CelineSianiDjiakoua

2011-12-29T23:03:00.002Z

2011-12-29T23:01:00.000Z

2011-12-29T22:57:00.002Z

2011-12-29T22:55:00.002Z

2011-12-02T09:57:00.001Z

2011-11-22T14:13:00.002Z

Trying to draw the physicality of emotions

2011-11-10T10:36:00.000Z

2011-11-09T23:48:00.002Z

2011-11-09T23:47:00.000Z

What do you love ? BLOG

2011-10-31T21:18:00.002Z

The "What do you love project now has its own blog : HERE

2011-10-27T15:48:00.002+01:00

Spiritual robbery

2011-10-27T15:47:00.001+01:00

2011-09-22T10:42:00.002+01:00

Transcription of Susan Hiller's "At the Freud Museum" - Site specific installation 2005

2011-09-22T10:12:00.001+01:00

Site specific installation in the Sciences department

Staffordshire University

2005

For this installation I borrowed specimens from the Geology Department and displayed them in association with written documents in the Sciences display cabinets.

Joanna Concejo

2011-07-11T12:51:00.004+01:00

2011-06-21T20:05:00.002+01:00

2011-06-21T20:03:00.000+01:00

2011-06-21T20:00:00.002+01:00

2011-05-30T23:56:00.000+01:00

2011-05-14T23:17:00.000+01:00

2011-05-04T21:20:00.002+01:00

2011-05-04T21:15:00.002+01:00

Going back to collages ...

2011-05-04T21:07:00.001+01:00

Getting inspiration from my last drawings, I am going back to making collages, which I hadn't done for more than 10 years.

Antonia Aitken

2011-04-28T15:48:00.001+01:00

"River presents recent intaglio and relief prints on paper by Australian printmaker Antonia Aitken. The prints are large-scale abstractions based on drawings and performative interactions with the environment. A major focus of her work for the past three years has been the rivers of the region where she lives, particularly the Murrumbidgee River. "

hand printed woodblock prints

These images were the only one I could copy from Internet : more to see on her website :

WEBSITE

Marcel Dzama

2011-04-25T21:17:00.002+01:00

"Self-Portraits in mirrors" as part as With Myself in Mind, exhibition curated by Claire Taylor - Crocus Gallery 2011 - Nottingham

2011-04-15T22:16:00.000+01:00

Installation made of 36 photos taken between 2004 and 2011

Statement
INTERVIEW

2011-04-11T23:04:00.002+01:00

March 2011

2011-04-05T20:09:00.002+01:00

21.02.2011

2011-04-05T20:07:00.002+01:00

BA show - Untitled - 2009

2011-04-05T19:49:00.002+01:00

The video was projected in the same space shown at the beginning of this video.

There was also a performance. Here is the documentation :

BA show - Untitled - 2009

2011-04-05T19:46:00.004+01:00

This piece was shown on a TV screen but in a previous version, it was a live filmed and projected performance where people knew that I was in that space but couldn't see it directly.

Interview by Graham Coulter-Smith about this piece :

BCCA Commission 2011 - video documenting the performance.

2011-04-01T11:21:00.007+01:00

Juul Kraijer

2011-02-11T22:20:00.005Z

"The drawings are decidedly not representations of situations existing in reality. Rather, they are incarnations of frames of mind. The bodies are nude but neutral - vehicle rather than flesh. They remain in the domain of the spirit." Juul Kraijer 2004 - website

2011-02-10T23:23:00.001Z

video trial

2011-02-08T19:18:00.004Z

2011-02-07T23:00:00.000Z

Quadriple protection 2

Quadriple protection 1

2011-02-03T10:48:00.004Z

2011-01-31T14:26:00.000Z

Little couples in my sketchbook - 2

2011-01-28T11:09:00.002Z

Allan McCollum - The Shapes Project

2011-01-22T23:19:00.001Z

7056 Monoprints from The Shapes Project, 2005/05. Framed digital prints, each unique, signed, and numbered. 4.25 x 5.5 inches each, on acid-free bond paper. Installation: Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, 2006.

In 2005, the artist designed The Shapes Project, a combinatorial system to produce "a completely unique shape for every person on the planet, without repeating."[The system involves organizing a basic vocabulary of 300 "parts" which can be combined in over 30 billion different ways, created as "vector files" in a computer drawing program. McCollum has used the system in collaborations with a community library, schoolchildren, home craftworkers, writers, architects, and other artists, as the Shapes are created to be used for many different kinds of projects, and so far have been produced in the form of both prints and sculpture, in Plexiglas, Corian, plywood, hardwoods, metals, rubber, and fabric, in a variety of sizes. In 2010, he published "The Book of Shapes", in collaboration with mfc-michèle didier. This book makes the Shapes Project complete : The first volume contains the 300 shapes "parts," and the second one includes the guides and instructions for creating all possible combinations with these components. That same year, he organized the Shapes for Hamilton project, in which a unique signed and dated Shapes print was made for each of the 6,000+ residents of the town of Hamilton, New York.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_McCollum

Little couples in my sketchbook

2011-01-18T11:57:00.001Z

"What do you love ?" - travelling kit preparations

2011-01-14T22:30:00.002Z

The interactive ever growing mobile was made to travel around the world.

