tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18412300552354653682023-11-15T06:59:27.244-08:00The RudimentAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-25568027254059620072017-03-09T14:55:00.001-08:002017-03-09T14:57:25.442-08:00Experimental Knitter // Sam Meech<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sam Meech is completely disarming. I’m not sure what I expected as I made my way up to the Rogue Studios guided by the knitted signs. I’m not sure what questions to ask, or even where to start. I slightly worry that I’ll kick off with, so what is it you actually do? When speaking to friends of the planned interview I’ve invariably told them I’m off to meet an experimental knitter, they invariably ask what’s one of those, and I invariably shrug, grin and say I’ll find out. I’m also unsure how much there can be to this lark. I schedule forty-five minutes, and leave an hour-and-a-half later fired with enthusiasm and yet more curiosity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sam is not really an experimental knitter. Only in the narrowest of senses could Sam’s practice be described as experiments in knitting. Certainly much of Sam’s current work has involved experiments using elements of knitting, knitting machines and the peripherals that surround the art, or craft, of knitting. Sam is primarily a digital artist and working with digital media is the driving force of his work. He studied theatre at John Moores and has previously worked at the Royal Opera House as a video designer "on two new operas. Very different types. I got to whack a load of CCTV cameras on the set. I like the ethos, that it’s going to happen." First night deadlines are a fine way to focus energy. "The art work is different, it will emerge when it’s ready."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />"I’m interested in how the design process and digital media overlap, in theatre, in music sequencing. For me, textiles, and knitting, have a lot of parallels with digital processes." I’m still not sure where this is going, but Sam points to the knitting machine next to him in the middle of the room. "The punchcard system is the forerunner to modern programming, knitting is a digital system. The stitches are pixels, you make the pattern, copy and repeat." The knitting machine works by taking a pattern from a roll of card which has the pattern punched into it in rows of holes as you’d make with any standard hole punch. You punch into the roll of card the pattern or image you want the machine to reproduce, feed it in, and the machine takes the pattern and follows it through with the wool. In the way it looks it does remind me of how early computers were programmed on the same principle.<br /><br />"Although my background is the digital moving image, I can explore things I like with these tools. Knitting works, people are familiar with it, it’s engaging, even subversive. And finally, you might be able to wear it. Consequently, it takes up a lot of room." Sam has two knitting machines in his studio, which squat silently and slightly menacingly. Shelves, boxes and the usual detritus of the artists’ work surrounds us, although a closer look reveals that the cylindrical objects on the shelves aren’t pots of paint but cones of yarn. So the question is, what happens to all this material?<br /><br />I was very interested in a spreadsheet that Sam produced to show the costs of production, which came about through his last experience of the art market. "It was </span><a href="http://kinetica-artfair.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Kinetica</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, I was lucky to get a stall, through a strange sequence of events, and thinking ‘I don’t have anything to sell, or it wouldn’t be any good, actually the only thing is my labour.’ So I had this nice conceptual premise, the art will be my labour, you buy my labour at Arts Council rates. Many people engaged, thought it was a great concept, one said to me it was “the closest thing to art there”. But no one bought anything. It cost almost £600, materials, storage, accommodation. I lost a lot of money."<br /><br />"When the Manchester Contemporary came round I couldn’t do that, so I copied the Unique Knitwear factory signs." Rogue Studios sits in a mill occupied by a host of knitwear companies, producing stylish garments to prestigious high street retailers such as Primark and BooHoo. One of the companies has their signs on boards, "Unique Knitwear; I thought there was something funny, something cute and ironic about it being ‘unique’, so I make, copied the sign, ‘Unique knitwear’, piled them in the corner in an unlimited edition, put the pattern online."<br /><br />"The other thing I wanted to make clear; the cost of labour. That’s how a factory works. They work out the cost, materials and overheads, and labour. So I worked out my time, at a fair rate. Art markets hide that labour, and I don’t think that helps us as artists, we can be romantic or naïve about what it actually is, and undercut ourselves." Sam has a wry smile to himself as he continues, "I didn’t sell any then either. I proved a conceptual point to myself but I’d rather have more control over context."<br /><br />Sam came across the idea of knitting and the knitting machines while filming a knitting group project in Moston where he set up the </span><a href="http://mostonsmallcinema.org.uk/category/about/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Small Cinema</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> at the remarkable Moston Miners Club. "For so many people, the machines remind them of their gran," Sam reveals, but he had a different object come to mind as he stands and takes on the rolls of card in hand. "Most machines are punchcards, though some are hackable, but," as he rolls out the card in front of me showing the sequence of outlines punched down the roll, "this is a film reel."