Nicola Conibere for Gynmastics

The Conceptual Leap

Grunts for the Arts Sports Day 2,
Burgess Park, London,
15 September 2007

In March of this year, the UK government announced it would divert £675 million of lottery money from funding for the arts in order to offset the costs of the 2012 Olympic Games. This included an immediate £29 million drop – from £83 million to £54 million – in this year’s Grants for Arts budget. The cut is already having a drastic effect on the ability of arts organisations and individuals to plan and make their work.

Because Grants for the Arts supports a wide range of individual projects, the effects of this cut will be felt in many places, including artistic collaborations with schools, charities and throughout the public sector. Grants for the Arts programme’s £54 million budget is trivial when compared with the £5,100 million projected cost of widening the M1, the £15,000 million projected cost of replacing the Trident missile system, or the £18,000 million projected cost of the national ID card scheme (£32 million of which has already been spent without any tangible results).

A number of ongoing efforts have been made to persuade the government to rethink this cut or to make up for it in its forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review, including an online petition with over 25,000 signatures (http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/lotteryolympics/, now closed) and a coalition of arts organisations under the name Independent Arts (http://independentarts.org.uk). But artist Tim Jeeves has taken an ‘if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em’ approach with his ‘Grunts for the Arts’ project, which promotes the retraining of artists into Olympic athletes. One of the outcomes of this project was the second ‘Grunts for the Arts Sports Day’ in Burgess Park, London. (The first Grunts for the Arts Sports Day was held in May on Hackney Marshes, part of the 2012 Olympic site.)

The Grunts for the Arts Sports Day consisted of a number of ingenious versions of typical sporting events, including a gymnastic event with extra points for the competitor’s dramatic death pose, a 20-person relay with each stage only 2m long, an Olympic doughnut ring eating contest, and (my contribution) the Conceptual Leap. The day ended with Richard Dedomenici’s contribution to the evolution of football: ‘Triball’, in which three teams play on a three-sided pitch with three goals and two balls.

The weather was gorgeous, and the whole day was a reminder that both art and sport should be a celebration of collective spirit and local participation, something increasingly lacking in the global branding exercises of the Olympic Games franchise. There were plenty of reflections on the realities of being an artist working in the UK funding system, including an argument over ‘measurables’ during the Handbag Hurling, or the requirement that competitors in the Tour de Park Cocktail Race display not only artistic and athletic prowess but also the ability to sell their product to the assembled crowd. But most inspiring of all was the way in which a few young children and a group of developmentally disabled people joined in with the fun – a reminder of the arts’ ability to spontaneously bridge gaps without any sight of bureaucratic targets or comprehensive strategy papers.

Written by Theron Schmidt

Further information:

Grunts for the Arts website:
http://gruntsforthearts.wordpress.com/

Find out what you can do at the Independent Arts
campaigning website: http://independentarts.org.uk

Submit your comments before the Comprehensive Spending Review: http://csr07.treasury.gov.uk/survey/

New Work Network members can join the discussion here:

http://www.newworknetwork.org.uk/modules/

Facebook members can join the group ‘Campaign against the cuts in funding for the arts’: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2301243429

Toynbee Studios, London 15th September 2007

On 15 September, New Work Network (NWN) celebrated its tenth birthday. One of very few artist-led programmes to receive regular funding from the Arts Council, NWN has been a behind-the-scenes partner in many exciting live art events and cross-disciplinary projects, including the DIY peer-to-peer professional development scheme; ‘Everything You Wanted to Know about Live Art But Were Afraid to Ask’ around the UK; the Darkside at the Arnolfini, Bristol; and this summer’s Spill Festival in London.

NWN’s primary activity is facilitating networking among artists and providing ways to share information and resources, build collaborations, and promote events. It does this primarily through its website which, like Facebook and Myspace, is designed around social networking principles. Due for a revamp later this year, the website has grown along with the membership; this year alone has seen a 100% increase in membership, there are currently over 500 NWN members.

NWN’s major programme in the past few years has been Networked Bodies, a unique awards scheme in which proposals were evaluated and selected by artists themselves, rather than by a centralised panel. This scheme has evolved into two complementary programmes: the ‘Activator’ cultural leadership programme currently involving ten artist/producers around the UK, and the forthcoming ‘Associates’ scheme which will forge links with artistic and non-artistic organisations to raise the profile of the network and its artists.

As an artist-led organisation, NWN must necessarily value openness and transparency, and its projects tend to be more easily available to early-career artists than some of the producing organisations – though of course, this means that is up to artists themselves to produce their work. It is also a truly national organisation with representation and activity from around the UK. There are a handful of international members, and NWN coordinator Philippa Barr has announced her intention to grow the network’s global connections.

NWN also know how to throw a wicked birthday party by drawing on their strengths to get artists involved in running it. Robert Pacitti made souvenir badges. Bobbie Baker, in her wonderfully hapless and reassuringly maternal performance persona, doused Toynbee Hall with copious amounts of sauces and spices. Eilidh (rhymes with ‘daily’) MacAskill led us in a Scottish Ceilidh (rhymes with, well, ‘Eilidh’) folk-dance. Eilidh provides accompaniment on her ukulele, and has been doing this in some form every day, making it – you guessed it – ‘Eilidh's Daily Ukulele Ceilidh’. Later on in the evening, Richard Dedominici hosted internet-based karaoke, which he called ‘crapaoke’, and made decidedly not-crap cocktails.

