Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas’ Split nik installation opened in the Moscow Biennale on 22 September and the exhibition runs until 30 October 2011. Split nik is an installation re-reading a book published by Russian author, Alexander Kukarkin, during the Cold War period, discussing Soviet and Western ideologies in relation to consumerism, design and art. I am an ‘embedded writer’ with the project. The installation is a device to look backwards at the history of the Cold War in culture, focussing on the book Beyond Welfare (The Passing Age in English) by Kukarkin, and also to look forwards from now. The installation consists of three elements:

-       a presentation of Kukarkin’s book in Russian, Lithuanian and English,

-       extracts from a 1970s Lithuanian film Things and People that humorously examines our psychological and ideological relationships with objects,

-       and a wooden structure resembling convoluted raked seating designed for dialogue.

Installing the work was fraught with drama. It got held up in customs and then lost in the basement of the luxurious Tsum Department Store in Moscow – our exhibition was on the fifth floor. Then our team was beset with flu, a broken hand, and chronic jetlag – nevertheless after a few 24 hour shifts, Split nik appeared.

THE FOURTH ELEMENT

The Split nik project assistant, Anna Kotova, contacted Moscow artists via Facebook and Nomeda, Gediminas and I ran a week-long workshop which is the developing fourth element of the work. The participating artists are Elle Gard, Liza Izvekova, Anna Prihodioko, Maria Sokol and Vladimir Smyshlenkov. We discussed the work of Future Studies researchers such as the Global Scenario Group www.gsg.org  and Kingsley Dennis and John Urry’s book After the Car (Polity, 2009) and artists considering the future: science fiction, and artists such as Lise Autogena, John and Helen Mayer Harrison, Andrew Sunley Smith, Heath Bunting & Kayle Brandon, Kate Rich, Uta Kogelsberger, London Fieldworks and HeHe.

Talking of Khrushchev and Nixon’s 1959 Kitchen Debate, we wondered why the best conversations always happen in the kitchen. We set them a task to sit in a kitchen (their own, their grandmother’s, a showroom kitchen – whatever they like) and make some sketches of their vision of a future scenario – in whatever form they like: drawings, photo, collage, film, text, sound. We will be posting their developing ideas in a few weeks time. You, the reader, are welcome to submit your Future Casts to us too.

THE PEDAGOGICAL TURN

Elle, Liza, Anna, Maria, and Vladmir are also organising dialogues in Split nik during the exhibition with small groups of people. Documentation of these will follow. Sitting in the Split nik structure we discussed with them the pedagogical turn in art.

See Kristina Podesva, The Pedagogical Turn in Art

http://fillip.ca/content/a-pedagogical-turn

and artists and projects such as Tino Sehgal, The Long March (China), Platform (UK), Jeremy Deller (UK) and Nomeda & Gediminas’ other projects on http://www.nugu.lt – click on dossier.

We talked about theorists: Clare Bishop’s book Participation and her articles on The Participatory Turn; Christian Kravagna; Grant Kester’s book Conversational Pieces; Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics and Altermodern; Lars Bang Larsen, and then historically Joseph Beuys, Helio Oiticica, Milan Knizak, Marcel Duchamp’s text ‘The Creative Act’, Umberto Eco’s ‘The Open Work’.

KUKARKIN RESEARCH

Meanwhile, we are also progressing our research on Kukarkin himself, leafing through copies of Amerika magazine and Kukarkin’s personnel records, unearthed by Anna. The top floor apartment in Moscow where we were staying was showing the ill effects of a leaking roof and its age. We imagined it could have been Kukarkin’s apartment. The doors squeak painfully, the floors creak, the lightbulbs blow room by room, the toilet leaks, the kettle has a huge crack down one side but still works. Tea is a small mercy.

Kukarkin was born in 1916 at Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod). His parents died when he was a child and he was raised by his uncle, a doctor living in Moscow. From the age of fifteen Kukarkin worked at the factory Dinamo. During 1934-35 he served as secretary in various offices. From 1936 he studied at M. Gorky’s Institute of Literature in Moscow, graduating in 1940. During his studies he published his first critical essays in the magazines Flag (Znamya), New World (Novyj Mir), Literary Observer (Lietarturnoje Obozrenyje). Due to bad eyesight he was decommissioned from army service and worked for various newspapers and publishing houses. In 1943 he was sent by the Communist Party to the Higher School of Diplomacy, which he graduated in 1945. After graduation he began a diplomatic career and was sent to USA.

