SEPTEMBER 2022

Our A-N Bursary (Time-Money-Space) has enabled us to be residents at FuseBox, Wired Sussex, where we will be expanding our knowledge in immersive technologies and thinking about ways to make and present VR video material to different audiences.

To kick-start our project, we led an experimental workshop with Yael Flexer’s dance group Acting Our Age at South East Dance. The dancers participated in a series of processes to explore their individual and collective responses to this chair, a black faux leather LazyBoy. The chair has been with us for some years, an object of resonance conjured through a personal narrative by a woman we worked with in 2018. We are looking at the differences between watching 360 video as an unwrapped panoramic on a single screen or on a headset; where this places the viewer, how you engage with multiple actions and movements, what these experiences offer the viewer. Also exploring alternative ways of ‘making sense’ of ideas and images generated through performance and video, using drawing and collage.

Over this month we are participating in an Immersive Discovery Day with Chris Chowen at FuseBox and resolving how we want to share work at a Wired Sussex Show & Tell. Our A-N Bursary also provides us with technical training with Inkibit, a female-founded collective supporting the development of AR and VR, and mentoring with artist and film-maker Andrew Kotting. More to follow…

FuseBox’s Immersive Discovery Day was great, with Chris giving an overview into the latest tech developments and chance to try some things out. We didn’t get to do this when we first joined FuseBox during the pandemic, so it was nice to spend time reflecting on what we knew and how we can develop our learning. Particular hi-lights were playing with SightLine (an ‘old’ VR game, where the viewer activates change by looking away), Google Earth VR, TiltBrush – and OpenBrush a new open source version of this VR drawing tool developed by a FuseBox resident. This person is about the walk Richie’s Plank.

Yael Flexer kindly came and met with us to look at the footage we recorded with her dance group. Her insights were really useful and confirmed our suspicions that the recorded rehearsal event needed to be presented as such, with its flaws and our interventions. There is scope to develop aspects of what we learnt during the session, to refine how the movement correlates with the chair, but we also need to make some decisions about what we want to communicate through this, how attached we remain to the core story or whether we let the action reveal our intentions without further direction through narrative or text. We will try some of these things out next week at the FuseBox Show & Tell.

Lastly, we met with Mike Sansom, a pyrotechnics expert and rather wonderful man who is willing to help us blow up the LazyBoy chair! Michael Danks introduced us and will be involved in the filming, lots of talk about cameras, slo-mo, drones, 360, Go-Pro, as well as types of explosives, scale of fire balls and smoke. Very exciting!

And here’s a funny character we came across as we were leaving Mike’s farm. Not sure whether an emu will feature in this work, but logging it here as a point of reference!

This week we participated in FuseBox’s Show & Tell (15.09.22). There were six ‘demo’ presentations, free pizza and beer, and about 60 people attended. It was an intense experience; hosting our space, setting people up on the headsets, talking about what we are doing, and gaining a sense of how it is being received.

We put together an edit of what is now called REHEARSAL / REMOVAL, adding text and unwrapping the 360 footage to reveal the whole dance studio. We also had two headsets, one with an outdoor scene and audio, another giving viewers the chance to feel like they are inside the studio with the dancers moving around them.

We met some great people and had some useful conversations – engaged, curious, constructive – and spent the following day digesting what we’d learnt, thinking about how to resolve this work, (for the time being at least). We’ve given ourselves a tight schedule as the chair will be blown up in early November, so whatever we do with it will need to happen before then! Plans are for sound composition, another green screen shoot, a group performance in a field and the fireball finale.

We’re taking a break for a week, whilst Annis works at Documenta with Project Art Works and Sarah prepares for a new academic term at Central St Martins. Brighton Women’s Centre have also sent out our flyer to promote participation in SHIFT, the new body of work leading on from this residency that will commence next month, based at Phoenix Arts Space.