Over the Christmas holidays, I worked at a dismantable table that will go inside the mobile for people to write their answers.

I have also started to look for suitcases to transport the whole thing as well as the translation booklets....

To see more about "What do you love ?", click here.

(for better understanding, scroll down and start form the 1st post)

Cayetano Ferrer .... (ideas for my personal dream show - part two)

2011-01-07T09:49:00.001Z

How better than that can you show the artificiality of a gallery space ? (my remark)

2006

EXTRAMUNDANE - 2008

Cayetano Ferrer

Ann Hamilton - Pinhole photos

2011-01-02T21:39:00.001Z

Ann Hamilton's pinhole camera portraits, taken using a tiny camera in her mouth.

"So I devised, over a number of years (it was sort of something that was in the background for a long time) a way of making pinhole cameras, which is very simple, but to make my mouth the aperture. I don't go into the darkroom and load the film in my mouth and then come out and do it, so it is actually still an object that's inserted into my mouth - but to have the orifice of the place where speech exits the body actually become the eye, and to just play with that. Then it was in the process of actually taking those pictures, seeing what they looked like, seeing in fact how the shape of the mouth is very much the same shape as the eye, and seeing myself become almost like the pupil within. The image of my head becomes almost like the pupil in the middle of the mouth, which is eye-shaped." Ann Hamilton
Interview about Pinhole Photos

Samuel Beckett - Not I - 1972

2011-01-02T21:27:00.004Z

I had forgotten I had watched this piece before...

scanning mouths trials

2011-01-01T22:22:00.002Z

Feelings series

2011-01-01T21:51:00.002Z

Patter Hellstrom

2010-12-26T17:48:00.002Z

2010-12-02T23:20:00.004Z

Drawings - 2006

2010-11-14T00:02:00.001Z

Dry pastel on A4 paper, frottage.

Johanna Hällsten - Time/Breath (reprise) - performance

2010-11-13T17:27:00.001Z

I was lucky to see Johanna Hällsten's performance at the Castle last wednesday ...

Event : Hatch, it's about time, as part of the SIDESHOW of the British Art Show 7.

Two singers, one singing/saying the name of the notes only, the other one only singing/saying the values of the same music piece. At the back, the written description of the music (instruments playing). Only the singers were able to hear the music (Pink Floyd) : we could guess it by their body movements following the beats and facial expressions.

It took me a bit of time to understand what was happening but then, it felt as if I was experiencing the music from the score's point of view. Amazing. Really good work, one of those that I won't forget ...

Singers : Angela Warren and Caroline Helbert.

Factory Night @ Old Telephone Building - Stoke-on-Trent

2010-11-08T23:28:00.006Z

About Factory Nights 2009/10 (click here)

We went to the top of the Old Telephone Building, space I had always dreamed of visiting because of its windows .... I was dreaming of a studio space there, but the windows are quite high up. The light is just amazing, though and I was drawn to it. Light and openings ....

I had a go at trying something (see video). I like the simplicity of the action (changing positions around a window) and the nuances in light, colours and view that result from it. I'd love to explore this in trying to cover all the view spots possible for one window ....

http://vimeo.com/16596664 from Celine Siani Djiakoua on Vimeo.

My dream show if ever in a gallery space .... artist : Urs Fischer

2010-11-08T23:17:00.005Z

Some more :

2010-10-26T03:01:00.004+01:00

2010-10-24T22:52:00.004+01:00

2010-10-11T17:50:00.002+01:00

2010-10-08T00:23:00.004+01:00

2010-10-07T23:46:00.004+01:00

Black Country Creative Advantage CONFERENCE

2010-10-07T22:44:00.005+01:00

I will be presenting my work at the conference on Staurday 9th October in West Bromwich:

"Performance in West Bromwich - 2010
Sinkhole : measuring Tesco site perimeter with a string"
How do we affectively and bodily experience the city when it is going through regeneration? In the present work, I will more specifically look at a site bought by Tesco in West Bromwich city centre, where no construction has happened yet but where most of the buildings have been emptied. It is as difficult to apprehend the surface of this site, as it is to apprehend the amounts of money involved in the largest British retailer. Only a physical confrontation with the space and some imaginary illustrations can help drawing the sketch of a personal understanding.
A short film will document an on-site performance where I am trying to follow the boundary of the Tesco site, confronting map and real space and using a red string to measure the perimeter. Along the documentary appears the phantasmatic idea of the the Tesco site being a huge sinkhole …

