p a u l h u r l e y

Another September comes, and with it a period of busyness and new beginnings. I’ve just started a new job at Weston College, which I’m really enjoying – it’s a great place, a super team, and bright students -, it should be fun. I’m also working towards the culmination of the Whose Data? project, with a  performance at Knowle West Media Centre. The performance is part of my Why? And what does it mean?! project, and has been subtitled ‘The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago. The next best time is now.’ Long, I know, but we should never let that scare us! The performance is on the 13th October, between 4-8pm, at the Media Centre. If you’re in or near Bristol and can make it then it’d be great to see you there, but if you’re not, then it would be as well (if not even better) to have you watching online at the recently live whosedata.net.

I’ve been working with the brilliant Dane Watkins over the past couple of months to develop a web interface that will operate as a kind of interactive live documentation  / performance streaming space, in which people will be able to view, create and comment upon live data generated around the performance. The technical side is all thanks to Dane, I’ve just been developing the concept and being picky about the visuals! It’s still an experiment – I’ve certainly not come across something as multidimensional as this before – so we’d really love to see how people interact with it and what they think of it. Whilst this marks the end of my Whose Data? residency, I’m sure the project will have outcomes that will far outlive it.

I came back last week from doing ‘All around the Field: Waterside’ Festival in Linz, Austria, which was a lot of fun. They’re always a slightly odd affair – arriving in a strange place, finding your directions and throwing up a performance, meeting lots of interesting artists and audience, and then (I speak for myself, at least) when you’ve gotten to know each other it’s time to leave again. There was some great work at the festival, some lovely artists (and super organisers), and we had a really nice discussion chaired by the brilliant Boris Nieslony. We talked about this, the concept and structure of a festival, and the idea of a laboratory (the organisers of ‘All around the Field: Waterside’ also run an event called Performance Laboratorium) which seemed to be something that many of us crave. I must reactivate plans for doing such a thing in Bristol, it feels like a really valuable and worthwhile activity.

One final heads up / date for your diary, anyone in or near Bristol: BV Studios, where I hold a studio, is having its annual Open Studios on the weekend of the 14-16th October. After a really interesting conversation with the incredible Gwendoline Robin (wandering, post-performance, along the bank of the Danube) I’m considering a return to installation. Whilst for whatever reasons the focus of my practice has become almost exclusively on live performance in recent years, I was reminded that it hasn’t always been so, and that medium-specific distinctions are not necessarily always useful. I know this is by no means a radical proposition, but it kind of felt it for me, in a most exciting way. The challenge to move away from concretisation, break up some of what (I think) I know and then see what’s left.

Photo of performance experiment at KWMC, text by Conner Segesdy

Just a quick post, which I should have posted up some time ago… I’ve not been on here for some time because I’ve been running a project as part of my Whose Data? residency at Knowle West Media Centre. It’s been a great project, involving workshops with young people, an experiment in creating live performance data streams (with the help of H.Ren and Phil Owen), and now working towards a bigger performance in October, which will be live to view both in Knowle West and online. Watch this space…! In the meantime, check out the project blog here!

Also cooking up this month (as well as some amazing things in the kitchen, but that would be a whole other blog that I simply don’t have time for…) has been a new project with the amazing H.Ren. H.Ren and I have worked together on Aeon and Spotlight, but for this new project, Transfigurations : Subject / Object, we’re taking over an empty space in Central Bristol (with the help of Ruth Essex and the Capacity Project), which we’ll be transforming into an open studio / installaction space for a week (15th-10th February). This is really exciting for me, having been working in an increasingly visual way with materials and transformation in performance, as Ren shares an interest in performance, but from a background much more in sculpture. The opportunity arose fairly suddenly, so we just took it, and are looking forward to seeing what comes up out of working openly and collaboratively for that period. We’ve been talking a fair bit about Modernism, about the 1960s and what we’ve lost from it, about if / how we can make art that works, and about if / how we can be serious about what we’re doing without sounding like twats. It’s been great having these conversations with H.Ren, returning to art history in a much wider sense and looking to ideas and concepts directly concerned with aesthetics and the artist. I wonder now, if this is something I miss within live art – its development as a successful sector that values itself by its contemporary relevance (cultural, political, social, etc.) somehow overlooks its historical locatedness and its relation to qualities that I might dare to name transcendent. Hmmm. Any thoughts?