<br /><br />How the punchcard works in the knitting machine is by releasing needles to change colours, "so it’s a tactile process, not a digital one, except that it can be thought of as binary." Sam checks with me that I understand how binary works and I nod in the same was I did in maths class when I felt I understood but didn’t want any questions. The implications of this for Sam were far-reaching. For example, if you link the punchcard strip into a loop, "it’s a gif, a physical gif. So I’ve been working on ways to animate. My first interest is in the moving image, not storytelling. And I’m interested in the restrictions: there can be a bit of a tech arms race, and I know I’m not good enough to keep up with that even if I had the time and money. I like looking back. Lo-fi." There’s the use of the original fair-isle pattern that crops up in Sam’s work, from his time there, and then from living and working in Montreal he explored the lives of the people there, "I’d take things from their workplaces, make patterns out of them, gifs, small pixel art forms that were knitted."<br /><br />Projection is literally a big aspect of digital art, projection onto buildings, on to clouds in the work of </span><a href="http://www.davelynch.net/nimbus/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dave Lynch</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, who references Eadweard Muybridge. Creating images to project onto that scale using the knitting machines plays with size in creative and slightly subversive ways. Sam has already commented on the size relation between the large punched holes of the input to the smaller size of the stich stitch "where the physical output is smaller than the programme, which is weird." Now he takes down from a shelf behind me what is to all the world an excessively long but impractically thin scarf. The pattern is an image of a horse galloping, and at this point I’m having a bit of difficulty working out exactly what’s going on. Sam’s enthusiasm is infectious, his joy at the idea he’s presenting, as I puzzle out what I’m being shown. It’s Muybridge’s sequence of photographs for his Zoopraxiscope, which transforms the series of still images into a galloping horse, now turned into a scarf that imitates a film reel, with the images knitted via a roll of punched card, and which are then individually ironed "which kills your back" and photographed digitally before being compiled into a </span><a href="https://twitter.com/videosmithery/status/832622127048126466"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">stop-motion film</span>.</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><br />He shows me a stop-motion film </span><a href="https://vimeo.com/159481290"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">‘Ceci n’est pas un spectacle’</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> in reference to "the dude with the pipe" and the Quartier des Spectacles event in Montreal, "quotes and symbols, taken and smashing them together." It’s provoking in the way it juxtaposes the police and the anarchists, and clever, but mainly it’s fun. As with the way Sam plays with the Muybridge footage there’s a sense of mischief here. The use of high-end digital technology to exhibit the lo-fi knitting is quirky, and yet it makes me realise how much more accessible digital cameras are, compared to knitting machines, both in terms of availability and the skills required. With reference to the Montreal project and the images projected onto the buildings, Sam says "it’s going to make some great wallpaper, the things found and collected, but it’s just wallpaper." The scarf of Muybridge horses sits on a shelf, its purpose fulfilled once photographed. "Quite often the physical thing is a by-product of the thing I’m making." It’s a blurring of the traditional perceptions of art and craft. "To me it’s still a part of using craft. In this sense when I’m trying to make films the knitting machine is the projector, the punchcard is the film. The knitting that comes out is a document of that labour; it’s a receipt."<br /><br />The binary potential of the knitting machine also revealed itself in another co-incidence that Sam was able to spot, that the punchcard arrangement of three groups of eight holes would also fit the 256 figure that is used to fix the Red/Green/Blue digital spectrum. "I knitted an RGB disco. I pointed a camera at the punchcard, trying to see which holes were punched, with some tracking software" This became the basis for a project at the Whitworth Art Gallery. "It might just be a happy co-incidence, but I wanted to use that. Then people aren’t knitting, they’re programming lights. Again it’s another digital parallel. You put it in front of people, they’ll find their own parallel that I won’t have thought of." Sam runs his hand across his hair and leans forward slightly. "At the moment, I want to go back to more digital work, but I love these projects where things come together."<br /><br />His work is startling to tackle the more commercial potential of Sam’s ideas in a collaboration with a knitwear company in the mill. By the door there’s a big box of scarves that have been produced using a pattern of encoded binary quotations. "It’s just a pretty pattern, but you could decode it if you wanted to, and hopefully you wouldn’t find any spelling mistakes." Previous attempts to produce garments hardly created something marketable. His proposed Christmas jumpers, which I think are spectacular, take the idea of the bad jumper through the wringer. "I decided to work with the idea of appropriation, took bad photos of jumpers in M&S and Primark on an iPhone. By the time I’ve reduced it to three colours, and the scale." Sam hangs up the jumpers he produced and challenged me to see the festive patterns, one in which the figure of Santa is distorted like a Cubist portrait, the asymmetrical snowflakes only recognisable through a squint. "They’re unique. The jumper is made by taking big sheets of the material that’s cut, so each jumper looks different. You won’t see jumpers like this in the shops. Because they’re bad."<br /><br />"It’s been good to work with the factory, they’ve been very patient with me, but I’ve liked working in a more direct way. It’s alright treating this as a work of art," as he hangs up his jumpers, "but what’s the economics, how does it feed back." This recurrent conceptual reflection in Sam’s work, viewing one thing through the prism of another, the tension between the commercial world and artistic ideas, craft and economic realities, has a new outlet in the knitted flames scattered around the floor. My visit to Rogue has come shortly after a fire that threatened the studios. While the circumstances behind the fire are still uncertain, there are certainly theories that combine recalcitrant tenants and redevelopment ambitions. "And the fact that it happened in a knitting factory. So I’ve been knitting flames and thought about projecting them round the building. It’s the presence of a fire, but they’re knitted so they’re cute, it plays with the threat. I’ve cut out flame shapes from boards connected to the development, because it’s a part of the story. And I’ve reverted to punchcards, using traditional fair-isle patterns, in stop-motion. I’m determined to get something to mark it."