Charlotte A Morgan

Art School Alternatives

2010-10-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

Art School Alternatives

A Corridor8 symposium on alternative models of learning at the Johnson Foundation Auditorium, Art & Design Academy, 2 Duckinfield Street, Liverpool L3 5RD
on 7th October 2010, 10am – 6pm.

Admittance is free but please email lm@corridor8.co.uk to book a place.

Is school a place, an institution, a set of facilities, a situation, a circumstance, an attitude, or a constellation of relationships of the transfer of acquired, invented, and accumulated knowledge…?

Raqs Media Collective, ‘Art School: Propositions for the 21st Century’, MIT Press (2009)

Drawing together a range of practitioners whose work looks to the communal, collaborative and participatory, Corridor8 contemporary visual art magazine presents a dynamic symposium that explores methods of learning and ideas of schooling.

Speakers include Department 21, irational.org, Feral Trade, Islington Mill Art Academy, Circa Projects, Black Dogs, A Latento, No Fixed Abode, Disrupt Dominant Frequencies,
Artmarket/Kunstfreund, Charlotte A Morgan, Megan Wakefield, Heath Bunting, Kate Rich and Lady Lucy.

The symposium also includes a preview of new film work by Paul Rooney.

Art School Alternatives Blog

Corridor8

Critical Writing Collective

2010-09-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

Critical Writing Collective is a network and platform for art writing and critical dialogue based in the Yorkshire region.

The collective aims to create a platform for experimental art writing, promote critical discussion around regional visual art and performance activity and support artists and writers through events, publications, projects, opportunities and an open network of contacts.

Critical Writing Collective was initiated by Leeds based writer Joanna Loveday and Sheffield based artist Charlotte A Morgan, after meeting in Berlin through a project run by Open Dialogues.

Contact: criticalwritingcollective@gmail.com

OPEN CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS OF EXPERIMENTAL/ART WRITING
Deadline 12.10.10

COPY is a new low-tech publication of critical and experimental art writing based in Yorkshire. For more information follow this link.

Art sheffield 2010, Life: A User's Manual

2010-08-06T02:12:00.000-07:00

Lookout

Lookout, bookwork 2010. Site Photograph and Installation View, Site Gallery.

Lookout is a limited edition bookwork that focuses on the space between two prominent residential buildings on the edge of Sheffield city centre - The Velocity Tower, a 22 storey new build, which stands unfinished and only fractionally occupied and the Hanover Tower, a 1960s social housing block. Both buildings offer expansive views of the city, a much sought after commodity, yet they appear both rooted and detached from the space below, suggesting a sense of distance, stillness and gazing; a state of inertia, suspense and possibility. These high rise buildings mark the boundary of the commercial, economic and cultural hub of the city and the out-skirting suburbs, and map a shift in ideology and aspiration.

The book comprises new writing, documentary photographs and extracts from essays, poetry, individual memories, found images and fragmented references to wide sources associated with the boundaries of urbanism, culture and access, which are interrupted by a pictorial archive of high points, lookouts, watch towers, radio towers, tree houses and platforms.

Art Sheffield 2010, Life: A User's Manual was a city-wide contemporary art event showcasing artwork by locally, nationally and internationally based artists. It took place across venues in Sheffield from 6 March until 1 May 2010. Netherlands-based curators Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher of If I Can't Dance I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution collaborated with curators and artists in the city to select a dynamic and varied programme for the event.

Art Sheffield 2010
If I Can't Dance...

Video Podcast

Texts
Frieze
Culture 24

Art Sheffield 2010 and Over to You, article for a-n Magazine, Charlotte A Morgan

RITE

2010-01-18T07:11:00.000-08:00

RITE is a collection of 18 original texts by UK based art writers that enact expanded acts of criticism, question the essay form and use language as material.

Order Online

RITE is the result of a nine month collaboration with Critical Communities, an Open Dialogues and New Work Network project exploring collaborative critical writing both on and as new work.

MarketPlace Publication

2010-01-18T06:49:00.000-08:00

A collection of responses to shifting notions, uses and interpretations of the market place contributed by invited artists, writers, curators, architects and active local people, including Kai-Oi Jay Yung, Sebastian Craig , Jordan J Lloyd, Trish O'Shea, Alex Farrar and Hans Abbing, Julia Udall, No Fixed Abode, Amenity Space and Lesley Guy.

MarketPlace Publication

MarketPlace Documentation

2010-01-18T05:30:00.000-08:00

Website

2010-01-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

New website online soon at http://www.charlotteamorgan.co.uk

Daniel von Sturmer 'Set Piece', Site Gallery Review

2009-11-06T04:19:00.000-08:00

Daniel von Sturmer
Set Piece
Site Gallery 5 Sep - 31 Oct 2009
Published in a-n magazine 2009

http://www.a-n.co.uk/publications/a-n_magazine

The gallery brings about different expectations to the roadside or adjacent cafe. Within its secure physical and contextual boundaries, is our attention drawn away from the space directly towards the works it houses? This suggestion is toyed with by Australian artist Daniel von Sturmer, who’s Set Piece draws our attention cyclically towards an installation of video works and the spatial arrangement of Site Gallery itself, toppling and re-presenting the context as an arena of subjectivity and ambiguity.

We initially encounter one of three walls constructed by Von Sturmer to occupy the centre of the space, stretching far above head height and creating a course around the gallery along which his video works are positioned. Shades and depths white create an unstable perception of distance until - clack, looking left, a small translucent screen insinuates itself into the space from his ‘temporary architecture’. Bright rectangular blocks form an orderly line in the centre of a white backdrop. Two fall, landing on a suggested lower surface. Clack, tap. Two more, another three, until the entire row lies in disarray on the lower edge of the screen. The depth is unclear, were they suspended? Perhaps they lay flat on an unseen plane. They vanish, the white greys.

Continuing around the space, this puzzling spatial game develops. A second screen presents a landscape of geometrical checks onto which a series of lightweight shapes are pushed. They disappear, reappearing in different formations. A third protrudes from the triangular internal structure. Here a series of cubes fall from an unseen location, padding and thudding nonchalantly into a colourful pile. Their dimensions remain questionable and their course to the ground hypnotic, their sounds holding a satisfyingly rhythmic synergy. A fourth screen shows another gridded surface, this time balls of bluetack and orange fuzz struggle up the side of a length of chalk, finally jumping to reach the summit.

The artists control unveils itself, we catch on. Simple editing tricks and magnets worked masterfully into subtle moments of intrigue and momentarily warped spatial awareness. Heightened in an adjoining room, the centre of a wall approaches us, coming to a point either side of which two monitors depict objects pushed, sucked and shot through curious tubes.

Von Sturmer’s work embeds itself in the gallery experience, asserting a bridge between art work and context through playful insertions of visual and spatial anomaly. His videos are smart and irreverent constructions of seemingly sporadic movement and uncertain scale and depth, joining architectural interventions to play a game of space and minutiae. Referencing the gallery’s physical and contextual systems, work and space and amalgamated, bent into a new composition that distorts our expectations in an alternate proposal. Using everyday motifs and materials, Set Piece questions a gallery space’s distinctness, suggesting its subtle and knowingly evident illusions.

Copyright C A Morgan 2009

MarketPlace

2009-11-06T04:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.re-place.co.uk
MarketPlace is a site specific taking place at Chesterfield Market Festival from Thu 29 - Sat 31 October 2009, commissioned as part of the re:place Derbyshire programme. The project addresses changes in global and local trade and their influence on the structure of towns and cities, exploring the local and global manifestations of the marketplace and its shifting position socially, spatially and economically.

