The traces of ‘Traces of Shanghai’ – Metal International Residency Award 2012

I attended the Castlefield Gallery Associates meeting last night and was one of 6 artists to give a 5 minute ‘show and tell’. I chose to share the ‘Would you Tell me, please…” arrows work that I’m currently developing into a digital piece. It was really useful to condense the work into a 5 minute presentation. I also approached the presentation as a scripted talk, feeling that was the best way to get across what I wanted to in such a short time slot. I suppose it was a sort of monologue really, when I was writing it, I was trying to create some sort of rhythm. It was also useful to push me on to create something with the Flash skills that I learnt at the weekend. I’ve now got a slightly better version of the animation to show people.

The rest of the presentations were interesting too – a range of practices. From the research that Alice Bradshaw (www.a-n.co.uk/p/2334120) is doing on Rubbish and it’s use and references in art, to a review of work by Hannah Leighton Boyce (). Robert Carter shared his zine/cross-disciplnary event practice (), Kathryn Miller is currently working at Blankspace in Manchester on the Verb Project () and Nicola Ellis () shared her experiences of participating in a launch pad exhibition at Castlefield Gallery. That and meeting and putting faces to names of artists I was aware of but had never met, it was a great night.

I’ve started learning how to use Flash today. It’s a steep learning curve, and there’s loads that I don’t understand. BUT, I have managed to adapt one of the pieces of code that the lecturers at Shanghai University made me, and to animate some of my arrows using the software.

Animated with flash:
http://www.claireweetman.co.uk/shanghaigallery_dig…

Adapted code:
http://www.claireweetman.co.uk/images/other/shangh…

One step at a time..

A bit of a progress report:

-I’ve been to see someone at Liverpool John Moores University to see about getting some display boxes laser cut, and that is in progress. I figured that laser cutting plywood would give a neat finish and would allow me to pre-cut spaces for the LED light.

-I’m still working out how to do the animation/programming/interactivity for the digital arrows work. I’ve been to DOES Liverpool and they let me have a play with their kinect camera – however I got a bit scared of the whole programming language bit. One step at a time. I’m going to make an animation with the arrows first to see how it looks projected onto a floor and then work on the programming aspect of it. As part of this I’m currently digitising photographs of arrows, cutting them out from the background of the photographs that I took in Shanghai. I’m nearly half-way through, and that has taken a lot of hours so far.

-I’ve got some frames for my drawings, so I’m hoping to get them framed up towards the end of next week.

-I’ve had an unsuccessful proposal for one residency and one exhibition. I’ve got one more exhibition proposal pending. However, I am profiling the arrows work at Castlefield Associates ‘Show and Tell’ next Wednesday, and a meeting last week has lined me up with an exciting exhibition space to play with for July this year – more detail on that as plans get firmed up. I also need to apply to 3 community based projects to fill in the paid work and there’s another exhibition opportunity that needs a proposal making too. Getting the work out there takes as much time and energy as making it!

I normally keep my blogs here on artists talking to a narrow, time-limited period to fit in with being in residence somewhere, however, I’ve found that there’s lots of threads of work that need finishing and developing from my month in Shanghai. So I’m going to keep writing for the time being.

I’ve now been home for nearly a month, although Christmas has taken a chunk out of the actual time to make much further work. I have however made the following progress:

– 3 collages that use strips of paper coated in graphite (and metallic tape, but that was less successful), lined up next to each other, and stretching vertically up the paper. I’ve made these to work through how I want the ‘Architecture of Stairs’ videos to look. I quite like them as drawings in their own right too – I plan to frame them up.

– A collage using self adhesive arrows on top of a map of Shanghai. The map itself has lots of little arrows on it – I think they are to indicate traffic direction – but there’s loads of them. I think I’ll also frame this up as a little piece of work. It’s also a study for a series of photograms that I’d like to make. More on those as they progress.

– I’ve been to see my friend Gareth Houghton who has shared his After Effects editing skills (he edited this work in 2010 for me). I’ve started playing with the videos for the Architecture of Stairs work. It’s resulted in this updated version of the video: http://www.claireweetman.co.uk/shanghaigallery_sta…

– I’ve been sat with a calculator all morning, going through some statistics that I got from the museum of urban planning in Shanghai. And I’ve drawn some diagrams representing per capita living area in Shanghai, and how it has increased in spite of the increasing population. I’m quite pleased how the boxes I’ve drawn seem to reflect the skyscraper-isation of the city over that time. Make me feel that the piece of work is heading in the right direction.

