Lever, crank, bell crank, cam and ratchet

Lever, crank, bell crank, cam and ratchet was an installation of a series of sculptures I made specifically for the GOODS In group exhibition (Saturday 28th June, a one day event in a disused warehouse space).

It was the first time anything like this had happened in this space and location-wise it was outside the usual destinations and a little bit tricky to spot (amusing considering the size of the place!) so it was good to see so many people track it down and come and have a look over the few hours it was open.

GOODS In

GOODS In

As per usual I ended up producing something that needed active participation from the audience in order to function: Lever, crank, bell crank, cam and ratchet consisted of 5 small cardboard models of each of the named mechanical components connected to each other and to weights via threads that arched across the room.

installation view

weights

The sculptures were made so that rather than forming an array of mechanisms that combined to produce some overall useful effect, each one worked in isolation and therefore was limited to a basic repetitive action.

Apart from a few extras to form the axles and pivots (and the occasional rubber band, of course), the units were made from A4 cardboard picked up when I worked as a temp for an examining board. This is the cardboard used to reinforce the envelopes in which adult basic literacy and numeracy exams are returned.

I’ll leave you to form your own connections and meanings…

cam

The way it worked out, there was no signage to accompany the works in the show so it became quite interesting for me to watch and see how people overcame (or otherwise) the usual gallery barriers to interact (or otherwise) with the mechanisms.

Many people wouldn’t operate the levers and handles - even when told they could, and even when they’d been looking at them for some time presumably wondering what would happen if…

As usual, the best way to get people participating was to lead by example and just get on and have a play and then invite them to join you. There were some nice cascades where for a while we’d have 3 or 4 people all operating different parts of the installation.

Also, as with other projects, those that got over that initial participation barrier tended to become ‘power-users’ [to borrow a term from a recent post] and get properly stuck in. I’m definitely talking about Pete here as demonstrated by the final scene in this video:


Lever, crank, bell crank, cam and ratchet from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

my new camel

This morning I went along for an introductory visit to the local primary school where I will be doing a project with some of the students.

I found myself in the staffroom with some teachers fresh from an assembly where they’d had two dancers performing. One thing led to another and suddenly the conversation had evolved into the one about Not Getting Modern Art. You know the one - it always starts with The Bricks and The Bed.

I let it go. I didn’t have the heart to introduce myself as the artist who’d just been asked to do something with the reception class’ bricks.

bricks

Observation became participation after stepping in to perform banana-opening duties at break time and the food-related theme continued with invisible chocolate soup and an invisible glass of wine with cream on top.

You gotta love it.

camel (mine, new)

Walk to Work - a proposal

I set Kevin the task of mapping out his normal route to work in terms of lefts and rights etc and asked him to set off one day from where he was staying in China and Walk to Work following his normal route and ‘do some work’ when he got there where ever that was. The definition of work is blurred here so do something - take photos write sweep the street - whatever.
Paul Conneally

An interesting proposition has come through to work with Paul Conneally and Kevin Ryan on the challenge of transposing people’s usual journeys to work onto different locations, and then performing some sort of work function at the new location.

Kevin's walk

Kevin’s walk in Chongqing resulted in some really nice images which you can now see on his photo gallery.

Meanwhile, I recorded my journey to work for Paul to do what he will with:

  1. Right
  2. Right
  3. Left
  4. Left
  5. Right
  6. Straight over
  7. Straight over
  8. Straight over
  9. Right
  10. Delay of 32 minutes
  11. Right
  12. Left
  13. Left
  14. Right
  15. Left
  16. Right
  17. Straight over
  18. Straight over
  19. Straight over
  20. Straight over
  21. Left
  22. Left

After some discussion, we seem to have a distilled version of my typical day’s work invigilating at a local gallery that Paul will reproduce somewhere else:

  • Arrive at your location and set up.
  • Perform a general tidy up of the area.
  • Settle into your seat and become absorbed in your book/music whilst at the same time being attentive to the needs of others around you.
  • Answer any queries in a polite and professional manner, asking any visitors if they wouldn’t mind adding their name to the visitors book.
  • At about 4 o’clock ask if anyone wants some chocolate and then go to the nearest newsagents.
  • Return to your seat as before.
  • Start packing up 5 minutes early if you think you can get away with it.

