Hello my friends! Long time no speak. Don’t ask me about last week - I have no justification for my absence beyond the following series of GIFs:
I made a portal
Many moons ago in early August I was involved with a 3-day intensive lab and experimentation session run by post-digital arts org Ludic Rooms. It was called ‘Art of Place’ and focused on exploring site specific arts practice - particularly that which directly responds to its location (hence ‘place’ over ‘space’).
The fun (read: terrifying) part of the experience was that after those 3 days we then had until the end of the month to plan and execute our own piece of site specific work. Whilst I initially panicked at the idea of such a fast turnaround I’m really not sure why considering this TikTok is the most accurate reading of my relationship to deadlines available. As it turns out, short deadlines work pretty well for me 🤷♀️
So anyway, long story short I created this IRL portal - aka cool light and sound installation - that I’m actually super pleased with. I didn’t manage to get any video recordings since by virtue of it being an unrehearsed scratch night I’d not considered the fact that you can’t play bluetooth audio from your phone AND record video with sound at the same time… but that’s okay. You can imagine it.
I used colour-changing floodlights to illuminate the otherwise ‘ordinary’ looking Bridge 1 at Coventry Canal Basin to transform it into this otherworldly passageway. Some cool cat in my discord once commented that I should cover more in this newsletter about how Unreality manifests within the art I then go on to create, so here is an example of that. I was tasked with creating work for a location that I feel curiously sits on the border of ordinary and magical - the dead-end of a canal network in the most landlocked part of the UK. I attempted to inject just enough weirdness to disrupt the ordinary and emphasise the magical. You can read more about what I had to say about the work on my website if you would like.
Have a listen below to the audio that accompanied the work to give you a better idea of the experience as a whole. Ludic Rooms lent me some brilliant speakers that projected the sound all the way around the canal basin so it ended up being super immersive.
The best part of this story is that I’ve been offered an insanely cool commission off the back of this prototype piece of work that I’m extremely excited for - so keep ur eyes big fat peeled pals, it’s gonna be good.
Moar chair content
And on the topic of fun and colourful public interventions, I now have actual professional photos of my recent Meadow Arts commission. I thought you might like to see them since I’ve waffled on about it loads in various Unreality posts.
What do you think? Looks brilliant, right? I’m really pleased with how wonderfully well they photograph because of course in this post-digital age the work is far more than just the object. Thanks to the internet the number of people who see the photos is likely to far exceed those who have the opportunity to encounter the chairs in person. So as such the documentation is as important as the IRL staging - it’s an extension of rather than just representation of the work.
Check out this instagram post for shots of the joyful moment I finally got to actually visit them in situ. If you’re UK based (or fancy a trip abroad) you can still drop by to see them up until 31 October. You can find out more info re visiting via Meadow Arts.
Apologies as always for how sporadic my Unreality posting habits can be. I’m in the process of a big life/diary/schedule upheaval that makes everything a lot more tricky but I should have it all in hand nearer the end of this year. At which point I will also have a bunch of announcements re new projects, a new (and actually regular) streaming schedule and more fun things. It’s all coming, I promise.
Now excuse me while I just-
You should have slept when you were a child...😊👍💕