48 Sheet

The billboards have been speaking to me again.  Their messages leaping out of the paper and infecting my brain with subliminal commands, you feel empty, you need me, this will fill that hole, desire, obey, consume...

But sometimes forces of resistance manage to break through these portals instead.  Taking the form and twisting it, questioning the nature of these message boards to the subconscious.

Ian Richards

The dream state can be accessed to show us the potential of images in the media, that they can have moments of ecstasy, strange violent joy, if we only take the time to read them actively instead of passively.

(This particular intrusion of one reality into another was so powerful my camera couldn't capture it, so I borrowed evidence from DiG )

Elizabeth Rowe

The debris can be reformed, grow into new shapes, remind us of the creative possibilities we saw when we were young, before they convinced us that fun had to be bought.

Lucy McLauchlan

Or we can simply distill the adverts and logos into pure icons, sigils that refuse translation, while firing off endless associations.

Harry Blackett and Robin Kirkham

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EC Arts: 48 Sheet
Ian Richards
Elizabeth Rowe
Lucy McLauchlan
Harry Blackett and Robin Kirkham

Dead Fingers Talk

I've just posted my first review to Interface, about a group show in response to William Burroughs' Tape Experiments. Please drop by and let me know what you think.

Something wordless called me to this exhibition, the dry hissing of ghost tapes echoing sibilantly around the streets. As I entered the space, a portal reached out to me, bending space with cones of acceleration and deceleration. Plastique Fantastique's three-dimensional diagram was charged with a subliminal feline Scientology spell. It pricked my skin with a strange energy, and my brain was infected with the parasite-thought of Burroughs' reality-changing playbacks of tapes.

Read more -->

Dead Fingers Talk: The Tape Experiments of William S. Burroughs
IMT Unit2/210, Cambridge Heath Road,
 London, E2 9NQ
28 May - 18 July 2010

SLESP

I've been collaborating on a project in the virtual Eastside Projects in Second Life that Michael Takeo Magruder has been developing with them. Myself, Antonio Roberts and some students from BIADs MA Digital Arts in Performance have been using the space and the virtual objects left there to explore the possibilities for this kind of exhibition.

My slot has been this week, and I've taken phrases that suggest control, persuasion and compliance from Liam Gillick's plays (that are being performed for his exhibition in the RL space), and scripted them into objects for avatars to sit in.

I'm interested in whether we can use this rather structured environment to produce new relations, so feel free interact with any other avatars you see, perhaps responding to the space, the phrases, or the context.

It would help me if you could document your visit somehow, maybe take a snapshot and forward the chat log, if you get time you could make a few notes about your response.

This link takes you to the door of the main virtual Eastside Projects, assuming you have Second Life set up on your computer, and you need to walk along the wall to get to the 'twin' space where we've been doing things.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Transitional%20Space/140/133/51

My SL name: Ana Vemo






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EP:VV

Changing Room
23 November 2009 - 23 January 2010

Changing Room is an evolving mixed-reality installation that considers the mutability and reusability of artefacts, concepts and situations in the Digital Age. Lead artist Michael Takeo Magruder will collaborate with Extra Special People artists Ana Benlloch, Iona Makiola, Antonio Roberts, Lee Scott, Zhao Wei and Selma Wong to develop a new collaborative space.

Blending the shared virtual environment of Second Life with the shared physical environment of Eastside Projects, the artwork will facilitate the realisation, curation and documentation of seven distinct - yet interrelated - art projects arising from a common pool of virtual and physical resources.

Experience the artwork's physical component at Eastside Projects alongside Liam Gillick's Two Short Plays, a new solo exhibition (27 November 2009 to 23 January 2010) and the virtual environment in Second Life). For further information please visit: www.takeo.org.

Changing Room is an experimental prototype for EP:VV (Eastside Projects: Virtualised and Visualised) - a new space for imagining ideas about Art. EP:VV will develop online, multi-user virtual worlds that afford new models for participation and representation of the gallery's artworks and initiatives. For more information about EP:VV and its ongoing development, visit: www.eastsideprojects.org or email info@eastsideprojects.org

Ever felt there’s something missing in your life?