<br /><br />Following his previous venture in Moston, Sam has set up a </span><a href="http://rastudios.co.uk/2017/02/rogue-cinema-artists-film-fest-18th-feb-18th-march/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">pop-up cinema</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> in the exhibition space at Rogue, which he shows me on my way out…<br /><br />… but that’s another story…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">conversation with Sam Meech took place at Rogue Studios on Wednesday 22 February 2016 from 5.15pm //</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">@videosmithery // <a href="http://www.smeech.co.uk/">www.smeech.co.uk</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">Sam was recommended by <a href="http://therudiment.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/clara-casian-better-understanding-of.html"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Clara Casian</span></a>.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-24536987909428609122017-03-06T09:02:00.000-08:002017-03-06T09:02:03.447-08:00Thrilling Spirit // Adam Szabo<span lang=""></span><div align="JUSTIFY">
<span lang=""><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There’s a moment in the playing of the Biber when the texture is disrupted by a collective foot stamping. A frisson goes round the room as expectations are shifted. There’s just shy of one hundred people packed into the performance space at <a href="http://www.islingtonmill.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Islington Mill</span></a>, encircling the musicians and the unworldly sight of the harpsichord amidst the exposed pipework and hanging cables. It’s not an audience you can pre-judge; many of them will be concert regulars at chamber gigs at the <a href="https://www.rncm.ac.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">RNCM</span></a>, others will have been to other nights in this space, perhaps some doom rock or improvised white noise experiment. I suspect very few of them will have heard Biber’s Battalia live before; it’s very rarely done, and recordings are few and far between. Everything about this experience feels new and fresh.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It’s possible we take for granted that within easy reach of anywhere in the north west there are at least eight large orchestral groups of international standard. Coming from Sydney, Australia, where there is just one symphony orchestra and one opera orchestra, Adam Szabo feels this strongly. It’s apparent that in our local area, as Adam tells me, "there’s an incredible density of that kind of cultural practice. For wherever reason there doesn't seem to be the same breadth of top-tier, live chamber music." Those reasons could be mixed: string quartets tend to gravitate to the bigger cities and no one can operate in a full-time string sextet, where there’s a small subset of what might be thought of as "great works" alongside a large group of amazing works that rarely get performed outside the festival circuit and the academic concert programmes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Adam Szabo is the artistic director of the <a href="http://manchestercollective.co.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Manchester Collective</span></a>, a chamber group that gathers up all these thoughts and issues and aims to tackle them by creating a well-considered and effectively prepared season of performances. "Our MD Rakhi Singh comes from a background in classical chamber music, first violin in the Barbirolli Quartet, and is used to preparing programmes with the artistic rigour that quartet are famous for. If Transfigured Night was programmed at an arts festival, for example, it might get one or maybe two rehearsals. We had a session in early January, followed up with sectional rehearsals and a full week of calls to put the project together."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There’s definitely something else going on, however. At Islington Mill, the interspersed Purcell and Cage is the sort of idea I can imagine William Glock doing in the 1960s, the use of lighting changes to chart the performance might not be revolutionary nowadays, but brought into this space and presented in this way it feels unrepeatable. At the interval we’re encouraged to move to a different place in the room for a different acoustical experience. Things like this shouldn’t feel radical but they are statements. They are statements of intent. They are ways of treating the audience experience as more various than the concert-goer is traditionally allowed. "It’s not so much the traditional arts cry of reaching new audiences. The aim of the programme is to wake people up to the possibilities of the art form, whether or not they’re a Halle veteran or a student of heavy metal. And we’ve had both of those in our audiences. It’s important that what we offer is different, moves them, that it changes the way people feel."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"The venue choices have to do with the character of Manchester, which is more alternative, which has an underground aesthetic. It’s not the same as the Bridgewater Hall; here you step into a space where you may not expect to hear classical music. It’s a different way of seeing, different ways of listening. Preconceptions are removed." While making that happen in the usual halls is going to be well-nigh impossible, "we can help make it easier. When people walk in to an old Victorian cotton mill, you’re already expecting something different. And Islington Mill has supported an outrageous number of independent artists, it feels like a good thing to do, and it grows Manchester’s indie cultural scene. And that's not to say that in the future we won’t play bigger venues, but for now a special part of the performance is the intimacy, the physical proximity to the audience."