MarketPlace presents a re-imagined market stall structure, developed in collaboration with James Halsall, Jordan L. Lloyd and Rob Taylor, which acts as a physical record of visitors to the space by altering structurally as items are taken away and incorporates multifunctional, adaptable and mobile elements. This is combined with a curated collection of visual and textual responses to the market place, comprising a range of forms from critical text to documentary video, photographic essay, interview, event documentation and participatory art work, and including contributions from artists, writers, curators, architects and active local people. Whilst considering ideas, interpretations and uses of the marketplace, the collection also draws upon its significance within cultural discourse and practice and upon wider notions of community, locality, exchange, interaction, commodity and the object.

MarketPlace aims to bring into question the ways in which social and economic shifts combine with advancements in technology and design to create new systems, forms and processes in that directly influence our urban existence.

The MarketPlace pavilion structure can be found at New Square in central Chesterfield and will be open to visitors throughout Chesterfield Market Festival, Thu 29 - Sat 31 Oct 2009 9am - 4pm.

Ta(l)king Place Documentation

2009-10-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

Some images from the Ta(l)king place events, Encounters Shop, October 08 - June 09.

Sheffield Specials: Do Our Cities Include the Young?

2009-06-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

The second of the two Sheffield Specials events set out to address the inclusion and participation of young people in our cities. Speakers Sarah Wigglesworth of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, Dr Sonia Sharp of Sheffield City Council, Laura Broderick of CABE and Ken Dunn of The City School, Sheffield discussed various cultural perspectives and expectations of young people and their uses of urban space, presenting projects which explored the potentials of engaging young people in the built environment.

As addressees of the events title any audience buoyancy in youth status was to be weighted - young people were designated as those under the age of eighteen. In not being entitled to vote or drink alcohol, under 18’s have less influence upon decisions made for the city which impact upon their futures, and can not convene with other citizens in what event chair Kieran Long (The Architects Journal) describes as the ‘quintessential social space of British cities’. Teenagers and young children do however have increasingly firm footings in the city’s retail spaces; welcomed as fully fledged global consumers and the primary target for many advertising campaigns adorning the city’s billboards and bus stops yet their use of retail centres and surrounding open spaces are largely restricted. Young people may shop but are rarely provided with spaces to stop, sit or socialise due to regular abuse of these amenities. Socialising becomes anti-social, relaxation and communality becomes loitering, interaction with the physical environment becomes potential damage, and we are presented with a dichotomy. Whilst the event acknowledged the problems of anti-social behaviour as real and tangible, the speakers gladly raised significant challenges to common perceptions and generalisations, including the potential for stereotyping to escalate to what Long suggests as an ‘hysteria of the elderly’.

Inserted into existing debates, the evening’s discussion furthered the notion that as the title reflects, not only is there a lack of participation on the part of young people, but our attitudes towards young people and the restrictions we implement on their behaviour, access and activity also contribute to this exclusion. Who do our cities include? Who are they designed for? The preceding event in the 2008 Sheffield Specials programme rose for discussion the influence of retail within the regeneration and future survival of our cities, and lead many audience members to question the impact of prominent retail developments on our behaviours and the variety of choices made available to us. Though of course fundamental to the city’s economic resilience and our lifestyles as urban dwellers, retail spaces arguably draw young people further towards aspiration and consumerism, restricting and distracting them from their immediate physical and social environment. Combined with young people’s restricted use of city’s public spaces, we are lead to question not only how far our cities encourage participation, creativity and exploration in young people, but how far young people are included in our conception of the ‘public’.

As Laura Broderick describes, young people have ‘no particular place to go.’ Taking on board the cause/effect nature of their disengagement, her work with CABE approaches facilitated learning in the built environment as a means of increasing the esteem of young people. Through engagement in practical projects that utilise and explore the physical environment and the design and development of the city, young people may feel their ‘place’ in the city and participate in its, and therefore their own future. Ken Dunn’s environmental projects with secondary school pupils inspire their consideration of sustainability and community cohesion, encouraging an environmental conscience, shaping the future through changes to current attitudes. Dunn’s belief that ‘liberation breeds energy’ poses practical engagement in environmental issues as a counter to the ‘malaise of the modern youth’, suggested by Sonia Sharp as an adult concept. Sharp emphasised mastery, independence, belonging and generosity as key elements in engaging young people, whose activities can be accommodated in successful urban projects.

Much of the evening’s discussion centred on creating spaces designated for young people, referencing skate parks, play areas, social spaces and sports grounds, yet we should also resist the expectation for young people to ‘perform’ their youth, demonstrating participation through activity. We understand the significance of the imagination in a young person’s engagement in their surroundings, which translates to urban environments and later the concepts by which they are shaped. Sarah Wigglesworth discussed the influence of colour and materials on our responses to environments of both work and play, and proposed the role of the architect as to create a world that captures this imagination. Therefore, whilst spaces must be created to house the activities of young people, cities must also be open to creative exploration by the young, allowing for unplanned and fluid urban encounters which link the social and imaginary with physical boundaries and may on the surface appear disruptive, vacant or mundane – such as wandering, sitting, gazing, congregating and playing.

To include young people we must offer them agency within the cities we create, maintaining security and behavioural standards and addressing perspectives and behaviours of both old and young that generate negative relations. The discussions of the evening made a welcome insertion into the projection of the regenerated city, encouraging openness in design, mess, play and the unpredictable - the event itself a model for transparency, exchange and engagement in urban development. Inferred through the strategies and practices presented was the need to also include young people in these discussions.

This text was produced on request by the Sheffield Civic Trust, May 2009. http://www.sheffieldcivictrust.org.uk/
http://www.sheffieldspecials.org.uk/

Copyright C A Morgan 2009

Evening Window 9pm (Sofanco®, re-constituted stone and stainless steel)

2009-05-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

Installation View

Evening Window 9pm
(Sofanco®, re-constituted stone and stainless steel)
digital photograph on 35mm transparency

Image fragment of longstanding exploration of incidental, ambiguous and defunct urban features and their dormant potentials.

Ta(l)king Place: Tues 2nd June - Zoe Sawyer and Ruth Ben-Tovim

2009-05-27T15:50:00.001-07:00

Join us for the fifth and final event in this series of open sessions inviting networking and discussion around the intersections of contemporary art, architecture and community action.

As the Invitations to Join in programme comes to a close and the Encounters shop is vacated, this months event will address dis/used urban spaces and temporary projects.

With presentations from...

ZOE SAWYER {Artist and Curator/Co-founder of theartmarket, Leeds}

theartmarket is an artist-led initiative and hub of creative activity based in the Merrion Market in Leeds city centre. Running since 2006, theartmarket has hosted a range of events, exhibitions and workshops. Zoe also works as a freelance curator, recently curating Morphic Resonance at Project Space Leeds. She will be joined by Jay Cover of nousvous, designer and associate of theartmarket.

http://www.kunstfreund.co.uk/, http://www.morphic-resonance.blogspot.com, http://www.nousvous.eu

RUTH BEN-TOVIM {Artist, Facilitator and Creative Director of Encounters, Sheffield}

Encounters is a Sheffield based arts initiative specialising in the delivery of tailor made participatory arts projects that involve the collecting of urban histories. Founded in 2003, Encounters have work with dis-used shop spaces, street based intervention, interactive media, text, performance and photography. Ruth managed the Invitations to Join in programme.

http://www.encounters-arts.org.uk, http://invitationstojoinin.blogspot.com

Ta(l)king Place aims to address contemporary social, artistic and urban issues whilst encouraging informal networking and dialogue between practitioners, professionals and residents. The events are open to all and take place at the Encounters shop, 16 Wostenholm road, Sheffield 7-9pm.

