiously sifting through footage. Here's some to be getting on with.

Best of Tom

Best of Rafal

The moment we walked out of a dismal reality TV show

Error show Lithuania a simple condom demonstration

The moment we get fired

Where I would be now if I hadn't come home - in Paulius' flat

Best of Paulius

And a slice of history: Radiohead's exit interview

# 49 [9 August 2009]

Spent some time looking at Eero's work on Facebook: when you're there, tap in Tukk and you'll find it.

He finds pictures that people have uploaded and Photoshop's Tukk into  them, sends them to the owners of the photos and sees if they like them. Most people do.

I like the idea of this virtual itinerant character visiting virtual places all over the world and making new virtual friends. An important part of it is taking time to make relationships with the people whose photos he intervenes in, he says.

Also looked at the page of the Polymer factory in Tallin.There's an ancient printing press there - a functioning one, with lots and lots of the cyrillic type that I loved so much in the Technology factory here.

They have a sauna made from old windows, workshops - it looks great. Used to make plastic toys in the daytime and sex toys at night, on the quiet. The old people who used to work there all came to a big perfomance party there - called the Homecoming.

Another project is Migrating Realities - Miga's been working on it for a while and in September, a group of people are going to travel, across three borders, ending up in Linz.

I'm interested in migration. There's a part of me that'd be happy to take the bus back to London, I see them through Peckham and down the Camberwell New Road on their way to Victoria all the time.

# 48 [8 August 2009]

Paulius has arrived. My stuff is now off the laptop. He wants the Sim cards back - they have under a fiver's worth of credit.

The milk has run out. I'm off to the CAC for some breakfast.

# 47 [8 August 2009]

continued from last post...

We phone Zilnas, Eero was expecting to do a lecture - paid - on the Wednesday - he'd been booked, after someone else dropped out. Zilnas is out of town but agrees to get on to Kornelya to find out wtf is going on.

Meanwhile, Paulius is frantically trying to retrieve kit - laptops, cameras and tripods. IHaving spent four weeks dancing to someone else's tune, 'm not up for being harrassed. I have a bit of work on the laptop - and Justin has almost the whole memory used up on his. I say to Paulius - lovely Paulius - that I'm not trying to make his life difficult, I've always been helpful.

No you haven't, he says. Your blog, it started off alright, but it hasn't been helpful at all. It went from being quite objective to being really subjective and negative. He then went on to pretty much accuse me of wanting to steal it. Unpleasant, to say the least.

Hmm. I think it's been extremely clean - immaculate, even, Too clean. I've edited what I've written with an acute sensitivity in the knowledge that it's being read by people that I'm working with - the crew. But I didn't come here to write propaganda for the Lithuanian TV industry.

Speaking of which, it doesn't bode well for the twenty thousand litas book.

More later.

# 46 [8 August 2009]

We all met at yesterday at five. I mean, us, the artists. Agreed that this couldn't go on - but we were invited here to do work, we want to do it, we can if they let us get on with it - and we take footage and edit it and give it to them. Then we can show how making art works - not the tedious footage they've been showing.

Much discussion - is it that they don't know, or just don't care? I know for certain that I don't want any more microphones stuck in my face asking me ČWhat do you feel about art?Č We agreed that we were up for doing an event at the studio, invite people, show some films, do some workshops and performances - I had a great one lined up - though a few thought having a party and calling it art was unconvincing. The studio is a wonderful place - and it needs love. It's an light, airy monastery building that's about to be given back to the Franciscans.

The TV people had not responded to text messages or phone calls - but they announced a meeting at seven at the studio.

We didn't know what was going to happen but we knew we didn't want to be on a game show any more.

Donatus, the director, took the floor. With ČinfoČ, he said.

They've done some eliminations. Everyone's been eliminated, except for Pavel, Tadas and Darius. Pavel's in Denmark, of course, and Tadas and Darius don't speak.

The ruse is that we broke our contracts by walking out, the night before. Though everyone had done that. We are each given a short termination of contract paper - with Jonas'  name on it. Jonas is the number three at the TV station - very young, pencil moustache, rolled up jacket sleeves - crashed our dinner weeks ago with the grace of an elephant in a china shop - as they say round these parts.

Our flights have been reserved and - this is absolutely true - there's a camera set up next door for us to speak, directly to camera, one by one. The Lithuanian artists are expected to leave the dorm immediately. Of course, this doesn't happen. Kornelya comes over to me to try to discuss a flight on Monday.

Continued next post...

# 45 [7 August 2009]

Half past ten, Saulius has arrived after giving blood this morning and Justin, Eero and Monica are dumpster diving downstairs. I go help them bring stuff up - hula hoops, a toy fire engine - a printer. Monica is beside herself with joy, she found an ornate old bathroom ceramic sink. She has a plan.

Justin's taken cameras and phones so he and Ania can edit the footage from last night.

The mood has changed and everyone's on form - even those who are usually pretty glum. I think interesting things could really start happening now. We're in this together.

Anyone who's reading this will have realised that what I'm writing here is highly selective and edited in the knowledge that it is public. I've taken to sending occasional emails to a small group, i'm intending to do this more as a means of documenting and not losing details. If you'd like to be added to this list, do email me - it'll only be people I know.

Off to the flea market on my bike. Others are looking for something big.

more later. oh - still haven't told the skirmantas story.

# 44 [7 August 2009]

The broadband is dicky, much has happened and I haven't been able to record it. But here's yesterday's sequence of events.