We see Transfigurations as an investigation, an experiment in which we want to work responsively to each other, to each others’ disciplines, and to our context. Working without funding, we want to make the project matter, to do as much as possible on as little as possible. We’re hoping to document and blog our process throughout the week, and are looking for people to help us do so. We’ve set up a special blog for the project, which at present is pretty empty, but which’ll fill up once we get started and hopefully be quite an active discursive space, and a window into the project. If you think you’d like to help us, to either document the project or to assist in other ways, then do look at the info on the  Transfigurations blog and get in touch via the contact form there. More publicity info re. the project will be released soon.

January’s begun (and almost finished…) in a whirlwind of activity and enthusiasm for the year ahead. There’s so much to do… A couple of weeks ago I ran an exhibition tour and Live Art Crash Course at Arnolfini, both of which were fantastically enjoyable and (I think) successful. The tour of ‘What Next For the Body‘ was really interesting – I led a small group of visitors around the exhibition and they seemed to have few preconceptions about the exhibition content (largely body based stuff, with a significant forensic twist and performance documentation element) or previous knowledge of live art. But they were wonderfully interesting individuals who were really open to honest dialogue and debate (and I think one of them was a medical professional of some sort, which gave her a fascinating take on some of the material and a technical advantage over me at points!), and I think we all got a lot from the hour or so’s chat we had. The Live Art Crash Course was similarly fun, with a great group of almost 20 participants from a range of backgrounds – a mix of students, teachers, researchers, practitioners, artists, writers and just curious “punters”. I was really humbled by people’s enthusiasm and willingness to participate, and encouraged by how deeply people were really interested in live art and performance and what it could bring them – I suppose having spent the last 10 years or so making, watching, theorising and teaching live art, one can become a little complacent, if not cynical and institutionalised, by being immersed in something no matter how interesting! I was also surprised at how far people had travelled for the workshop (London, Cardigan and Surrey, as well as much closer to home), and how there is clearly a desire for such affordable live art / performance workshops. I’ve been invited to run the crash course again up in Dundee in March (watch this space for details…), which is exciting, and need to get on the case with other venues / groups about running it elsewhere in the country. If you’d be interested do get in touch!

I do love Columbo. But on a more serious note, as part of InBetween Time’s extended programme at Arnolfini, I’m giving a gallery tour of the What next for the body exhibition next Saturday 15th of January at 2pm, and running an exciting new one-off workshop ‘Live Art Crash Course’, also at Arnolfini, on Sunday 16th 11am-5pm. The tour is free and you can just turn up on the day; the workshop is best booked in advance to secure a place, and costs £15 or £12 Would be great to see you there!

It’s 2011 already, and I shan’t even try to apologise for my absence from the blogosphere… Ok, well maybe a bit; I’ve been doing other things. But will throw one of my favourite quotes from Guattari, written in an obituary of Deleuze, by way of an excuse / distraction: “Il n’y a pas de manque dans l’absence. L’absence est une presence en moi.” The end of 2010 was busy – a performance down  at the University of Plymouth in November, and two at InBetween Time festival in Bristol in December. All of which went very well. Whilst the first two were reworkings of existing pieces, I made a durational work at IBT that was

If I were you I would run for your life

entirely new and experimental in the best sense of the word. It consisted of a kind of meditative performance installation, working with visual actions and materials in trance-like intensity, which was punctuated by gentle pauses – the playing of live radio and the distribution of jam doughnuts. It felt a very tender but powerful piece, which was received with the compassion with which it was intended. I’m really enjoying it as a way of working (even if it might not be as commercially viable as more neatly packaged live art works…), and hope to continue exploration in the new year. It would be great to hear / read any responses, if you were there?

And on the subject of feedback, I’ve decided it’s time to rework this blog a little, and make it function more like a website. I’d resisted such a thing for years -particularly publishing documentation online – but have caught up with the times and think it can do no harm. So I wonder how would be best to design it? Who is it out there that’s actually reading this, and why? What, I wonder, would be most useful to visitors? A (more) regularly updated blog? A kind of living CV? An archive of documentation? A resource of writing? A newsletter? As before, any feedback or comments would be much appreciated, so do let me know.

“so slowly”, Madonna says, but I’m not so sure it’s as simple as that. Two things on the subject of time: one, that i’ve not blogged for months, the past few months flying by as they have (although equally not flying by, given all that’s been going on); two, time and performance is something I keep coming back to (Deleuze’s ‘eternal return’, difference and repetition?) and is always exciting, again. But firstly things first, what’s been happening since July? Well the Context residency Taunton came to an end, and was a really great experience. It was fantastic to work with a freedom to do whatever I wanted, to experiment with new / revisited forms (photographs, objects and installed video), and to work in a different geographical and professional context. One of the pieces of work that I made – an ArtVoodoo procession and dance around the town centre on a busy Saturday afternoon – re-instilled a certain playfulness and fun in my practice, a playfulness which I’m occasionally fearful of losing amongst theory, physical intensity and the opacity of artspeak. But all things in balance, I suppose. September saw the development of CycloGeo, a cycling-based participatory project in collaboration with Caleb Parkin, commissioned by Sustrans Wales for their MicroFestival in Caerphilly, celebrating 15 years of the National Cycle Network. It was in the same groove with the fun element, creating a big interactive map (on a beautiful canvas map we commissioned from H. Ren) of Caerphilly, annotated with participants’ experiences of situationist-inspired adventures / games.

