Protest!

The protest today in London against the student fee rise i must say, turned out to be massive. I didn't realise what the extent of the turnout would be- but London was totally jam packed. I actually watched the unfolding of the protest at work in the Estate agent on BBC news- i did have the intention to go to the march at my lunchtime, but it got cut short by me being late to work in the morning so the 20 min walk to trafalger square from mayfair seemed a bit pointless, I don't think i would have even got close because of the crowds.  Of course, our uni being very close to Millbank tower meant that our college pretty much closed for the protest and everyone attended. It also hosted the port-a-loos for the protest. My boss thought the protest being at my college was hillarious and made up a very ellaborate story about how i had crept into the Millbank tower in the morning and had let down the security there so my fellow commrades could go and destroy and burn down the place... thats why i was late that morning, and also why i was at work- to give myself an alibi.
I did run back to college this evening after work and there were police everywhere, half the roads were taped off too, it made my journey home on the bus horrendous. 
We were watching newsnight earlier- i cant say that us students were very well repesented. We'll have to see what effect the protest will have on the unfolding political desicions before i make a calculated opinion on what has happend.

Thegalleryistalking recruitment presentation

After last weeks 'sorry im late presentation' i'm worrying that i haven't put any useful information in thegalleryistalking presentation at all. But hopefully everyone got enough out of the presentation to e-mail me if they are interested. I'm still worried theough.
The presentation did go well- Mo told the first year's before thier lecture this evening that they should all come along because it is a brilliant project, which drew in about 30 students, and i got a couple of questions at the end. It looks promising that a couple of people will e-mail to be part of the project:, I suppose a lot is dependant on this though:

"The Gallery is Talking is a collaborative project that was set up last year between Tate Britain and Stage 2 of the BA Fine Art course at Chelsea

Established to increase accessibility of the existing in-gallery text for people with dyslexia to refresh resources at  The Tate Britain, the project soon engaged with wider issues related to art and communication and the very way we experienced and looked at the gallery.

During this first year we discussed at length what actually makes a text accessible and engaging, and if text is in fact the best way to reach out to museum visitors. The participating students devised a series of resources aimed at people who don’t usually rely on text during their visit, but who would like to access the ‘gallery’s voice’ through other media.  After a year we have made a large amount of progress in resources produced.

Last summer, towards the end of the first year of this project additional students were recruited to the project by the course, this included Stage one students with the hope of developing the project this year.

As the remaining participants from this group we would now like to expand on and evaluate our ideas further. This, we believe would be done best opening up the project to other disciplines and students, to maintain it fresh and relevant with some new members, fresh ideas and a new outlook.

Now I am going to briefly talk about the work we have been doing and our progress so far.

The Map concept is something that took a lead within the paper resources made during the year. It was keenly worked upon because of the problems that the group felt the existing normal Tate map contained. Small things like stairs not being logical to the structure of the gallery, to not having any visual reference to where you are on the map. E.g. ‘Room 15’ does not help us know where we are as much as a landmark such as a stained glass window would.  The actual production of the map was quite complex, It is something that was incredibly difficult to manage and to make, but the success with this resource is that the Tate now wish to trial the map on the main information desks of the gallery. 

The website that has been developed by Sam has become a hub to share our learning and resources and opinions.  It is linked to the Tate Britain website and can be accessed by anyone that goes onto the Tate website through a link. We have already had some interest from a museum asking about our progress due to the originality of the project.

Please take a note of the website: www.thegalleryistalking.org and perhaps you can look in more detail after the meeting has finished about what we have been doing. 

There are also other resources that have been made to expand The Gallery is Talking to its visitors. Chatterboxes were made as a way for people to talk about art in a way that is recognisable and fun. Audio questions was a way of finding opinions about traditional gallery forms i.e. Curatorial statements and text; who writes this and what are they trying to say- talking to people about the gallery within the gallery. Finally, the active forum, a way to produce conversation around all of these subjects I have been speaking about. 

The opening was a way of showing the public what we had been doing with the project, and was a great way for us to get some feedback. It launched the website, introduced our resources as well as giving visitors on the day some ‘only on the day’ events in the site specific environment that was so necessary for the launch.

For example, we had a digital comments board that visitors to the Tate could add to by text messaging, and of course our map making workshops right in the centre of the Tate. 

If you would like to know more details about the project, please send me an e-mail or have a look on the website. Otherwise if you would like to be a part of the project please send me an e-mail with your name and a brief explanation of why you would like to be involved. I’m happy to take any questions you have now, or if you would prefer, I will be staying behind here for about 10 minutes.