He was working as an attaché and head of the Press Department at the Soviet Embassy in Washington from September 1945 to August 1946. His time there coincided with the period when Alexander Feklisov was the KGB handler for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg at the New York Soviet Embassy. The Rosenbergs were executed as spies in 1953 and alleged to have given away US atomic secrets to Russia.

In August 1948 Kukarkin was part of a Soviet Delegation visiting the London Olympics at a time when USSR was negotiating terms to join the Olympics – it competed for the first time in 1952. He was a member of the Soviet delegations at the First World Congress for Peace in Czechoslovakia in April 1949; the United Nations Fourth Session September-November 1949; and the Second World Peace Congress in November 1950. The World Peace Council was established in response to fears of a third world war and the threat of atomic annihilation as the Cold War was escalating in Korea. Peace Congress deletes gathered in Sheffield in the UK, including Kukarkin, Picasso and ‘the Red Dean’ of Canterbury Cathedral, Dr Hewlett Johnson, who argued that capitalism lacked a moral basis and the moral impulse of communism constituted the greatest attraction. The British Labour government sabotaged the Congress and it was forced to shift behind ‘the Iron Curtain’ to Warsaw.

Kukarkin was a member of the editorial board of the magazine The New Times (Novoye Vremya). From 1951 he worked as editor of NEWS (Novosty) a newly established English language magazine for foreign countries. He travelled to France as a member of the Soviet delegation to the United Nations Sixth Session November 1951 – January 1952.

From 1953 he continued his literary work. He took a job as head of the Drama Department at the magazine Arts (Iskusstvo). He then disappears from the official records for five years. According to the personnel file during this time he was focussing on literary translations, and writing on Charlie Chaplin.

During 1958-61 he was head of the Foreign Film Department at the State Film Foundation USSR (GosFilmFond). During this time he collected materials for his major work on American film, which was published as part of the larger book: Cinema, Theater, Music, Painting in USA by Znanye (Knowledge).

From 1963 he started research work at the institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Science USSR where he worked until his pension in 1976. During these 13 years he wrote books, essays and articles on contemporary cinematography and critiques on bourgeoisie ideology and culture. The Passing Age – a book for foreign readers was published by Progress, and The Mass Culture of Bourgeoisie was published by PolitIzdat.

He lived his last years with his daughter and granddaughter – who we are hoping to find and interview. We are also very keen to find out more about his diplomatic career and whether there is any information on him, his book designers and illustrators in the archives of Progress publishers. If you have any information on Kukarkin, or would like to comment on his book or Split nik please contact us.

Also see http://www.vilma.cc/splitnik

On Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas’ Split nik

Tracey Warr

http://www.vilma.cc/splitnik

Helter Skelter, Sokolniki Park, site of the 1959 Kitchen Debate between Nixon and Khrushchev. Photo: Nomeda Urbonas.

In June 2011 I travelled to Russia for the first time, carrying preconceptions largely formed from Martin Cruz Smith novels.

I joined Lithuanian artists Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas and their Russian assistant, Anna Kotova, in an attempt to track down Alexander Kukarkin, an elusive Russian writer from the Cold War era. Our researches became as contorted as the Helter Skelter in Sokolniki Park where Nixon and Khrushchev had their famous 1959 Kitchen Debate.[i] See the full text account of our research, looking for Kukarkin, on http://traceywarr.wordpress.com

Our resulting art project, Split nik, is showing at the Moscow Biennale

23 Sept – 30 Oct 2011

at the Tsum Art Foundation, Tsum Department Store, 2 Petrovka str., Moscow

Open Mon–Fri: 10:00–22:00, Sat–Sun: 11:00–22:00

Nearest Metro Stations: Tverskaya, Teatral’naya.

http://4th.moscowbiennale.ru/en/

We are inviting participation in dialogues about the Cold War and its legacies now, particularly in relation to the role of artists, writers and books. We invite your Future Casts. You can participate in person in the Split nik installation in the Moscow Biennale, or participate by commenting online:

Split nik on Facebook: http://vkontakte.ru/splitnik2011 [Russian]

Or comment on http://www.vilma.cc/splitnik [English]

Or comment here on http://traceywarr.wordpress.com [English]

