Artothlon, Summer 2009

There’s been much guff talked between us and the crew about the balance between an arts residency and “reality” tv over the last week and a half.

Watching the screening last night – and then being filmed lived as the results rolled in (or maybe trickled, they reckoned they didn’t know how many public votes there were).

The camera can record facts – and then it constructs another kind of reality. Facts can be juggled and manipulated to make up someone else’s idea of what the story is or should be.

So work that was made in the studio the other night was represented in a way that fitted someone else’s viewpoint.

This is nothing new, but interesting to watch when you are the subject.

The edit is a powerful thing.

I will be wearing my whore heels in a bar tonight, launching a fictional new product on an unsuspecting public.

And my mum’s suggesting I get wax ear plugs to cut out those 6am builders.

Our project is on task, we’re really pleased with the idea, with both its form and how we intend to execute it. I’ll talk about it more after tomorrow night.

I hadn’t mentioned till now, but we’d been talking about a film club for some time – and I figured that if we didn’t commit, it’d never happen and then it’d be time to come home.

So we’ve decided to commit to Saturday night. I’ve done a flyer and we’ll show a film – dunno which one yet – with a digital projector on to the wall of the studio – and hope people will come to see. And I found popping corn in the Maxima supermarket at the Akropolis this morning – the first really big shopping mall in Lithuania.

We were hoping to go to a bar to watch the screening – but no, we’re being picked up to go to the studio to watch it there.

Once again, I’d like to be able to talk about the work – and once again, other stuff’s getting in the way.

Until five minutes ago, it looked like everything was going fine. In the last five minutes I’ve had a massive bomb thrown my way. I can’t tell you more, right now.

The lecture was good. Really good. The academic who delivered it is going to email me PDF of the paper and I’ll put it online.

I need more sleep. The workmen outside my window start at 6am sharp every morning.

Can. Barely. Speak. So. Tired.

And in a rush a I’m up later than usual and have to be at the studio – ie our studio, not the TV studio – for 11 which is in an hour.

Very briefly.

The show was a hoot. I’m thrilled to be in the team I’m in – Andrus, a 25 year old Lithuanian, whose body work includes a 400 foot high string of helium filled balloons, one of my favourite pieces of work from the presentations the other day, and Ania, our Moscovite, who is a fan of and has collaborated with Oliver Laric, an ex-Chelsea student whose work I came across some months ago at the Seventeen Gallery, down the road from my studio. I think he’s fantastic.

The work we made in an hour in the TV studio was pretty awful – but the process, working together under pressure and being performative, was good fun. And with a week to prep for the next one, I think we might come up with something more rigorous. Probably a bit of a school exercise, maybe, but fun anyway.

I’ll post the link to the show when I have time to get it. It airs at 10pm (8pm UK time) on Thursday.

Tonight we have our first lecture, “Art and Education may turn Revolutionary” by Hubertus von Amelunxen.

This is him (sorry ’bout the cut n paste):

“One of the most well-known contemporary philosophers of photography.

At present he is rector of the European School of Visual Arts and
professor at the Canadian Center for Architecture and the European
Graduate School in Switzerland. Hubertus von Amelunxen worked at the Muthesius Hochschule for Art, where he founded a Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies. He is also founder of the International
School of New Media in Lubeck.

Hubertus von Amelunxen has published a few books about the history of photography and trends in contemporary photography, he is also actively involved in the supervision of international exhibitions.”

One of the great things about living with different nationals is picking up bits and pieces from our languages. I talk too quickly and use way too many idiomatic phrases to be easily understood, but Monica is keen to learn them. She has learned the various meaning of “bollocks”, “the dogs bollocks” and what it is to be “bollocksed”. Also when it’s appropriate to respond to something with “big swinging mickeys”.

I’m hoping very much that on my return, having hung out with Justin and Tom, I’ll be able to trip out “douchebag” without sounding self-concious or contrived.

I’ll add pics later.

Awake early.

A short pep talk from Claire on the phone last night who said: when in doubt, draw. So I’ve had a few thoughts about that.

I figured that rather than try to sleep with building work noises outside, I’d try and articulate to myself, once again, why it is that I’m here.

1. Reality TV has a bad name among many. But the idea of trying to make art, in the context of a reality TV show, is interesting, because TV is what people watch – me included. Reality TV is a massive part of our culture – there is never a shortage of people who want to appear on them (even when they are cynically set up to make people look daft or silly). It has to be a medium worth exploring.

2. Lithuania is an interesting country. On the one hand, it’s very old – with a huge medieval history – and on the other, it’s very young, only around 17 years since independence from the soviet union.

The nation is ambitious, energetic, and it’s changing rapidly. Guidebooks published even just two years ago have proved pretty out-of-date with regard to changes in some aspects of culture. There’s a manufacturing base, an educated workforce and there’s money. Not evenly spread of course, but it’s there. There maybe 50% discount signs in the Armani shop window, with an international recession on, but the point is, there IS an Armani shop window.

The Contemporary Arts Centre is a classy building that shows work that has been carefully chosen and curated with care.

3. There’s an academic programme of lectures – which could be really interesting.

Given that my own emerging practice is about trying to express an optimism for the future and the connections that we all share, it’s not a bad place to spend time thinking about that.

Time to make another cup of tea. Who knows how it’ll go today but hey, if it goes badly, it’s only a reality TV show. I’ll live to tell the tale.