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"What we’re doing, sitting in the round, the audience is less than one metre away in every direction. It’s a really physical activity, you see that when you’re up close, flashes that happen between players, the smirk if something goes wrong, the feet shuffle when something goes especially well. It’s what makes live music. For us Islington Mill is the best of both worlds, we'd never had that opportunity anywhere else. It’s an incredibly potent physical set up, an optimal set up for us. For the audience, wherever they are in the room, they’re engaging with player’s faces."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Adam has a considered attitude to his responses, a coherent line of thought that carries him through. When I start by saying I’d like the interview to be led by what he wants to explore, he tells me it would be helpful to have a provocation, as if otherwise he's worried that he won’t be able to get going or might end up on some random digression. When he finishes his response to the initial question he reflects "that was a very long answer to a very simple question." His thoughts fall very naturally into fully formed paragraphs and he has a habit of summing up the point he's made in an additional sentence or two. These feel like the issues that have been thought through deeply for some time, and spoken through with others. There is also a careful focus in the way Adam speaks. We’re a bit jammed in to the corner of <a href="http://www.theartoftea.co.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">The Art of Tea</span></a> and so there isn’t a lot of scope for wild gesticulation or bold body language, but it doesn’t feel like Adam is one for the grand physical gesture. Instead his passion comes out through intense flashes, usually towards the end of a phrase that reveals something behind the story of how the Manchester Collective came about, and the type of work they do; that exposes a little of why Adam is driven to do this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We talk a bit about the approach to playing Purcell in a twenty-first century way, after a century of re-discovery, the authentic music movement and the era of experimentation. Adam is clear that the Manchester Collective performance was informed by all of that but wasn’t enslaved to it; they couldn’t be. They play on steel strings, as one example. More than that, though, they are forced into a position by the music itself. As you scrape through layers of editorialising and tradition, you discover that "inherent in that repertoire is the spirit of improvisation and spontaneity that’s not really thought about in many contemporary performances." In their performance of the Purcell, Adam reveals to me that there were two passages of complete improvisation. "It’s true to the spirit of those composers."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At Islington Mill the Purcell wasn’t played alongside John Cage, as I think I expected, but interspersed movements of the Cage paired with a piece of the Purcell Fairy Queen incidental music. "There’s a lot of similarities, with aspects of the Cage that resonate with the Purcell." Adam offers me the extended metaphor of a visitor to a new city who just sees a host of huge buildings until a guide can point out specific details or stories behind certain buildings. And this isn’t always a one-way historical process, as Adam reflects with pleasure on the metal fan who heard reflections of his music in the Biber. "We don’t think our audience should always expect music to be pretty. We want people to have a good time, but that’s not the whole point, we want them to hear our music and have a reaction. The music can change something in you."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Adam’s work beyond the Manchester Collective finds him working with a wide range of other organisations; "I’ve worked a lot with <a href="http://www.wno.org.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Welsh National Opera</span></a>. There’s a dramatic element to music performance." This feeds back to the way the Manchester Collective works, and especially how it programmes, with a conscious collaborative element. The next concert is with actor Mitch Riley, who Adam describes as an incredibly powerful, vibrant presence. He hasn’t been brought in simply to perform the new commission, but as a Lecoq trained performer he brings a strong sense of physical theatre to the group. "He casts a long shadow." The new commission has been written specifically for Mitch Riley by <a href="https://huwbelling.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Huw Belling</span></a> on a text from Anthony Burgess’ Inside Mr Enderby, worked out by Pierce Wilcox. And this isn’t simply a collaboration by association. "We worked very closely with the estate and foundation and stayed true to the spirit of the original novel. So we have a series of character studies of Mr Enderby; poet, tragic and desperate figure." Adam fishes around for a similar reference; "It’s Alan Partridge, pompous, ultimately deluded, but comic." This is paired with Janacek’s second quartet "which is also a literary work. Janacek starts from a place of introspection, so there’s a rhetorical epistolary aspect from letters between Janacek and his muse. And this relationship basically drove Janacek mad. In concert, Mitch performs selections from the original letters. In Sheffield, we’re doing something a bit different; a question and answer session with the artists. We’ve capped the tickets at thirty, for a two-way discussion, and the people there are then involved in creating the experience."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Another thing Adam is clearly very proud of in his understated way is the live stream of the Islington Mill gig (which can be found on the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/manchestercollective"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Facebook</span></a> page), which was caught by over sixteen thousand views to some extent. There were some minor technical issues and they are still to get to grips with the metrics and feedback, but it was obviously a hugely important part of the project, and in time those recordings will be matched up to the HD audio and made available. It’s a piece with their approach to accessibility which also finds them working in schools. "We’re taught how to listen, how to see, when we’re young. It’s formative for people. So in our first year we wanted to do some grassroots educational work. This year we will be conducting some composition work in junior schools with Sam Glazer and then building that work into broader performances at the schools. It's not about creating more musicians, it's about appreciation; in twenty years they’ll be the audience. It’s something I’m very proud of; we’re a small organisation, we have to be careful with our budget, but we’ve made it a part of our practice from day dot."