Dr TRACEY WARR

CONTACT DETAILS

Email: warr28@gmail.com
Website: http://traceywarr.wordpress.com

QUALIFICATIONS

2008- MA Creative Writing, Trinity Saint David, University of Wales (due to complete 2011)
2007 PhD: Creative Acts: Curating and Writing with Artists, University of Plymouth
1982 M.Phil English Language and Literature, Oxford University
1980 BA (Hons) English Language and Literature, Hull University, 1st Class

CURRENT EMPLOYMENT

2008-present Oxford Brookes University, Lecturer, Contemporary Art Theory

PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT

2006-2009 University College Falmouth, Associate Lecturer, MA Arts and Ecology
2008 Bauhaus University Weimar, Guest Professor, MFA Public Art & New Artistic Strategies
2000-2009 Open University, Summer School Tutor, BA Art History.
2007 Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, Holland, Visiting Lecturer, MA Fine Art
Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway, Visiting Lecturer, MA Curating
2006-2007 Glasgow School of Art, Researcher, Art in Social Contexts and Visiting
Lecturer, BA Environmental Art and MRes Creative Arts (Fine Art)
2002-2006 Dartington College of Arts, Totnes, Full-time Director, Arts & Cultural Management Department; Co-ordinator, Taught MA Contemporary Arts
1999-2002 Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, Lecturer/Researcher, BA Fine Art
1997-1999 Surrey Institute of Art & Design, Farnham, Researcher, Site Specific Art
1988-1992 Edge Biennale Trust, London, Co-Director
1986-1987 Arts Council of Great Britain, London, Combined Arts Officer
1985-1986 Chatto & Windus Publishers, London, Press Officer
1984-1985 Poetry Review Magazine, London, Editor
1982-1985 Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, Exhibitions/Publications Officer

EXTERNAL EXAMINING

2006-2009 University of Wales in Cardiff
External Examiner, BA Fine Arts (Art History and Theory)
2006-2007 Birkbeck College, London
External Examiner, MA Arts Management and Cultural Policy
2003-2006 Arts Institute at Bournemouth
External Examiner, BA Arts & Event Production

PHD EXAMINING & SUPERVISION

Current Students
Michael Blow (Oxford Brookes University), Ryan Bromley (Oxford Brookes University), Christian Thompson (Oxford University), Tine Bech (University of the West of England)

2011 University of Bristol, External Examiner
2011 Oxford Brookes University, Internal Examiner
2006-2010 University of Plymouth, PhD Second Supervisor, Janey Hunt, completed
2009 Manchester Metropolitan University, External Examiner
2009 Roehampton University, External Examiner
2008-2010 University of Ulster, External Examiner (x 2)
2004-2011 Brunel University, London, 1 MPhil & 2 PhDs – External Examiner

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Authored Book
2011. Almodis: The Peaceweaver, Exeter: Impress Books.

Edited Books and Journals
2009. Editor, Wanderlust, Weimar: Bauhaus Universitat Weimar.
2009. Co-Editor, with Ratcliffe, H.; Smith, A. Allenheads Contemporary Arts: Art in a Rural Context. Sunderland: Editions North.
2000. Editor, The Artist’s Body. London: Phaidon.
1990. Co-Editor, with La Frenais, R. Ria Pacquee 2 Projects: Edge 90, London / Newcastle: Edge Biennale Trust.
1987. Editor, Live Art Now, London: Arts Council of Great Britain.
1987. Editor, Performance Magazine, May/June, 47.
1983. Co-Editor, Imlah, M. eds., Poetry Review magazine.

Research Reports
2006. Artist Links Research Project: UK-China 2002-2006. Dartington: Dartington College of Arts. For British Council China and Arts Council England.
2005. Research Report on Artists’ Bursaries. For Arts Council London.

