Festial

This morning, I felt a flash of happiness as I sat at the kitchen table making ‘free gifts’ for the front covers of 180 copies of the new Kalender by dipping paper in elderberry juice and rolling it into beads. Whilst I was absorbed in this meditative process, I could hear what can only be described as ‘unusual’ sounds floating down the stairs as Trevor worked on his soundtrack to the forthcoming video. It all felt so right.

Wait a minute, ‘forthcoming video’? Let’s get this straight. Installation for Norwich Fringe Festival starts on Monday, six days away. The event opens on Friday. I am expecting to show my video in the undercroft of Dragon Hall, a fabulous medieval merchant’s house in Norwich. To accompany it in a ‘less-is-more’ kind of a way, I am printing out the first five editions of Kalender enlarged to A4 and having them bound into a hardbacked book. The new Kalender will be stacked alongside as an exclusive Fringe giveaway.

So, what stage am I at?

– Soundtrack at a delicate stage, with Trevor alternately despondent and ‘a bit happier’.
– Video editing not started yet.
– Kalender omnibus not printed or bound.
– No lectern or plinth organised for display of book.
– No DVD player or TV monitor organised for showing of video.
– New Kalender not yet with the printers, let alone rubber-stamped or with the free gift stapled to the front.
– A pitifully small proportion of the required number of free gifts completed, though the production line is rolling.

Right. So what happened to that flash of happiness?!

It was my turn for a crit at our artists’ group meeting yesterday afternoon, and I decided to pass around past issues of Kalender for comment. Some interesting feedback, and all in all quite encouraging. So, I’m feeling a bit more positive about the fifth issue of Kalender that’s in production right now. I was worried that it may be in danger of becoming pedestrian and predictable, but I’ve had a break from it as our lovely friends Hilde and Alex from Harrow came to stay over the weekend, and maybe the gap has been beneficial.

On Monday, we took Hilde up to St Andrew’s so that she could see the location – she’s been following this blog and reading Kalender on the Festial website – only to find a notice on the door stating that the church has had to be closed for internal repairs. Oh no! But I went across to the keyholders’ bungalow and although they were not at home, the enormous key was hanging in a special box beside the door. Swiftly borrowing it (and, of course, leaving a note to say that I’d done so!) we were able to gain access. Inside, it’s quite a sorry sight, as wood and masonry have been falling. Sadly, the faded charm of the place is verging on disintegration. I’ve since been in touch with the keyholder and he has kindly given me permission to get the key and visit anytime, on the understanding that ‘on my own head be it’.

Anyway, I’ve had a couple of new ideas this morning that I’m about to go and try out, and hopefully the injection of new images will liven things up a bit. One thing that came out of the crit was that people could see the structure underlying each issue, and also the regular ‘features’ that are beginning to emerge, but they don’t feel that it’s a problem, i.e. that boring predictability is setting in!

Although at the moment it often feels frustratingly like skimming over the surface, I need to keep reminding myself that Kalender is actually building into a sizeable sketchbook of potential starting points for exploration. In fact, I can imagine it leading to at least a couple of years’ work once the Festial year ends, and that’s a reassuring thought.

Returning late on Tuesday evening from a music festival on Dartmoor, I wasn’t sure how ready I felt for the next day’s festival of a rather different kind.

I had the bare bones of an idea of what to do for Festial’s fifth festival, Assumption. This was an important medieval festival, one of four special Mary feast days that fell (not co-incidentally, I feel) during each of the seasons. This one was popularly known as ‘Our Lady in Harvest’ and I had this in mind, as well as the physicality emphasised in the belief that Mary had been bodily (as opposed to spiritually) lifted up to heaven after her death.

Unusually, probably uniquely, for me, the work was also to have a gender element. This is surprising as I have a particularly vocal dislike of work centring around so-called ‘women’s issues’. But I’m interested in the fact that women had a very raw deal in earlier medieval times despite their skill and knowledge in healing, but after the cult of Mary took hold they were given far greater respect.

So, on Wednesday morning I went up to Wood Dalling church for a reccy to see if my vague plans were viable. Deciding that they probably were, I returned that afternoon and spent several hours photographing, filming, making an elderberry ‘rosary’ and generally hanging around to see what else would happen. As usual, it ended up as a race against time and failing light.

