Transmission Rory Pilgrim 10.03.2015

Lecture Notes:

What do we hope to become? 

Fascinated by words, suffered with a stutter but appreciates how necessary they are in life and communication. Have we become artists because its another way to say something? 

started with speech when he first started to make work. “What on earth do I have to say? What on earth do I do? who is my audience? who am I actually supposed to be making work for?” 

As an artist its not clarified exactly what you supposed to do.The freedom of being on artist. 

Began to learn Estonian - Interesting way of learning speech, considering previous stutter. Opened up to the fact he could speak to another 1.3million people. 

Spent 3 years learning Estonia, spent 3 years trying to twin weymouth and happily (Estonian town) 

Love in Uganda, 2010 - Perfomance and Installation  

illegal to be gay in Uganda - trying to pass a bill to allow hangings. 

• Churches in the UK said nothing for 2 months. 40% of Ugandan follow same anglican religious beliefs. 
• Wrote a song during this silence called ‘love in Uganda’ 
• Asked churches around sheffield to perform the song, to which non excepted. 
• Produced an announcements poster to display this, displayed in a concert dates format. 
• Found hand written poster advertising ‘morning coffee and tea’ absorbed by the use of a hand written sign - it was traceable, someone was responsible for this. 
• Traced the sign writer and asked to collaborate. David (dSigns) hadn’t worked as a full time sign writer for over 10 years. 

The Rainbow, 2011 

• Made piece called ‘Rainbow’ - collaborative poster states “I guess we are not ready for this yet” tried to included things that would relate directly to him but also to everyone  
• Began to work more with young people in 2011, just after the students protests. 
• Made largest sign to hang in the window of museum. 
• Group of 8 young women got together to sing, empowering songs. 

The Rainbow, 2011, Installation

2012 - Went back to ‘Love in Uganda’ 

After work he began to focus on words 

• Peace in the 60s, Love, War, Legality and Opportunity, What if these words were to become saturated of meaning for future generations? 
• What if there aren't the words for future generations to express what they need to say? Do we have those words? 
• Freedom, for example, comes with a lot of baggage but equally amazing. 
• Started, not only to think about words but space. They require space in order to grow and gain life. 

New work thinning about what space offers now. Words are like repositories which retain meaning and time. 

Words Are Not Signs They Are Years - Work at Site Gallery, Sheffield 

• open room in which for people to talk about words, time, what you want to become. 
• “Family, affection, communication - if people communicated more the world would be a better place, and freedom, people should be able to live where they want and how they want.”
• “Freedom to be a wife, freedom to be a mother”

Transmission Grace Shwindt 10.02.2015

Lecture Notes:

"Only free individual can create a free society"

Production uses film, dance, interaction, interrupting the idea of a narrative. Costumes reflect the narrative. Tried to turn everything into a material tried to make them all individual.

Taking the reaction out of the viewer rather than introducing it - monotone narration.

Used trained contemporary dancers, made them use ballet techniques. Ballet has strong lines and a rigid form.

Always trying to take the system apart. Lines of ballet is broken through costume and movements. 'she can move freer'.

Themes of breaking freedom. Long process of parallel development. In depth preliminary drawings and extremely detailed script.

6 Month process to shoot and edit the film, heavily post produced. One years process all together.

ONLY A FREE INDIVIDUAL CAN CREATE A FREE SOCIETY, 2014 

Medium: Full HD, single channel video, sound, colour, english language 

Running Time 80 Minutes 

Transmission Richard Layzell 03.02.2015

Lecture Notes:

Reading about life after Art College:

 - Graduated from Reading (Fine Art)

 - Video Piece, people walking along herringbone patterned wood flooring.

 - Narrates personal story in third person.

 - Begins to deconstruct flooring, 'once one leaves the rest will follow.'

 - Begins to build structure from the removed structures, creates imagery of a developing city. Film ends with the destruction of this city of blocks.

Becoming Other (acting) - Visiting Cambridge as Bailey Savage.

- Extreme acting/ performance art

- Fully embodies and becomes the character at the time.