Click on the poster for enlargement :

2010-10-06T23:10:00.004+01:00

Breathing

2010-10-06T22:39:00.001+01:00

Drawings

2010-09-30T22:33:00.009+01:00

Drawings

2010-09-30T22:33:00.008+01:00

What do you love ? - The Translating Factory

2010-09-19T22:32:00.002+01:00

For the Common Ground Commission, I developped and tried a second stage in this ongoing and growing piece : each single paper containing someone's answers to my questions* would be translated in as many languages as possible. Each paper is given a number, its English version is typed and becomes the first page of an extensible booklet with blank pages where people from different languages will translate the English version in their own language.

At the Common Ground event in the Hanley Park, Stoke on Trent, some booklets were translated in about 7 different languages by various participants.

*who is the most important person in your life ? what is the most important place in your life ? what is the most important object in your life ? what is the most important date in your life ? what do you love ?

What do you love ? Interactive installation in Hanley Park - July 2010

2010-09-16T22:11:00.003+01:00

Travel to the center of the Black Country

2010-09-08T22:53:00.003+01:00

These images are my participation as part of "DIY7 - Artists Guide to the Black Country".

DIY7 - The Black Country Living Museum - images trials

2010-08-10T00:47:00.003+01:00

PAST & PRESENT

MATTER TRANSFORMATION

COLOURS ASSOCIATION

DIY7 - Artists Guide to the Black Country - FIERCE -

2010-07-26T13:40:00.002+01:00

I am very pleased to have been invited to "DIY7 - Artists Guide to the Black Country" by Abi Davey. There will be 5 other participants for this "Professional development project BY artists FOR artists" (Live Art Development Agency). It will culminate with the production of an "Artists Guide to the Black Country", which will be exhibited as part of FIERCE’s next Interrobang event in September.

"DIY is a brilliant scheme conceived by the Live Art Development Agency that supports artists to run unusual training and professional development projects for themselves and other artists. The activities that tend to take place in DIY aren’t traditional workshop activities – they are shared experiences, adventures, explorations.

Past projects have included cycle rides across Britain and forest retreats.

The scheme is open to artists from the West Midlands region and beyond.

This particular DIY project is being supported by Fierce. It invites a group of six artists to spend time in the Black Country during August at some of its most iconic tourist attractions (starting at the Black Country Living Museum). Their encounter with the Black Country and their reflections of the experience will be turned into an artists’ guide to the area, which will be exhibited as part of Fierce’s next Interrobang event in September."

If it was a sinkhole ...

2010-07-20T22:45:00.004+01:00

Note : "Starting point" on image 1 : where I started the performance on the 9th July : tracing the outline of the Tesco site with a red string and imagining the site being a sinkhole.
For more information : look HERE.

The present documentation was made for the BCCA project newsletter.

Sinkholes, Internet found images

2010-07-17T00:16:00.002+01:00

Tesco sinkholes

2010-07-17T00:04:00.003+01:00

Tesco sinkhole 1

Tesco sinkhole 2

From spider webs to galaxies - Tomás Saraceno

2010-07-16T20:33:00.004+01:00

Galaxies Forming Along Filaments,

Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spiders Web

2008

Flying Green House

BCCA Commission

2010-06-29T13:16:00.005+01:00

Click here for more about : BCCA PROJECT

“What is missing from our dwellings today are the potential transactions between body, imagination, and environment”; … “To at least some extent every place can be remembered, partly because it is unique, but partly because it has affected our bodies and generated enough associations to hold it in our personal worlds.”
Juhani Pallasmaa in The eyes of the skin quoting Kent C Bloomer & Charles W Moore in Body, Memory, and Architecture

Considering this, how do we affectively and bodily experience the city when it is going through regeneration?
In the present work, I will more specifically look at a site bought by Tesco in West Bromwich city centre, where no construction has happened yet but where most of the buildings have been emptied. It is as difficult to apprehend the surface of this site, as it is to apprehend the amounts of money involved in the largest British retailer. Only a physical confrontation with the space and some imaginary illustrations can help drawing the sketch of a personal understanding.
Through a documented performance I will attempt to measure the perimeter of the site using a map and a string. The project will be accompanied by collected digital images, drawings and texts, which will come as a fantasmatic counterpart.

