I did two back-to-back workshops with KS1 at Mickelhurst Primary School today, with thanks to previous Contents May Vary co-curator Martha Distin-Webster for the invite. We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I talked them through the process of making a Cap Stories caterpillar. Cap Stories originated from my Welland Festival 2019 Associate Artist project and I’m in the process of mounting the resultant caps from that for Elland Library. This spin off is using the same premise of illustrating stories inside thrown away / recycled bottle caps but using a well-known story this time instead of personal/social stories of Elland.

The conversations about the book and the illustrations in the book were great. One child couldn’t find the right dark shade of blue for the plum and we discussed Eric Carle’s use of different tones to create his plum illustrations.

Another child, who is obviously very bright and creative, sped through the task with excellent technical accuracy and understanding, and was asking, “What do I do next?” We talked about drawing things from the story but also creating your own narrative from your imagination. I suggested, on the spot, a ladybird, anything! He drew several insects more and explained his logic too.

Another child was in a ‘can’t draw’ funk and I suggested starting with a simple orange: a circle coloured orange. He drew five oranges (for his five caps). That would’ve been fine and illustrating the five oranges in the story but he was visibly upset by the situation. I don’t know what was said by peers or teachers but he was adament it was wrong. What were his favourite foods? I asked. Garlic bread. Round pizza garlic bread or baguette garlic bread? The baguette style. OK, I said This is how I would draw a simple baguette with the outline and diagonal lines. What colour is garlic bread? he asked. I looked at the crayons and limited colour-range pens. This would’ve been better with watercolours, I thought. Hmmm… brown I reckon – what do you think? He nodded.

I said quite a few times that there wasn’t really a ‘right or wrong’ way to do their picture and it was theirs to make in whatever way they wanted. I think they really excelled in the putting the picture together part where they could see the caterpillar starting to look like a caterpillar and they could situate it within a landscape of their making. I told them I loved how they were all so different and showed their individual style. Brilliant work KS1!

I put together a little slideshow of their work on my blog: https://capstories.home.blog/schools-workshops/

On Monday, KS1 made an army of brilliant caterpillars! On Tuesday, I will be in dialogue with Vicki at Parley by Parlour. On Wednesday, KS2 have the challenge to make a variety of ingredients illustrations to go into George’s Marvellous Medicine saucepan…

 

 


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Everyday is a workday. Working on something ubiquitous as dialogue, and being attuned to thinking about everyday dialogue, means that everyday is the potential for a ‘work day’: Constantly thinking, learning and ‘working’.

 

Working: to do; productive or operative activity.

Learning: knowledge acquired by systematic study in any field of scholarly application; the act or process of acquiring knowledge or skill; the modification of behavior through practice, training, or experience.

 

We had a family trip to Hardcastle Craggs on a sunny Sunday afternoon and bumped into Alan Dix and Jenny Harris of 509 Arts doing some R&D at Gibson Mill. A quick catch up and talking about the talking about talking R&D of my own practice and we’re swapping suggested contacts for us each to respectively look up. Interesting to swap notes as their own R&D is currently talking to people too.

How do you engage people in dialogue, and meaningful dialogue at that? How do you approach people or invite people in to conversations?

Photo: Hannah Honeywill – The Golden Aerialist, Hardcastle Craggs, 07/07/19


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I attended the Sculpture as Fieldwork conference at Leeds Art Gallery yesterday (Manchester School of Art / University of Huddersfield / Henry Moore Institute collaboration).

The first speaker was Holly Corfield Carr who is interested in caves and writing in caves. She spoke about words as singular sculptural objects and talked about a couple of artists/writers working in caves.

Her paper and prose was quite poetic (she is a poet, so not surprising) and listening to her speak was sometimes a bit like listening the music on a more cerebral level where I was aware of the words being spoken but not really consciously computing their meaning. Possibly the codeine kicking in, IDK.

Talking to a friend after the first session, he noted her use of language as well and that it was sometimes a bit too specialist as we are “non-cave audience”.

Emily Puthoff presented her Hudson Valley Bee Habitat socially engaged/environmental art project which responded me of the novel The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia I’ve recently read.

After lunch Monica Bello from CERN talked about her curatorial and Art Department lead role involving hosting artists in residence. In the Q&A audience member and artist Nicola Ellis asked a question on the residency induction process and any barriers and Monica replied that it was imperative to empower the artist(s) with knowledge so that artists and scientists can talk on the same level. This use of language seemed a common theme coming out of the conference (or perhps that was just what I was attuned to with dialogue at the forfront of my mind).