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are exciting plans for the years ahead for Adam and the Manchester Collective. The idea of a major new commission each year is one thing, but some of the plans yet to be announced will have a real buzz about them, I suspect. "There’s this sacred fourth wall that we’d like to remove." It's not iconoclastic, but more about finding a more direct line from the music to the listener and enabling them to hear it anew, which comes through the spirit of the craft. Adam compares the orchestral players experience to that of the chamber player as being like the novel to the sonnet. In the orchestra "you’re part of a huge machine" which the chamber player by contrast is like "a part in a mechanical watch. Terrifying and thrilling, each note is meaningful."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The second Manchester Collective programme tours 23-26 March.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><a href="http://manchestercollective.co.uk/intimate-letters">http://manchestercollective.co.uk/intimate-letters</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">conversation with Adam Szabo took place at The Art of Tea, Didsbury on Sunday 19 February 2017 from 3:00pm //</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">@Mr_Szabo // <a href="http://adamszabo.info/">http://adamszabo.info</a></span></span></span></span></div>
</span><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-12952648986545524422017-02-12T03:59:00.001-08:002017-02-12T05:05:33.750-08:00The Facilitator // Sam Illingworth<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’m sat opposite what Manchester City Council have deigned to call Circle Square, and I wonder if I need to get myself a philosopher or theoretical physicist to help me to understand the concept. A man gets impatient as he tries to squeeze between the window I’m sat by and the slow tread of students ambling by the roadworks. A couple waiting at the bus stop opposite laugh and I thought I heard it. Sam slides in the doorway and catches my eye half hesitantly, half expectantly. Slightly delayed by a meeting the value of which is shrugged aside, we avoid the small talk to make the most of the allotted time.<br /> <br />I have a structure, and it comes from Sam’s <a href="http://www.samillingworth.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">webpage</span></a>. Sam Illingworth is Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University, as I figured this was as good a place as any to get into the circles of scientists that still seem so distinct from my arty peer group. And it’s a concern for him as well. Although he has a background in climate science, his current passion is finding the bridges, the links for people between scientists and artists. Or maybe he’d prefer to help people realise that these are artificial distinctions, that professional scientists also have an artistic aspect, that artists have valuable and essential things to say about science.<br /> <br />“I spent two years in Japan, some of which was spent studying with Yukio Ninagawa, who’s famous for his Shakespeare adaptations, thinking about how you can use theatrical techniques to improve communication and encourage creativity.” When he returned to the UK this became an interest in the potential for theatre to facilitate the conversation between the expert and the non-expert. We look at each other with an acknowledgement of how loaded those terms are today. “I’m interested in the co-creation of knowledge, working with non-scientists, have them ask what they can do, what will benefit, what can they provide.” Sam confesses that theatre is no longer the driving force of his work at the moment, that “poetry has taken over,” but there is a project envisaged, tentatively, using the techniques of forum theatre to explore co-governance and community involvement, which he sees as “a powerful tool for allowing people to play out scenarios. Especially with science subjects that people think they’ve nothing to contribute to.” Sam has a way of leaning forward and pinning a point with his fingers when he feels it’s important, and the position of the audience in relation to science subjects is one of those points, where he wants to subvert the idea of a lay-audience. “You may be a lay-audience in relation to bio-medicine, but if you’ve suffered from an illness for twenty or thirty years, you’re not really a lay audience in health care.”<br /> <br />Sam believes there have been a number of very good theatrical projects around science, but largely traditional, not breaking the fourth wall. “But scientific transparency is very important,” so the idea becomes bringing together audience with scientists, bring in a dramaturg. Yet Sam has his reservations even about this sense of public engagement, for by picking the scientists in some sense you’ve already set the boundaries of the conversation.<br /> <br />I’m slightly worried that asking Sam whether he is looking to process over product might be a loaded question, but he catches on to it. “Process definitely, process as much.” It brings to his mind a module that he teaches on Sciart, where the conversations between the students is so interesting to him. There’s a common concern with the role of the teacher, the expert. “The traditional lecture room, with one person stood at the front reading from a textbook, that’s not changed from medieval times, when they only had one copy of the textbook, it’s not changed. I might have more knowledge in one area, but everyone brings knowledge, that everyone can benefit from.” It seems to me he’d love to find the process that would utilise the best process for the specific audience, the appropriate methodology for each different community that produces the most useful outcomes.