Drinks and a buffet will be provided, but if you can, please bring an item, however small, to add to the table!

Ta(l)king Place: Tues 5th May - Kai-Oi Jay Yung and Simon Cross

2009-04-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

Join us for the fourth in a series of open sessions inviting networking and discussion around the intersections of contemporary art, architecture and community action.

Drawing upon the success of the recent Invitations to Join in Swap Shop project, this months event addresses modes of exchange and economy.
With presentations from...

KAI-OI JAY YUNG {Liverpool based Artist, Writer and Curator.}
Kai-Oi Jay Yung’s recent project The Sock Exchange at FACT, Liverpool was part of FACT’s Climate For Change programme. Yung’s work explores borders, identities and ways of living, and as been exhibited at the Istanbul Biennial, Whitechapel Gallery, London and Tart, San Francisco. Her residencies and collaborations include Grizedale Arts, Cove Park, Munich and Libya.

http://blog.fact.co.uk/?p=1300, http://climateforchange.fact.co.uk/, http://www.happystacking.tv/blog/k=jay%20produce

SIMON CROSS {Founding Director of It’s Free Just Collect It.}
It’s Free Just Collect it is a nationwide freecycling network, promoting the donation and exchange of unwanted items towards the elimination of unnecessary waste. Cross had founded and developed a number of local action groups and is a member of Face to Face social performance group.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=32157855609

Ta(l)king Place aims to address contemporary social, artistic and urban issues whilst encouraging informal networking and dialogue between practitioners, professionals and residents. The events are open to all and take place at the Encounters Shop, 16 Wostenholm Road Sheffield 7-9pm.

Drinks and a buffet will be provided, but if you can, please bring an item, however small, to add to the table!

For more information on Ta(l)king Place, or to join the mailing list, contact Charlotte at invitationstojoinin@googlemail.com

http://invitationstojoinin.blogspot.com, info@encounters-arts.org.uk, http://www.encounters-arts.org.uk/

Invitations to Join in, Encounters Shop, 16 Wostenholm Road, Sharrow, Sheffield S7

Ta(l)king Place: Tues 7th April - Tony Broomhead and James Wallbank

2009-03-31T03:33:00.000-07:00

Ta(l)king Place returns from hibernation! Join us for the third in a series of open sessions inviting networking and discussion around the intersections of contemporary art, architecture and community action.

This month's event explores technology as a potential barrier to or enabler of participation.
With presentations from...

TONY BROOMHEAD {Architect and co-founder of Amenity Space, London.}
Amenity Space produce innovative work through exploration and research that connects with the user/listener/viewer and promotes architectural discourse. They also present a regular radio programme on Resonance FM.
http://www.amenityspace.co.uk/

JAMES WALLBANK {Founder of Access Space, Sheffield.}
Access Space is the UK’s first free media lab: an open-access learning community where participants learn, create and communicate online.
http://www.access-space.org

Ta(l)king Place aims to address contemporary social, artistic and urban issues whilst encouraging informal networking and dialogue between practitioners, professionals and residents. The events are open to all and take place at the Encounters Shop, 16 Wostenholm Road Sheffield 7-9pm.

Drinks and a buffet will be provided, but if you can, please bring an item, however small, to add to the table!
For more information on Ta(l)king Place, or to join the mailing list, contact Charlotte at invitationstojoinin@googlemail.com

Critical Communities

2009-02-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

Image: Open Dialogues

I am currently participating in Critical Communities, a project inviting dialogue, discussion and writing around the notions of 'the critical' in relation to critical writing both on and as new work (live and interdisciplinary art).

The project is taking place in London and Yorkshire, and invites online communication between the two groups. The London Critical Community includes Emma Bennett, David Berridge, Chloe Dechery, Rikke Hansen, Tim Jeeves, Emma Leach, Bill Leslie, Johanna Linsley, Mary Paterson, Jim Prevett and Cally Spooner. The Yorkshire Critical Community includes Rachel Lois Clapham, Emma Cocker, Amelia Crouch, Joanna Loveday, Charlotte Morgan and Nathan Walker. With special guest provocateurs Sohail Khan, Alfredo Cramerotti and Derek Horton.

'Critical Communities will run from February to May 2009, and will take place through face to face meetings and online. The project will culminate in a print-on-demand publication, produced by the writers and artists involved in Critical Communities, to be published in 2009. The community will also act as a sustained network for experimental writing/new work practitioners in the London and Yorkshire areas.'

Critical Communities has been developed by Open Dialogues and New Work Network (NWN) and is supported by East Street Arts, The London Consortium and Space.

http://www.newworknetwork.org.uk/

http://www.open-dialogues.blogspot.com/

http://www.londonconsortium.com/

http://esaweb.org.uk

http://www.spacestudios.org.uk

Folly and [Dis]location

2009-02-25T05:54:00.000-08:00

Comissioned text for and...and...and... Exhibition Catalogue, Sylvester Works Sheffield, 2007. Curated by Robert Lye

An Illegible Text.

The cranes that protrude awkwardly in-between buildings; primary coloured stationary that interrupts the horizon and directs the eye to ascend with them to their apex, piercing the sky where they come to settle comfortably, outstretched, in their place in the canopy; it is from here that I write, with privileged vantage from their topmost points. Rising from cordoned off (no longer) public spaces, designated areas for acts of convivial public exchange - perhaps quick lunches, long periods of vacant contemplation, a crafty teenage cigarette; or from demolition sites haunted by the spectre of their past smoky aired industrial or utopian aspirations, these lofty giants of construction stand in apologetic grandeur above the concrete stacks and hammerings of immediate regeneration at their base. They are temporarily located yet endlessly present and never obsolete in the modern city.

The panoramic view of the city centre shows the drag or rush of the streets; the smooth cut concrete surface appeal of new urban regeneration projects and inner-city living, and the lingering presence of their failed predecessors, disillusioned ghost-like icons of modernist ideology.
The city has always eluded definition; it is the nucleus of everyday lived space , a space of fantasy, and a context against which the experience of the rural is placed. From an aerial view, the city below appears as a conceptualised space in the self-perpetuating condition of progress (progress which, in being satisfied, denies its own existence), a diagram by which planned spatial relations are enacted; the city becomes an image.

From this privileged position I am detached from the actualities of lived experience in the built environment, which occur beneath the threshold at which visibility begins.

For Michel de Certeau, this is the metaphorical distanced position of those within the economic system of the city who design and define the space and its uses towards a structure centred on theoretical and ideological vision, ultimately to facilitate efficient capital growth. The city seen as a plan genericizes the movements of its inhabitants and variants of the everyday, guiding their experiences of the spaces they inhabit. To take u de Certeau’s proposal of the city as a text, these imposed pre-definitions of city life can then be equated as means’ enabling legibility. In a readable city, the complex and interweaving narratives of both collective and individual movements through physical space are separated and punctuated by prescribed methods of encountering these spaces, separating the individual from their encounters and denying a personal relation to the space. Artist Nayan Kulkarni places this in perspective, ‘If you have a legible city – a city you can’t get lost in – you have a controlled city.’

Physical disorientation or a sense of non-belonging; where becoming lost is inferred, with it is most often the notion of origin and destination. Everyday movements are punctuated by places, in which the city dweller has reason to be, and therefore feels they belong. These identifications of, and with, place make sense of individuals’ positions within the city and the routines of daily life, alleviating the blindness of city life amongst the crowds or alone on a deserted side street, defining the ways in which daily encounters are understood. In a wider sense perhaps, these place bound identities necessary in assuaging anxiety at the unknowable and bewilderingly vast network of spatial and social structures and relations that comprise the individual’s understanding of the world, offering a sense of place within it. Through identifying place, we identify ourselves in relation to it, and to the other. Place creates identity, yet equally it is through this need for identification that place is in turn created, and therefore in being lost or displaced we are facing anxiety at a misidentification with the self.