The Event is upon us and we'll be spending the next 5 days changing our name every 6 hours, wearing hand decorated dungarees, playing thought-stopping games, eating brightly coloured food, asking questions, strengthening our Dantien, collective dreaming, strumming red, yellow, green and blue ukuleles, finding portals, calling rainbows, going to the top, chanting punk meditation, making friends, sleeping in pods, giving out flowers, love-bombing, and having all the fun we can cram into the day.

Want to join us?

http://theotherplaceportal.net/family/

All You Can Eat

Come along to the Gallery of Owls' Zine Event at the Sunflower Lounge on Thursday 15th Oct from 8pm. As well as performances from Pseudo Nippon, Fallen Timbers, and the genius Richard Peel, Stuart and I will make a rare and exciting Milgram appearance, DJing cold head games, and hot perverted beats. We've also put in zine-style reprints of a.a.s. maga-zine and comics from 2003-2009

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While you're here, I do hope you're following The Family's blog - fun times ahead in November, and a spooky Vision Quest next week.

SVarndell

I haven't been blogging much recently, partly because there hasn't been so much going on, but also due to my PhD and art practice getting in the way, but if you're missing the art commentary, you should head over to Steve Varndell's new blog where he talks about all sorts of interesting stuff, including Rollerderby, socks and art shows, such as Treasure Seekers VIII (Caitlin Griffiths show curated by Charlie Levine and Kate Pennington-Wilson):

"These images are highly stylised, informed by the classical and elegant handwriting commonly used all those years ago. They compliment the stories by developing the work of the minute takers slightly away from their words and into the aesthetic. I can't help but wish the minute takers had done more doodling in the margins. There is a link in the way the forms have been isolated and diplayed as single entities, to the more classical Japanese painters and calligraphers motto of less is more elegant."

from svarndell.blogspot.com

If you don't know him, Steve is an artist and curator, who is part of Crowd 6:
www.svarndell.co.uk
www.crowd6.org.uk

Parfyme Backpack Factory

Met up with Parfyme again (We'd been in their Tent Show, and Pelle was part of Red Line Surveillance - building the mini bus shelter that's still there). They've been doing a Residency in Loughborough for Radar.

They travelled around the campus and further afield, getting "Ideas" in a custom made rucksack/mailbox - they were deliberately vague about what this meant, but when pressed said that perhaps something to do with public spaces would be good. They then took some of these ideas for activities on their current residency, and they may also feed into future work However, there was also an interesting suggestion that what they were really doing was to encourage people from a particular place to discuss what they thought would benefit them and if some people agreed, give them a push toward working on it together. Rather than being there to "fix" things, they were a kind of catalyst that could activate an area and encourage further public engagement.



This is from a set of photos up on Flickr of them exchanging Danish Sausage for ideas.

They came over to Birmingham for a couple of days, braving the snow to gather ideas around the Ikon, Brindleyplace and Digbeth, I didn't manage to see any of the things people suggested, but think it's a really good thing to just ask people to consider their environment in a different way, to change the course of someone's working routine, their train of thought. Whether any of the specific ideas get implemented is not the point for me, but instead that we start to realise we can work together to improve public spaces, and always be coming up with new ideas.



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Parfyme website

Drawing

I've noticed that drawing seems to be getting more popular recently around here, of course there's always been plenty of great illustrators, and one of Birmingham's best artists - Paul Newman - has always had drawing as an important part of his practice. I'm thinking more of people who had stopped doing much drawing taking it up again, or people starting who had never really done much.

I used to draw all the time, but it was more a way of getting my visual ideas out than an end in itself, like storyboarding or illustrating narratives that I was constructing. I even used to create my own comics, but found it a bit frustrating as I wanted to interact with characters not control them (this is probably where my current practice came from).   Doing One Day Comic with Henrik Schrat helped me to see drawing as an action, as a process that could be collaborative, and since then I've been getting back into it.

