Live Art In Lincoln

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What a way to end the 2009 programme than with a crescendo from My Dads Strip Club. Although not everyone’s cup of tea the events over the 26-28^th November have provided an exceptionally immersive experience for some.

We began on Thursday with an event in the Dog and Bone pub, which I may add is a wonderful venue who are really keen to support art and have a fantastic book exchange scheme. The event saw MDSC present an event which I have dubbed as a stand up comedy style presentation of art and activism and the work of MDSC. Chris’s no frills attitude had the pub filled with laughter at regular intervals, exploring the exploitation of the public through corporations, particularly focusing on coke. MDSC show cased Coke Fuck and other works that highlighted the issues that are often left behind the scenes of large corporations.

The evening ended on a high with pub filled of conversations about creating work with human left over’s and the politics of presenting art that perhaps is a little risky for a Lincoln audience.

Friday’s event was made to tie in with the Mini Wave hosted by Critical Mass in Lincoln. The Mini Wave was a sibling event to the main event in London next week which is a climate protest aiming to raise awareness of the UN Copenhagen conference. After participating in the Mini Wave and narrowly avoiding blue face paint I went alongside a large crowd of protesters and some other found audience members who had assembled en route to the Healthy Hub to be entertained by MDSC presenting an event in support of the days events. Dirty Cash To Clean Green showcased Chris’s drawing whilst Ange animated it live and narrate the evening with tales of the Titanic and other nuggets of information.

The nice thing about Friday was that the event was made almost for the Mini Wave people and they really seemed to enjoy it, after Chris had finished MDSC allowed members of the audience to play with the tools, and various people rose to the challenge creating their own animated art works, on the X Box style tool kit.

The grand finale to a thoroughly entertaining and exhilarating few days finished with two happenings. The first saw Chris peddling deer shit, to willing punters in Lincoln. The premise of which was instead of buying cheap shit for Christmas you should buy deer shit, and so it came to be Chris stood in his flasher jacket in the middle of Lincoln train crossing overtly opening his coat to reveal pouches of glittery laded deer shit to sell to willing punters for £4000, unfortunately he had no takers, but many a puzzled expression. I know what’s going on my Christmas list.

Amelia (1/2)

Last weekend saw Feng-Ru Lee’s performance take place in the Collection Auditorium. The performance began with a film that saw Milee the Sheep and her Animal Orchestra preforming in a forest from dawn to dusk, which felt like the animals were contributing to the natural sounds of the forest and making it come alive. This added to the already set atmosphere and flowed into performance with Milee and the Orchestra taking to the floor to preform a live ensemble to the audince, a concofany of noise and shadows as Milee the Sheep swung a light bulb at her drum skin, vibrating the atmosphere. The performance concluded with a 60 second count down of audince participation, where each person was given a sheet of A4 paper to create a noise with whilst Milee the Sheep counted down via tearing off numbers from a paper pad.

The general reaction from the audince was that the disjointed nature of the work played on the strengths of the atmosphere and created an all encompassing event. After the performance I interviewed members of the audience with out video camera to gage their reactions, my favorite feedback came from a little girl who was talking to the camera with her mother saying how the rabbit from the orchestra was her favorite character and that they enjoyed scrumping the paper to make noises with. I am certainly keen to carry on the participation elements that some of our programming has as I feel there is more to engage with that way that having something presented to you. I am hoping that this will come across in our development day next week. We are finally going to sit down and have a presumably long discussion on our future programming and current evaluation.

A couple of weeks time will see the My Dads Strip Club events in the city, which I am very much looking forward to. A lot of the decisions have been relatively last minuet due to the nature of the work and the activities to co-inside with eco-groups in the city. My Dads Strips Clubs work will tie in with two national / international events that are politically and socially relevant, Buy Nothing Day on the 28th and the Mini Wave event on the 27th; http://www.ecolincs.org/, we are releasing some information with a couple of days / hours notice which I find exciting and intriguing, although the main event is being publicised as normal.

Amelia

Last week both the flyers and posters arrived for Feng-Ru Lee’s forthcoming performance. So we’re distributing those at the moment as well as sending out e-flyers left, right and centre. Have sent some lovely cotton bags to print with one of her perfomance drawings on the side so can’t wait to see how those come out.

For this perfomance, we’re hoping to attract a Lincoln audience as well as those from further afield. We’ve had a couple of articles in the local press this week and The Collection are going to help with our e-marketing, which should both help in this respect. Fingers crossed for a good turn-out.