That’s the starting point anyway - I’m really interested to see what conversations Paul’s presence might catalyse. We’ve been strict withourselves and dismissed the temptation of too many bells and whistles: Paul’s mission is essentially to sit, to be, and to watch.

invigilate

invigilate

Yamanote Stories

 
 Yamanote Stories (draft) [6:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Checking the feasibility of telling the SoPG: Yamanote stories whilst travelling inbetween stations on the Yamanote line.

3 jokes

3 jokes told to me by a drunk Irish crack-addict whilst in London’s Hyde park:

  1. Why does Tiger Woods wear two condoms? In case he gets a hole in one.
  2. A meandering anecdote about going to the Bank of God. Punchline: Holy Spirit Bank of Christ.
  3. Someting to do with rescusitating a tank full of eels.

renga roundup

Wow. Has it really been 7 months since I first agreed to go and sit under a tent in a housing estate and write poetry with strangers?

Yesterday we gathered in Keith’s house and penned the final batch of the 100 Verses for 3 Estates (Alec Finlay, Gavin Wade and Paul Connolly Paul Conneally Little Onion).

You already *know* there was a good bunch of people there and the atmosphere was great, but the food was delicious and deserves a special mention - thanks guys!

Does it sound like we didn’t work very hard?
There was some serious thinking going on too…

absurdity and the art of seduction

…Either people are truly gullible (fascinating hypothesis, but not too appealing), or else one must think that it is by soliciting them in the strangest, the most preposterous way, that they are seduced most easily. Indeed they want to be seduced, that is to say not solicited within their raison d’etre, and the same people who most obstinately resist justifiable, reasonable, explicit requests (requests for help, requests for opinion, affective a psychological requests) are prepared to play the arbitrary and absurd game of seduction. We are, in the end, secretly flattered that something is asked or even demanded of us for no reason, or contrary to reason: It spares us the commonplace and honors us in a more profound complicity. It is on this level that the seduction is played out, and rightfully so: There are few people in whom this basic reflex, this spontaneous response to the challenge of irrationality, has been destroyed by the habits of reason.

Please Follow Me, Jean Baudrillard

Volume 13

Volume 13 started off with sculptor Atsuo Okamoto: he agreed to fill in a page of the sketchbook and pass it on to another artist; I agreed to keep a small section of the artwork “Volume of Lives” with me until I die. Anything’s fair game in the world of artistic collaborations!

Atsuo Okamoto

Volume 5

Orie Inoue: Is she a fashion designer? Is she an animator? Is she an illustrator?

You decide... (but probably it's all of the above and more!)

Orie Inoue

Volume 1

Ami Ko

Battling a department that produces endless human figures, Ami now also has to work out how best to deal with an almost empty sketchbook…

Volume 11

Currently sending postcards to herself and contemplating a project involving invisible things, Eri was last seen planning how to use a smell as her contribution to the sketchbook.

Eri Sasaki

Volume 15

On a sunny but cold Sunday, we travelled to Moriya to find out more about the Arcus project.

Arcus building

We had a look around the buildings and then a chat with the programme director. After that we met artist in residence Goh Ideta who was kind enough to spend time showing us his portfolio and talking about his works.

Goh Ideta

His profile on the Arcus website sums his work up pretty succinctly

Works with experimental devices that utilizes light, shadow, and space to understand “perception,”“sensation,” and “existence.”

or you can check out his website here, but I get the feeling these are works you have to spend time inside to really do them any justice.

volume 15

Volume 19

Googling for “artist led projects, tokyo” eventually led me to Kandada. Their website is in Japanese (of course!), but armed with their English language map and this blog entry giving an interesting snippet of background information, I went to have a look.

First up, I really liked the show they had on (Hong-Goo Kang ‘s Road to Eouido), but then I’m probably a bit partial to journey projects at the moment…

Secondly, completely getting into the spirit of passing the sketchbooks on to other artists (!), the director volunteered staff member Ueno Masao to participate on Kandada’s behalf.