TESCO Red Line Boundary

COMMON GROUND event

2010-06-09T22:49:00.003+01:00

Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 11:00am - Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 4:00pm
Location: Hanley Park, Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom

Common Ground is a weekend long arts event in Hanley Park, Stoke-on-Trent, organised by AirSpace Gallery Studio Artists. The project invites the public to discover art works hidden and placed in the city park. The art works work with the historical and physical reality of the site, and set out possible future visions for a public park in need of activation.
Common Ground has been commissioned in response to a recent public consultation project, Quality Streets, where the public expressed a desire to see activities and events taking place within the park.
Common Ground will see artists intervening in public spaces; loudly, quietly, secretly or overtly, in a manner which questions the use of public parkland in the 21st century. The works will last the weekend, be sensitive to the place they are situated, and offer opportunities for delight and magic in the city.

Events include:

Saturday 26th June:
11.30am - Brian Holdcroft sets off on his walk from Stoke Railway station.
around the bandstand -
12pm - Discovering the Green Man, A workshop for children and families with Kate Lynch
2pm - Audley Brass Band repopulate the bandstand
Sunday 11.30am onwards - David Bethell's durational performance 'digging'
4pm - celebratory picnic and rounders game (weather permitting)

Details about the Artists' Projects:

Phil Rawle turns a tree into a giant sundial with his Sand Drawing.
Bernard Charnley’s piece finds politicians up to their necks in it.
Andrew Branscombe‘s interactive musical sculpture references the human life of the park.
Kate Lynch asks the public to look out for the elusive and enigmatic character The Green Man.
Monument sees Stuart Porter drawing attention to features of the park that are more usually overlooked.
Katie Shipley explores the physical processes of memory through drawing and sculptural intervention.
Anna Francis excavates the Park’s Halcyon days, connecting to the history of a once great city park by repopulating the bandstand.
David Bethell will be undertaking durational performance ‘Digging’ between 11.30 am and 4pm on Sunday.
Glen Stoker uses the Pavilion to investigate levels of Political commitment to urban regeneration.
Carl Gent aims to consult the public on his campaign to Twin Stoke-on-Trent with a distant cosmic body.
Celine Siani Djiakoua’s participatory piece asks park users to consider poignant questions, and connects to the multi-cultural side of the Park.
Nickie Brown’s signs aim to directly address the public, testing reactions and responses to requests and orders.
Marc Tittensor’s stick men delight and amuse, and reference the Park as a destination for Play.
Chris Parkes has created a series of sculptural objects that reference the furry and feathered inhabitants of the Park.
Michael Branthwaite’s sculptural piece provides visual sensation through colour and form.
Ben Faga’s performances and installations bring animals from around the world into the Park.
Brian Holdcroft draws a physical line that denotes the body passing through space and across time, when moving through this historic site.
Andrew Jackson will negotiate chance meetings with park users, aiming to capture these moments for others to discover later.
My Dear Tom is a mysterious and anonymous sound piece by Emmie, from a Postcard sent in 1907.

“What do you love ?” - Common Ground Commission Proposal

2010-06-09T22:41:00.005+01:00

Proposal for Common Ground

Hanley Park is, on a multicultural point of view, one of the richest places in Stoke-on-Trent. Certainly much more than a dozen of different languages can be heard there. The Shelton area has a highly diverse community: Asian resident community, International students, European and East European migrants, asylum seekers from various countries and now families who have become residents in UK. Opposite the park is also the Cauldon College where a lot of foreigners go to improve their English when they first arrive in Stoke-on-Trent. This is where the idea and the first trials of one of my works started, in 2002, when I first arrived in UK, coming from France.

This piece is an interactive and progressive installation called “What do you love ?”. It consists in a circular portable mobile : from the outside, on hanging pieces of papers, people can read what answers have been given to the questions* and from the inside, they can individually write their own answers.

For Common Ground, I would like to invite the park users to take part in this piece in their own language but I also would like to start the 2nd stage of the project, which is the translation of each single text into as many languages as possible, turning each single paper into a booklet. Some of the translation could be done in collaboration with translators from the Stoke-on-Trent College (about 8 different languages).

There are two sites I am considering because of their circular shape : the bandstand or the “little feature originally from the Garden Festival 1986” (in Anna’s blog). In the bandstand, the mobile could be hung in its middle and tables and chairs arranged around it for people to do translations. The other site could be used as itself to hang the pieces of paper, covering the entrances.

There are many interesting sides to this work : the recognition of people’s different cultures, the sharing of an emotional content which is discovered as universal (for many people, the most important person is their mum), the necessity of one common language to communicate (here, it is English) …

“What do you love ?” has already been shown at :

Burslem College (2002),

Staffordshire University (2003),

New Vic Theater (2004),

Stafford Campus (2005).