– I’ve been to see the William Kentridge print show at the Bluecoat in Liverpool and also to the ‘Tracing the Century’ show at Tate Liverpool, where I took some time to watch Kentridge’s animations (Mine, Felix in exile, History of the main complaint). It’s made me think about how the video that I’m trying to make for Architecture of Stairs needs a narrative to it. The Kentridge films are aesthetically and technically interesting, but they are also moving because of the story that they tell.

– I’ve been making a template for display boxes for the pinned collage works. A bit of a play with a LED from Maplin has resulted in a better lighting solution than standing next to each work with the flash from my smartphone. I’m thinking of getting the boxes laser cut in plywood and then sprayed black,

Ooh, and Christmas has brought a selection of further reading – I’ve now got Lefebvre’s ‘Rhythmanalysis’, which is a longer work than the essay I was reading in Shanghai, plus the tome that is ‘The Production of Space, which I think I’ll be dippling in and out of. Plus a Psychogeography book by Merlin Coverley, the Pina Bausch DVD and Kentridge’s Traces book of prints from MOMA which is a beauty.

I’m thinking that I’ll need to set myself some deadlines for making work to ensure that I get on with the work that is underway, as I can forsee that balancing making this work with the freelance work and general admin that will start next week will be tricky (although at the minute the creative work is winning hands down over a backlog of admin)

I’ve arrived home, rested from a peaceful holiday in Japan, unadjusted to the coldness and excessive Christmas songs of December. I feel like I might have broken through the jet lag, although I’ve been in bed by 9.30pm the past 2 nights.

I’ve actually come here to reflect on my use of the online exhibition that I created at the end of the residency, spurred on by this news item on a-n yesterday:

http://new.a-n.co.uk/news/single/blurring-the-boun…

“We see the Internet as a ‘para-site’; that is, a virtual space made up of multiple sites of articulation, that nevertheless function in relation to the properties of physical space. In this sense, the INMG can be seen to operate alongside the physical art gallery, and extend the boundaries and possibilities of exhibition into the expanded territory of the World Wide Web.”

I had hoped that as I came to the end of the residency that I would be able to show the work I had made, along with earlier works in a physical exhibition at Shanghai University. They had gallery spaces, an amazing selection of AV equipment and I felt that having some sort of deadline to work towards would help to spur me on to finish things. As it turned out, there wasn’t the time or the space available at short notice to realise the physical presentation, although the university will present my work to their students as part of their course in the near future.

Initially, my aim of creating an online exhibition of the work was made as a backstop – a plan B. Less important than the physical presence of the work in a physical space. However I found the method of bringing the works together for the online show really useful for reflecting and contextualising what I had made in this intense period of time. Right now, I think that if I hadn’t done that reflection then, then it would have been sometime before I did it back home – what with the distractions of washing a month’s worth of clothes, working out what to cook, and whether I’ve bought Christmas presents for everyone.

What has really surprised me though, is the feedback that I have got from sending the online exhibition out to my mailing list. I’ve had people reply to my invite to this ‘exhibition’ with their responses to the work. It’s only a handful of people, and they are the people who I have an existing critical dialogue with, but it has felt as though people have taken the time to view what is essentially just a series of website pages, as a coherent exhibition – they have visited in the mindset that they might visit a physical gallery.

The idea to create a solely online exhibition came out of the work that I’ve been doing with POST (www.postliverpool.com). Our current project TRADING STATION was established to investigate whether creating a virtual/physical cross-continental artist exchange fitted better with the complex family lives and artistic practice that its members have. Through that project, we have tried to use online technologies to communicate the work, physical exhibitions and a series of newspapers that can be sent around the world cheaply. I think that the online technologies for communication and sharing in that project have been a bit hit and miss, but the combination of physical work, printed publication and the ability to share that publication online easily have been successful.

It is here that I refer back to the quote about the International New Media Gallery. About how they see an internet gallery operating alongside a physical gallery. TRADING STATION had the physical exhibition, but I feel that the physical publication reached more people due to it’s mailability. Before leaving for Shanghai, I created a catalogue of works from the previous 2 years. A way of visually describing what I do, and a calling card to leave with people that I met. I’ve been mailing out the catalogue, along with the online gallery link to people both at home and in Shanghai. I’m hoping that this combined approach will generate further feedback from contacts, both known and speculative.