Thank you for listening and I hope some of you are interested in taking part.

Any Questions"

 

 

 

 

Performance success!

Success at work today at college- I have been asked to help out with the Saturday School programme in line with the ambassador programme that i am involved in, over the next couple of weeks. The Saturday school this year is for potential 1st generation  university students that are at college  or school preparing for their art foundation courses. Today's task involved animating sentences- some obscure- some simple, but with the intention to create a stop motion animation at the end of the month with all of the important supporting material. It was my role to talk to the students today and help them with initial ideas of where they would like to take their work. This is also the same group of students that were doing portfolio practise a couple of weeks ago, so they all know my work already. Anyway- one of the sentences was 'painting yourself into a corner', a student today asked for my help with the task because as everyone else was drawing and cutting out letters she was finding the task a little boring. She asked me about my work- after seeing it in the previous weeks and said it was a shame she couldn't do performance in this session. So we found a way to incorporate the task into a performative piece. instead of just animating the words in 2D we animated them in 2D  within a performance. It consisted of the girl in a manic way writing the sentence on pieces of paper with black paint and putting them in front of her (Each time moving slightly backwards)- eventually she was writing with her fingers dipped in the paint and was under a table in the corner of a room! Brilliant- Performance in the Saturday school! Next week she is planning a stop motion performance....

'Sorry i'm late' Presentation

From last weeks discussion with Bex- today was the big day of collaborative performance.
The collaboration, we had decided was to be about the distribution of text that Bex produces in her everyday practice. Bex would throughout the week distribute information whilst i would gather (If found) and translate it into a performative piece of work. Hopefully the seminar group would also pick up on these nuggets of information.
I received a text last night- through extreme fear that i wouldn't receive any information saying:
'page 2/2
Lines are down
seek other methods'
From this, i gathered that the information was about the train strikes that have been happening in recent weeks and i decided to write a presentation/ speech about change (after all, this is what you seek from striking) I also decided it should be ambiguous, like the text that Bex had sent- as if all the people in the seminar group had received exactly the same lack of information that i had (Which it turned out that they had) and we were all in the room on a 'revalutionary hearsay' basis. Titled 'Sorry I'm late' to be the only emphasis on what i presumed the text was about:

I know, i know, I’m sorry i’m late. It was expected that i would be late, so i’m sorry but there was really nothing that i could have done. I tried to get here on time. It didn’t happen. You know how things are. It didn’t happen.

But anyway , I’m sure None of us want to be here. To be honest it took me an hour longer that in should have to get here. But we can’t be talking about why we are here, how we got here, but only how we can change the way we got here. 

WE CAN MAKE A CHANGE TO THE WAY THAT WE GOT HERE. 

It’s time that we did make a difference. If not for ourselves, but for future generations. I have younger sister. She is 10, what will happen when she is in this position? And to be honest the way the youth is like today, she’ll be there before i ever was a her age. Do you know what i mean? Children aren’t children anymore. This cannot go on forever, otherwise they will begin to get too old.

 People have rights, that is understandable. But this is why it has happened really. If people didn’t have so much freedom then they wouldn’t have the option to aggravate other peoples lives. Other people have lives, lives where they want to talk to others- tell them their ideas, their thoughts. I admit that. But they shouldn’t have to have lives that affect other’s lives...  I’m glad that you are thinking along the same lines as me. Without having common interests people are nothing. 

PEOPLE ARE NOTHING WITHOUT EACH OTHER

I read a book before. It was about France. Well, It was set in France. I’m certain. A small book, not many pages, a story book; it was about philosophy. Well. A philosophy. A philosophy about how people can affect each others lives in a detrimental way without even realising it. I remember the book because it had some really nice illustrations in it. I advise that everyone reads it. It will help with how you are feeling at the moment. Anger is only a thing that you can feel in the present text. 

This leads me to my final slide and the object of this presentation. You all came here for answers, and that's exactly what i am going to give you. Answers. The answer is of course is that there  was a consensus. Nothing that i could do about it. And only something that YOU can change. Yes you. Not me. I am here to encourage you to do something. 

Of course you may think that the reasons were right; or even just reasonable-  for these people doing what they did..., but you have to remember  why i was late this morning, why you are here and why the person  sitting next to you is here. They are here for you as much as themselves, and they are here for your children, and your children’s children.

Remember:

People are nothing without each other- We can make a change to the way we got here.