I hadn’t nearly finished when the keyholder appeared with a wheelie bin and the enormous church key. Responding to my shocked negative reply when asked if I was ready for her to lock up, she kindly said I could stay as long as I liked and pop the key back through her letterbox. Emboldened, I asked whether it would be OK to come back later, after dark, to do some sound recording. ‘Oh yes’, she said, ‘as long as you return the key by 7am tomorrow as there’ll be a service in the church then.’ (!)

What an opportunity! Later that evening we loaded up a collection of seemingly bizarre objects (luckily under cover of darkness) including laptop, mic, cello, singing bowl, jar of water, drum and reindeer-hoof rattle. The full moon meant that visibility in the church shouldn’t be too much of a problem even if there was no electric light.

In the event, we discovered that there is electric light in the church, which made operations more practical if less romantic. I had hoped to see a bat or two, and despite the light a few of them did break cover to flutter around atmospherically.

Trevor asked me to walk around the church playing the various instruments to see where they resonated best while he sorted out the technicalities of sound recording. This was a memorable experience. But the session can’t be called a resounding success as we were unable to resolve the technical difficulties and eventually had to call it a day.

That’s not the end though, as Trevor has ideas for alternative recording methods so the envisaged video soundtrack is still a distinct possibility.

Yesterday evening we went to the private view of 'Ammunition', a group show of anti-war art at St Margaret's Church in Norwich. Some very powerful, memorable, uncompromising work; but leaving aside the debate as to what would actually happen in Iraq if the troops suddenly pulled out, it was just so great to see challenging art in Norwich. It was the same venue as our slash exhibion back in June, which has had an unfortunate reputation in the past. On the other hand, it's practically the only place in Norwich that's big, painted white, and available to be hired out for group shows. If there are more shows like 'Ammunition' planned, things may well be looking up…

Earlier, I had collected the 'Giant St Christopher issue' of Kalender from the printers and I really am pretty pleased with it, all things considered. The print quality is great considering it's a cheap and cheerful option, and despite my anxiety there was so much material that it filled 16 pages again (the first Kalender was a 12-pager).

I do worry sometimes that the 'enigmatic imagery' (in the words of my original proposal to the Arts Council) might be mistaken for weird Christian evangelicism, but that was neatly balanced when I collected the previous Kalender and the print shop's managing director assumed it was a witchcraft publication.

So, it's back to rubber-stamping and stapling and writing comp slips and stuffing envelopes – the old routine.

While researching St Christopher for the last festival, I was disconcerted to come across an American Catholic shopping website where a lot of the beliefs I think of as 'medieval' still appear to be alive and kicking. Just try googling for 'St Christopher medals' and see what comes up!!! Pages and pages and pages of them.

I started to feel a bit insecure about some of the ground I was standing on in this project, but Trevor pointed out that these American Catholic buyers of lifesize crucifixes and figurines of Jesus playing baseball (yes, really) are also living in a world of expensive cars and comfortable houses quite unlike the medieval landscape. And medieval people had quite a different sense of time. They had no idea that the world had existed for millions of years. It had been created by God at a time not far back in history and would be ending – with Judgement Day for all – in the very near future. This must surely have affected their perception of life: perhaps everything was bigger, in sharper focus and more vivid to them.

Anyway, the new Kalender is up on the Festial website now!

I'm finding myself in a period of uncertainty about the project. The past two days have been totally given over to working on Kalender. Selecting and preparing images and finding text are part of the work, I know, and it's absolutely true that by doing this I'm generating ideas for further exploration.

The problem, I think, lies in the fact that I'm questioning the validity of the St Christopher journey as 'art'. Does that matter? Is it what I do with the material collected along the way that counts? Does it matter if some of the festivals end up feeling less significant than others? Will I ever have time to make more ambitious work that side-steps away from literal responses?

At the same time as I'm musing on this, I'm aware of a box containing 150 copies of the last 'Bonfires and Relics' Kalender with its stapled-on free gift, to be left in various places for people to find and (hopefully) take away. So I need to see to that too. Thanks to Trevor, it's also up on the website: www.world-tree.co.uk/festial.

I've been sending out around 30 copies of each issue to press contacts, curators and arts officers. There have been three Kalenders now and they've been met with a resounding silence. This, I'm sure, is adding to the feeling of stasis.

Having said that, hammering the layout together with my computer guru is always so exciting that hopefully these worries will recede.