<br /> <br />“What I’ve struggled with most is that role, that stood at the front I’m still thought the most knowledgeable; I don’t know if it’s modesty or Britishness, I don’t think of myself as much more of an expert, and certainly some of my students are smarter than I am, certainly. But it’s dangerous to have too much of a sense of modesty. Actually, a dramaturg isn’t a bad analogy; ultimately I encourage the student to utilise their skills.” Sam talks of his practise in three strands, of research, teaching, and public engagement, which are symbiotic (a scientific term physicalized with intertwined fingers). “Encouraging people who already have the innate skill set, give them the confidence. That’s why interdisciplinary work is so important.”<br /> <br />“I’ve always had a personal interest in poetry, I’ve written plays, there’s a similarity, a searching for questions, there’s a natural flip between, many of the most creative people I know are scientists.” It’s partly an aspect of contemporary culture that Sam feels passionately is “really divisive,” and it’s what he’s driving against. “People are unsure of where they fit. A scientist might not visit an art gallery; an artist might not contribute to a scientific discussion. We should be exploring similarities rather than differences.” This mission of both art and science are, as Sam describes them, “futile attempts to describe the place we live;” futile because they will always be partial, both incomplete and biased. “People are not artists or scientists but human beings.”<br /> <br />Not that Sam finds much resistance to these ideas. People generally seem very open to new ways of working and “are willing to push boundaries,” and Sam has a project pairing artists and scientists, particularly poets. He’s worked with London-based poet <a href="http://www.dansimpsonpoet.co.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Dan Simpson</span></a>, creating experimental works enabling scientists and poets to communicate to a wider audience. “Ultimately I want to work to something truly interdisciplinary.” We can avoid CP Snow no longer, whose idea that scientists should be able to quote Shakespeare has for so long been de-contextualised and misconstrued, and Sam wants to hold on to his idea that “the only way to solve inter-disciplinary problems is to use inter-disciplinary solutions. That’s my whole raison d’etre, to help people see the world through other people’s eyes.”<br /> <br />As a concrete example of a project that Sam is working on to demonstrate exactly the sort of cross-pollination he proposes he tells me about his blog <a href="http://thepoetryofscience.scienceblog.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">The Poetry of Science</span></a>, in which “every week I read a new piece of science research and try and write a poem.” But it’s more than that, it’s using the structures of the science to inform the artistic choices, to have the artistic choices affirm the research. “So a piece in dementia, I choose the pantoum structure, which I felt plays with the concept of memory. Another idea was to see if we could replace that traditional abstract with a poem, where we gave a group of scientists an abstract and a poem based on the abstract. Not surprisingly they preferred the abstract, but their analysis of the poems were fairly accurate.”<br /> <br />“I’m incredibly lucky. I’m passionate about what I do and I love doing it.” You can see it and despite our tight time-slot it feels like it’s going to be difficult to draw this conversation to a close, especially as Sam is determined to tell me about a current <a href="http://www.manchesterclimate.com/plan"><span style="color: #cccccc;">project</span></a> he’s engaged on to make Manchester a carbon neutral city by 2050. “The challenge here is that both of these terms are esoteric, so we’ve gone out into the community, to find out what’s important to them and now we’re working with people to implement a better climate change strategy. Mainly using poetry so far, but also art and music, to try and communicate and get responses. You have to be careful about that, to remember that art has its own intrinsic value, but it can also be a facilitative tool. That’s easier because of my background. I’m very proud of that project; it’s of benefit to the community, it feels ahead of the curve.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">conversation with Sam Illingworth took place at Costa Coffee, Oxford Road on Tuesday 7 February 2017 from 4:10pm // @samillingworth // <a href="http://www.samillingworth.com/">http://www.samillingworth.com/</a></span></span></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-35373763718352020472017-02-09T15:11:00.003-08:002017-02-10T01:42:33.160-08:00While Playing With Radiators // Paul Morrice<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Jam Street Café occupies an interesting place in Manchester’s psyche. Nearly everyone I mention it to has heard of it; ‘Why have I heard of it?’, more than expected know it well, surprising numbers know someone who knows someone who works there or owns it. It’s not a surprising or pre-possessing place; with posters and Banksy on the wall it is the typical Northern Quarter, Chalk Farm, Prospect Park or Venice Beach type vibe. The only other drinker is focussed on his pint and crossword. They apologise for only having demerara sugar.<br /><br />I’ve spent the last couple of days listening to the Cynthia’s Periscope playlist on <a href="https://soundcloud.com/cynthias-periscope"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Soundcloud</span></a>. It’s a mix of the playful and angry, frustration pent up in the playpen. In the interview Paul talks about how he keeps things acoustic with samples of knocking things around the house, scraping radiators and the like, which “can make it feel more real and tangible.” It’s unusual, unfamiliar and unexpected, and it feels individual. This is an artist collaborating with himself, and there’s always a story there.<br /><br />I’ve come to think of Cynthia’s Periscope as elusive. I’ve just missed the set at the first Cute Owl festival, a wonderful night of truly alternative work at <a href="http://gulliversnq.info/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Gullivers</span></a>. While the acts weren’t experimental (as I understand the term), the event felt like a bit of an experiment which I hope to see repeated (see update below). Friends have mentioned Cynthia’s Periscope to me, in that way when someone knows your taste – ‘I think you’d like them.’ Other than the music there’s not much online; a couple of arty gig photos and a very few words. When I message the band Facebook page I’m still not sure whether it’s a group or a solo artist with collaborators, or a fictional void out of which I’ll never hear back.