*who is the most important person in your life ?

what is the most important place in your life ?

what is the most important object in your life ?

what is the most important date in your life ?

what do you love ?

work as presented in Stafford

Actual structure in Hanley Park

Proposed idea

Ema (Japan) - ex-voto (catholicism)

2010-06-09T22:21:00.005+01:00

"Ema (絵馬?) are small wooden plaques on which Shinto worshippers write their prayers or wishes. The ema are then left hanging up at the shrine, where the kami (spirits or gods) receive them. They bear various pictures, often of animals or other Shinto imagery, and many have the word gan'i (願意), meaning "wish", written along the side. In ancient times people would donate horses to the shrines for good favor, over time this was trasferred to a wooden plaque with a picture of a horse, and later still to the various wooden plaques sold today for the same purpose. Ema are sold for various wishes. Common reasons for buying a plaque are for success in work or on exams, marital bliss, to have children, and health. Some shrines specialize in certain types of these plaques, and the larger shrines may offer more than one. Sales of ema help support the shrine financially.
At some shrines, such as Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, one can find ema in many languages, as tourists leave their own wishes and prayers."
WIKIPEDIA

In Kobe, Japan :

Other similar examples :

"An ex-voto is a votive offering to a saint or divinity. It is given in fulfillment of a vow (hence the Latin term, short for ex voto suscepto, "from the vow made") or in gratitude or devotion. Ex-votos are placed in a church or chapel where the worshipper seeks grace or wishes to give thanks. The destinations of pilgrimages often include shrines decorated with ex-votos. Ex-votos can take a wide variety of forms. They are not only intended for the helping figure, but also as a testimony to later visitors of the received help. As such they may include texts explaining a miracle attributed to the helper, or symbols such as a painted or modeled reproduction of a miraculously healed body part, or a directly related item such as a crutch given by a person formerly lame. In the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde in Marseille, France, the site of a major local pilgrimage, the ex-votos include paintings, plaques, model boats, war medals and even football shirts given by players and supporters of Olympique de Marseille, the local team. The magnificent Lod mosaic is thought to be an ex-voto expressing gratitude for rescue from a shipwreck.[1] In a corner of the basilica of Saint Joseph's Oratory in Montreal there is a tall wall with thousands of crutches and other supports from those Brother André supposedly healed. Pope John Paul II recognized the authenticity of the miracles and beatified Brother André in 1982."
WIKIPEDIA

Salvador de Bahia - plastic body parts

(all images found on Internet)

computers, video and interactive art

2010-06-07T09:45:00.002+01:00

Scott Sona Snibbe

"Boundary functions " 1998

"Artists in a bid for success with different type of draw"

2010-05-29T13:16:00.001+01:00

The Herald article sat 29th May 2010

EXCLUSIVE: Phil Miller, Arts Correspondent
It may be the first national artistic movement inspired entirely by cold, hard cash.
With government cuts, standstill budgets, the financial crisis and the ongoing recession, many young and established visual artists are facing a bleak financial future unless they get a lucky break.
But a new collective of UK contemporary artists – led by Glasgow-based Ellie Harrison – have decided to engineer their own luck, with a scheme which maximises their chances of winning large amounts of money on the various National Lottery draws.
To be launched nationally in July, the Syndicate, as they call themselves, will “strategically” play the lottery games using a mathematical system they believe increases the odds for the 40 players to win large amounts of money, which will then be shared equally.
The group of artists – including Harrison, who graduates from Glasgow School of Art’s esteemed MFA course this summer, John Beagles, S Mark Gubb, who is representing Wales at the Venice Biennale, and the Becks Futures-nominated Hayley Newman – will purchase 44 lines on each of the two weekly UK Lotto draws, at £1 a ticket, and 36 lines on the weekly EuroMillions which is £2 a ticket.
Each artist joining the Syndicate is therefore required to pay £4 a week for the duration of the year, or a total of £208 a year for each artist.
Each of the 44 lines they choose will use the same five Artists’ Lottery Syndicate numbers, which are secret, with the sixth number on each line being unique to that ticket.
The numbers on a lotto ticket range from 1 to 49, so the remaining 44 numbers available will be entered on the lotto lines filled in by the artists.
This system, the Syndicate said, hugely increases the chances of winning the Lotto or EuroMillions jackpots.
Harrison said the system means they will try to utilise the idea of luck, which has always played an important part in artistic careers, as well as a new way to access Lottery cash which has, since its start in 1994, been a boon for the cultural sphere.
She added: “I had the idea for the Artists’ Lottery Syndicate when it appeared that the glory days of arts funding which we witnessed under New Labour were drawing to a close.
“It seemed clear that artists would have to find new ways of funding their work and surviving in what was being referred to as a new ‘age of austerity’ for the arts.
“The Artists’ Lottery Syndicate aims to be a speculative new way of acquiring funds for artists. I thought it could be a fun collective activity, which would act as a gentle critique of artist’s relationships to the economy, as well as a potential money maker.
“It is a group of artists who are still aspirational, despite this time of economic doom and gloom, and who are coming together to support each other in their attempts to hit the jackpot. We’re using a specially calculated combination of numbers to maximise our odds of winning prizes. At the end of the year, each of the artists will receive a cheque for one-fortieth of the money we accumulate.”
The Syndicate is being run by Harrison and its other members include MFA students and artists from Birmingham, Cardiff, Fife, Glasgow, Lancaster, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Nottingham, Plymouth, Preston, Stoke-on-Trent, Suffolk and Worcestershire.
It will initially run from July 1 this year to July 2011, but may be continued if it proves to be successful.
The GSA Master course has produced artists such as the Turner Prize-winning Richard Wright, Douglas Gordon and Simon Starling.
This year its graduation show is being held at the Glue Factory and the CCA in Glasgow, and runs from June 11.
The big winners
The odds of winning the jackpot with a single ticket are nearly 14 million to one, but for a group running 30 tickets the chances are better, at 466,666 to one. The individual prize each person takes will fall in proportion to this, however.Around a quarter of all jackpot wins are by syndicates, according to the National Lottery, but organisers warn would-be syndicate managers that they should sign contracts beforehand to avoid disputes.
Issues such as whether or not to go public in the event of a win can be divisive, and even close friends are advised to set out ground rules in advance.Seven IT workers from Merseyside shared a £45m lottery jackpot in November last year, taking home more than £6m each, just two months after another group of nine friends, based at the Doon Inn in Blantyre, shared £4.5m.Five years ago a syndicate of six women at the Morrison Bowmore’s bottling plant in Glasgow each won a £2.5m share of the total £15m jackpot.