Our A-N Artists Bursary included spending time with Andrew Kotting, and we met him in his Hasting studio this week. Andrew is an incredible artist and film-maker and has recently been exploring using VR. He showed us his film The Tell Tale Rooms (recently shown @sheffdocfest) and we shared some of the things we have been working on. The conversation was really inspiring, talking about why use VR, what it can offer, questions, concerns, ways of sharing the work and what things we’ve found works, and what doesn’t. Some really useful practical / technical advise and suggestions of things to look at, such as Tango, by Zbigniew Rybczynski. Andrew is a wealth of knowledge, a frank critic and a generous soul. We came away with a head full of ideas, things to try and things to change. We’ll meet Andrew again in a few months.

Meanwhile, we checked in with Brighton Women’s Centre and met the two Peer Facilitators who will be supporting the women participating in our project. The weekly sessions kick-off next week, so we have begun planning, working out what we want this first workshop to be, how to pitch it to a group who are likely to be nervous and in unfamiliar surroundings at Phoenix Arts Space.

We also spent the day editing the film we made with South East Dance, using a new sound track from Jim Kirby and playing with some of the effects and audio we had previously recorded. Talking with Andrew had freed us up to look at this work differently, which was liberating as it carries so much history for us and we are now able to look at it anew. We’ve booked in one of the dancers to come and work with us next week in the green screen at FuseBox and are excited to see what this might offer. And we’re keen to go and see the new show at the Whitechapel Gallery, Moving Bodies, Moving Images, which feels rather timely!

OCTOBER 2022

Fantastic start to the month, with some green screen experiments and our first workshop with Brighton Women’s Centre. We have a date to blow up the lazy boy chair, so asked dancer Clea Godsill to come and try some ideas out whilst it’s still in one piece! Clea was wonderful to work with, her movements revealing new ways for us to think about this aspect of the work. It may be that these sequences become a prelude to the explosion, viewed in 360 on a headset.

On Friday, we met our new collaborators, ten women from BWC who came to Phoenix Arts Space and took part in our introductory workshop. It was such a relief to finally begin this part of the project, to have everyone in the room to start to build a process together, to explore this idea of shifts, from a personal and collective perspective. There was a lot of generosity, some laughter and thoughtful honesty, all very welcome. We played some games and responded to images, making short videos and compiling a playlist of songs that make us want to move. In the evening we also enjoyed seeing some of the work in the Brighton Photo Fringe, which has just opened and can be a resource whilst we work at Phoenix Arts Space.

Here are the images chosen by the group as a starting point:

Second session with BWC – we were relieved and delighted by how positive the group felt this week (and that they all came back!) – everyone seemed more comfortable with the space, with us, each other, and the ways we are working. We watched footage that Annis had edited of last week’s video clips with music (‘songs that make you want to move’), looked at some examples of our past work to further explain our research process, did drawings to loosen up together and created individual and collective collages.

One group member said she’d left really inspired last week, and another had sent a message on how upset she was to miss the session due to ill health. We made little collage packs for everyone to take home – there’s a lot of creativity amongst the group, a desire to give things a go, to be playful, to worry less about outcomes, all of which is really positive. We also talked about the week-in-residence in March 2023 at Phoenix, the form of which we don’t yet know but that there are many ways we could approach it based on this sense of speculation and openness.

For our third workshop with Brighton Women’s Centre we decided to focus on text, using words as image, responding to something someone said last week about memory, physical impairment and the slippages of language. It was a tricky session in some ways, probably trying to do too much and not leaving enough space for reflection. What did we learn from what we did? On a practical level, it would have been useful to critique the images, looking at which words (and the ways they were written) were working and why, what they revealed or proposed. We also laid the tables out in angles across the room – it allowed more individual focus and new groupings but made navigation difficult (especially for the wheelchair users) and inhibited easy conversation and comparison between images. Note to self: come back to these images at a later date, perhaps with a slideshow of all the work generated so far, to both review what we’ve done and to also see the qualities and capacities of certain approaches, the mark-making and visual languages emerging.

We also looked at the Phoenix’s current exhibition REAL UTOPIAS Photo Fringe 2020: Collectives Hub. None of our project participants had visited Phoenix before, despite it being just a few minutes walk from the BWC building, and one woman said it was the first exhibition she had ever been to. We had two new women join today, and the group overall appear to be gaining in confidence, able to easily welcome others and expressing a buoyancy and pleasure in the speed and freedom of these working practices.