You probably have questions. I don’t blame you. I would.    If you do, please contact me by e-mail. I’m more likely to answer quicker. (Show contact slide)

Thank you for your time. (sit down)

My character was 'stumbley' and out of breath, as if it was a nightmare to get to the presentation, and i didn't allow time for questions- although i think it was quite obvious within the presentation that the character had no more information that anyone else. The work was a way of explaining the links between our normal work and i think that the similarities are mainly in language and style of dispersion of information. I know that my work is always very ambiguous and i think so is Bex's.The main difference which is quite obvious is the way we distribute our work. Mine is very controlled and 'in your face' where as Bex's is subtle and up to the viewer whether or not they take the work.
a lot more forthright with strikes and will gather as large communities to protest for others; instead of the British attitude of complaining about strikes.
Overall- feedback was very good and it was quite a good opportunity to make a piece of work with a guaranteed audience.

A little Inspiration for tomorrows performance: Brown (fantastic book)

People Like Us- The Pilot

I thought i should put a little clip of this on here- It's very good, especially this one, the actor, the photographer and estate agent. It is cringing to watch if you know anyone in these professions because the caricatures are strangely accurate.

Halloween Dress

It was Halloween over the weekend, we had a little moving in party in aid of the celebration.  I don't think i have ever worked as hard on a fancy dress costume. When i dress up for a party i always like to make the costume somewhat responsive to recent news and i thought that the bankers huge bonus's would do, as we had a couple of accountants as guests. I dressed as a 90's fat-cat/ clown (fat man pants sewn together with a hula hoop and grey suit trousers, topped off with a waistcoat, braces and hilarious tiger pants. Well i thought they were hilarious... - I also had the traditional 90's clown face paint and wig with red converse trainers- all topped off with a bowler hat) Unfortunately my costume wasn't too scary, well it was to the people that couldn't recognise me.


It's quite obvious to say that the performative side of people reveals itself to you in a party like this. You always get surprises with costumes- who dresses up and who doesn't- and of course who goes a little too far with acting the part. I think our party was a little sensationalised for a normal fancy dress party- but then with a room full of art students- what do you expect. Joe dressed as a Scout (Don't ask how this is Halloween related) and spent all night getting his scout guide out of his top pocket to give 'good scouting advice' to our guests. Also we had a guest dressed as a 'dead gym instructor' who insisted on doing aerobic dances with everyone (Using her equipment that she had bought along). Personally i love dressing up- I think that speaks for itself in my work and i don't think it is a terrible thing to say that wanting to make performance art stems from fancy dress. It was the game i played everyday at playschool, i wore a curly wig and dressed  as super girl- onto primary school i used to love going into the playroom which always had a theme. Once it was a hospital (This is the only time i can remember being told that i couldn't do something because I'm a girl- the teacher made me pass over the doctors outfit and put the nurse one on instead!) It has very strong links for me about what is fun (and to an extent educational) in my life- You learn a lot from being in others shoes- a 'costume' is going to indent how you feel, influence what you do,  influence the ways others act around you.

During my Gap year before i went to Art college, it was my ambition for the year to try and work in as many different jobs as possible- which i did; from security guard to estate agent to dinner lady to post lady, plus more-  and the thing that was always apparent to me was how polite or not people were to you. As a receptionist i was told to dress smartly and people didn't acknowledge me outside of the office at all, yet when i was a post-lady, everyone that i walked past said 'good Morning' whether i was working or not. I could start to ramble on about the Authority of clothing, but i think if you want to know more- you could look at this social experiment-
Milgram study: Which was a study done to prove that uniforms can be used as a way of social control. There was also a situation in a school in Germany, The Third Wave- where in a participatory way a teacher taught how fascism can be bred  from a minority influence situation- this started just by asking for everyone to dress alike- in  the same white shirt and actually ended very badly. there is a very good film based on this story called 'The Wave'

Anyway, moving on from fascism and back to the Halloween Party- It went very well in the end, everyone left very late and the house was a mess- but after tidying up the next day I travelled home where i then went trick or treating with my sister- obviously the other side of Halloween- for children it's the one time of the year where you can knock on your neighbours door, give them a fright and then ask them for sweets without your mum telling you off. I like to where a mask for Trick or Treating (I have a very scary looking cow mask), although the adults never really like it, i think it's because they cant be bothered to dress up- however, you get a laugh from children if they answer the door- and as i know half of the kids in the neighbourhood because of rainbows/ brownies they have begun to expect it. My sister likes me dressing up too. Well, i presume. I don't really ask her permission.