Throughout the evening, party conversation was both stimulated and subverted as part of a work by FrenchMottershead. Reprising an earlier project of theirs called ‘The People Series’, a set of cards were secretly distributed, each containing a provocative instruction and a cluster of tiny numbered stickers. Each time you carried out the instruction, you were to place the sticker on your ‘victim’. This resulted in some moments of disappointment, as having a sticker placed on your shirt revealed that your conversation partner had only been ‘lying to impress’, or that the person who just asked you to kiss him or her wasn’t necessarily doing so spontaneously. There was also a great deal of embarrassment around the direction ‘ask someone how much they earn’; apparently, this just isn’t a topic that artists like to talk about, seeming ashamed both of earning money and of working for free. And this, perhaps, is one of the points of an artist-led network: artists need to make a living, not just work, and this becomes easier through networking and sharing information.

Written by Theron Schmidt

To find out more or to become a member, visit http://www.newworknetwork.org.uk

BOiLEROOM: The Terrific Electric at the Barbican 10 Sept 2007

Touch Wood #1 at The Place, 11 Sept 2007

My interest in live art means I am always looking out for new and emerging work across various performance disciplines, so this week took me to the results of two very different schemes supporting new work: BOiLEROOM’s ‘The Terrific Electric’ at the Barbican, supported by the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust (OSBTT) Award, and ‘Touch Wood #1’, a complement to this summer’s Choreodrome dance development programme at The Place. The two experiences could not have been more different.

According to the Barbican programme notes, the OSBTT Award aims to support ‘emerging practitioners engaged in bold, innovative and challenging theatre’ by ‘facilitating the transition from fringe to studio spaces’. OSBTT does this through a generous grant and various levels of mentoring (this year’s scheme was mentored by Mark Ravenhill). It was such a shame therefore, that BOiLEROOM’s The Terrific Electric was a dull, poorly structured assemblage of visual theatre clichés.

The Terrific Electric is ostensibly about the impact of electricity, radio and the idea of new technology in general on the lives of three - more or less hysterical - women from another era. The show wears its visual theatre influences obviously: costumes hanging from the ceiling, quirky dancing and magic tricks, a facile voiceover, and an agonising fondness for video projection. The company describes itself as practicing ‘investigative theatre’ and claim to be interested in various questions about the world outside the theatre – though its references to science and history amount to little more than crude caricatures. But the real failure of The Terrific Electric is that it is not inquisitive enough about theatre itself. What is this collection of titbits and slapstick supposed to create? What effect are they trying to create? Why do this as a live performance as opposed to any other form? For a piece essentially about a singer losing her voice, this show has no heart.

It made me wonder where the OSBTT process went wrong: BOiLEROOM’s ideas sound interesting on paper, and the performers are clearly capable (even if they are too often reduced to over-egged pandering to the audience). I wonder if the clue might be in the phrase ‘transition from fringe to studio spaces’, and whether this particular transition made it too easy for BOiLEROOM to emphasise style and marketing with insufficient attention to substance and structure. It’s as if BOiLEROOM has tried to do everything they’ve seen ‘professional’ companies do but missed out on the invisible but crucial task of developing its basic ideas and goals – which suggests something lacking in the structure of the OSBTT scheme. The result reflects poorly on OSBTT, the Barbican and BOiLEROOM; who were doubtless overwhelmed by this opportunity and are now not likely to get many more.

It was such a refreshing change, then, to attend the first (#1) evening of The Place’s Touch Wood season, a new feature for 2007 in which artists, most of whom have participated in the Choreodrome programme, are invited to present in-development work to the public. In contrast to the over-produced and under-thought feeling of The Terrific Electric, Touch Wood’s selling point is its back-to-basics minimalism: the dance floor of the Robin Howard Theatre has been stripped away, revealing the bare wood underneath and there are no curtains or blacks on the sides. As associate director Eddie Nixon explains in his welcome, the idea is to recreate the feeling of the studio.

‘Touch Wood #1’ featured four new works (rounded off by a reprise of Shobana Jeyasingh’s ‘Prologue’ from her company’s 2004 production ‘Transtep’). All these four new works, in a marked contrast to The Terrific Electric, shared a studied attention to the basic elements that make up the performance. Watching Temitope Ajose-Cutting’s ‘BASE’ felt like watching someone learning how to put these pieces together: solo dance, group dynamics and unison, and working with live musicians, costume, and lights. It had an easy, confident theatrical language, and though it may not have had anything particularly powerful to say with this language, it was well structured, dynamic and exuberant. Similarly, Zoi Dimitriou’s work ‘Dromoi’ gave considered attention to each gesture so that the simple first action of unwinding a microphone cable to mark out a square around the stage took on an engrossing symbolism that set the mood for his sparse and meditative piece.

But the real standout was Colin Poole’s ‘Joyride’, which became truly electrifying – and terrifying – by adding the relationship with the audience to the elements with which it works. This provocative, brave and disquieting piece begins with a typical scene from an airport or holding cell: Poole removing some clothing and emptying his pockets of loose change, keys, and passport. But he doesn’t stop there, and he’s soon completely naked, staring us straight in the eyes and moving with the graceful fury of Rilke’s panther. ‘Okay. Let’s talk’ he says. ‘Get to know each other better. Relax. Get things off our chest.’ Never breaking eye contact, Poole reflects back all the uncomfortable thoughts we might be having about his nakedness, his dancer's body, his blackness on display: ‘I know what you’re thinking. I know what you’re dreaming. I know what you’re wishing.’ Held together by Poole’s incredibly skilled control over his voice, gaze, and body, this is powerful and mesmerising work which both depends upon and challenges its relationship with the audience – it is as much a live art intervention into the dance world as a piece of dance.

Written by Theron Schmidt

Touch Wood continues at The Place until 6 October:
http://www.theplace.org.uk/?lid=7885. Colin Poole’s 'Joyride' will be presented again on 20 September. Tickets cost £5-£15, book online or call the Box Office on 020 7121 1100.

BOiLEROOM’s The Terrific Electric is on at the Barbican until 15 September

Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust website:
http://www.osbttrust.com