Book Chapters/Catalogue Essays
2011. ‘Interview with Misha Myers’. In Merskimmon, M. & Row, D. eds. Diasporic Futures, Manchester: Manchester University Press. In press.
2011. ‘The Body in your Lap’, in Zerihan, R. & Chatzichristodoulou, M., eds. Intimacy: Across Digital and Visceral Performance, London: Palgrave Macmillan. In press.
2010. ‘The Hysterical Sense of Leaking’. In Found, P. ed., The Body in Women’s Art: Part 2 Flux, London: ROLLO Contemporary Arts, pp. 19-28.
2010. ‘Texts from the Body: Bruce Gilchrist’. In Broadhurst, S. & Machon, J. eds. (2009) Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st Century Performance, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 23-37.
2010. ‘The Hole in the Wall’ in Scott, C. Powers, M., Jones, A. eds., Shadow Plays, Cardigan: Parthian, pp.
2009. Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva: Gloucester Cathedral Project, Artsway.
2009 ‘Interview with Miranda Whall’. In Miranda Whall, DVD Publication, Filmarmalade.
2009 Tine Bech, Open Studio, Toronto.
2008. ‘Endurance and Performance’. In Kermode, D. ed. Endurance, Birmingham: Vivid.
2007. ‘Contemporary Metaphysics’. In Farquhar, A., ed. Half Life, Glasgow: NVA, pp. 53-7.
2007. ‘Feral City’. In Sladen, M. & Yedgar, A. ed. Panic Attack!: Art in the Punk Years, London: Merrell, pp. 116-121.
2007. Filmed interview with Marcus Coates, The Dawn Chorus. Bristol: Picture This. DVD Publication Series.
2007. ‘Awkward Art Party’. In Moloney, C. ed. Ten Years of OMSK. London: OMSK, pp. 110-114.
2005. ‘Measuring Beauty in the Upper Ice-World’. In Gilchrist, B. & Joelson, J. eds. Little Earth. London: London Fieldworks, pp. 11-19.
2004. ‘What a Performance Is’. In Foster, S. ed. Joan Jonas. Southampton: John Hansard Gallery, pp. 17-24.
2004. ‘Weathering’. In Murdin, A. ed. Elemental Insights. Exeter: Met Office, pp. 60-71.
2003. ‘Image as Icon’. In George, A. ed. Art, Lies & Videotape. Liverpool: Tate Liverpool, pp. 30-37.
2002. ‘Tuning In’. In Gilchrist, B. & Joelson, J. eds. Syzygy/Polaria. London: Black Dog, pp. 6-11.
2002. ‘Being Something’. In Coates, M. ed. Marcus Coates. Ambleside: Grizedale, np.
2002. ‘Passing Presence’. In Ackroyd, H. & Harvey, D. eds. Afterlife. London: Beaconsfield/Arts Admin, np.
1998. ‘In the Dark about Art’. In Stankevicius. E. ed. Twilight/Sutemos. Vilnius: Centre for Contemporary Art, pp. viii-xv.

Journal Articles
2009. Journal Article. ‘Crackling Poetry Review’, Oxford Poetry: In Memoriam Mick Imlah, Dec., pp. 63-65.
2008. ‘On Collaboration: Interviews with Heather Ackroyd & Dan Harvey and Phelim McDermott’, Doubt Guardian. In press.
2007. Book Review: Broadhurst, Susan & Machon, Josephine eds. (2006) Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. In Body, Space & Technology Journal, 7 (1). http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/non_ie.html
2007. Book Review: Broadhurst, Susan & Machon, Josephine eds. (2006) Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. In the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 3:1, pp. 89-93.
2006. ‘Consensual Art: Cyril Lepetit’, Wharf, Caen: Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie. [French]
2004. ‘A Moving Meditation on a Dead Line’, Performance Research, 8 (4), pp. 130-136.
2002. ‘Circuitry’, Performance Research, 6 (3), pp. 8-12.
2001. ‘Interview with Carolee Schneemann’, MAKE online, http://www.make-magazine.org.uk.
2001. ‘Earth Art, Consciousness and the Thing Itself’, Fourth Door Review, November, pp. 75-81.
2000. ‘James Turrell’s Roden Crater’, Contemporary, 30 September, pp. 42-47.
2000. Warr, T. & Gilchrist, B. ‘Art as a First-Person Research Methodology on Consciousness Abstract’. In Sutherland, Keith. ed. (2000). Consciousness Research Abstracts: Toward a Science of Consciousness 2000. Thorveton/Tucson: Journal of Consciousness Studies/University of Arizona, p. 162.
2000. ‘The Informe Body’, Body, Space and Technology, 1 (1). http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/non_ie.html
1998. ‘The Informe Body’, Performance Research, 3 (2), pp. 118-121.
1997. ‘Sleeper’, Frakcija, 4. [Croatian]
1996. ‘Sleeper’, Performance Research, 1 (2), pp. 1-19.
1996. ‘Udders, Drills, X-Rays: Dorothy Cross’, Women’s Art Magazine, June/July, pp. 20-21.
1995. ‘To Rupture is to Find: Marina Abramovic’, Women’s Art Magazine, May/June, pp. 11-13.
1995. ‘Uninhibited Landscapes’, Artists’ Newsletter, March, pp. 10-12.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