Ueno Masao

Welcome aboard Masao!

kandada

Volume 21

Volume 21 gets posted to Kyushu where the first page might have something to do with clay, something to do with computers or something to do with something completely different…

the Nakagawa parcel

Volume 9

Surrounded by artists’ books of all shapes, sizes and types, Pepper’s Project not only agreed to take part in the project, but also completed their page there and then!

Pepper's collage team

details

ready for the next person!

City Canal Tour

Having excused myself early from the last segment of Johnny Hillwalker’s walking tour of Kyoto, I made a (not so) quick dash over to the Shimogamo Shrine to meet artist Markuz Wernli Saitô.

The last time we’d met was on the Kamo Obashi bridge when, having randomly followed a link from this article, and discovering the momentarium website I thought it would be great to invite Markuz to be a starting point for the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks project.

This time, however, was to be much more involved…

Wednesdays in Markuz’s programme are city canal tour days where “surprises and wet feet are guaranteed”. Well, I certainly got both, starting with performing the opening ceremony!

A condensed version of the tour can be viewed here http://momentarium.org/service/popup/1025.html (Quicktime format), but the actual event lasted about 2 hours.

canalside futon clips

It was fascinating to peer into people’s gardens from what was effectively ground level, and there were some nice little discoveries within the limbo territory of the canal itself: sights, sounds and smells.

Mostly the people we saw did a double-take but recovered enough to give us a friendly “konnichiwa” or “kombanwa”. There were a few quality encounters though, such as the woman throwing food across the canal and two fences to a dog in a garden on the other side, and The Guy in the Red T-Shirt.

The Guy in the Red T-Shirt

I didn’t catch his name, but he just sort of appeared alongside the canal on his bike. After a brief introductory chat with Markuz, he left his bike propped up at the side and came down to join us. …but only for a few seconds before he started sprinting down the canal path!

He reappeared some time later completely out of breath and stopped to chat some more. We saw him a few more times after that as he cycled over various bridges and gave us a friendly wave. I wonder if he ever got back in touch with Markuz later by email?

camera

I’m very much intrigued by how encounters like this can be documented. I was repeatedly amazed by the fact that, in Japan, Markuz has been able to leave his video camera set up on a tripod on the other side of busy bridges and in railway stations etc unattended and without fear that it would get stolen. How would you manage this in the UK or elsewhere? Some sort of hidden camera? An entourage of beefy cameramen?

Is there some other way of documenting the process besides video? Does the record need to be visual and time-based?

Maybe a more comforting way to regard my dozens of mosquito bites is as some form of alternative documentary record…

Volume 17

This week I was due to meet up with a friend in Kyoto on Saturday, but I altered my plans so I could meet up with momentarium Markuz Wernli Saitô.

hostel baggage

This involved arriving a day early and spending the night in a youth hostel… and then oversleeping the next morning, trekking back to the station, faffing around trying to find a locker big enough for my bags, trekking to a different station and then arriving at Kamo Obashi Bridge 10 minutes after the scheduled bridge-sit was supposed to end.

Fortunately there was something of a crowd there and so I was still able to meet Markuz to invite him to take part in the project.

Markuz Wernli Saitô

Hopefully I will make it back to Kyoto next week to properly take part in one of the activities.

Volume 23

Last week I entered the strange, strange world of Megumi Ishibashi.

This is a world where large, contorted, fibre-glass figures leave flight trails that arch across the sky or
struggle to escape from the arse-holes of technicoloured fish.

megumi ishibashi, flying seven, amabiki 2006

We built a new language and then we talked about studio spaces, art outside the gallery and residencies.

It was fun; I gave her a sketchbook.

megumi ishibashi

I hope she likes it…

light snack

Volume 7

On September 23rd I visited Ono Garou for the first time.

ono garou stairs

It was in the basement of this dilapidated apartment block in Ginza that we came across Junichi Saito and a masterfully executed presentation of a single piece of sculpture in an awkward corner under the stairs. Pure theatre, excellent!

saito junichi

And so Volume 7 has been left in the (white cotton-gloved) hands of Saito-san, ready to begin its journey…

volume 7

Volume 2

Yesterday I completed page 2a and so today I posted Volume 2 to the next artists: Karin and Reuben at Springhill Institute.

posting vol2

Volume 0

A few pages from Volume 0 compiled at the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks launch party.

Peer-to-Peer Project Launch

A few images from the launch of the the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks project.

