Dear Barefoot Doctors - this blog is your creative space to put your ideas forward for the 12 final interventions of Standstill.
- These interventions can be in any artform.
- They will be done on a tiny budget.
- They will be seen by the public (anybody) as they walk through Hanley towards Northwood Park.
- They will be seen on the run up to Christmas ( and maybe a few weeks afterwards - time scale to be confirmed) They may only be seen for a few minutes , a few hours , a few days, a few weeks --- it all depends.
- They all be branded as Standstill interventions and will have to make sense within the narrative of the Standstill journey.
- There will only be 12 interventions... you may need to collaborate with fellow Barefooters.
We will be meeting in Hanley town centre to explore the journey and the possible site.
Meet at 3.30pm , outside the Old Post office 5th November if you want to join us.
We will meet again , a week later, to discuss all submitted proposals / ideas/ collaborations on Thursday 12th November , 1pm - 3pm , 19 Barracks Square, Newcastle under Lyme.
- Get your ideas down, comment on this blog with your ideas.
- See what others are thinking of doing and consider if your idea could work in partnership with somebody else's idea.
- Chat with each other through the blog, through the facebook group, face to face and by phone or email.
- Describe your proposals ( the venue, the materials needed to fulfill your idea).
- We'll collectively shape them up into a solid idea and journey at outr next meeting.
- Look on here everyday for each others ideas and our updates.
3 comments:
Everyone will get a map of the area we are looking at and you will jot ideas down then chat and then mull things over ... we don't have to have final ideas today.
When we meet today you need to look at locations with your idea in mind ( if you have one already) or when you are walking around you might get a spark of an idea that would work well in a certain place. We might each get ideas from other people in the group and that might trigger something off.
Think about the idea behind STANDSTILL and how your idea fits within that.
Think about who will see your idea and what they will think.
Think about how will it look and how it will work ( will it be performed, will it be projected , will it be painted , will it be visible , will it be online etc, etc)
Think about what else is happening in that space ( what can you smell , see, is there traffic , noise, do you need permissions from shop, will you be causing an obstructions etc)
See you at 3.30pm
Ok, meant to post (something like) this a while ago, i.e Before the deadline, but perhaps it could be used as an extension/supplement/para-project
-- Based on the variable timescales suggested at the Halloween meeting, my suggestion was for a form of artist research over a period of time.
It would take (or would have taken) place within a control booth like a cavern surveying before and after impressions of the Winter/Christmas period by means of images, sounds and scents
Structured as:
- initial 'sensation creation' (aural/olfactory etc) inside of the tent,- ask the audience for first winter/nnakah/mas associations
- Then ask audience to reassemble photos or other tactile signifiers as provided
- (Photos chosen from street scenes, Christmas)
- Take them through the following process as detailed then—
- Ask the participants again for new ‘impressions’ of what the season means.
SOUND
the sounds would be a combination of low-throb subliminal grooves, building up to treated dialogues and Christmas melodies mixed in with other cultural impressions and wood-grove samples,deer and bird cries .
TASTE
Acrid charcoal scents and cherries along with wrapping paper synthetics and pine.
IMAGE
SOUND and TASTE laid over visual representations to create effects not just sociological but of the uncanny, ala the Santa drawings discussed around Halloween or the commerce code jamming ideas people have thrown forward, but slightly less determined- e.g as specific cultural critique
We could have collections of images set in motion-single frame and short-film-- like woods outside with trees scratching the sky and in between lanterns shining along with precipitation and colours in the forest to create impressions which are phenomenal and also directly abstract. And alongside this we overlay imbedded cultural constructs with pre- Victorian depictions of Christmas from the woodland- e.g Malorian myths- and other landscapes still faded by their own irrepresentability (cultural memory) as hope and melancholy.
And the montage could then evolve into frames scratched to create lights like constellations in the observatory and the journey into the unconscious (inner-history-space) alike—Christmas images overlaid with shards of light- Brakhage style obscurities. These sparks would be like consciousness, like growing imagination on the face of the cave.
Also the shift from primordial and into earth-religions and then into we call modern Judo-Chr-Is and Enlightenment civilisation, but with the same elemental impulses in art and memory left by the uncanny images sounds and colours conjure up in us.
It might be possible to tie this into a quest narrative-exploring the sky- frames suggesting star-gazing and also decrypting the faded images and in turn a truth underneath equivalent to discovering multiple connections between the other art--sites and finding a story of the subconscious.
The kind of scene we might create in short;
Flat/house—indescript, but signs of Xmas. In the crowded kitchen -quickened time moments, a blur and then we shift to darkened sitting room with dots of light and time has frozen affixed to the Christmas tree. In the contrast an image of crooked fairylights, the confusion and allure of fir-tree charcoal and the scent of perfume conjure a flickering face in the gaps. Then we cut to the christmas morning light blending into associations-waiting for- the suspense of being--from one wait to another.
General sorts of imagery which might be used:
Fir forest-light on and off-changing in front of eyes into tinsel
Decorations made of twigs celebrated in the dimming light
Baubles in a sandpit-or clay dust.
-- worn hands from Christmas shopping and hands carving figurines over the fire
-- eggnog visions transposing into amorphous ‘symbols’—like ‘abstract’ art, over fires
--green and red- video tints, changing into fairy tale figurines behind which, ghostly, appear, the traditional icons.
These might all be juxtaposed -however employed- with other exhibits (i.e what Celine suggests); those mirrors and portals to inspiration in the abandoned or particularly significant buildingscapes and the way artistic interventions have chosen to reinterpret them.
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