The notion of a journey, of the inner-city, or of a destination, immediately insinuates a walk, which has been a preoccupation for successive artists, writers, geographers, theorists and social activists when negotiating the influence of the metropolis on evolving human state. Walking has, for some, provided the literal realisation of their aims in subverting the enactment of daily life. Social and spatial relations not only affect one another but produce one another, and therefore intervention into one possibly provides a key to significantly changing, if not revolutionising the other.

I look away from the city below and the notes on my desk, turning towards window to my left to see the dark purple rooftops and the moon, a reflection of my light bulb. Down the hill my neighbour sits, part of a community without geographic ties, sending instant messages to its distant members whilst dreaming of an unknown setting, relocating himself again with Google earth. Through a forest I visited regularly in the past, certain paths and bicycle routes were clear through the trees, which were marked with black rings towards the bottom of their trunks to protect them in some way. The veteran Major Oak; a dying organism embodying time beyond my comprehension. I read an article about that same place last week as I travelled on a train in the dark, looking out of the window to see the passenger sat on the opposite seat.
Within a utopian ideology in which revolutionised social relations determine spatial form and vice versa, the inherent problems lie in the inevitable authoritarianism of the agenda by which this is brought about. To consider the extremes of Marxism and capitalism as ideals to adopt in totality is problematic and difficult to swallow for most in the contemporary city. Capital gain is always placed in conflict with fulfilling relations to the surroundings, yet the economic reasons for the city ever coming into existence can’t be ignored. Such extremes allude to clearly defined boundaries and outcomes, and to a conclusive ‘big picture.’

Whilst physical re-appropriations of urban space still play a role and the everyday has become fundamental context and medium in many cultural practices, the literal incarnation of the journey as a walk is not the only journey or narrative implied in presenting the city as an ever changing web of interlinking narratives. Walking activates the city, writes the space, and through it the walker physically engages with their environment, but as they move they also encounter the equally influential space of fantasy, moving simultaneously through the narratives of the imagination. In the city, divergent routes are walked as inhabitants are seated at their desk, imaginary strangers are greeted, accounts of remembered dreams are shared and locations observed in advertisements to return as anecdote or déjà vu. The mental life of the city can be important in considering issues of the local and the global in the forming of identity, including the positioning of identity in relation to points in time, history and its unknowable interlinking details.

Through these literal, metaphorical and remembered journeys, both real and imaginary, the text of the city is written. The perception of multiple destinations create fragmentation and alleviate the anxiety of the inconclusive narrative; the natural process of catharsis. Instead of attempting to alter the structure of urban lived space to counter this, the influence of the mental life of the city can be considered, that of memory fear and imagination in the conception of the city and of identity. This then offers perhaps a rewriting of the city in a way which encourages, not the need to be constantly wandering, lost, but an examination of the sense of right or wrong attributed to its specific places, and the need for destinations and secure chronologies. If place is considered a pacifying and binding concept, then subsequently the significance of the right place can be reconsidered in the defining of the self.

This regenerative process suggests a constant redefinition of the city, instilled from the ‘bottom up’ through the perceptions and actions of its inhabitants. The place bound definition of the city’s identities are reconsidered, yet differences are not erased to become homogenised or legible; this process sustains relations. Suggested is an ever-shifting state by which the inhabitant simultaneously belongs and doesn’t belong, is located and dislocated; the identities of the city and the self are dynamic and intertwined. This state is produced by the inhabitants; a state of flux by which the individual is reconnected to the space, produces the city, and to be lost comes to signify a gain.

Endnotes (please contact for formatted version.)

In reference to Lefebvre’s definition of space as conceived, perceived and lived, see Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson Smith, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 1991.
de Certeau comes to this realisation from his own elevated physical position, as he beholds a deceptively ‘full view’ of New York City. The panorama city, he explains, is ‘a “theoretical” (that is, visual) simulacrum, in short a picture, whose condition of possibility is an oblivion and a misunderstanding of practices.’ Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Randall, London: University of California Press 1988. p. 92.
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 92..
Nayan Kulkarni, in Sharon Kivland, Jaspar Joseph-Lester and Emma Cocker (eds.) Transmission: Speaking and Listening, Volume 5, Sheffield: Site Gallery 2006. p 69.
By means of a sample of texts; Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1999, Anna Best Occasional Sights: A London Guidebook of Missed Opportunities and Things that Aren't Always There, London: The Photographers Gallery 2003, Guy Debord, ‘Theory of Derive’ [1958], in Situationist International Anthology, trans. Ken Knabb, Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets 1995, Claire Doherty, (ed.) Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog 2004, Georg Simmel, 'The Metropolis and Mental Life' [1903], in Phillip Kasinitz (ed.), Metropolis: Centre and Symbol of our Times, Basingstoke: Macmillan., Wrights and Sites, 'A Manifesto for a New Walking Culture: Dealing with the City', in Everyday Walking Culture: The Sixth International Conference on Walking in the 21st Century, 22-23 September, Zürich, in Performance Research, Issue 11.2, London: Routledge 2005.
The centralist and utopian architectural ideals of the Situationists were to be brought about through altered methods of urban navigation, in view of humans’ own actions functioning to eradicate detachment from their everyday surroundings, which had become reduced to an image of which people were spectators, see Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, Detroit: Black and Red 1983.
David Harvey’s theory identifies the self, the community, the institution, the built environment, and the principles of human action among the eight fronts on which political interventions can be made. See David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press 2000, and Steve Pile, Real Cities, London: Sage Publications Ltd. 2005.
Developed in Miwon Kwon, From One Place to Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity, Massachusetts: MIT Press 2004.

Playing in Urban Spaces

2009-02-25T05:43:00.000-08:00

Text written in esponse to 'Playing in Urban Spaces' Symposium, Leeds Met Gallery, 3.10.08

http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews/single/485459

HotDesk

2009-01-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

View from Victorian Ornamental Shelter, Roundhay Park and Building 2.0 Illuminated, digital video, 2009.

http://www.ntileeds.co.uk/events/hotdesk-art-exhibition-from-outofoffice/

Two digital videos projected onto whiteboard surrounded by office notes, at forthcoming HotDesk,an exhuibition intervening in the office environment at The Old Broadcasting House, Leeds. In association with nti Leeds.

These video and photographic works are markers within an ongoing enquiry into the montage of histories that comprise urban space, the distinctions between workspaces and those designed for leisure, and the shifting functions, potentials and periods of vacancy created through temporary occupancy and re-framing of architectural structures. They act as subtly altered views, suggestions or proposals for activity.

View from Victorian Ornamental Shelter, Roundhay Park and Building 2.0 Illuminated shown at Hot Desk depict the The Victorian pavilion in the titled location looking towards Leeds centre, and the new Digital Media Campus in Sheffield. Traditionally, Victorian follies and pavilions allowed a whimsical encounter with the environment from the comfort of shelter, a contrast to practical cabin or shack-like structures or the pragmatic and dynamic intentions of much contemporary small architecture, and significant to the framing of landscape as product or object within leisure and tourism. Glass fronted environments for work in the city frame the urban landscape which their occupants are both immersed in and comfortably detached from, and many attempt a playful and stylized presence, associating enterprise and innovation with entertainment. As yet unopened, the illuminated Digital Media Campus appears active, yet strangely void and slightly kitsch.