some more ...

2010-03-17T22:59:00.003Z

"Where are you from ?" - Pecha Kucha night - Stoke-on-Trent 2010

2010-03-17T22:36:00.003Z

Pecha Kucha is a Japanese concept for a slide show presentation of 20 slides with 20seconds per slide.
For my presentation I wanted to show images from a project I had been working at, a couple of years ago, without reaching the final stage. I introduced it as "the journey through my own story within the bigger frame of History and how this has shaped my multicultural identity in some unexpected ways".

listen to a live track of the night : BBC Stoke

I wasn't quite satisfied with the presentation itself as it would have taken much more preparation to obtain the result I was looking for but I had very good feed-backs that were telling me that I was on the right tracks.

I find the slide show + voice-over/comments very interesting as a format because 2 parallel discourses/stories can be told : the one of the images and the one of the voice over. I like the ambiguities such a situation can create and I would like to work at it in the form of a short movie.

images : Mark Brereton

This work very autobiographical. It focuses on my physical features and the fact that lots of people think that I have some African heritage. It is a kind of mystery that would certainly be explained if I could do a genealogical research . My father also has some African, North African features.

The story takes another dimension when I look at my city as it has been built with the money of the slavery trade and it goes on a more personal level as I married an African man with whom I had two children ....

Here are the slides ...

Drawings - the space between

2010-03-15T23:43:00.006Z

filming the space between dancers ... project

2010-01-02T22:22:00.007Z

Standstill 2009 - Barts

photograph : Tony Jones

Oneness, Love and cooking (2008)

2009-11-30T10:05:00.007Z

"(...) long ago, humans were composed of two people stuck back-to-back, with two faces and eight limbs. Male-male humans came from the Sun, female-female humans from the Earth and male-female humans from the Moon. The gods, out of jealousy, split them in half. Now, throughout our lives, we are always trying to find our "other half", and sexual intercourse is the only means we have to put the two halves back together; this desire to be one person again is what we call "love". However, it is impossible to fully rejoin two people because it is our souls and not our bodies that most desire to be reunited."

(from "The origin of love", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Love)

brown and white sugar mixed together + butter and spices

honey

Milk

Fan of Pipilotti Rist

2009-08-15T23:40:00.007+01:00

Piece seen in Paris elles@centrepompidou.

Projected on the floor + music piece.

Delphine Reist "averse" 2007 - Elles@centrepompidou show

2009-08-15T23:28:00.008+01:00

Video piece where the projection fitted the wall of the gallery space.

Statring as a fully enlighted room, the bulbs start exploding, the one after the other leading to complete darkness in the video but also in the projecting space.

I like the simplicity and the perfect correspondence between the 2 spaces : the one of the video and the one of the projection.
I like the fact that we are reminded of the making of a projection : the need of light for it to happen !

Pico street projection

2009-07-30T22:34:00.004+01:00

Example of a "pico projector" :

And an example of use in the street :
"Video of a mobile projection of an Interior Dancing scene on urban grafics, we used a pico projector and a iphone to diffuse video on the night of the 15 july 2009 in the streets of berlin. We are a french collective experimenting new ways of including mooving images into the city.. "

It's a bit like graffities ...
Projection grafities ...;

Pico Street Projection Interior Dancing scene on urban grafics #10 from pico micro on Vimeo.