<br /><br />I hear back almost immediately, the arrangements to meet are sorted inside of the evening, and we agree to meet early the following week. It’s never this easy. But it is. Sorted. A quick confirmation message and I take a stroll out to Jam Street for the appointed time. It turns out Cynthia’s Periscope is Paul Morrice, chirpy and tausselled, diffident yet eager. After a quick call to confirm, Paul arrives with a bounce and once he’s perched on the sofa opposite me and we’ve laid out the ground rules, we set off.<br /><br />The Cute Owl gig came about through networking. “I saw <a href="http://www.tangerinecat.net/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Tangerine Cat</span></a> perform, I gave them my CD, they gave me theirs, we messaged, and they asked me to play the festival. It was one of the better gigs. I stopped playing live for a while, I was in a more alternative band <a href="https://youngmountainsuk.bandcamp.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Young Mountains</span></a> but stopped for about a year.” It feels like audience reception has something to do with this, and he remembers being called ‘wilfully provocative’ after a gig at <a href="http://fuelcafebar.tumblr.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Fuel</span></a>, It’s not something to shy away from; his attitude is that whatever he could do on stage “there’s always some who’s been more extreme. I could be offensive or violent, but I still want to be playful.” Back at Fuel for an electronic open-mic organised by Martin Christie very soon, could be an interesting experience. “I don’t know how that’s going to work, as an open-mic. That’s the thing with electronic music, there’s a lot of equipment.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />“In 2011 I wrote Turtles, playing with Ableton, it was the first song that felt like a Cynthia’s Periscope song but it wasn’t called that at the time. I wrote other songs I could record at home, 2014 I had my first gig at <a href="http://www.antwerpmansion.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Antwerp Mansion</span></a>, four songs.” Emerging into the world of a solo artist from the collaborative world of bands throws up an interesting perspective. “The last band was a three-piece, where you’re writing for a set line up.” Perversely this doesn’t offer more possibilities but rather Paul tells me it’s “a bit frustrating with the limitations.” Working on Cynthia’s Periscope songs enables him to be more exploratory, maybe kicking off by simply running a drum machine through an effects pedal, so perhaps “only fifty percent of the songs I perform live. I try and keep things as live as possible, but sometimes it’s me with a backing track.” It speaks to the range of Paul’s approaches to writing that there is no standard path to the song, which could come through long perseverance with an idea that seems to go nowhere, and “some of them turn out to be the best. If something is very heavily improvised I usually don’t perform it.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />When the space between the recorded track and the live act becomes a topic of discussion, there’s no sense that Paul’s ambition is to ensure the spirit of the recording is reproduced on the stage. But the different journeys he can take from idea to recording to song to track are just as many and various. A song may start out as a track recorded at two in the morning in his bedroom, yet it may not get what some might call an official release until it’s been played live a number of times. “I’ve already picked the songs for the new EP, the advantage is they’re road-tested.” So who is this all for? Playing on the fringe of the alternative scene in Manchester necessitates a small selection of venues with a select audience on a circuit that can seem cliquey. The EPs are a calling card, an ambition to reach beyond and play more gigs outside Manchester. “And it would be nice to have a full album.”<br /><br />Paul is of that generation where, while being able to fully embrace the potential of the online world, the CD album still has a powerful attraction. “I still listen to full albums on CD in the car,” he says as if it’s some sort of confession and it’s clear he feels greater satisfaction from listening to a whole album, even from the bands he loved growing up but whose musical work is no longer his. Even fond memories of Alice in Chains is grist to the mill for a musical experiment as eclectic as Cynthia’s Periscope.<br /><br />The continual dark reflection of childhood keeps cropping up in the conversation as much as it does in the songs. Cynthia was the name of Paul’s childminder, and while on a first listen Cynthia’s Periscope songs can seem quite technical, Paul is sure that “reduce it to melodies, you could probably teach a seven-year-old.” He talks about there being a “blend of hedonism, carefree sex and drug abuse, and doing those things because you’re not genuinely happy.” He’s talking about Arab Strap, but not only them. “It’s innocent things from childhood related to adulthood.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />“I used to write a lot but just over a year ago I got a new job, it’s more demanding. One thing I find, some songs I’ve written, recorded and uploaded in a day, I like that, it has a charm, a bit scrappy.” While a combination of events have curtailed the time Paul can devote to music for the last year, he now has a new impetus. Editing old tracks, writing new work, gigging more. Recent songs like Corneal Scratch and Pillar of Salt come from midnight sessions, “throw stuff at the wall, wake up with a hangover and edit it.” And lyrically? “Essentially pop songs. I’m conscious of trying not to be edgy on purpose. A lot are about real-life,” and here Paul has a sudden brief inward look as if he wonders whether to go there. “One I was assaulted and my jaw broken, there’s dysfunctional relationships (not my current one). Often on stage I’m in drag and I get offensive things on the street.” It’s a look I suspect speaks to his approach to his songs, he wants to write pop songs where darkness can still intrude. “I don’t want to write political songs,” and a lyric squares up to the conversation; “How much longer will you wait to hear a piece of your mind has been bought.” We are in a world of tensions and ambiguity.