Amelia and I had a catch-up meeting with Feng-Ru (Milee) last week in the oldest pub in England to see how things are progressing and talk through how things will pan out on the day. Also arranging things like her filming day in Thieves Woods and transport for all her equipment/props and things on the day (courtesy of a kindly offer from a lovely white van man). Also trying to sort out volunteers and things to help out on the day as we were a bit rushed off our feet at Art-jacking.

Amelia and I also visited Broad St in Nottingham as part of Hatch Abroad, an evening of performances in bars and restaurants etc along the length of the road. I had to leave early but managed to squeeze in two fantastic and extremely bizarre performances from Nottingham-founded Reckless Sleepers in a beautiful old theatre and Nottingham based Daniel Hunt and his chum in a dark and dingy pub basement. Highly recommended.

All very exciting! Anyway, must go, must send out more e-flyers…….

Anneka

Looking to the future is a funny thing, ambition and realistic ambition can often be two very different things. Aiming high is definitely essential for progression but its important to realise the immediate capabilities that we have.

The reason I say this is the Lincoln Art Programme has set its self a bar, and in my opinion a high bar to progress from, the Art Jacking debate was most definitely a success, but yes there is room for improvement. The pressure is on to put bums on seats but that can often be a distraction. Feng-Ru Lee’s performance is only a few weeks away and the hard work of marketing is kicking in now. We are behind with flyer printing as we had a custom size created but they are due back any day now, so its not too much of a problem.

One thing that has stuck in all of our heads ever since John (Plowman) (our mentor) mentioned it is that printed publicity is not always necessary. I am beginning to agree, making use of distribution networks and the excessive amount of online marketing facilities is creating way for cheaper and potentially more direct marketing. This is one of the successes of the debate, however the problem still lies with attracting a local audince. I tend to think that a local audince would be the ones the printed publicity is for.

Next week we are getting together to develop the future into 2010, and we are going to pay a visit to Hatch, a live art platform in Nottingham, on the way. There is a strange tension in the group about inclusivity and having a range of high profile works and that of emerging artists for our programme. My initial reaction is to have a big impact in Lincoln, and less so to worry about level of development, but we shall see.

Amelia

I thought I would reflect on the Lincoln Art Programmes most recent event ‘Art Jacking’. As the Lincoln Art Programme is focusing on initiating a live art orientated programme, we decided to initiate a debate on the role of live art in public environments. We invited various speakers to be involved in an open debate with our audience, including Lois Keidan from the Liver Art Development Agency, and Laura Eldret from Collecting Live Art.

The discussion began with the various speakers talking about their own relationships with live art and how they feel it fits with unexpected audiences and public environments. With a-n review editor Hugh Dichmont getting a few laughs from the audience explaining his embarrassment and pity for live art performers an participants. Before the audience got the opportunity to explain their own thoughts and experiences on live art events.

The event was a great success, specifically in terms of the audience who attended, we understand that we are building new audiences in a city that has little other artistic activity, but the interest in the Lincoln Art Programme is really high, attracting both local audiences and arts professionals from across the country, its great that we had people travelling from London, Liverpool, Norwich and Manchester all to Lincoln, as well as people from East Midlands arts bodies who are interested to see the Lincoln art programme develop. I think people are excited to see the Lincoln art programme, and watch how it grows and develops.

There is always the worry when hosting a debate that the discussion will trial off and speakers will struggle to draw out a discussion. But this debate seemed to grow as the event went on, the audience became actively involved in the discussion, and with various conflicting opinions

We had one blunt comment from the audience which I quite like;

“Lincoln’s a pretty crusty place. Things like this is only going to make it better”

I was trying to think during the debate about how I’m meant to interpret the word ‘crusty’. But I think he meant crusty as in a ‘bit stale’, a bit behind maybe, and that this is only going to freshen things up, bringing innovative contemporary activity to the city.

A noticeable group absentee was students from the University. I’ve being told by other course leaders from other universities that they also have difficulties in raising enthusiasms from their students. and maybe when I was a student i was guilty of the same thing, this is something we at the Lincoln Art programme are going to have to re-address, and find better strategies for attracting their attention.

Next up, event number two out of three is Feng-Ru Lee’s performance on Saturady 7^th November, Mille will underkae her alter ego, milee the sheep, and is bringing with her, her own ‘animal orchestra’ for a surreal musical performance. check out the website for more details.