- Visited the area for a week and began to become know and recognised as this character (Bailey Savage) by the local public. Testament to his skills, begins to get a real life reaction to his work and the characters he embodies.

Max Hombre - Colchester

Tania Koswycz - Imaginary conceptual artist.

Exhibition about art does to people. Developed four imaginary artists to take part in an exhibition. Was originally going to use real artists work but had issues with ownership of the work. Then had to develop and create the artwork for each artist himself. Found this easier then developing the characters. Found he had more of a connection with Tania more then any of the other artists and work he developed, Tania's work was particularly easy for him to generate and make.

Felt so strongly connected to this character that he began to develop work off of the original show. Found himself having regular dialogues with Tania and used to write to her. Produced a large show in London based on his communication with Tania, posted his conversations with Tania in a script format online.

"RL Maybe I should open an e-mail account just for conversations with you, Tania?

TK All I’m interested in is what this project is about. For you to dedicate time. No half-measures with this. It’s becoming so complex that there’s no escape. It’s all piled on, piled in.

RL How do you mean?

TK Like your dream about a woman with a name like mine, Vesna Falkirk. Do we run along with this person as well? Are we talking to her too?

Like your speculating with me about what you should or shouldn’t do, how you should act.

Whether you should talk to me via e-mail or text. Whether this dialogue is more dynamic when it ‘goes live’ by e-mail to Andrew, then to web. If so, how to set it up, and when to start.

What these dialogues are about. Are they about you and me? Or are they about you telling me what’s going on artistically? Your musing about whether to ‘act’ [make actions] here, or not.

And who’s listening in? Is it Caroline or Chris? [did you just zone out?] Is it Rosie? Is it Lois? Or Kate? Or Andrew?

And when to work? You had two days off, now you’re back into it. You could take the sunrise shift at 06.15 for the early swim, then work till 13.30, siesta and take it from there. You could do this for 5 days. You could try all sorts of stuff. Treat it like a laboratory, including repeat performances of Catching the Breeze and International Cleaning. And those 5 days could be Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sun.

What do you think? And what’s been happening since our e-mail chat this morning, like animal conversations?

RL Sounds good. And like the Australian Log [2003] it’s ok if some days are quieter than others. But does it become Proustian musings about doing or not doing, acting or not acting, performing or not performing, and tracing the process in all of this?

TK Remember Caroline’s view of the self-conscious reference to process?

RL So you think leave this out, or see what happens when it’s pure dialogue?

TK You said it.

RL You think it might reveal more?

TK I think it would make better reading. I mean, let’s face it, we’ve started now, so let it roll on. Global dialogues. Number one, Skyros, Greece. I mean, the context is so meaty, so fleshy: you’ve been facilitating your workshops on the senses, the place is thick with resonance and memories. Even this taverna you’re in now, where you sat silently with eight people three weeks ago. And there was enough going on at Time Place Space to justify a web journal.

RL I’d like to bring the video camera into it, for images, and more technology.

TK The animal conversations?

RL Was looking at the tethered donkey, then the mule, then the horse, on the way down here, with Ari. He wanted to start some kind of friendship with the donkey. Then I thought how Tai Chi and Walking in Circles has related to animals. How they accept it and move with it. And I wondered if this could become one of my actions?

TK What?

RL Standing still with them or moving very slowly with them.

TK Why?

RL Haven’t thought it through enough.

TK Are you gonna wear grey and grey?

RL Think so. It’s the only semblance of a considered outfit I have here.

TK Clothes didn’t matter when you cleaned the Rupert Brooke statue [International Cleaning 2002].

RL True. Anyway, what do you think?

TK You need to work on it, but why not try it alongside everything else. It’s a lab situation. Kind of sad that I want to snigger when you talk about ‘working with animals’. Innocence as a currency. So would this be aimed at video documentation?

RL I guess so. But more of a creative conversation to see what happens. Like swimming with the ducks in the sea this morning. Like thinking of animals as potential audience and collaborators.

TK It’s happening. Call Andrew about setting up the daily web journal.

RL Ok. But hang on. Last time I had the 4 categories: Practicals/Methods, Intuitions/Insights, Freeflow and Your View. So this time it’s just dialogue with you, right?