First thing, Tom bailed. Slipped away in the night with his whiffle hurling bats. Everyone very sad. Massage vouchers, a prize left over from last week's show, were still hanging around so they decided to make it a girlie event - yet again I got a bit of a prize I hadn't won. Poetic justice.

Skirmatas, the cameraman, came along - low point when he came into the massage room when each of us was lying face down under a towel. I asked him to leave.

Grim mood all day. The assignment is one hundred litas. At the sculpture park the day before - no, I haven't even been able to talk about the sculpture park experience - Kornelya had given each team a hundred lita note. Except Justin's team who had better things to do than visit a sculpture park, despite being put under a lot of pressure by Kornelia.

open bracket

More positively, we've asked for a day to do some workshops, a talk, make some work, at the Technology museum - a fantastic ex-energy station with all the plant still in situ. I'd gone the other day and found trays and trays of Lithuanian and Cyrillic type blocks alongside a magnificent printing press. Just imagine what you'd do with those. Great location, great stuff in there, it'd make fantastic footage. It took a long while for them to pick up on this but finally, they've bitten.

We've also asked for a day at the Observatory. There's one eighty km away and apparently it's fantastic.

close bracket

The grim mood continued all day - collaboration isn't working for many but there is, underneath the grimmness, a sense that the only thing keeping our pulses beating is the delicate web of solidarity between us.

The screening of the show. This is where we have to watch it at the TV studio, then for the last ten minutes the cameras turn on us and Egmontas, the host. They film us responding to the audience votes and announce the prize and, officially, the next week's assignment. It's always horrible.

The show has been edited better this week, though inexplicably, they're still showing hot air balloon footage and the Ania scene. It's not like we haven't given them masses of action.

Egmontas the host isn't there, we don't know why. Some technician has placed a number of bananas on each table. Of course, some people start putting these in their bags, so he puts more bananas out. This hasn't happened before.

One of the reporters does the host thing and we all get up and leave, without a word. We leave the building and walk home. It feels sublime. It's the first thing we've all been able to do together, in block solidarity.

Apparently they were intending that we vote one or some of us off with the bananas.

I mean, really.

pics and skirmantas story later.

# 43 [4 August 2009]

Just spoken to Jim, my laser man back at home. Why on earth didn't I call him before?

My lasers are almost certainly ruined, he says, thanks to using 9V batteries - they're only able to tolerate 3V.

Another couple of important lessons learned. Always check, don't assume.

# 42 [4 August 2009]

Saulius and I are relatively happy with the work - though it's a hard thing to document - the light is very fine.It looked absolutely beautiful at times; each time the light reflected off a mirror, it refracted very slightly so that by the fourth angle, it was very soft - and had divided itself into threads of light within the one main beam. Lovely.

Maybe we should have had a smoke machine there. I had wondered about it, but it seemed to me that that could, if we weren't careful, be a bit showy and begin to detract from the very simple thing that we were trying to do - that is, to draw a line, using laser light technology, through two opposing buildings, connecting them using the line but driving the line through from one end of the location to the other.

What was really excellent about this project was that a good few people turned up to see what we did and they really interacted with the line. It was good to see the line build as we placed the mirrors, and to discover how the line worked and changed in response. 

We didn't get to take the line up to the sky which we'd wanted to do, but we'd always been clear that it was an experimental piece of work for us with no dress rehearsal.

Eero began to make a fire to generate some smoke - just as my lasers gave up (and now no longer function). We'd decided to rely on batteries and while the 9V ones we'd used over the weekend had been fine - Sony ones - the batteries which the crew brought for us gave up almost immediately and the lasers started to play up - I'd hardly used before I came here but they'd been as good as gold all weekend.

We all know that brand matters with batteries. But remember - it really DOES matter.

What's interesting about this for me is that while, because we didn't complete the work and get superb documentation, the TV show will see it as a failure. I don't and neither does Saulius. We did most of what we wanted to do, people got involved and engaged with the work, we watched the line change and we changed the space - as a bonus, the people in the TV crew had never seen this small but atmospheric part of the city before.

I thought this morning of Catherine Yass' High Wire project - her tight-rope walker only began to walk out - he never completed it as intended because it was too windy on the day.

But the work still stands proud.

# 41 [3 August 2009]

Three things that happened today:

1. Just now at dinner, the new boy, Darius (filmmaker) was practicing his English. It's not strong but he likes to make the effort. He says - Fiona - that's a beautiful name.

Do you think so? Says I. Oh yes, he says. I know a Fiona - Hollywood.

Oh - what's her name, says me.

He says the name of a film but I can't catch with the pronunciation. She is very beautiful, says Darius.

I look puzzled, since I didn't catch the name. Monica (who could pass for Angelina Jolie) asks him again for the film or the actress. It's Shrek.

You are beautiful too, he says. On the inside.

He was all set to carry on this line of discussion but I asked Monica to ask him to stop right there. Eero decided to move all the knives.

2. I'm writing, a few people are having lunch in the communal area (lounge would be too strong a word) and a Lithuanian folk singing competition is on the TV. Andreia's talking on the phone in the backround. The ads come on and Justin shouts to Andreia to pipe down as we can't hear the ad.

It's the ad for Artothlon and we're all on it. Who could have imagined that a few months ago.

3. Saulius parks his car at a 30 degree angle - always. It's embarrasingly bad. This morning at the laser firm, I can't bear to walk out of it jutting that far into the road. He gives me the key and I park his car. We meet Donatus the director - sorry about that, I say, I was just parking Saulius' car.

Why? It was sticking out into the middle of the road.

Donatus is puzzled, and asks - is that an English thing, to be concerned with how a car is parked?