Part of a series of intentionally uncomplicated videos that consider framing of open space through lens and architectural form, these still shot projections also draw links to the history of the Old Broadcasting House and its own combination of period architectural features and office fittings, referencing it’s current ‘collaborative, open, communal and sustainable’ co-working environment and the single shot moving image of Roundhay Park Gardens by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, made at the Old Broadcasting House in 1888.

Visit
http://www.roundhaypark.org.uk/roundhay-park-virtual-tour/source/roundhay9865.html

Hotdesk/Hotdesking is a term that relates specifically to the physical yet ephemeral occupation of a work station/surface. As a new arts organization based in Leeds OutofOffice are developing a project that confronts such themes with relation to contemporary art concerns.

outofoffice3@googlemail.com.

http://www.ntileeds.co.uk/tag/hotdesk/

2009-01-22T07:58:00.000-08:00

XS: Big Ideas, Small Buildings

The Winners!

2009-01-22T07:56:00.000-08:00

DIY5: Hunting For Treasure

2009-01-22T07:40:00.000-08:00

Project Development

The Hunt!

In collaboration with 4 emerging artists lead by Yara El-Sherbini
Sponsored by the Live Art Development Agency
The Discovery Museum, Newcastle Upon Tyne2008

http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/prof_dev/diy/

Over three days six artists collaboratively developed a playful site-specific Treasure Hunt that facilitates new ways of exploring the given space. The funny and socio-politically engaged hunt aims to find new ways to actively engage audiences with contemporary issues, including social practices and the specifics of the local and the global. The use of this recognizable format in contemporary popular culture explores accessibility and interactivity, and allows us to develop the art of cryptic clue writing.
Working within The Newcastle Story at the Discovery Museum, we developed clues that engaged participants in their local context, providing altered perspectives on local history and representations of popular culture and a discerning look at the delivery of local identity through museum displays. The Treasure Hunt was held on the evening of the third night and attracted over fifty participants. The treasure was a collection of accumulated objects offering irreverent takes on local identity.

Wolfgang Weileder

2009-01-22T07:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.house-projects.com/

Atelier Bow-Wow

2009-01-22T06:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.bow-wow.jp/profile/works_e.html

Heather and Ivan Morrison

2009-01-22T05:58:00.000-08:00

Simon Faithful

2009-01-22T05:54:00.001-08:00

www.simonfaithfull.org/

Andrea Zittel

2009-01-22T05:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.zittel.org/

Ta(l)king Place

2009-01-22T05:33:00.000-08:00

http://invitationstojoinin.blogspot.com/

TA(L)KING PLACE

In collaboration with Sam Vardy
Encounters Shop, Sheffield
4.11.08 and monthly

Ta(l)king Place is a series of open monthly sessions inviting discussion around participation, action and interdisciplinary collaboration in local urban contexts.

The sessions aim to explore contemporary social, artistic and urban issues, whilst encouraging informal networking and dialogue between local practitioners, professionals and residents, generating new ideas and collaborations.
Drinks and a basic buffet are provided, and visitors are invited to contribute an item.For more information on Ta(l)king Place to join the mailing list contact Sam or Charlotte at invitations@encounters-arts.org.uk

This project is part of the Invitations To Join In programme, a series of participatory projects delivered collaboratively by a collective of Encounters, myself and local artists, organisations and individuals interested in participation and dialogue. Invitations To Join In is running from the Encounters Shop, Sharrow, Sheffield.

http://invitationstojoinin.blogspot.com
http://www.encounters-arts.org.uk/currentprojects.htm

http://invitationstojoinin.blogspot.com

Make/Shift Press (links)

2009-01-21T17:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.metro.co.uk/metrolife/article.html?in_article_id=188461&in_page_id=219&in_a_source=

http://www.thestar.co.uk/theatre/Artspace-explores-the-city-as.4205929.jp

Make/Shift Press Release

2009-01-21T17:31:00.000-08:00

Solo Curatorial project by Charlotte A Morgan
Featuring work by Jack Fabian, Chris Clarke, Alex Farrar, Robert Lye, No Fixed Abode, Ben Moon, Transit (Kate Longman and Charlotte A Morgan), Thom O'Nions and Daniel Simpkins and Penny Whitehead.

'MAKE/SHIFT explores temporality, impermanence and [dis]location in the context of the built environment and ways in which these elements may inform shifting notions of place. The project, devised and curated by Charlotte A. Morgan, consists of a series of nine one day exhibitions presenting newly developed work by emerging artists and collectives. Based locally and nationally, the exhibiting artists work with sculpture, installation, intervention, participation, text and live performance.

The form and experience of the city is proposed as a complex network of spatial and social structures and relations - both real and imaginary - a perpetually modified whole denying clear definition. MAKE/SHIFT considers elements of the impermanent, the facade, the immediate, the transitory and the sustainable within these structures and relations; the design and construction processes that comprise the urban system and the networks, groups, encounters and communities formed by its inhabitants. The project also re-examines the perception of the individual daily encounter as fixed within the flow of the city’s immediate history, which alludes to, perhaps misleadingly, a locating of the self in relation to the environment.

The enquiry into the transitory aspects of the city is reflected in both the content and structure of the exhibition, which adjusts the arrangements by which the artists use the space and the audience encounter the work. Though the locality of Sheffield is not referenced directly in all of the works, its geography, industry and its current state of regenerative flux provide appropriate references for these considerations, which bear relevance at a time when issues of the global/local are of particular pertinence within many current discourses.

MAKE/SHIFT opens with a solo exhibition by Jack Fabian and continues with solo exhibitions every other day, culminating in a CLOSING EVENT on Thursday 10th July | 6.30 – 8.30pm. S1 Artspace will be open
12 – 7pm on all exhibition days, please see above for full exhibition schedule.'

http://www.s1artspace.org [archive - makeshift]

Units 4a-6b /

Trafalgar Court / Milton Street

SHEFFIELD S1 4JU / United Kingdom

Active Archive. Charlotte Morgan and Kate Longman.

2009-01-21T16:33:00.000-08:00

Video Stills - Archived sights

Archived descriptions/directions

Installation Views

In collaboration with Kate Longman

Make/Shift, S1 Artspace, Sheffield 2008.

With reference to Sheffield City Council’s plans to replace the iconic cooling towers at Tinsley with a public art work commissioned to ‘represent’ Sheffield to its inhabitants and visitors, Kate Longman and I showed an interim collection of our ongoing archive of landmarks, vistas and incidental city features of significance to its inhabitants, contributed through public submission, which aimed to reflect the multiple and ever-changing internal and external factors that inform the perception, experience and definition of place.

Borderline Engaged (link)

2009-01-21T16:31:00.000-08:00

Imagine This…
Review of Nathan Peters’, Your Imaginary Country, in Issue 2, Open Dialogues Flash Publication 2008.

Borderline Engaged
Response to Nathan Peters’, Your Imaginary Country, Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin blog, available at http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_628

Caban Unnos Interview

2009-01-21T16:24:00.000-08:00

Caban Unnos collaborators No Fixed Abode, Tony Broomhead amd Dan McTiernan, interviewed by CAM and Anga’aefonu Bein-Vete

INTERVIEW - CABAN UNNOS
No Fixed Abode, Tony Broomhead and Dan McTiernan of the project Caban Unnos, interviewed by and Anga’aefonu Bain-Vete and Charlotte A. Morgan, Berlin 5th June 2008.

Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Jonathon Groeger. Courtesy Wooloo Productions

Caban Unnos is a collaborative project between Sheffield (UK) based artist collective No Fixed Abode (Horatio Eastwood and Terry Slater), Tony Broomhead, architect and partner in Amenity Space, and Dan McTiernan, project manager of free online waste exchange whywaste.org.uk. The project is centred around the design and construction of a one night house in Alexanderplatz; Berlin, and is taking place as part the New Life Berlin festival, organised and facilitated by Wooloo.org. Assistance from participants and volunteers has been initially brought together through the Wooloo.org network. This interview takes place two days prior to the build, which is scheduled for 07.06.08.

Charlotte A. Morgan (CAM): Can I start by asking you to introduce the initial concept of the project and talk more about the folk tradition of the one night house?

Horatio Eastwood (HE): Well the reason that we say belief and not law, is that the one night house tradition doesn’t have any founding in law anywhere in the world though it is a worldwide phenomenon. It is believed that if you can construct a house between sunset and sunrise without being disturbed, you then obtain free copyhold of that land. Different countries upholding this belief stipulate different conditions, for example in Wales the house has to have smoke coming from the chimney by sunrise, and in turkey you just need to have a roof.

Anga’aefonu Bain-Vete (AB-V): Is there a specifically German one?

HE: Probably, we haven’t found one; it is all over Europe…

Terry Slater (TS): A lot of people seem to know about the Turkish one over here as there’s such a massive Turkish community, but we’re bringing it from a UK perspective I suppose, so it’s a contribution to what’s already circulating really.

AB-V: How do you see this project as being specifically relevant to the location of Berlin; having a one night house in the city? I’m thinking in terms of local people, beyond the actual build and inviting people to participate that way. How did you come to choose the location?

TS: I suppose there are a couple of things there. Initially we’d obviously been invited to do it here, and the relevance to Berlin came quite late through our research. We found books by certain people that were working in similar ways in Berlin just because of the nature of the city and how much disused space there is. The space is so contested and you don’t really get that anywhere else to the extent that you do here.

HE: One of the key things we’ve found, though we didn’t specifically intend to do the project in Berlin, is that there are a lot of spaces that are produced in a similar way through a community of interested parties, and they will claim land or buildings through various means. Something that’s happening in Berlin is that it’s starting to receive serious money and be developed because of interest in the art community, and the socially produced spaces or free open spaces are beginning to disappear. It’s completely by coincidence that we’ve come at a point, but then again you could argue that maybe it isn’t, and that this is the reason that the festival’s happening.

TS: This is one of the things, when you ask, ‘could it be done anywhere else?’ Well yes, it probably could…

CAM: …but it would have taken on other issues?

TS: It took route with us in Sheffield through long term research and we refined it into a project for Berlin. Sheffield has had major investment and all of a sudden is becoming a completely different place, and in many cities you may encounter similar issues. Even in terms of materials used, we’re looking for this urban vernacular material and they’re probably quite similar in many places.

Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Andreas Bastiansen. Courtesy Wooloo Productions

Tony Broomhead (TB): I think architecturally, the fact that the build is in Berlin was a big draw for me. It’s one of the few cities that have been split down the middle for decades and architecturally the two sides to the city are very different. In the last fifteen years or so that has begun to change; this new wave of development and gentrification, and of unifying of the two halves architecturally and in terms of city planning, have completely changed the nature of the city. Projects like this help people reassess what’s happening to their city, and by creating something that’s essentially made of scrap, rubbish or a material that everyone can identify with, quite interesting questions start to be posed as to what we’re building cities out of and how much control we have over that development. Plonking something in the middle of a main city square is quite provocative.

CAM: Tony and Dan, as you both come to this project as architectural or environmental practitioners, I’m wondering how this kind of project might open up possibilities for your own professional exploration that maybe wouldn’t be possible within your own practices. The notion of functionality is quite prominent within a lot of current discourse surrounding the relationship between art and architecture, and perhaps this project allows a certain amount of freedom from the legal and functional elements of your work that have real implications in what you can produce.

AB-V: You’re also moving more into the realm of what I would consider to be art that architecture, because of the paradox of constructing a space of shelter and yet this space then being impermanent.

TB: I’d argue that this project is more relevant architecturally than most architecture projects are as it's driven by artistic desire and a sense of social responsibility. Also, the design has grown out of the materials that are being used, where it can be placed and how long it takes to be built. It’s taking on a lot of architectural issues; the difference is that normally there’s someone paying the bills, making demands that affect architectural creativity, and the social implications of placing a building permanently are far greater.

CAM: So this kind of project opens up a space for criticality in your work that goes beyond the structure itself?

Dan McTiernan (DMc): I think that architecture should do that anyway. Maybe the problem is that it doesn’t always, and this work is kind of pure architecture – it’s about what a building means in a space and how people interact with it.

CAM: When you speak of the networks or communities that you want to build or insert yourself into, what interests me is the mode of participation that you used and how important this element is within the work. Originally your call out through Wooloo.org and other networks seemed to intend to create a group of participants that would all influence the project in different ways, and this process would build some kind of shared experience. Perhaps the fact that Tony and Dan were personally invited makes them collaborators rather than participants.

TS: Definitely, yes.

Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Andreas Bastiensen. Courtesy Wooloo Productions

AB-V: How much of the participatory element is based on keeping the ball rolling and egging each other on throughout the night, and how much is conceptually based and focused on collective activity?

TB: Well it needs a lot of people to get it done.

DMc: The reality is that it has to be collaborative and it has to be organised.

AB-V: So if it was manageable with one or two people to do it alone?

DMc: But that’s the whole point; it isn’t, building never is.

AB-V: Conceptually though, how much weight does this have in the project; the participatory act?

TB: That’s the key thing; it’s literally the weight of the materials.

CAM: So they are just helpers then.

DMc: Of course they’re not because it is a collective endeavour, and building used to be a social endeavour as well and that’s what we’re generating. Even if it’s an imported Sheffield community I don’t think that matters.

TB: If you’re building a house for someone, everyone has input and that’s what’s important, even if it isn’t artistic input. They still take pride in the work.

DMc: That’s quite in-keeping with the notion of the one night house anyway isn’t it; it’s friends and family that would have pitched in.

CAM: A limitation of the Wooloo.org context may be that it wasn’t possible for you to put the call out to people from non-art backgrounds who may have been interested in helping.

HE: Martin [Rosengaard, co-curator of New life Berlin] did suggest that the community on Wooloo.org was not strictly art based; I can’t possibly comment on that really. We have tried to do a lot of participatory things and get people involved before, but we’ve learned to question why these people would want to be involved if they don’t necessarily have a vested interest or get any obvious benefit from it. We have worried what we are actually offering this group of helpers, but the majority really do just want to help; they don’t need artistic input.

CAM: It can mainly be other artists interested in the experience or the project. We’ve discussed many aspects of the project in its present sense now - how do you expect the build and the finished house will be represented in the future? There’s been some debate surrounding how the Wooloo.org site will be carried on - will the work receive any publicity outside of this context and how important is that to you?

Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Jonathan Groeger. Courtsey Wooloo Productions

AB-V: You’re going to start a revolution…

HE: It’s difficult to say as it is in the future… This is the first project we’ve done that we feel we could do again in another context where techniques can be refined or explored. We will archive it on our website and these guys [TB and DMc] might too, I haven’t really thought about it.

TB: When you’ve done something physical, it will lead onto other things. Even if the house falls down or whatever, we’ll have learned something from that, and the reason that everyone is sat around this table today is the desire to ‘build a thing in Berlin’. That’s incredibly credible by itself, but no doubt more will come from it.

Charlotte A. Morgan is an artist and writer, currently co-developing and curating Transit Projects, a mobile project space based in Sheffield UK and online.