Next week we will be making larger ‘self-portrait’ drawings before taking a break, when we will consider what we want to do next. There is an internal struggle with maintaining a healthy process and pace alongside our own goals for this project. There is a lot of fragility and uncertainty for everyone despite the robust sense of purpose during the actual sessions.  How do we ‘make sense’ of all our ideas, differences and needs? As artists, how can we create new work ‘speaking nearby‘ (Trinh T.Minh-ha) rather than for these women?

The two-hour workshops feel so brief, but this is a building process, with each encounter informing the next as well as leaning on what came before. There’s also a desire from the group to go to the woods soon, to play outside, and we are keen to introduce 360 video as another tool through which to explore landscape (in its widest sense).

The fourth session at Phoenix was a joyous day; everyone worked really hard, supporting each other, drawing on the shared skills and vocabulary we are developing. One woman said she sleeps well on a Friday evening, having “got everything out during the workshop”.  We explored drawing as metaphor, alluding to images, objects and sensations through colour, mark-making and thinking through the body.

We also spent a day at FuseBox looking at the green screen footage we recorded with Clea. This video may become Part II of a triptych: Rehearsal – Shifting – Letting Go (the final part being the blowing up of the LazyBoy Chair).

NOVEMBER 2022

We blew up the LazyBoy chair!

On Wednesday we did our final animations of the chair in the green screen, wearing a morph suit, before it was taken away and delivered to it’s final resting place.

Pressing the button to blow up the chair – after so many years of living with this object and the story it carries – was a thrilling experience! We are very grateful to Mike Sansom and his colleague Tom for making this happen. We’ll be looking at the explosion footage in the next few weeks and working out how all the elements of LAZY fit together.

Giddy from the blast and gathering up the detritus, we left Mike’s farm feeling elated and excited to see the footage that was recorded, both by Mike (in slow motion) and Michael Danks (in 360). Both of these men have been very kind, and generous with their expertise.

The following day we met with our group from Brighton Women’s Centre at the Phoenix Arts Space. We reviewed the work we’d made so far and explored mark-making and performative actions, quietly watching each other and offering reflections on what we saw, felt, assumed, understood. The women have become a supportive, critically astute group who are trusting us, themselves and each other more and more each week. We laugh a lot and it is a great joy to work with them each week.

“this project is one big learning experience”

“it feels really experimental”

“sometimes it scares me what is coming out of my brain”

The Phoenix have a new exhibition on, Press and Play, so we decided to try mono-printing with the group this week. We took our chosen objects as the focus, exploring the conversations we are having with material, evocation and memory.

The above drawing holds ambivalent stories about grandmothers and school, nurture and power, and one person commented that it felt like an image from a Harold Pinter play.

Below is a monoprint that speaks about trees. Next week we are planning to visit Stanmer Park and record audio amongst the trees, so this image occurring is one of those funny things that happens when you work closely with people – unspoken shared knowledges, slippages, synchronicities.

We have some trips lined up, which BWC and the group were keen, on but in reality it is challenging – in terms of transport & access and disrupting the weekly rhythm we have built. Often people are now saying that they have come to Phoenix despite not feeling well or not having been out all week – our Fridays are becoming a sanctuary, which we are all feeling. BWC are trying to get a minibus for next week’s woodland visit to ensure everyone can come, and we have hired a space at Stanmer Park in case of wet weather, so that those who are less able to walk have somewhere warm to sit. There’s a lot of logistics – hoping it works out, and is indeed the right thing to do.

We have also now undertaken an introduction to Unity software with Inkibit. They are a new female-led creative collective, who ‘use immersive tech to help underrepresented groups tell stories from the messy edge’ – perfect for us! This training has been funded by our A-N Artists Bursary, delivered by the lovely Laura Loonstein.

Here we have tried placing a monoprint image from last week as an object in the 3D virtual space.