2011 Association of Art Historians, University of Warwick, Poster: Outlandia
2011 Artists’ Films, ARLISS, Lux, London
2010 Freelancing as an Art Historian, Association of Art Historians, London
2010 Scotland’s Wild Landscapes, UHI, Perth, Poster: Outlandia
2010 Planetary Breakdown: Artists’ Autonomous Infrastructures, The Baltic, Gateshead
2010 Performance: The Construction of a New Language, University of Girona / FEM10 Festival
2010 Collaborations, West Wales School of Art, Carmarthen
2008 Performance on Screen, Picture This/Capture, Watershed, Bristol.
2007 Intimacy: Across Digital and Visceral Performance, Goldsmiths College of Art/Laban Centre, London.
2007 Cultural Rights Roundtable, Interface Research Centre, University of Ulster. 2007 Common Work, Tramway, Glasgow/University of Stirling.
2006 The New Co-efficiency in Art, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow.
2006 Reenchantment of Art, Bergen National Academy of the Arts , Norway.
2005 Navigate, Baltic Contemporary Arts Centre, Gateshead.
2005 Desire Lines: Art and Ecology, Dartington College of Arts, Totnes.
2004 In and Out of Middle England, Exeter Phoenix, Exeter.
2004 Commonsense, Tate Liverpool/Liverpool Biennale.
2004 OtherWorlds, Baltic Contemporary Arts Centre, Gateshead.
2003 Bone 6: Performance by Women, Bern, Switzerland.
2003 Extremophiles: Surviving in Space, Arts Catalyst. Royal Institution of Great
Britain, London.
2003 Invisible Bodies, Arnolfini, Bristol.
2002 A Short History of Performance, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.
2002 Marked/Gina Pane Symposium, Arnolfini, Bristol.
2002 Gina Pane Symposium, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton.
2001 Strange and Charmed 2: Art and Science Lecture Series, Royal College of Art /
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London.
2000 Liminality and Performance, Brunel University.
2000 Toward a Science of Consciousness, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
1998 Space Art/Earth Art, Boulogne-Billancout, Paris, France.

CURATORIAL PROJECTS

2010-present Outlandia, Associate Curator
2010 Culture of Rowing & Swimming
2006-present Outlandia Treehouse Residencies, Glen Nevis, Scotland.
2008 Monday Night Lecture Series at ACC Gallery, Weimar including Wochenklausur; Kayle Brandon; Rob La Frenais and Boris Sieferts
2008 Visions in the Nunnery, The Nunnery, London.
2001-present Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Northumberland.
Curated artists included Marcus Coates and London Fieldworks.
2005-2006 Dartington College of Arts Gallery, Totnes.
Curated artists included Jem Finer, Kayle Brandon, Qiu Zhi Jie, Lu Chunsheng and Liu Ding.
2005 Body Language and Embodied Meanings Screening Programme, Piet
Zwart Institute / TENT / Witte de With, Rotterdam, Holland.
2004 ART – What is it good for?, Dartington College of Arts, Totnes.
Curated artists included Alastair Maclennan and Gediminas Urbonas.
2001 OX1: Oscillations & Vibrations Sound Art Festival, Modern Art Oxford ad
other venues in Oxford.
Curated artists included Hayley Newman, Kaffe Matthews, Scanner, Bruce Gilchrist & Jonny Bradley, Brian Caitlin, Ray Lee.
1998 Twilight/Sutemos, Centre for Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Curated artists included Jane & Louise Wilson and Kathleen Rogers.
1994-1996 James Turrell, Northumberland Skyspace Proposal.
1994 EarthWire, Cleveland.
1988-1992 Edge 90 & Edge 92, Site-based exhibitions in Madrid, Spain (part of the European Capital of Culture programme), London; Newcastle and Glasgow.
Curated artists included Helen Chadwick, Dorothy Cross, Isaac Julien, Jimmie Durham, Marina Abramovic, Stelarc, Carolee Schneemann, Guillermo Gomez Pena & Coco Fusco.
1986 New British Sculpture, Air Gallery, London.
Curated artists included Cornelia Parker, Stephen Pippin, Hermione Wiltshire and Sharon Kivland.