I used to draw in a very painstaking way, often taking a day to do a panel of a comic, or longer if I was doing an illustration for a magazine, but when you're doing something in a short timeframe, with other people, this has to go out of the window. Sure, not all the results will be brilliant, but the drawing becomes more of a document of something that happened between people than a polished product, and to me that's more interesting. (No, I'm not just trying to excuse my dodgy skills!)

Trying to explore this, over New Year's Eve (9pm - 2am) a group of us made a comic together: it was open to anyone we'd met out and talked to about it, but ended up mostly people from Owls and a.a.s. with Jerome from B.I.F.S.. We chatted about a starting point, and settled on doing something about Pookahs, as we've been working with this idea for a while, with performances and videos based on them. Someone suggested we use the Surrealist exquisite corpse technique to generate ideas, then we each did two or three pages to make a crazy disjointed beast, that I think gives a flavour of the themes and process really well.  We'll be selling photocopied versions, as I think full colour ones might be too pricey, but could make this available as pdf or special technicolour edition if anyone's interested.

I also went along to Dr Sketchy's Burlesque life-drawing class on Saturday, after Graphiquillian made it sound interesting. I was a bit nervous, and gulping cider to offset this probably didn't help my drawing skills, but had a great time overall. The speed of the poses really pushed me to work in a different way, and I was surprised by how a lot of my drawings came out - not perfect certainly, but perhaps a bit more energetic than stuff I've done in the past.

I'd like to experiment a bit more with how I do things next time, maybe even try, gulp, colour!

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Liz Walker's photos from Dr Sketchy's Brum

Alex Hughes' Dr Sketchy's Post

Graphiquillian's Dr Sketchy's Post

Candice Smith's Dr Sketchy's Post

One Day Comic & Feature: Architecture

Works by Henrik Schrat (with guests) & Shezad Dawood form an installation at ESP that feels very different from the opening exhibition there.  It may be a happy accident that the artists were scheduled together, but the works complement each other well.  Although many dismiss comics and cowboy films as sidelined genres, here they are stretched and mutated into exciting new forms.

For One Day Comic, Schrat worked with others (including myself) to create each comic in just a day.  It was daunting, and seemed impossible at first, but with plenty of coffee and Henrik's enthusiasm, somehow it all came together.  The final results might not make much sense, but it is the process that's fascinating - it showed you how much you could achieve when you put your mind to it and when you had a tight deadline.

In Feature: Architecture, Dawood has made a film with participants including a Christian historical re-enactment society, Gay Leather bartenders, opera singers and an avant-garde art band (The Lonesome Cowboys from Hell) - I'm not sure I followed what was going on but there was something to do with a massive bar fight, a cross between Billy the Kid and Krishna, and zombie flesh-eaters. My kind of night out.

There's also some extracts from the comics on Henrik Schrat's website

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Feature: Architecture by Shezad Dawood
&
One-Day-Comic by Henrik Schrat
With special guests a.a.s, Access Local, Asia Alfasi, Simon & Tom Bloor, Celine Condorelli, Hans Christian Dany, Shezad Dawood, Stefan Heidenreich, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Plastique Fantastique, Olav Westphalen

open 6 December 2008 to 31 January 2009, Thursday - Saturday 12-5pm 

Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham, B9 4AR, UK
eastsideprojects.org

Tomas Chaffe

Went to the first show at the new Moot Gallery space to see the opening of the Tomas Chaffe exhibition. I've worked with Tom before on The Quatermass Code, and know that his work often plays with the space of the gallery and other contextual elements. (He also co-organises Via Vaudeville events.)

'Viewer Added Value (Artist Run Gallery)' 2008, Plastic and screws  

The work was all fairly peripheral, but fortunately we were provided with a map so we could hunt the art.  The titles and materials generally tell you most of the story, my favourite being 'Approx. 192 x 1713 x 630mm (The Largest Possible Plinth To Enter The Gallery Space Without Altering The Fabric Of The Building)'. 2008, MDF, white paint and timber.  As you might guess, this was a scuffed plinth placed on its side, that could be ignored as a room divider or contemplated as a minimalist sculpture as you wished.