TK I hadn’t forgotten the structure of the Australian Log. How could I? Let’s see how it goes.

RL Ok." - Skyros, Greece - August 2004. Conversations were posted daily. The accompanying visuals are stills form video footage. - http://www.rescen.net/Richard_Layzell/TalkingToTania/ttt01.html#.VOda400fyUk

Inhabited his characters, particularly Bailey Savage - Satirical take on right wing politics.

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Graham Dolphin 27.01.2015

Lecture Notes:

• Alternative titles 
• Everyone knows this is nowhere 
• day dream nation 
• life goes off 
• please note our failure 
• waiting on a dream 

Originally from Stafford born 1972

Art Foundation 1990 - 1991 

BA Fine Art Painting - Bath University 1991 - 1994 

One art gallery along with two cinemas nearby when growing up, art to him was boring black and white text books with poorly produced photographs. This was his culture. 

Rented a VHS player and watched a lot go unmoderated movies as a child; Dr. Killer, Cannibal Holocaust, Experimental Camp for example.

Also interested in music and music magazines and their cover art. 

Used to record music on cassette tapes then draw and make album covers from magazine cuttings 

inspired by koyaansqatsi - film, recordings of cityscapes and members of public within the city. Trilogy series. no narrative, no words, just clips from everyday life in cities.

Visual Drone and Resolve: 

Stockholm Music and arts festival - August 2014 

7 Screen video piece 

got musician to play 7 different droning sounds 

Damien Hirsts’ ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of a Someone Living’ 1991 - Couldn’t relate to the work, production costs were expensive - off putting etc.

final show at university - drilled through a Vogue Magazine. wanted to use something graphic, something that would stand out. 

First solo show came from his final piece. made 30 pieces from vogue and other fashion magazines, burning into the front covers, drilling screws into them, sticking hair to them, sticking vacuum waste to them. 

Made first publication from these works called ‘Everything from Vogue’ Solidified the work in the book and brought an end to the series. was creating other work at the time. 

wanted to make a video but didn't have the knowledge on how to. 

made a video piece called 1500 images of Kate Moss in 60 Seconds. played at 30 frames per second. Kate Moss still remains omnipresent. 

Moved away from fashion and started making front covers of album art. 

scratched song lyrics into vinyl records. used an etching scribe to scratch into the records. About owing the objects and things, personalising items. Liked the shift from buying them from a mass market then making his mark on them and them become precious, or one of a kind. also interested in the economy of this. 

Bench. recreated a bench outside kurt cobaines house. people write messages to cobaine on the wood of the bench like a memorial as he was cremated so no grave. 

Jim Morrissons grave in France, person made a crude bust of morrison which stood for 6  years which people defaced. eventually stolen. Grave now protected. Interested in the power these celebrities have over these people for them to come and write. 

redraws suicide note of elliot - famously left his note on post it note on a mirror. 

Recreated a rock that bob marley used to rest his head on while he smoked. people visit the rock much like the bench previously mentioned. 

recreates celebrity shrines… detail is about making them look old and weathered, finding the right and appropriate objects to add to them. 

made a series of fan - drawings…redrawn fan drawings he has found online. 

Frida Khalo’s Last diary entry.

ink drawings featuring lines repeated over and over again, interested in when they start to wobble and deconstruct. 

Started creating text pieces. wrote out every album and song he has in his iTunes. did a similar piece but writing down every human emotion. 

Are you a fan? do you have an obsession with celebrities? 

Only in the same way that a painter has the same obsession with painting or painting a certain theme. 

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Transmission Week 5 - Mel Brimfield & Gwyneth Herbert

'Mel Brimfield's practice is rooted in exploring the vexed historiography of performance art and its relation to theatre and popular cultural forms. She makes work in regular collaboration with a broad range of performers, including comedians, choreographers and dancers, musicians, cabaret and theatre practitioners. In recent years, she has developed exhibitions and performances for agencies and institutions including Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Government Art Collection at Whitechapel Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, Henry Moore Institute, and Ceri Hand Gallery.