GRANTS & AWARDS

2010 Creative Campus Initiative: Curatorial Project (Culture of Rowing and Swimming).
2007 Arts Council England: Individual Travel Grant to visit Documenta and Munster
Skulptur Projekt
2007 Arts Council England: Individual Grant for writing projects
2007 Relational: Individual Curatorial Research and Development Grant
2006 British Council China Research Grant
2005 Arts Council England: Individual Travel Grant to visit Venice Biennale

ADVISORY BOARDS

2009-present Palgrave Macmillan Performance and Technology Book Series Advisory Group.
2001-present Editorial Board, Performance Research journal.
2000-present Editorial Board, Body, Art & Space journal.
2008 DRHA 2008 Programme Committee Member (Digital Resources for the
Humanities and Arts annual conference), Cambridge.
2006-2008 Trustee, Arnolfini Arts Centre, Bristol.
2004-2007 Chair, Council of Management, Spacex Gallery, Exeter.
1993-1994 Arts Council of Great Britain Visual Art Committee.
1992-1994 Arts Council of Great Britain Combined Arts Committee.
1984-1985 Greater London Arts Literature Committee.

GALLERY TALKS, GUEST LECTURES, WORKSHOPS

2011 Ideas About Space: Gordon Matta Clark and Outlandia, Arnolfini
2011 Art Writing Workshop, Modern Art Oxford
2010 In Conversation with Jayne Parker, Night & Day Performance Weekend, Modern Art Oxford
2007 Art in the Punk Years, Barbican Art Gallery, London.
2006 Jordan Mackenzie, Spacex, Exeter.
2006 In Conversation with Zoe Benbow, Café Gallery, London.
2005 Contemporary Romanticism, Piet Zwart Institute / TENT / Witte de With,
Rotterdam, Holland.
2005 The Death of the Body, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.
2003 Monica Bonvicini, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.
2002 Tracey Emin, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.
2000 Trauma, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.
1993-2009 Guest lectures at Carmarthen College of Art; Shanghai University; Potsdam Fachhochschule; University of Bourgogne, Dijon; Nottingham Trent University; Central St Martin’s; Wimbledon School of Art; University of the West of England; Camberwell College of Art.

OWN EXHIBITION PROJECTS

2011 Splitnik, Moscow Biennale, with Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
2008 Something Like Spit, Exchange Gallery, Penzance.
2007 Something Like Spit, Boilerworks, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London.
2004 Dialogue, Dartington Gallery, Totnes.
2003 Generator, Dartington Gallery, Totnes.
2001 Knowhere, Milch Gallery, London; Underwood Gallery, London; Art Through Touch, London and Queen’s Hall, Hexham.

LANGUAGES

Basic French.

References
Bourriaud, Nicolas, Altermodern (London: Tate, 2010).
Cheever, John, ‘The Swimmer’ in Collected Stories (London: Vintage, 1990).
Deakin, Roger, Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain (London: Vintage, 2000).
Dennis, Kingsley & Urry, John, After the Car (Cambridge: Polity, 2009).
Rew, Kate & Tyler, Dominic, Wild Swim (London: Guardian Publishers, 2008).
Smithson, Robert, The Writings of Robert Smithson, edited by Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979).
Starling, Simon, Cuttings: Simon Starling (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2005).

Websites:
Altermodern http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/explore.shtm
Amphicars http://www.amphicars.com/
Rebecca Beinart http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=9713
He Yun Chang http://www.spacex.co.uk/pl3artist.html
Darpa Grand Challenge http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp
Energy Café http://energycafe.wordpress.com
Alec Finley and Ken Cockburn, The Road North http://www.alecfinlay.com
Malcolm Fraser Architects http://www.malcolmfraser.co.uk
HeHe http://www.hehe.org.free.fr
Claire Long & Anna Keleher http://www.claireandanna.com
Outlandia http://www.londonfieldworks.com/projects/outlandia/index.php
Oxford Brookes University Sustainable Vehicle Research Centre http://tech.brookes.ac.uk/svec
Andrew Sunley-Smith http://www.sunleysmith.com

Initiating new dialogues across sport and art

This symposium and related events, organised by myself and Rob La Frenais took place 15-18 July 2010.