September also saw the staging of Æon, a durational performance event, produced with Tunnadine Fine Art at the Two Degrees Gallery in Montpelier, with H.Ren, Liz Clarke, Phil Owen, and Michael Jones and his guest collaborator Gareth Llyr. It came out of the Spotlight show we did there in April, but was created with all of us performing work simultaneously, in the same space, for the duration of the four hour event. It was a strange event to do – none of us really had a chance to view each others’ work, nor reflect clearly on our own (the audience all pretty much left at the end of the event). Feedback we got was positive, and what I saw and heard of other people’s work was very strong indeed. It’s certainly inspired me to continue my explorations of durational work, both in my solo practice but also in such simultaneous laboratory settings. There can be something incredibly powerful about durational work, in the time and space that such performance creates (I was a couple of weeks ago at the Performing Idea symposium at Artsadmin, and heard some very interesting reflections on this in the ‘Other Durations’ Symposium, about which I will write more later) that for me forms that essential transformative function of performance, a function that probably constitutes a large part of my artistic intent. I realise that this subject constitutes a longer and deeper reflection, which I will give it, in time (excuse the pun).

Also, on the subject of time, I recently made a performance for tactileBOSCH‘s ‘Seven Seconds’, part of the space’s Tenure 10 year anniversary programme, and also a preview for Chapter’s Experimentica 10, also celebrating its decennary. It was a curious but joyful thing to make work for this occasion, to reflect and remember some of the artists I’ve seen and worked with at both tB and Chapter, and to think on the impact they’ve had, along with the amazing producers and curators at both spaces, on my thinking, my work and the development of my career over the years. On a similarly reflective vein, I’m currently preparing work for InBetween Time in December, about which I’m incredibly excited, and which brings back similar memories of making work at the previous one, and attending the one before that. It’s moments like this, when one stops and thinks what’s happened, and what it happening around one, that one really appreciates the richness and wonder of life, of art, and of all the people one encounters along the way of both!

The Context Residency in Taunton is flying by, and it’s astonishing how things are coming together so quickly! Having started just two and a half weeks ago without much idea of exactly what I’d be doing, I now find myself preparing for a performance in town this Saturday, and a couple of other performances-for-camera next week. We met up this lunchtime with the other two artists in residence (Natalie Parsley and Brian Gibson) and the project organiser (Emily Bull) to talk about the exhibition (opening on 10th August, at Somerset College of Art and Technology) and it’s getting really exciting imagining how it will all look.

But first, we need to do the work, and for this I need people’s help! I’m planning a couple of actions based around regeneration in Taunton, of which much is going on already, in the form of building, economic development, social projects, etc. But I’m thinking about a different aspect of regeneration, through a more personalised, grass-roots and ambiguous reflection, drawing on ritualistic and shamanistic practices and thinking what regeneration might actually mean. I’m calling the project ArtVoodoo (with my tongue firmly in one cheek) and it’s become the central theme of my residency, of which Saturday’s performance (in Taunton town centre, from 2pm) will be a lynchpin.

For the performance on Saturday, I’m asking for people’s hopes, fears, wishes and worries about the regeneration of Taunton. These will become a physical part of the performance and of the installation that will be in the exhibition, and Natalie and Brian will also have an input, which feels really important and quite touching.

So if you know Taunton (or perhaps even if you don’t), I’m asking for your hopes, wishes, fears and worries about regeneration in the town, and I will dance for them, sweat them out, and do my best to summon the energies to empower, protect and generate. All you have to do is pop them in a quick email (max one line on each) to artvoodoo [at] live.co.uk, by Saturday morning. And of course if you’re nearby do come and find me in the town centre from 2pm.

Many thanks in advance!