Big day with BWC group today – a trip to the woods in Stanmer Park. In the end we had five women, a reduced group size mostly due to covid. Jess from BWC organised a minibus and we hired a room at the Old House in case of rain. As it turned out, the weather was glorious. We did some focused, quite intense writing exercises and everyone offered to read theirs aloud, which was a wonderful moment. We then traipsed around the park, searching for a tree that felt most relatable, in proportions, in structure, in character, the way it stood there. Pressed for time, we didn’t manage to do all the video experiments we had hoped, but it was good to go out together, to chat and to enjoy the sunshine.

Back at Phoenix we then made a huge drawing on Fabriano paper, though everyone was pretty exhausted!

DECEMBER 2022

We met with the dancers from Acting Our Age (South East Dance) this morning, to watch LAZY and share a few mince pies. The video has come a long way since we met them in July, and it was great to show them what we have made and get their feedback.  Also useful to see it projected. Comments were useful and insightful and it was agreed that we’d like to work together again.

We then dashed up to Phoenix Arts Space to meet our BWC group. We had put together some of the footage from the woods, with recorded spoken words, and it was oddly affecting. We discussed why this is, and looked at some other video art together before setting up the space for our own videos and animations. We also did a fun drawing exercise capturing movement to loosen ourselves up.

We were planning to develop these videos during our last session of 2022, but had to go online due to nasty colds and travel strikes! We watched our 360 video STATIC together and had a conversation about pacing, repetition and ruminating, what we do when we feel stuck.

We then asked the group what shifts they may have noticed about themselves since we started working together in October:

“I have become more aware of myself. More open to change within myself, in a more constructive way”

“I’ve been stimulated being around other women and being introduced to new ideas. It did shift something in me, I suddenly got ideas. I couldn’t find that oomph to be creative before”

“My brain is waking up and I feel so alive”

Before taking a break for xmas we are meeting Jane Moore and Jess Hoult from BWC to review the project at this mid-point, and to discuss whether we will do something together for International Women’s Day at Brighton Dome on 11th March 2023.

JANUARY 2023

LAZY is complete. We met with Kerry, who gave us the story, to check she was happy with what we have made. It was interesting for her to hear her voice from four years ago, to reflect on where she was then and is now. It was a reminder, in many ways, of how hard these past years have been for everyone, the toll of the pandemic and the ways it has affected our sense of movement, progress, development.

Friday 13th we were back in the room with our BWC gang. We talked about this idea of ‘shift’ more and watched LAZY together. Great feedback, insightful and pertinent. Then we all donned black balaclavas and tried some experiments moving red chairs around the 360 camera. Much mirth ensued…and the discovery that “you can’t laugh in a balaclava!”

Our second session after xmas extended this idea of the shift, with an exercise in listening and reflecting on moments in our own lives. These narratives will be explored as mono-prints next week.

This week we also presented our work STATIC in the Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins, King’s Cross. The exhibition, Vestibule, is a two week series of events, with the gallery acting as a classroom, storeroom, an archive, a making space and a showroom. It was really useful for us to show STATIC again, using the wallpaper as a place to reflect on the work with visitors through drawing and conversation.

We revisited mono-printing techniques this week, with a different focus and using colour. Some wonderful images emerged, with everyone very focussed in exploring the medium and the best ways to convey their ideas. Also visited the artists working in residence in the main gallery at Phoenix, to learn more about how they are working and using the space.

We’ve also just heard that our previous film STATIC won Best 360 Film at the Cannes World Film Festival, December 2022!

Beautiful session with BWC today. We did a big automatic drawing exercise, and reflected on how relaxed this process now is, compared to when we began and everyone felt wary and self-conscious of making a mark. We also talked through the mono-prints and the stories behind them. Some tears, some revelations, laughter and even a spontaneous rendition of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ by Annis and one of the group that was incredibly joyful. We watched Tracey Emin’s Why I Never Became a Dancer and revisited the work-in-progress exhibition in the gallery. One wall had been covered in words and some of the group expressed how much they’d like to do this. Then we tried out an idea in the Project Space using the 360 camera, that we will watch on a VR headset next week.