Gediminas & Nomeda Urbonas were artists in residence for The Culture of Rowing and Swimming project. They have established an international reputation for their socially interactive and interdisciplinary practice. Combining the tools of new and traditional media, their work frequently involves collective activities. They undertook an artistic investigation of the River Thames for this project. ‘Besides the sky, a river is the only aspect of our urban environment that has not yet been parcelled out into real estate or butchered by human insensitivity and carelessness. It suggests far-away places and distant memories and thus gives to the urban citizens a most needed sense of freedom’ (Gyorgy Kepes, Artist).

A programme of artists’ films related to rowing and swimming, including work by Andrew Kotting, Kate Rew, Jayne Parker, Jem Cohen, Tony Hill, Helen Edwards and Cesare Pietroiusti was shown at Modern Art Oxford.

The Culture of Rowing & Swimming Symposium

took place at the Isis Farmhouse with inspiring talks by Rowley Douglas, rowing Olympic Gold Champion; Dervis Konuralp, Paralympic Swimming Champion; Joel Cahen, Creative Director of Wet Sounds and Kate Rew, Outdoor Swimming Society & author of Wild Swims . Other exciting presentations were given by Hans Maarten van den Brink, journalist and author of On the Water, Anatole Beam, Putney Town Rowing Club and Weybridge Rowing Club, Nicola Hewish, Ironbridge Rowing Club & Luce Choules, Artist; Tiffany Black, Artist and Oxford Brookes University Lecturer in Fine Art & Harriet Harriss, Architect and Oxford Brookes University Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Tine Bech, Artist.

More than 60 people took part in a social swim in the River Thames with the Outdoor Swimming Society on 17 July and 10 artists learnt with row with Oxford Academicals Rowing Club.

‘To be embraced and sustained by the light green water was less a pleasure, it seemed, than the resumption of a natural condition’ (John Cheever, The Swimmer).

See Events for some images from the event. More coming…

Warr, Tracey (2009) ‘Raw Presence’

Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva produces artworks that are carefully balanced between the beautiful and the brutal. There is a disjunction between the materials she uses: a cow’s stomach, pigs caul fat, one ton of butter, duck heads, salmon skins – and the exquisite sculptures and installations that she creates. ‘Matter out of place’, Mary Douglas writes in her great study of pollution taboos, is dirt, and yet she explains, dirt has a powerful creative charge (1966: 35). The materials Hadzi-Vasileva uses have a raw, uncanny presence to them because we know (and can sometimes smell as well as see) that this matter was formerly part of a living organism: an animal, bird or fish. Her work is full of paradoxes, between animate and inanimate, transcendent and abject. She recomposes decomposition into gorgeous forms.

Trees, animals, birds, food, clothing and architecture are recurring motifs in Hadzi-Vasileva’s work, as she sets up a visual and material dialogue between the structures of the natural world and the structures of human culture. Her work is responsive to specific sites and engages with local industries, communities and environments: the fishing industries in Berwick and Brighton, for example, or Indian restaurants in London’s Brick Lane.

The culmination of her year-long residency in Gloucester Cathedral is Motectum, a work which has three parts linked by the overarching theme of birds. She has created a sound installation mixing human and bird song in the cloisters and re-landscaped the cloisters garden; a crinoline dress made by stitching together translucent yellow chicken skins; and forty portrait busts of the feathered heads of dead ducks, pheasants and chickens.

When you step over the threshold into Gloucester Cathedral time seems to slow and stop – partly because of the weight of history here, but also because of the sheer volume of still air. The columns, buttresses and vaults of the cathedral rise up around the visitor like a great stone forest. The earliest parts of the Cathedral were built in 1089, alongside the Benedictine monastery that had been on the site since 678. The Cathedral has witnessed the crowning of Henry III, the burial of Edward II and the burning of Bishop Hooper. The monastery was dissolved under Henry VIII and the Cathedral narrowly escaped demolition under Oliver Cromwell. Its stained glass windows include the earliest image of golf (1350) and a fabulous beaked two-legged grotesque. An Angel Orchestra play their instruments in the ceiling above the choir. Inside the Cathedral are forty carvings of Green Men and outside, gargoyles funnel rainwater away from the walls.

It is easy to imagine monks in the 12th century pacing the quadrangle of the cloisters underneath the intricate stone latticework of their fan-vaulted ceilings, or to see them seated at the stone carols contemplating the enclosed garden through a colonnade of arched windows. The monks were mostly silent so the Cathedral was the sounding space where voices could burst out.