Anga'aefonu Bain-Vete is a practising artist, collaborative curator and cross-disciplinary writer, currently completing a Master's in Visual Culture at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
www.angaaefonu.com

Please only reproduce this text with permission from the author and Open Dialogues. opendialogues@gmail.com

In Issue 1, Open Dialogues Flash Publication 2008 and online at

http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_584

http://nofixedabode.org

http://amenityspace.co.uk

http://whywaste.org.uk

I was always told not to eat standing up (link)

2009-01-21T16:10:00.001-08:00

Critical response to Ali&Cia, Eat the Wall

http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_644

When is an artist not an artist?

2009-01-21T16:04:00.000-08:00

WHEN IS AN ARTIST NOT AN ARTIST?

30 Days
Two anonymous cartographers
30 days prior to the closing of the New Life Berlin festival.

The two cartographers behind the 30 Days project casually make their way across a courtyard, between two flat roofed buildings and back towards the main road. Over the disused railway track opposite, they were told by the previous gallery’s assistant, a row of small art spaces inhabit the glass-fronted elevation of another vast converted industrial building. Shadowing them, I enjoy this sense of discovery and the unknown route ahead - a process invariably more interesting than much of the work on show.

Photographs and notes are taken upon entering the galleries, which are assessed according to a scale known only to the cartographers. Acting as anonymous practitioners, these cartographers aim to infiltrate and subvert Berlin’s local art networks and create, over thirty days, an alternative map of the city’s artistic landscape, which can then be used and added to by future visitors. Both cartographers originate from the USA, and through their position as relative outsiders, they also aim to connect organisations by pairing up the mapped spaces and encouraging them to collaborate on a future project. These pairs would not normally work together – perhaps because of preconceptions about each other’s work, different commercial agendas, or lack of inclination to direct resources towards small, experimental projects. The results of the cartographers' activities are one Google map of locations and two collections of textual or image based information that exist online via Wooloo.org. The resulting institutional collaborations will be followed up by the cartographers at a later date.

The cartographers admit that their categorisation of the galleries is subjective, and explain that any map-maker’s cultural background influences the maps that they produce. Talking to these map makers, it is clear that they are highly educated art practitioners who have de-classified themselves as artists in favour of the title ‘cartographer’. However, they say they aim to tread lightly over their chosen terrain, creating altered perspectives and relations amongst its potential visitors or inhabitants, whilst maintaining a critical distance and leaving no trace of their presence. Referring to the project in cartographic terms is therefore problematic because, by nature, the traditional cartographer stamps their ground a little, forming a subjective overview of place that is open to misinterpretation or generalisation. Cartography produces space, defining identities through difference. The inhabitants of the landscape being mapped (in this case, artists/professionals/galleries) then locate themselves within these identities, by which they define the outsider. Therefore, if the 30 Days online site and maps are to gain the level of interest and visibility that their creators aim for, the cartographers have the potential to mark their influence on the identity and boundaries of the Berlin art scene.

Another subjective element of this project is the classification of artistic activity. When do we cease to define activity as artistic - when working artists lose physical proximity to each other? When they all go out for a coffee? Perhaps the cartographers are being knowingly playful with the elusive nature of the artistic act, but if so, this could be reflected more in their results. In fact, the map shows established galleries for the most part and a lack of artist-led initiatives, studio groups, temporary spaces, events or individual artists’ activities. This is probably because less formal additions would be harder to fix geographically, which would interfere with the easy use of the maps as guides.

But the maps’ status as guides is also in doubt. In order to dispel the fixedness of the cartographers’ definitions, it is crucial that the maps can be adjusted by future visitors. Therefore, the project’s priority must be to provide a model for visitor re-structructuring (by adapting the original results online or creating a new map), rather than to create a definitive guide. However, the maps need to be visually clear and accessible to enable visitors to contribute. Although one of these maps is available through Google search, most of the information is stored on Wooloo.org with no direct link from the homepage (though this may be out of the cartographers' hands), and it is also unclear how the maps could be adapted. The mapped spaces are presented through an inviting visual display, yet remain separate and difficult to understand in relation to one another. Without clear links given between them, they are rendered isolated, cut off from the flow of movement in-between which defines them as destinations.

On a practical level, the artists claim that adopting the title of cartographer allows them more freedom to work within the networks they are navigating, which suggests the art institutions they visit may treat artists using ’non-art’ processes more suspiciously than their professional counterparts. Perhaps as artists have historically taken the institutional framework of their working environment as subject for analysis, they seem likely to have a more complex critical agenda, and as they don’t represent the views of a corporate employer, artists are allowed a more critical position than other professionals. The re-positioning of roles also denies any distinction between the artists' work and that of other practitioners and professionals in whose fields they may be working; when acting as artists, the cartographic process may be seen as a tool in the realisation of an artistic idea, but when acting as cartographers, the emphasis shifts to the product of their activities – the map itself. This role play also enables potential audiences to engage with the maps outside of an artistic context, which, the cartographers assume, would only complicate the situation. By enforcing the cartographic status of the project, its members make sure that the map readers are simply reading maps, and not partaking in a work of art.

This cloaking of the artist has implications within the network of relations existing between artists, art institutions, audiences and publics. As the New Life Berlin festival has exemplified, many artists position themselves in diverse roles, employing processes traditionally associated with other areas of study or professional work. Shouldn’t the artist’s role be declared in order to promote contemporary art practice as multi-faceted and inter-disciplinary? In fact, New Life Berlin was structured to promote just this kind of interdisciplinarity, among its communities of artists and participants. Also, though the artists have masked the project’s status as a work of art, the project is dependent on the artistic context of this festival for its promotion and dissemination, and so 30 Days’ separation from the art world is only fleeting.

Perhaps then, alternatively, the cartographers’ choice not to be deemed artists within the festival’s publicity material offers a critique of some participatory and interactive projects, whose claims of shifting and merging the roles of the artist and audience are unfounded. In denying the role of the artist the cartographers suggest that, as artists, the distinctions will always remain.

For now the project stands on ambiguous ground. Much like the dried out areas of land that interrupt the sprawl of Berlin’s urban system, the maps’ function is unclear. They are available for use, yet the user has an uncertain amount of freedom within them and relies on mediation for access. When the festival ends, and the cartographers remove themselves from the physical location of Berlin, the map they are offering will show its full subversive potential.

Charlotte A. Morgan

Charlotte A. Morgan is an artist and writer currently co-developing and curating Transit Projects, a mobile project space based in Sheffield UK and online. charlotte.anne.morgan@googlemail.com

Please only reproduce this text with permission from the author and Open Dialogues. opendialogues@gmail.com

http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_651

Project Outline

2009-01-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

Open Dialogues:New Life Berlin

New Life Berlin Festival 2008.

New Life Berlin, http://www.wooloo.org/festival/, was a contemporary art festival dedicated to new modes of moving and existing and is structured along three themes:

Transnational Communities. What do ‘community’ and ‘identity’ mean today? Presenting projects from both artistic and sociological starting points, New Life Berlin will use group participation to explore real-life cultural mobility.
Artistic Social Responsibility. What is the relationship between cultural practitioners and corporate entities in the new millennium? How does contemporary cultural production relate to the concept of “Corporate Social Responsibility”?
Participation and Intervention. How do participatory arts practices affect the socio-cultural environments in which they take place? How and why can local audiences become involved in artists’ projects, and what does their involvement mean in terms of civic engagement and social empowerment?

For New Life Berlin, Open Dialogues built a tailor-made programme of live events, textual interventions and writing that responded critically to the socially engaged and collaborative work shown. They developed a community of writers who explored online and offline communities during the New Life Berlin Festival, developed organic responses to the Festival and investigates the implications and role of critical writing. Local and international writers were asked to participate in OPEN DIALOGUES: NEW LIFE BERLIN, which acts as a professional development programme for new and existing writers. Each participating writer was supported in writing, publishing and editing their work as well as briefed current trends in critical writing. We also gained a unique insight into the participatory, live and socially engaged work at New Life Berlin.