Also met with Chloe and Ainoa at Phoenix to discuss extending our project until September when we could take part in their Community Takeover, in the main gallery. We are thinking that this is an opportunity to resolve some of the ideas which we won’t get to before the residency in March, and also delighted that this proposition means that we can stay in contact with the BWC group. Just got to work out how we can fund this extension of SHIFT now…

FEBRUARY

We watched the 360 experiment we made last week on headsets today – a new experience for everyone.  It was exciting to observe the space and each other within this media. We also talked more about the residency in March; what we want from it, who to invite, how to use the time. The main thing is for it to be maneagable and on our terms, to maintain the methodology of speculation and play. We are taking a break for half-term and then have two more sessions to shape things up.

Today was spent reviewing where we are at with the project and trying to make a plan for the week in residence at Phoenix. It’s a tricky balance between wanting to have time and space to play with the ideas more but to also give everyone chance to share their work with others in different ways. We didn’t manage to pin this down much today, too many different ideas and needs! We did sing together, did a quick collective drawing and looked at a slideshow of everything we’d done, which some people felt was a lot to take in. Need to make some decisions this weekend, get the poster made, and finalise plans for a ‘creative conversation’ at The Dome with Brighton Women’s Centre.

MARCH 2023

Finalised a rough schedule for next week’s residency at Phoenix Arts Space, which is now on their website. And celebrated one of the group’s birthdays, with cake and a song! Also planning for different people to facilitate activities with invited guests, so went through ideas, what people liked doing over the past six months, approaches and methodologies. Some of the women also keen to join us in a ‘Creative Conversation’ at The Dome in Brighton to celebrate International Women’s Day on Saturday 11th March.

RESIDENCY WEEK at PHOENIX ARTS SPACE

We have been at Phoenix for the past two days, and are feeling a little overwhelmed by how well it is going. The group are being fantastic; we’ve re-filmed a 360 performative sequence, installed a pop-up exhibition, made a new 360 video + spoken poem, planned two workshops to be co-led by different people and hosted a ‘friends & family’ viewing. The SHIFT Collective are fully operational and we are loving and laughing a lot. And we have a new title for the next stage of our project!

We are mid-way through the week and taking a moment to step back and review what we’ve done and what is ahead. Tomorrow the group are facilitating workshops for BWC staff and for other members of the Peer to Peer support groups. This is a big challenge for everyone, a generous offer to bring others into our processes and to hold the space for two hours.

And yesterday was International Women’s Day 2023!

We are attempting to make a new 360 video that features the women each using their bodies to explore their interpretation of the word ‘shift’ within an empty white space – the same space that is now full of work as a result of the residency. It’s a bit over-ambitious, and is likely to be somewhat unresolved, but good to try out and we are learning loads. Here’s a screen grab!

OUR RESIDENCY WEEK:

Monday: re-film ‘Balaclava Ballet’ – a work-in-progress 360 sequence merging performance and videos, made in the empty Project Space to be shown in the same space. Install pop-up display of work made over the past six months.

Tuesday: Friends & Family invited to look at the work on display. Poem by Leila added to 360 video from POV inside a tree, watched on a headset.

Wednesday: re-make some of the little videos for Balaclava Ballet. Group gathers to plan and test ideas to facilitate workshops later in the week.

Thursday: WFH, prepare presentation for Saturday and edit video material.

Friday: 12 people experience different creative processes (BWC staff and fellow Peers) led by the SHIFT group. We were all anxious but also elated, everyone contributing and the workshops went well. Cole & Joslin re-hung the Project Space, with A2 poster prints of selected works.

Saturday: 10.30am slideshow, video and discussion with group + guests at BWC’s IWD at The Dome. 2pm – 5pm, Project Space opened to the public. Use time in the space for everyone to view their video sections and discuss sound etc. Finalise edit of Balaclava Ballet

Sunday: 12pm – 4pm, public viewing in Project Space. De-install.