Gwyneth Herbert is a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter with six albums to her credit, including the recent The Sea Cabinet commissioned by Snape Maltings. Paul Higgs is Brimfield's long-term collaborator, and has been the musical director, composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist for all of her large-scale live performance and film works in the last four years.' - http://www.transmission.uk.com

Transmission Week 4 - Warren Neidich

'Warren Neidich is a Berlin and Los Angeles-based post-conceptual artist and theorist who exposes the interfaces between Marxist inspired cultural production and its interrelationship to the brain and cognitive capitalism to produce an Emancipatory Materialism. His
interdisciplinary anarchic experimental works combine photographic and video elements, Internet downloads, scotch tape, painting, and noise installations. Selected international exhibitions include: PS1 MOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, ICA London, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Walker Art Center, Kunsthaus Graz, Kunsthaus Zürich, and Los Angeles County Museum. He was a tutor at Goldsmiths College on the MA Visual Arts, and has taught at Harvard University, Princeton University, Brown University,
Columbia University, University of Cambridge, the Düsseldorf Academy, among others.

Selected awards include the Fulbright Specialist Program Award, Fine Arts Category, American University in Cairo, 2013, and the Vilem Flusser Theory Award, Berlin, 2010. His book The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism Part Two was recently published by Archive Press, Berlin, Germany. His collection of essays Resistance is Fertile will be published by Merve Verlag in 2014.' - http://www.transmission.uk.com 

Transmission Week 1 - Felicity Allen

'Felicity Allen is an artist, writer and curator/educator. She is currently producing Begin Again Chronicles (Verisimilitude), an image/text document based on 160 dialogic watercolour portraits with 75 sitters, interviews and written reflections. Recent publications include:
Textual Intimacies: Letters, Journals, Poetry - Ghost Writing Telegraph Cottage, with Simon Smith, The Installation (Intercapillary Space), and Education (MIT/Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art). As a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute. 
Felicity Allen has been working on the implications of feminism for artistic practice and its overlaps with education and employment. She has published several articles about artistic practice and gallery education, and has considerable experience in producing local, national, and international gallery education programmes and teaching in art schools.' -  http://www.tranmission.uk.com

Felicity Allens talk mainly focused around her latest piece of work, 'Begin Again' (July 2009 - September 2014). Her book 'Begin Again Chronicles' is made from a series of 150 watercolour portraits accompanied by sort quotes taken from the conversations during the sittings. The sitters themselves feature people she previously worked with at the Tate Gallery. She  described this as being a sometimes uncomfortable experience due to the relationship between some of the sitters. She also described how it was interesting to see how people reacted to being a sitter, some seeing it as a quick, formal and quiet process others seeing it as a more social meeting whereby conversation would flow with ease. The title of the work refers to her own personal journey as an artist having worked a full time job to then start using traditional artists materials again. 

Looking at her work my biggest question was why two portraits? and why watercolour? My initial interpretation was that she wanted to capture two different sides of the sitter, potentially a reflection of the conversation at the time. Following this idea I thought watercolour was used as to enable her to apply the medium quickly in order to catch said moment in conversation. Later during discussion Felicity Allen explained that she used watercolour as there was something quite unforgiving about watercolour and its something that was quick to use practically during the sittings therefore allowing her to make multiple portraits of her sitters. Allen went on to say that the watercolours played part in capturing and conveying the intimacy of the sittings to the viewers; I also think this, in addition to the text in the book, coveys a sense of fragility in conversation, particularly with those that she didn't initially get along with or found the sitting to be awkward. 

Upon seeing the book and reading through some of the text/ quotes which accompany the portraits I found it strange, however, thinking that they corresponded with the portraits and the conversations between Allen and the sitters during painting, reading through them it became quite interesting. I found it intriguing to see what subject the conversations had turned to within such a close environment this made me question whether it was due to the situation of painter and sitter being in such a personal environment and whether this effected conversation and perhaps, had they not been in said situation, whether these themes would even have been spoken about. Later in the talk Allen what on to say that the quotes were random in relation to the imagery. This then began to raise questions of stereotypes in my mind; how quickly we are to associate ideas and imagery with a person after only getting a brief glimpse into their lives.