Hadzi-Vasileva’s work repopulates the garden with trees, shrubs and birds and reinhabits the cloisters with the soaring sound of Thomas Tallis’ Spem in Alium. Tallis’ 16th century composition is a 40 voice motet. Hadzi-Vasileva has combined the human voices with recorded birdsong and live birdsong relayed from microphones in the garden and in nearby Highnam Woods. The sound installation along the four sides of the cloisters represents birds commonly found in four areas of Gloucestershire: the Forest of Dean, the Severn Estuary, the Cotswold Hills and Cotswold Water Park. The sound moves randomly between forty speakers placed in the cloisters, harnessing the extraordinary acoustics of the space. The ambitious scale of Hadzi-Vasileva’s work matches the vastness of the Cathedral itself.

Hadzi-Vasileva’s chicken skins dress creates a frisson of disgust. Dead skins, usually sloughed off, are here put back on, and worn against living skin. We sense or imagine a faint whiff of decay. ‘A voluntary embrace of the symbols of death is a kind of prophylactic against the effects of death’ (Douglas, 1966: 177). Jean Paul Sartre discussed stickiness as the queasy boundary between the self and other matter. Francis Bacon wanted his paintings to bear the trace of a life in the same way as the snail or slug leaves its trail of slime. Hadzi-Vasileva’s materials occupy this distasteful zone of inbetweenness. The laborious cleaning and preparation of organic materials in her work are reminiscent of the medieval textile processes of tanning, fulling, lacemaking and needlework. The chicken skins dress, housed within the carapace of the Cathedral itself, recall Gaston Bachelard’s discussion of a building as a nest or garment in his book The Poetics of Space (1969: 90-104). What is underneath and inside a material world of membranes and skins are recurring obsessions in Hadzi-Vasileva’s work. She takes dead waste materials and transforms them into new artefacts that show us the latent beauty of this discarded matter.

Hadzi-Vasileva’s portrait busts made from feathered duck, pheasant and chicken heads are in a dialogue with the heads of stone angels and saints in the Cathedral that have been worn down by erosion or damaged by Cromwell’s soldiers. The Cathedral’s angels and gargoyles are already hybrid bodies: composites of human and bird or animal. Hadzi-Vasileva’s work highlights this uncanny hybridity.

When the Cathedral was built in the Middle Ages, people did not have our contemporary euphemisms and squeamishness about food. They reared, killed and butchered their own animals, and would have trapped and eaten the songbirds too. Partridges, storks, cranes and larks were amongst the many species of birds that were eaten. Peacocks and swans were often skinned and cooked and then presented with their original plumage put back in place.

Sing a song of sixpence
a pocket full of rye
four and twenty blackbirds
baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened
the birds began to sing.
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
to set before a king?

A 16th century Italian cookbook included a recipe for pies with live birds inside that flew out when the pies were cut open. These illusion foods were known as entremets or subtleties.

Hadzi-Vasileva’s work skirts, but will not be pinned down to, any straight forward thematic reading. She evokes political topics such as animal welfare and ecological issues but she is not judgemental and does not explicitly engage a subject. She makes us aware of the discord between our attitudes towards the garden songbirds and our attitudes towards domesticated birds. Whilst we protect and preserve the songbirds, the chickens, ducks and pheasants are being exploited for food and sport. The difficulty she had in getting well-feathered heads for the project is evidence of the often appalling conditions in which many domesticated birds are kept. The abject birds are revalued in her work.

Her concern with craft and husbandry suggests pre-digital and pre-industrial eras, and ecologists’ current advocacy of the need for the reacquisition of old skills and life styles in a time of climate change. Her work questions the human control and structuring of the natural world. Hadzi-Vasileva’s work, however, is materials-led rather than concept-led. She allows the materials to unfold into their own potentiality rather than imposing an idea on the forms that the work takes.

The bird is a symbol of the soul. Like the angels, the birds are of the sphere of transcendence. ‘A thing of the field that loves the air between’, wrote the Gloucestershire poet and musician Ivor Gurney (Kavanagh, 1982: 206). Angels and birds are messengers from the divine to the human. Alongside the raw presence of offal in Hadzi-Vasileva’s work, birds, angels and song transcend. ‘That which is rejected is ploughed back for a renewal of life’ (Douglas, 1966: 167).

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