Writers committed to one full day’s writing workshop (31 May), two 2 hour peer-critique sessions, at least one OPEN DIALOGUES: NEW LIFE BERLIN event (7^th June) and to writing at least three texts throughout the festival, yet we spent many more hours working and interacting socially as a strong community than either the writers or the organisers had anticipated. For texts see http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog

Public Art Survey: Cardboard

2009-01-21T14:31:00.000-08:00

Construction

Prize Winners Announcement

Cardboard Works

Prize Winners

The Royal Standard Turner Prize Extravaganza! Wolstenholme Projects, Liverpool 2007.

In Turner Prize nominee Nathan Coley’s laborious durational work, ‘The Lamp of Sacrifice, 161 Places of Worship, Birmingham 2000’, the artist turned the second floor of Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery into a workshop, in which he constructed cardboard models of the city’s 161 places of worship for the duration of the exhibition, As It Is. Through this active and time consuming process, Coley was attempting to investigate the complex relationship between social and architectural structure within the urban system, with ‘an interrogation of the seen and unseen systems’ present within the built environment. Participants in Public Art Survey: Cardboard were assigned one piece of public art from within the city of Liverpool to recreate using only their imagination and the materials in the kits provided. For Coley’s Birmingham exhibition, the artist allowed a prolonged period of time in which to painstakingly maintain accurate proportions for each model; at this event however we had only four hours. At the end of the evening the models were be appraised by a panel of The Royal Standard curators and myself, and a winner will be announced. The winner will then be presented with the complete collection of cardboard models.

the big move. Street Party

2009-01-20T18:06:00.000-08:00

Video Stills

the big move. Installation Documentation

2009-01-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

Installation Views. 35mm Transparancy projections, guide leaflets, off site platform.

the big move.
Exhibition and Event

Roach Road/Psalter Lane Sheffield 2007.

This project took its name from marketing material circulated to promote the then imminent relocation of the BA/MA Fine Art courses to new premises in the city centre, and consisted of both a live event and subsequent participatory exhibition. I co-coordinated and hosted a street party for the residents of the area surrounding the campus, including families, elderly people and students, in celebration of the dynamic of the area. The project’s contextual focus was the wider regenerative agenda of the cultural industries quarter and contested environment surrounding the move, as well as a playful nudge at shifting roles and expectations of artists in relation to site and community, questioning the impact of a guest cultural worker’s presence in a pre-existing place.

The exhibition showed documentation of the event, whilst guide leaflets lead visitors back out of the building to the street location of the party to converse with one of the party guests, view the panorama of the city below and make their way along individual processions towards the new campus site, allowing for imaginary tangents. Whether physically undertaken or imagined, the processions aimed to playfully allow the viewers to stray from the path of the exhibition.

Evening Window 9pm (Sofanco®, re-constituted stone and stainless steel)

2009-01-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

Evening Window 9pm (Sofanco®, re-constituted stone and stainless steel)

digital photograph on 35mm transparency

Members Show, S1 Artspace, Sheffield 2008 Part of a series of video and photographic works exploring incidental, ambiguous and defunct urban features and their dormant potentials.

City Benches

2009-01-20T17:16:00.000-08:00

Ongoing Project

Sheffield

I am working on an ongoing project involving investigations into urban furniture, looking irreverently at the positive qualities of such features and also their ability to define behaviour or stand obsolete. I’m specifically looking at the prominent model of stone bench seen around Sheffield (see images), exploring their formal qualities and locations and usage in relation to their designers’ intentions. The benches positioning across the city hold potential for incidental usage and are suggestive of and follies, bandstands and amphitheatres. I am drawing upon research of these traditional structures and council planning regulations in the creation of photographic works, posters and potential events.

HOST:City

2009-01-20T16:27:00.000-08:00

Installation Views

HOST

Bloc, Sheffield 2007.

HOST: CITY archived a series of projects, events and interventions that occurred within and around the city in the three years preceding the HOST exhibition, collated through open submission. The submissions that were received, catalogued and presented include works from a variety of professional, emerging and undergraduate artists, organisations and institutions. The diversity of projects included intended to both highlight differences and raise debate around a range of practices and notions of site specificity, the influence of art practice within the conditions of urban space, and the boundaries of organisations and institutions within the city.

The archive will continue to develop, and comes to act as a structure in which these projects can be catalogued and circulated.

32’500 Metres

2009-01-20T15:25:00.000-08:00

UNTITLED (ROPE BRIDGE), 32’500 Metres, The Victoria Baths, Manchester 2007. 32’500 Metres showed work by six emerging artists made in response to the context. The show and was curated by Thom O’Nions.

Sheffield - Inverness

2009-01-20T15:14:00.001-08:00

Route between Sheffield and Inverness Train Stations

2007

Over a twenty four hour period I traveled from Sheffield to Inverness and back again. The journey has many motivations yet was ultimately aimless; it was an exploration of travel.

The need or desire to be regularly on the move, to have a sense of multiple destinations ahead, is perhaps symptomatic of evolving relations to place in contemporary culture. Demands on time indicate specified places for work and for leisure, and allude to unknown destinations that these routines place just out of reach. A sense of elsewhere can be reached in those times away from time, in which we are restricted yet may allow ourselves to wander. These times, can occur often in the gaze out of a window and in the constantly decomposing image of outside with which we are faced during long journeys. When traveling there is a set purpose, reason, destination, but the route allows tangents of imaginary diversions to be taken. The journey is physically restricting and yet offers a freedom, non time, nowhere-ness, in which these origins and destinations can be contemplated.

The resulting work took the form of a video projected onto a window at night, though it’s role as document, composition or narrative was ambiguous

Lost and Found

2009-01-20T14:20:00.000-08:00

Installation Views, Main Space

Installation Views, Mezzanine Floor

Presentation of Object

Installation View, Artists Talk

In collaboration with Kate Longman END Gallery, Sheffield 2007.

Over three hundred found items were amassed during pre-mapped journeys through the city and suburban areas of Sheffield, and catalogued by textual description and image of the place where found. The objects were housed within handmade cardboard storage units covering the walls of the upper floor of the gallery and offered to visitors who sought to reclaim their lost property or a similar replacement item, chosen from the printed and data projected catalogues and requested by form.

Team Build

2009-01-20T14:11:00.000-08:00

After building a tree house frame, a group of participants to collaboratively complete and decorate the construction in a playful take on play and participation, cross-disciplinary art and architectural practice and corporate team building exercises.

Team Build

2009-01-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

Mobile Platform

2009-01-20T13:43:00.000-08:00

A mobile platform was constructed with the intention of providing a portable scenic view on demand. Knowingly ridiculous in function and design, the platform is a tool with which I emphasised act of looking within the everyday environment. The role of a traditional countryside lookout point, in which the scenic view is predefined as valuable to the onlooker, is here subverted, and the platform comes to allow an elevated perspective on any location. However, the platform struggles to be a functional, aesthetically impressive self-contained art object, and the perspective it offers is only altered slightly in height, little more than is offered by standing on a table or by the natural hillside locations within the city.

Look-out Points

2009-01-20T13:28:00.000-08:00

This series of raised look out points offering altered perspectives on the building. Though they invite a physical encounter, the objects here are props that evoke imaginary negotiations of both the physical form and the new visual perspective.

Update

2009-01-19T15:25:00.000-08:00

This blog is being re formatted and will be active again 21.01.09