Beautiful day, last of our weekly sessions with everyone together to reflect and play. Some anxiety about endings, but all very positive in terms of last week, what we learnt, what we gained, what was overcome. There is such a strong sense of camaraderie amongst the group, that we have all been through something together.

We gave each person a portfolio of their work, shared a cake, drew some portraits and improvised some hilarious 30 second performances with a random selection of objects. We also titled the selected works from the Project Space exhibition, and talked about how it felt to open up our project to others.

We won’t be meeting again until mid-April, when we go monthly. Need to think about what this ‘shift’ looks like, how we navigate a change in momentum with an eye on an ending in the form of a Community Takeover in the Phoenix Gallery in September.

APRIL 2023

It’s been a month since we last all met together, and today was the start of the monthly sessions leading towards the Community Takeover in September. Many of the group have met socially over the past month, to do things and also to fill their Friday slot in a new way.

We decided to focus on the idea of a chair, following on from LAZY, and ideas and comments that have surfaced about this item of furniture and the stories we might have about them. We wrote some exquisite corpse short stories, made lots of chair monoprints (to animate) and wrote our own reflections.

Then we tested reading aloud with a microphone – how does it feel to hear your voice and your words amplified? Trepidation and laughter, it felt great to see everyone stand up to the mic.

We had chairs that revealed shame, chairs that stopped you feeling useless, chairs of prohibition, chairs that posed mysteries, chairs that evoke lost family and chairs that facilitated the imagination.

MAY 2023

We are back in residence at FuseBox to spend some time focussing on the work we’ve made and what we want to consolidate by August. Great to have more time to play and bounce ideas around.

Inspired by Agnes Varda today, thinking about trees, and holes, and confessionals…

…and playing around with ideas about cabbages and grief…

Also met with Jake Parker (Brighton-based prop maker) to discuss possibilities of him fabricating something monstrous and surprising from the remains of our LazyBoy chair. Meeting him again next week to look at the blown up material to work out what it could become.

Laid out the remains of the LazyBoy chair at FuseBox. Strangely compelling to see all the elements in this way. Jake went through it to begin to make sense of the material and how to use it.

Also played about some more in the green screen, re-enacting a clog dance from a BWC workshop. Used blur to capture shifts in movement and altered the colour saturation. Thinking this could be something we do with some of our group, bringing them to FuseBox.

19/05/23, we met with the BWC group today for a session at Phoenix. Struggled to plan this as meeting now on a monthly basis creates new challenges. We re-visited ideas around the ‘blue emotional sponge’ and everyone made quick drawings of things they remembered distinctly from the process so far. Cabbages, big boots, line drawings, trees, chairs, sponges, the welcome of a cup of tea.

We tried to make little chairs from matchsticks; bit of a disaster as our ambition was greater than our tools and skills! Wrong glue, sticky fingers and impatience. Interesting to see who persisted, and there was some curious objects made. We burnt these at the end in the car park, which was a lovely moment of ‘naughtiness’. Almost everyone was there, which felt amazing, that they are still so engaged despite having less regular contact.

Also looked at some video clips and talked them through things we’ve been looking at and trying out. Agnes Varda’s heart shaped potatoes, Louis Fuller’s Serpentine Dance (circa 1900), the cabbage strip, searching for holes in trees, distorted movements of the body to explore our ideas about small and big shifts, evoking the monoprints and the uncertainty of change.

Next week we are meeting Andrew Kotting for our second mentoring session, to review work we’ve made and have a chat. Then on Friday we are hoping to meet the BWC group at FuseBox to try some more dancing in the green screen.

25/05/2023 Really good morning with Andrew Kotting. We showed him all the video work we’ve made this past six months, mostly unresolved, and his feedback was incredibly useful. Also talked about the ways headsets might be used in public contexts, what we can achieve with the event in September and how we might extend the ideas further in the future. Andrew is a generous, gregarious soul, very frank and insightful – we came away feeling energised and with a bit more critical distance having watched the footage with him together.