Rebirth arts project - launch - University Hospital North Staffordshire NHS Trust

2009-07-16T13:06:00.017+01:00

The Rebirth project

From March to July 2009, local artists, photographers and documentary makers worked in collaboration with hospital staff, patients and families to creatively explore the transformation of the UHNS Maternity Centre. This event is the first showing of the artworks that have resulted from the project and a documentary that explores the transformation.

Images of my video projection :

CCTV deconstruction - Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

2009-07-13T11:06:00.007+01:00

Blow-up is a high resolution interactive display that is designed to fragment a surveillance camera view into 2400 virtual cameras that zoom into the exhibition space in fluid and autonomous motion.

Inspired by Antonioni, the piece is intended as a an exercise to underline the construction of presence through a simulated, live compound eye.
Year of creation2007
TechniqueHigh resolution interactive display with built-in computerized surveillance system.

DimensionsShadow box 104.5 x 80 x 12 cm.

SOURCE :

http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/english/projects/blowup.htm

ANTIFREEZE sat 4th July 2009 - Final framed images

2009-07-11T10:05:00.026+01:00

How was it like at the Antifreeze art car boot sale ? Here is Anna's "report" :
http://annafrancis.blogspot.com/2009/07/airspace-at-antifreeze.html

Getting ready for Antifreeze - 3rd part - trials

2009-06-29T21:49:00.014+01:00

Getting there, slowly, slowly ...

Last Sunday I found some more frames, all sorts... and took some more pictures.

I've started to match frames and photos.

Here are some images (photos only).

Francesca Woodman

2009-06-24T21:28:00.002+01:00

Getting ready for Antifreeze - 2nd part - trials

2009-06-23T20:12:00.006+01:00

Getting ready for Antifreeze with AirSpace Gallery and friends - 1st part

2009-06-22T23:45:00.027+01:00

Group proposal for the event :

'As a group we are interested in exploring the notion of value exchange. We have made works in response to the Sunday Car Boot Fair that happens weekly in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, on the same street as the AirSpace Gallery.There are all types of people to be found at the fair, and as a group we infiltrated the site and made work in response to the people, objects and conversations to be found there.The finished pieces highlight themes of resourcefulness (working with available resources), and the fact that other peoples junk and waste can be re-used and made into something useful, that can be appreciated once again and put back on the market. Other themes include ideas of trade, waste, environmental concerns, the importance of exchange in its broadest sense and the ability to make and sell products in the recession. Questions about the value of objects come to mind i.e how antiques and art are valued (what makes something precious and valuable- it's age, the artist/maker, the materials it's made from?), and whether rubbish/ found materials can become more valuable when put in the context of 'art'.'

Links to the project :
http://annafrancis.blogspot.com/2009/06/preparations-for-antifreeze.html
http://antifreeze2009.blogspot.com/
http://www.contentsmayvary.org/events.html

For this project I went to the Hanley car boot sale (which I call "Sunday Market") with my small camera. While looking for frames, I kept taking random pictures, holding the camera as if I wasn't using it. I actually took 150 !

Here are the frames I bought. I like their diversity in style and I will look for some with even more character next Sunday.

Below is also a selection of the pictures. One thing I like about them is that they reflect the diverse communities of Shelton, the area where I live and where the car boot takes place. I also like the funny/witty ones or the more tender or the esthetically pleasant ones.

Here my role as a photographer is in the choices I make for selecting the photos as I didn't have any control over taking them. However, next time I might be directing their randomness : I have started to look at how to match frames and images and new meanings and readings will appear through the combinations.... I'm starting to have more and more ideas and getting very much into the whole project !

FRAMES

RANDOMLY TAKEN PHOTOS - a first selection

Willi Dorner

2009-06-22T10:48:00.005+01:00

Art director Willi Dorner and photographer Lisa Rastl have collaborated on two project combining humans in odd formations and unusual locations. ‘hängende gärten’ and ‘bodies in urban spaces’ both set out to explore the “relationship between body, space and architecture”. the urban based series was created as a set of human sculptures which were spread throughout the city of Vienna.

Video installation - trials

2009-06-22T10:20:00.009+01:00

Here we used 2 projectors, a video camera and a CCTV camera. The moving images are live. The CCTV and the video camera were filming the same scene (kitchen) from 2 different angles.

Barbara Probst - work and interview

2009-06-19T16:49:00.038+01:00

Split Second
Interview by Nicole Pasulka

When experienced from many different perspectives, is the instant when a photograph is taken still just a single moment? Barbara Probst’s diptych and triptych photos, taken at the same time from different cameras and points of view, offer multiple versions of a split second. Probst subverts the authority of the lone photograph, but rather than presenting a more comprehensive picture of an event, location, or moment, her work reminds us that even photos are interpretations.