'Progress Report' 2008 Bound paper document

I feel I should make a comparison with the Martin Creed show at the Ikon at the moment, but as I haven't had time to see it yet, I should probably leave that one hanging: imagine I said something astute about simplicity, humour and the everyday.

'Losing Costs' 2008 Illuminated desk globe and electricity meter

The pieces stand up to interpretations to do with social issues, for example you can draw an eco message from 'Losing Costs', but I'm not sure if this is the most important thing about the work.

'Everything I'd Ever Known Is Behind My Thumb' 2008 6x4" inkjet print

The above print, only makes sense in this show, in the context it is being shown in (it's the same window as in the previous photo). I'm interested in the personal relationship Tom has with the space, with the staff, and with the viewer.  This grounds the experience, makes it specific, and rather than alienating you, draws you in.

In background: 'The Air Between Them And You' 2008 Mirrorpane, clear plastic and frame

Japan 08

I haven't really got my head around how to write about my trip to Japan for Call and Return at the dis-locate festival, but here are a selection of my photos to be getting on with



If these are a bit small try going to the page direcly:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/japanana/show/

Call And Return

Very, very quickly because I'm currently in a Typhoon in Japan, I'd like to remind you about Call and Return, the project Nikki, Stuart and I are doing as The Ludogeographic Society. We've just started the gameplay, and missions are here.

It's the next stage of Emergent Game, and players will be in UK, Japan, and elsewhere. The main feature that has been emphasised this time is the process of the players generating the missions themselves. This was always an important aspect of the game, so now it is one of the first five missions, as well as the other four having been developed through workshops and previous discussions with players.

Stuart will be in Bristol co-ordinating the igfest end of things, and myself and Nikki are at Dislocate in Yokohama. Will be interesting to see how it develops, so feel free to join in or just check the site when we've summarised what happened.

Oranges Can Dance

Charlie Levine has just curated a show which continues her interest in selecting and presenting work in an experimental way. This was a solo exhibition in a small theatre room in a pub of Tim Robottom's collection of kitsch ornaments and other items that would often be seen as 'bad taste'.

Questioning ideas of taste and collectability, the ironic distance usually present in such shows was undermined by the audience selecting items that they wanted to keep, and so affirming that they do have value for them. Everyone proudly displayed what they had chosen, and hopefully they now have pride of place in new collections.

Oranges Can Dance was held at The Old Joint Stock Theatre Gallery, Birmingham, on 9th of August 2008, 6pm and 8pm

Oranges Can Dance on Charlie Levine's Website
Charlie Levine's Blog

Tiny Details, Grotesque Proportions

Went to opening of Elizabeth Rowe show at Walsall, I really like her work, and wanted to do a quick post about it. I usually try to write more about artist-led spaces, but unfortunately there hasn't been that much going on lately, might have a bit of a re-think about how to organise this blog...

As you arrive at the gallery, you see a display of juneau/projects work from their residency, great to see it here, like a music shop display from another world.

Liz's work is generally referred to as collage (she reworks imagery from catalogues, magazines etc) but is a lot more varied than this suggests. I'm really interested in how her recent work is bursting out of the confines of the frame, from tiny interventions that you almost don't spot, to a gigantic wall piece growing up the wall and ceiling of the space.

The imagery is surreal, schizophrenic, the products stop being tame and erupt into life, either merging into devouring monsters, or scuttling like insects at the edges of your vision. This is not to say that there is not humour in the work, in the face of the pressures of consumer overload, I'm left with the impression of liberation and play being found in the cracks.

Milee (Feng-Ru) Lee is currently doing a residency at Walsall, and I popped in to chat to her, she's been doing some beautiful drawings, and will be performing in the gallery at various points as her cute sheep character.