Next, Ele Carpenter talked about her research into radiation and mapping invisible but potentially deadly isotopes and looking at the visual signifiers. She presented a Fukishima photographer’s work where he photographed the radioactive top soil from his garden being removed and buried, in his garden, in blue plastic (Shuji Akagi).

In the break I was talking to Annie Carpenter about the endurance challenge the conference format presents of sitting and listening for a whole day. We mused the possibility of conferences in transit (like on a boat or a train) or walking conferences but the practicalities of that meaning it would only work for small audiences or frgamented conversations.

[ Dialogue in transit / field dialogue ]

Marion Coutts presented next on icebergs and rocks. She began with a quote from Elizabeth Bishop in a letter to Marion Moore which was something like (this is maybe paraphrased): “Words are things in your head like icebergs or rocks or awkwardly placed pieces of furniture.”

A thing/rock to read. Marion postulated that words are objects and sentences are constructed objects (installations?) with sculpted properties and material materials.

This made me return in my mind to my 2009 work Static

http://www.alicebradshaw.co.uk/static.html

Static is the remains of a hole-punched text The Rocks Remain in constant motion. The found, mass-produced object has been manually hole-punched and the remains captured as stills. The stills created a frame pool which were randomly sequenced to create the moving image based on a random number from the computer’s operating system entropy pool.

The Rocks Remain was a geology book bought in a charity shop – perhaps outdated and obsolete.

Last was Chris Dobtowolski presenting about his triumphs in faliure, ladybird books and nostalgia and his residency in the Antartica. His style was funny and a good end to a great conference. Whilst the other presentations were not dry or dull, and in fact really interesting and engaging on various levels, to bill Chris as last at the end of a long day was a smart curatorial move.

I met Charlotte for a drink and we went to East Street Art’s new space Convention House for sound exploration Ways of Listening II.

Ways of Listening I had been workshop style interventions/explortions earlier in the day. The performances we saw were not exploring the sounds of words but more sounds in space. Ed Cooper’s piece was multi-performers moving through the building making echo/callback sounds like a dialogue between themselves and the building, but it was scripted rather than improv I think and all mic’d up and filmed also which I think really looses something about these types of works. Obviously the documentation is important but when it almost becomes more important and the purpose it somehow looses the impact of the live art work. The next performance was Alex de Little’s Sound of a Room Breathing and seemed to be the documentation of the earlier workshop with those sounds on playback and her silently performing in the space.

Not dismissing or minimising any of the brilliant lectures or sound works I saw/heard, it was the spaces and moments between that were the really interesting: the dialogues and reflections with other people. The conference break chats with Annie and Andy, the candid conversation with Charlotte in the pub, the inbetween performance breathing spaces, the train juorney home. Jon gave us a tour of the building which was very exciting to see the potential and future plans of a space in flux. It really seems the most exciting time to be on the start of a journey to somewhere new.


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Sophie Hope has started a new project on Mouthing Practices “exploring the sounds, speech, utterances and un-articulated moments in project meetings.”

In dialogue there’s non-verbal communication that affects the dialogue when it happens face to face or in person. Sophie’s project seems to be looking at the liminal space between dialogue (that is also part of it) and something that is perhaps much less conscious than the words we say.

“In socially engaged art practices we have to talk to each other, don’t we? My listening to your voice can result in ‘story theft’ – the taking of other people’s stories for my own self gain. Recording, capturing, reworking. A form of cultural embezzlement (Bourdieu) can take place. ‘Giving voice’ implies some people don’t have a voice and others have one to give. Everyone has a voice, it’s just that they aren’t listened to. Or their voices are not articulated in the way power understands.”

This week I have been making a conscious effort to use the word ‘glib’ in everyday conversation. I like the sound the word makes.


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Some interesting terminology diagrams form Failure of Participation :

 

The second diagram infers that dialogical practice overlaps with relational and is politcal (defers to criticality) and the dialogical only exists in the realms of the political and not in social practice (socially engaged practice and community arts separated from this notion of dialogical practice). However, the author does note, “it is important to know we don’t aim to be prescriptive with our language”. It’s a framework of references under the umbrella term of ‘participation’.

 


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