[photos by Nikki Pugh, Makoto Shindo and Karin Kihlberg]

introduction to the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks Project

sketchbook pages

Working with Springhill Institute I will develop a creative strategy for investigating an artistic landscape. This will initially involve the design and hand production of a series of books of ‘blank pages’ to which artists will be invited to contribute a fragment of their current work. Each participant will then be asked to pass the book on to an artist of their choice for completion of the next page. In this way, the process of gathering these contributions will result in a sort of highly subjective cartography that maps out the current terrain of specific individuals and also the links between a progression of artists.

The journey of each book will be logged here and it is hoped that the final contributor to each volume will then return the book to me.

In the first instance I will make 26 books each with 26 blank pages. In addition to starting trails here in the UK, I will also take several books with me when I go to Japan in September. Here they will act as a means to develop existing relationships and also to initiate new ones.

To signify the start of the collation process, we hosted a one-night event at Springhill Institute in which artists were invited to leave their mark on blank pages that will then be compiled to form the first volume.

work in progress

Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks is funded by Springhill Institute through the Springhill Project support, 2006.

renga boogie

The weather was a bit cold and rainy, but the food was plentiful and the music was loud so we soon settled into it…

A Flickr slideshow of the day can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikki_pugh/sets/72157594234326888/show/

Liam’s festival renga

Liam was let loose with a camera. Here is the renga session at the 3 Estates Festival as seen through his eyes…

…and his speciality grape-in-a-doughnut™ added a certain je nais ce quois too!

grape-in-a-donught (tm)

Hawkesley Square renga

Anthony asked us if we could get the kids a park to play in, instead of his wall (I don’t mind the hanging/but it’s the rubbish I can’t stand).

Liam started off by telling us about how he was often chased by the police. But stayed with us all day and wrote several nice verses (I fell out with my girlfriend/Norma/and got her back).

Joan came back again and was on as good form as last time (the bees in my bushes/are much too big/they’re black).

One of last month’s verses really hit home for a man whose son had returned home from Iraq that day (love goes home/to battlezone sighs/and Basra baggies).

renga snippets

Nice things from being sat in the middle of a council estate shopping precinct on a Saturday in June whilst writing poetry and inviting passers by to join us:

passing through

Joan - not sure what she had originally planned to do with her day, but she spent about 6 hours of it with us.

Joan - not sure if she really understood what we were doing, but she didn’t ‘alf come out with some corkers.

Gloria - initially intensely suspicious of what we were doing and our motives for doing so. She went away to think about it, but re-appeared 10 minutes later and contributed a verse.

Gloria - likes botany.

process

Diesel - local mc from the estate. Presumably spends a lot of time working with words and performing in front of crowds.

Diesel - Didn’t half look nervous when he was sat down talking with us.

Gang of youths - hanging around looking dismissive of what we were doing, but making sure they could hear what we were saying. “They’re writing poetry man, and then they just all go quiet.”

process 2

Maxine - Works in the cafe, but managed to join us for a while at the beginning of the session.

Maxine - Would join us on one of the Saturdays she’s not working, but she’ll be akido training instead.

space

Paul - for gently (but persistantly!) pointing out that, as of lunchtime, none of my verses had yet been selected!

strategic question #26

What is animate?

Link minds to write an artwork for Kings Norton 3 Estates using the form of a Japanese shared writing schema. Over a period of 4 seasons produce 100 verses in 6 different sites and provide a new tool for considering the future of the estates, its inhabitants, its identity, its visions.

http://strategicquestions.org/

Now you know about as much as I do.

what is art?

From the glossary of Relational Aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud:

Art
  1. General term describing a set of objects presented as part of a narrative known as art history. This narrative draws up the critical genealogy and discusses the issues raised by these objects, by way of three sub-sets: painting, sculpture and architecture.
  2. Nowadays, the word ‘art’ seems to be no more than a semantic leftover of this narrative, whose more accurate definition would read as follows: Art is an activity consisting in producing relationships with the world with the help of signs, forms, actions and objects.

The first of these definitions is utterly pragmatic; the second screams towards the target, hits the bulls-eye and quivers for a few moments whilst the repercussions reverberate out into the surroundings…