Stating/Showing

Hidden space – photographic performance/stage/abode

HIDDEN SPACE – MADE EVIRONMENT – DRAWING ARENA – STAGE SET – CONVERSATION EXCHANGE

ALLUDING TOO

KIMBAL QUIST BUMSTEAD

There’s something attainable across the airwaves.

“We have a secret hidden group on Facebook where we exchange ideas but its nothing compared to a good chat over the phone.”

Most of the time Kimbal seems to be away performing in various countries – forever simplifying his acts so he can travel lightly with a recording device (I can usually tell when he’s not in the UK – the dialling tone is different – sounds like he’s engaged most of the time or perhaps somewhere unattainable).

I got to thinking how Kimbal’s work fits in to this strange beast that is ArtEvict. The nature of the spaces that are revealed each month bends towards an ephemeral approach – an ad-hoc deliberation in what is made and performed. Today’s telephone conversation came to a conclusion: Kimbal takes away, tidies up his ideas – he packs himself up to hitch hike to another land where he straps himself to a stranger. Then I come along and make a piece of installation art where I want props and sounds and flashing lights – basically making a mess.

At some point we have to reach equilibrium and perhaps this will happen in the performance itself. Certainly my drawings seem to be acting as modes of communication – they seem to strike ideas within the nomadic man’s mind.

So I also got to thinking of how even in Kimbal’s stationary habitation – a warehouse/studio/flat/bed-living working area in north Hackney – is also a place of ever-changing racing activity. I want to install myself in this and build my ideas next to his self-made MDF bedroom. To this idea I thought of a tent made of paper to match his medium density box.

This image is that which is drawn by another the person on shift before me. It looks like a tent or a pyramid. A hidden space within a hidden space is perhaps a make shift studio constructed upon arrival in London through collaborative exercise and conversational/visual exchange. It can also be a drawing tool or a habitable or moveable studio.

Hidden space – tent as transitory studio

“This month ArtEvict has moved around the corner from Tate Modern. Be there and experience what is really happening on the contemporary front. Explore the 5 floors of an abandoned Victorian Storage Factory and stumble across various durational, live interventions throughout the evening.”

AND YOUR LIPS ARE TRUE TOO AS MY STUDIO BECOMES THE SEAT ON A TRAIN – WONDERFUL ON THE EAST COAST.

Once again I look forward to a week of travelling around the country – this travelling lark seemed to lark upon me as soon as I larked up to Glasgow last July – Glasgow is a far cry from many-a-place (13 hours train journey from Penzance for instance – that was a killer). Anyway the week after the next takes me to Bangor, Bristol, Aberystwyth, London and Brighton all in one week to deliver talks and present at events – to discuss the very genre of online platforms that Artists talking is – and their validity to a learning structure for art students and as professional tools for others.

Thursday the 29^th of April lands me at Slade School of art to talk to students from the London colleges – it was on this evening that I was initially invited to perform with Kimbal at April’s ‘issue’ of ArtEvict: then the date changed to the 24^th and the ever illusiveness elongated itself.

I got a mail out today from Kimbal – advertising this month’s event – this time you need a password to get access – something of a backstage pass to a building that is ‘just around the corner from the Tate Modern’. No more instructions I think you have to land a well-placed email in their inbox to find out more.

Kiki is another of the ArtEvict gang – I got a separate email from her asking for a short description as to the performance ‘I’ am planning. Well – er – I’m not the performer, I am the facilitator and therefore I prefer to remain hidden and let my actions do the performing. This is a difficult one. But then I remember how I used to dress myself in multiples of A0 paper back at university – something of making my own drawing space that no one could see until I had finished and cut myself out at the end. I might tell her there is to be a lot of cutting and a lot of pasting – Kimbal can go off and perform somewhere ‘wow the crouds’ and I’ll just make a drawing act.

Another thought I have had is to use the audience as drawing tools – enforcing them to pair up – be tied to the back of one another: one blind folded with charcoal, paper and easel to hand – the other to see the subject (but not the drawing) and to enact the movement of drawing. The contraption will suffice in transferring one’s vision to another’s movement on the page. A conference in process. Kimbal will be the subject as I take photographs by way of remote.

Hidden space – travelling, thoughts and communication-ist

This stem of blogging can also be read here – ArtEvict – hidden space and revealing performance

I was contacted on here from someone in an office on Buchanan Street – or somewhere close to thereabouts. In fact the whereabouts of this office are as equally as hidden to me as my whereabouts are possibly hidden to them. I was also contacted not too long ago by an old friend (a friend who likes to hitch hike and remain in a non-place, or live in a room made entirely of MDF). This friend he asked me to recall a performance piece we did together back in 2008 at the Carriageworks in Leeds – we called it “Bring your own Pencil” – we tied people up with electrical tabe and did a live interactive life drawing session with elements of forcibility.

ArtEvict. My friend Kimbal Bumstead has asked me to re-stage a performance we did together in 2008 – this time in a wearhouse in East London. In fact these ArtEvict guys, they seem to take on the semblance of organising a rave – the location always follows the notion of perfomance, it remains hidden until a mail out is sent – and there is never a singular location – every month it changes. The rave may be something to do with ‘cultural’ tenancies in wherehouses and other spaces – such tenancies that at times meet disagreement: ArtEvict follows along the same lines – it moves from one space to the next relying on the ephemeral approach that performance art installs in an artists work. (More information of ArtEvict – www.artevict.com/abou-us.php)

There has been multiple projects between Kimbal and myself, notably a curated site-specific exhibition in an old church and bell tower near Leeds Central Station. This was as the clocks changed for Daylight Saving (the exhibition took this name as a timely device for conceptual applicability). We facilitated each other as the works were installed and thus we were inbuilt in to one another’s work as much as the space itself. My hidden space came from the relationship between public display (the exhibiting of a work) and the work-done behind the scenes. I was commuting from Glasgow every month or two in the 7 months prior to the opening – each time I re-visited the site and re-allocated my installation. The ideas grew as I began to realise how the (hidden)space could be used as a studio. With a set of keys and a torch I explored the bell tower and set up shop in the top most compartment just below the time keeping device. I was hidden from view but from there I could look down upon the world (or the city centre of Leeds anyhow). (More information on DAYLIGHTSAVING – rich-taylor.co.uk/archive/daylight-saving)

This Blog will follow the cohesive approach to facilitation and performance in the build up to a collaborative work between Kimbal Quist Bumstead and myself (Richard Taylor) for the May 2010 installment of ArtEvict.