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Tiny Details, Grotesque Proportions is at The New Art Gallery Walsall, Gallery Square, WS2 8LG from 8th August - 28th September
artatwalsall.org.uk

juneau/projects site

Milee Lee's site

Re:Flux (Part One)

Just a quick reminder about Re:Flux, which is on tonight in the Jewellery Quarter (details below). It's part of the Vivid Flux Festival and features artists reinterpreting original Fluxus scores and writing their own to be performed by other members of the group, so the focus is more on the sharing of ideas, building on others' work and adding to it. Should be loads of fun and plenty of free apples.

We'll be attempting to live update with photos and texts, and asking the audience to join in, so could be an interesting experience, do follow along and join in if you're there.

Re:Flux Fluxconcert
Co-curated by a.a.s. and Ensemble Interakt
Friday 27th June 2008, 5pm - 9pm (late arrivals admitted)
St. Pauls Church, 30 St. Pauls Square, Birmingham. B4 1QJ
Tickets £3/£2 (Concessions)

Re:Flux Flickr page
a.a.s. Re:Flux pages
aas Twitter

we.assimilate

Here are some images and video of the Insectoid performance we did a few weeks ago in a double bill with Tai Shani. Performers on the night were me (Ana Benlloch), Alex Marzeta, David Miller, Paul Newman, Vanessa Page, Antonio Roberts, Stuart Tait and Vickie Wood.

There were lots of glitches with technology, as usual, but the beauty of doing something like this is that the mask covers most of your emotions, and everything seems like it's intentional. This is probably the most successful performance we've done, and although I'm not a fan of such a theatrical layout and setting, there's lots we can take from it for the future.

If that's whetted your appetite, here's the video in 2 parts:





And links if you can't get the embedded versions
we.assimilate (part 1)
we.assimilate (part 2)

More on Insectoid's YouTube channel

Insectoid website

Insectoid! Last.FM page

Surface Unsigned Hoo-Ha

There's a whole riot going on in the bloggosphere about the Created in Birmingham Surface Unsigned situation, which I won't add much to here, since people like Pete Ashton; Chris Unitt; Danny Smith; and Birmingham: It’s Not Shit know more about the whole thing than I do. To summarise though, bands have to sell at least 25 £6 tickets to shows to progress to the next round, which seems a bit steep.

It's been suggested we can help publicise this by linking to CiB's original post to push that up the Google rankings when people look for Surface Unsigned. I'm interested to see the power of blogs being harnessed in this way, how it shows we have a real community spirit, even though a lot of us can only identify each other as Twitter names and small square avatars. Nevertheless it's great to bump into each other and do that strange double take, as I did with @peteashton and @charlottecarey at the Fierce launch. That was the highlight of my evening, treat that as a review if you're wondering how all this fits into an art blog ;)

Wunderkammer

Wunderkammer curated by Kate Pennington-Wilson and Charlie Levine at BIAD, Margaret St Birmingham was a 'cabinet of curiosities' made up from the archives there and current student's work. David Miller and Edward Wakefield were lying inside perspex cabinets as characters drawn from when they were students at Margaret Street. Ed was lying in state, with audio playing (unfortunately you couldn't hear this very well with all the noise) and David was writhing ineffectually in his white ribbon bondage.

Charlie Levine Wunderkammer page (on her website)
Charlie Levine Wunderkammer page (on her blog)

The Institute of Psychoplasmics

Did a performance for the opening night of The Institute of Psychoplasmics (as undercover as staff at the Institute looking for friends that had gone missing there). We decided to experiment with Twitter for updating it as it was going on, which seemed to work quite well: http://twitter.com/aasgroup We also had an audio piece in the stairwell.

There's a great video by Pil and Galia to do with a cult-like group that developed after the catastrophic Ikea riots and some amazing sculptures by Diann Bauer of merged people after some ambiguous Science Fiction disaster

The Institute of Psychoplasmics curated by Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, London, SW11 4NJ
9 April - 26 May 2008
Featuring: a.a.s. / Insectoid / Diann Bauer / Amanda Beech / Mikko Canini / Seth Coston / Rod Dickinson / Pil and Galia Kollectiv / Tai Shani / Francis Upritchard / Roman Vasseur

Pil and Galia Kollectiv Psychoplasmics page
a.a.s. Psychoplasmics page