All photos © Barbara Probst, courtesy Murray Guy, New York, all rights reserved.

* * *
How do you set up these shots?

When I photograph there are always at least two and sometimes as many as 12 cameras involved. There is no way for me to look through the viewfinder during shooting, since all cameras release at the same time. Therefore, I have to set up the cameras and instruct the models very deliberately to get every camera to frame the scene in the right way. Needless to say, there is “accidentiality” involved, which I enjoy working with. The results are never quite as planned, but usually there’s something I can work with. I am not interested in manipulating images on the computer. My work is based on an investigation of the conditions of photography and its relationship to reality.

When I look at some of your work, it doesn’t seem possible that the photos could be the same shot. Do you consider your diptychs or triptychs to be photographs of the same thing? What’s each panel’s relationship to the other or others?

The images of each series are always shot in exactly the same instant. Each series show at least two simultaneous views on one and the same thing from different angles, distances, and contexts. This simultaneity is essential to my work. The relationship of the images is based on it. The simultaneity makes the images comparable. The viewer gets involved in the work by shifting his or her view from image to image —back and forth—and by comparing the images and bundling up the different points of view the images are made from in his or her own point of view. This analytical way of looking leads to questions about perception and raises of doubts about our ability to recognize truth.

The way your work separates a single moment into many seems to undermine the idea that photographs are showing us “what happened.” Do you feel your approach is a more complete or reliable representation than a single image from one camera?

I think my work provides us with the implication that there is no reliable representation of “what happened.” Photography is like language: It provides us with an interpretation depending on the intentions and abilities of the person that told the story or made the photograph.

Why do you show other cameras and tripods in some of your photos?

The camera angles are often overlapping, therefore cameras photograph each other while they are photographing. However, when the cameras are apparent in the images, it unmasks the process of photography, and I am interested in that.

How do you decide which shots to use in the final work?

I usually use pictures from all the cameras that were involved in the shoot. When we are shooting a scene, we shoot a roll of film in all of the cameras simultaneously, shooting the scene over and over until all 36 frames in the rolls are exposed. The result is 36 “moments” from which I try to find the moment that I feel works best, considering the quality of the relationships of the images in the series as well the quality of the images themselves.

Does location or subject play a significant role in your work?

Locations don’t play an overriding role in my work. I am actually not as interested in what I photograph as I am in how I photograph it. So the locations, as well as the models and the clothes, are like tools for me in a work that is more about how we see than about what we see.

(...)

Stuart Porter - Aftermath - May 2009 - Leek - Airspace Gallery offsite

2009-06-19T00:25:00.010+01:00

I just loved this piece. Such a simple, basic, low technology installation with such a beautiful result. Unveiling the magic trick but managing to keep the magic of the result.
Perfection.

Space scale and high technology

2009-05-06T00:18:00.002+01:00

Multitouch Subway Map from Ironic Sans on Vimeo.

Video piece for "Rebirth", North Staffordshire maternity hospital - video projection

2009-05-04T22:40:00.045+01:00

For Rebirth Project NHS 2009 from Celine Siani Djiakoua on Vimeo.

DOCUMENTARY about the projection
Poetry and another piece of work were also shown that evening.

Rebirth NHS Stoke-on-Trent from Behjat Omer ABDULLA on Vimeo.

"The old Maternity Block at the City General Hospital is where a quarter of a million people first saw the light of day. Soon, it will become a part of North Staffordshire’s history as it is demolished to make way for a new complex as part of the transformation of the hospital site.Rebirth will bring together performing artists, creative writers, photographers, visual artists, hospital staff, students, and the wider community to celebrate, document and explore this transformational moment in the regeneration of North Staffordshire." Rosemray Strang

"06.05.09 Rebirth is a series of multi-artform events created to celebrate the transformation of the City General's Maternity Hospital. A series of light-projection displays will lead up to the July launch at new Maternity Centre — a launch event that sounds like a good networking opportunity, especially for artists interested in health issues. Rebirth launch will also see launch of the documentary film and book, and will showcase artworks by local art students — sculpture, light-projections, paintings and installations for the new maternity centre. Both the book and DVD will be available for sale (any proceeds will go towards new art projects for the maternity centre). Watch for more details on Creative Stoke, nearer to July."
creativestoke.org.uk/whatsnew.html

Gravity Zero : Kitsou Dubois

2009-04-27T11:52:00.006+01:00

The Control and Movement of the Body in Microgravity : Insights from a Dancer's Research in Parabolic Flight
http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/space/SPACEkitsou.html

Fluid Trajectories, Kitsou Dubois (extract), 2001
http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/space/kitsou_web.mov