We then dropped off the remains of the LazyBoy chair with Jake Parker, leaving it with him in a garage to tinker with over the next month. It was a beautiful day so we sat by the sea in the sunshine before heading off to FuseBox for their Show & Tell evening. Saw some fascinating new work-in-progress and ate pizza. Great day.

26/05/23

Worked at Fusebox all day, with some of the BWC group coming in to try out their Shift-Moves in the green screen. Really nice to work on a one-to-one and talk through ideas with people, and dance around. Also tried out placing the figures on collages we made back in October.

Popped in at Phoenix to scope out the space now that we are starting to settle on how we might use it in September.

02/06/23 Lovely day at FuseBox with some of the BEC group. We filmed three more ‘shift-moves’ dances and some sounds, then in the afternoon went to explore the area we are filming next week.

09/06/23

Met with artist Katy Beinart and Sarah McCarthy from Phoenix Community Centre, to discuss how our work can share the gallery space in September.  Then had a session with the BWC group, drawing, writing and making little musical moments. It is hard to share the bigger picture plans for September, as resources, budgets, ideas etc not yet resolved. Hopefully we can go through it all properly when we next meet in July.

Also did some filming that has been planned for ages, in the beautiful early evening sunshine.

29/06/23

We met up this week to review our plans, sort out what we need to do, printing, editing, budget etc. Had an evening swim in a very warm sea followed by fish & chips, which was glorious.

30/06/23

Great morning at FuseBox. Chris Chowen, Innovation & Technology Manager at Wired Sussex, is collaborating with us to develop an AI / Open Mic event in September. With one of the BWC group, we tested out the possibilities for using voice – words and song – to see what images were thrown up by the AI. We also checked to see what happened when you gave the AI offensive content, and were relieved that it just didn’t respond! Members of FuseBox came to have a look and we met a great musician who sang for us and may join us for the Open Mic event.

JULY 2023

Meetings with the various parties involved in the Community Takeover, planning the exhibition and scheduled events, which will include workshops, a meal, a talk and the Open Mic. Also visited a fantastic community organisation that gives away / rents cheap AV equipment and met up with Jake Parker who has been working on the reconstruction of the LazyBoy chair. We’ve been talking with BWC who are organising the Open Mic and artist Katy Beinart whose video made with the Phoenix Food Shop will be in the space alongside our work in September.

Most of the group came along to the SHIFT HAPPENS session, where we reviewed plans and made editing suggestions for the video works. There were some really nice reflections on what the work is now that it is being opened up to a wider audience. Lovely to be back together again, although the creative process is now more directed to an outcome rather than the open-ended playful approach we have been in until now. We made a bunch of monoprints to hang on one of the walls and a giant word drawing that may have a place in the exhibition.

AUGUST 2023

This month has begun with lots of email conversations, finalising text for the publicity, booking equipment, making prints, resolving the videos etc. Jess Hoult from BWC has been organising the SHIFT HAPPENS Open Mic, talking to AFLO. the Poet who will compere and perform, amongst others. We’ve also been thinking about activities for gallery visitors; ways that people can engage through doing, widening our research and contributing to the event in various ways.

We checked in on Jake Parker to finalise the transformation of the LazyBoy chair into what is now called ‘Remains’. This object will be displayed in the Community Takeover – here is an early photo of it’s new identity:

On Friday 11th August Aflo came to meet our Shift group. She was really generous, talking to us about why and how she began to perform her writing, and gave us tips on how to speak into a microphone and to an audience. We played a collective writing game, made some noise, and agreed on final edits to the videos. We had added an unexpected element to one of the videos that we were struggling to resolve and weren’t sure how this would be received, but brilliantly they all ‘got it’ immediately! Such brilliant people, and we are all in tune with what we are doing and why, taking risks, feeling pretty fearless, everyone stepping up and finding ways their place in the ongoing dialogue – amazing to feel this sense of shared purpose and vocabulary.