So it’s been a busy week or two here at Hurley Towers. I had my PhD graduation, so am now officially Dr Hurley, and marked the occasion with extensive and marvellously enjoyable celebrations last weekend. I’ve also just begun a month-long artist’s residency in Taunton, along with Natalie Parsley and Brian Gibson. It’s a kind of experimental and exploratory residency, set up by Emily Bull of Context, and  promises to be an exciting project, creating potentially new

audiences and new contexts for work. We’ve started this week, with Brian and I working partly remotely, and it’s great to see how things are beginning to take shape already. We’ll all be keeping up to date via the residency blog so do follow that to see how our work, conversations and collaborations develop. I’m planning a new performance for camera, as well as a participatory project aimed at Taunton’s spiritual regeneration (it’s already undergoing massive economic development), so do watch this space (or rather the Context blog) to see what happens. There’ll be an exhibition at Somerset College of Art and Technology 9th-13th August with a closing / private view on the Friday afternoon.

Also this week, I was in London for the launch of the latest edition of Platform, previously an online journal and now for the first time in print. It’s a great project, coming out of the postgraduate research community at Royal Holloway, University of London, and seems to be an increasingly interdisciplinary and really professional journal. This volume contains an article of my own ‘When the body becomes too much: writing on Becoming-locust and the spectacle of theory’, which should also be downloadable, imminently from Platform’s website. Also in planning at the moment are some cycle-related art projects, some performance events, and a new little work for Tom Marshman’s ‘Beacons, Icons and Dykon’s’ event at the Cube Cinema, Bristol. To quote a good friend of mine, “there’s SO much to do…”

Last week I was in Belfast, to do a couple of performances for the project Combination, curated by Sam Hasler and also involving Fiona Goggin and Michelle Horacek. The project was a series of performances over three nights at the Station Project (run by Fiona Goggin, of Platform), an old RUC Police Station in central Belfast. The Station is a strange, uncomfortable, labyrinthine building. It was originally built as a children’s hospital, and its institutional Victorian roots are still very tangible. It bears little visible trace of its 70 odd years as a police station – some “witness report” labels on a shelving unit, a sign demarcating “information room” on an otherwise anonymous door,  a blackboard logging “stolen vehicles” and “suspect vehicles” and that’s just about it. And the twelve foot high wire fence in front of the building, but that’s not such an unfamiliar sight here.

But weight of the building, its historical role during the troubles (in just the few days that we were there,  we heard stories from passersby who had been held and interrogated there, and others who had seen the building bombed and barricaded), and its current position as an empty and transitional space (it’s due to be developed into a hotel) makes it an interesting site for dialogue and action. Having last been in Belfast in 2002 / 2003, the sense of change in the city is quite noticeable – not only in the economic and commercial development of the city centre, but in the openness of conversations had with people and in the general atmopshere of the place, which felt a little more relaxed, a little brighter and a little more distanced from – and reflective about – the trauma that the region is still, nonetheless, dealing with. Many of the wounds are still there, many of the signs of division (the peace walls, the murals, the flags, etc.) are still visible, and many of the structures of sectarianism and organised violence and crime are, if invisibly, undoubtedly there.

But there is a sense that the worst is over, that difference can still exist without the violence that accompanied it in the past. As a British (/ English) visitor, I was wary and consious of my position and my responsibility; this was in part postcolonial guilt and paranoia, but also quiet acknowledgement of my own ignorance and remove from the situation. The performance that I did on Thursday was a work that I had previously made in Bristol a couple of months ago. A simple repetitive action involving a bucket full of oranges that were alternately offered to spectators or balanced and squeezed on my head. I deliberated for some time beforehand whether I would be able to do the piece without the significance of the oranges changing and overtaking my original intentions – the piece was conceived of as an exploration of artist-audience responsibility, and a zesty and humorous play on action art aesthetics. But repeating the object and word “orange” (“does anyone want an orange?” “orange, anyone?”) and implicating the audience in a mock-torturous action (the acidity of the juice stings my eyes and partially blinds me), has a very different meaning when performed in a boarded-up RUC police station rather than a white wall gallery in England. And that was fine – I realise that the desire to control meaning is one that doesn’t usually concern me, but which in this politically charged city and space had tried to surface and contain. A futile attempt, obviously. And I came to remember that work is the site for meaning to be made, rather than the site for made meaning, and that as such it can be a real catalyst and stimulus for dialogue and exchange. Perhaps this is what it is good for, for an opening up and as an offering into the world, however that world may receive it. My second performance on Saturday was a much more open, abstracted and durational piece in which I attempted to divine and to exorcise some of the demons of the building, using gold glitter, a broken umbrella and a bunch of pink gladioli. It was also very successful, in bringing a degree of lightness and humour to the space, but also (less expectedly, but more interestingly) materialising the struggle and dialogue that exists between the artist / artwork and its context, between me and the building (as the hospital, as the RUC station, as a place of internment and a symbol of the troubles). In this struggle, unsurprisingly, there was no clear winner, but then it seems there rarely is – sometimes simply balance is enough.