SHIFT HAPPENS opens next week as part of the Community Takeover at Phoenix Arts Space. The BWC Open Mic on Thursday 7th September will include an AI experiment with Chris Chowen, and be MC’d by Aflo. the Poet. We are busy finalising edits and managing all the disparate practical elements, somewhat boring but necessary. It will be great to finally see everything in one space, to consider how it all works together, what surfaces or sinks, what engages or perhaps needs to be framed differently. Yael Flexer has kindly offered to run a responsive movement session for invited participants in the gallery one morning, to see how the work and its context informs the ways people want to move. And Jake will bring in Remains, the reconfigured LazyBoy chair creature, to sit stoically on the floor and take up physical space again.

The next two weeks are going to be super busy, with the install, the opening, multiple workshops, open mic, talks etc. Hoping we get to enjoy this rather than it feeling like a lot of work. We also have to work out how to bring things to an end with our BWC group, who we will miss greatly. Which is not to say that relationships will end, but this project needs to conclude so that we can look ahead and plan the next evolution of our work.

SEPTEMBER 2023

SHIFT HAPPENS opened on Friday 2st September. The install went smoothly, with the wonderful Chloe Hoare and technical support from James Murray. Phoenix Art Space was buzzing, with other artists and groups also showing work, a video by Katy Beinart and John Edwards, photographs by Huw Fox, paintings in the corridor gallery by Denise Harrison and a GraduatePlatform showcase in the Project Space.

Our BWC group came and were delighted with how it all looked. They felt a clear sense of ownership, despite our having had to make curatorial decisions on what to include / exclude. Lisa Dando, head of BWC did a speech, alongside Lucy Day (Phoenix Executive Director) and Sarah McCarthy (Phoenix Food Shop).

This image shows the table we are using for the #Food Shop Still Life drawings that visitors can make, alongside the wall of monoprint chairs (growing during the duration of the show) and the window vinyls of our participants taken from a video).

And this stage area is a place-holder for the Open Mic event on 07.09.23, hosted by Brighton Women’s Centre. More to follow once we have more photos of the exhibition…

w/c 4.09.23

It’s been an amazing week. On Tuesday we met with our group to continue developing the chair monoprint wall in the gallery and on Thursday Kerry drove from Sittingbourne to meet us and see the video she inspired. Kerry’s story informed LAZY and it was wonderful to see her again and to reflect on what it meant for her to have her story shared so publically.

The BWC SHIFT HAPPENS Open Mic was an incredible success. There’s lots of photos on instagram @brightonwomenscentre. Aflo the Poet did an incredible job holding the space, performing some of her own work alongside contributions by many others, including some of our ‘shifters’.

The next morning Yael Flexer led a movement session for us, with ten women in the gallery space responding to the exhibition. It offered some fascinating insights into how the body receives information, how you can understand artworks in a different way and retain these memories through a physical engagement.

In the afternoon we offered visitors the chance to make a monoprint, and finally finished the chair wall. Then we joined Katy Beinart in a Let’s Talk about Process meal & talk with local artists. Eighteen people came along with a wide range of knowledge and skills, reflecting on the exhibition, social practice and the arts provision in Brighton. Beautiful food and conversation.

The show is now up for another week and we have learned a lot about how much this theme of ‘shift’ resonates with people and how much this year of gatherings has meant to the people we have been working with. As a collaborative partnership we have also grown stronger, becoming more ambitious with how we work together – and with others – and are keen to push the practice and its possibilities further.

NOVEMBER 2023

We met up with the group for final farewells, using a studio kindly offered by Phoenix Art Space. Our invitation was Collage & Cake, time to sit, play with images, chat and also look around their new exhibition ‘Are You a Woman in Authority?‘. As always, great to see everyone. One person said that SHIFT had been the only project she’d ever done that had felt ‘transformative’ and there was a discussion on how they could continue meeting, perhaps monthly, to maintain this focus on creative play and self-expression. Also got the stats on audience numbers for SHIFT HAPPENS:  690 visitors to the exhibition and 72 people at the Open Mic, so pretty pleased with that.

We also visited the Turner Prize show in Eastbourne and have begun thinking about what’s next. SHIFT was designed as R&D for a larger immersive 360 artwork and we need to resolve what this might now be and start the process of seeking funding etc. Lots to do and think about.


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