<br /><br />With all this lack of time Paul worries that he should listen to more music, yet he still buys a couple of albums a month and when he has time at the weekend he may do a trawl of youTube, picking a genre and following the links. “It’s a consumer culture, consume and forget. A CD I’ve listened to for eight years means more, I’ve given it the time. I still have a preference for the full length, forty-five minutes. That’s why I think I should write an album, I’ve written a lot of disparate things.” We chat of a shared passion for Radio 3 and I encourage his discovery of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tp52"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Late Junction</span></a>; “a thousand years of music, I still only know five pieces of music.” We don’t listen to 6music much, which is clearly “Radio 2 for people who went on CND marches.”<br /><br />Unsurprisingly for someone who launches tracks online with the compulsion of a hamster with a catapult, the internet is “overall a positive. It’s devalued things a bit, taken away from the album which can be more moving. Another temptation, you can pull it down very easily if you’re not happy with it.” This is not something Paul approves of, preferring I think to keep his path through his music literally recorded. He reminds me that the live act is vital as well, and taking work to new audiences. Paul talks about having a setup he can pack in a suitcase with a simplified set list, pop on a budget flight to the continent, play and return.<br /><br />Paul has a vision for the future. He uses that very word. It’s a passion to keep exploring, to tug away at the edges of what’s possible and what sounds exciting to him, and find more direction for his musical journey. He starts studying audio engineering at Salford University later in the year. He has a project to work with Tacit Music over the summer, and he has a concept for a music video. “Between now and then, tie up loose ends, perform outside Manchester, away from supporting indie bands, look through my old files, start afresh.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial";"><a href="http://www.tickx.co.uk/event/534786/paddy-steer-at-the-castle-hotel/">Cynthia's Periscope can be seen supporting Paddy Steer at The Castle Hotel on 11 March.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">UPDATE: And at the next Cute Owl festival on 13 May at The Star and Garter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">conversation with Paul Morrice took place at Jam Street Café on Tuesday 31 January 2017 from 7:00pm // @CynthiasPerisco // <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cynthiasperiscope/">https://www.facebook.com/cynthiasperiscope/</a> </span></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-71018675122338480412016-11-16T14:28:00.001-08:002017-03-09T14:50:09.513-08:00A Better Understanding of Place // Clara Casian<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Everyone remembers where they were the night of the Great Manchester Storm. While hipsters floated down Market Street on boats made from the anoraks from Primark and lightning danced over Prestwich, a bedraggled couple could be found sheltering in the Manchester Central Library cafe, hands cosseting cardboard cups of coffee as pools of water form under my elbows.<br /><br />It had taken some time for me to get this encounter scheduled*,</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> and we were still uncertain about the best way to do the interview; daytime or evening? Should we meet in a cafe? We decided I’d head to Rogue Studios**<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> where Clara has a base and take things from there. I was still a bit vague on the extent of Clara’s work, and the project for this evening was to explore what this might even mean. Clara has been based in Manchester a number of years now, studying and post graduation, and has stayed to explore her work. The first piece I wanted to examine was a film taking a snapshot of a particular story, as she says to “trace a bit of history from Manchester,” piecing together aspects of alternative publishing and censorship in the 1970s through the history of </span><a href="http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Savoy Books</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, while also being a reflection on the changing landscape of the city through other bookshops, such as Paramount Books.<br /><br />The project came about through a commission by </span><a href="http://www.lifeanduseofbooks.org/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Life and Use of Books</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> in collaboration with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, who asked seven artists to each pick one from a series of seven publications. Clara close Corridor No 2, “a small press magazine, a nice mix of text and image, experimental, born from a time when people could print stuff in their own bedroom. This publication was the first that encountered problems with the censors, caused by a naughty picture on the cover by Bob Jenkins, and a text by Paul Buck “A Cunt Not Fit For the Queen”. In exploring a small incident like that it seems to be part of “a small war going on, as I started finding more, a set of ramifications unravelled that spoke of the raids that happened alongside other censorship stories. Not being from Manchester and knocking on doors, it’s really interesting discovering an unknown facet of Manchester, and whilst researching I’ve discovered so much material, I felt there was potential for a much bigger work.” And so opportunity came for a longer piece. <br /><br />“The extended version of the short film will be based on the testimonies and anecdotes of the people involved in the publishing scene to offer an understanding of the place in that time, adapting the concept of censorship to the small publishing house and its feud with James Anderton, the police commissioner.” It starts to sound a bit like a gritty thriller, but for Clara it’s about “bringing things from the past into the present. Since the 1990s everything has been open, so I’m looking at the context behind the Savoy Books and their publishing content which was provocative and obscene.” She was struck by the very direct nature of the work; a point she says was brought out when she interviewed Michael Butterworth – the combining of high and low culture, understanding the work meant “an adversity to the system, but an innocence as well. There was lots of reading involved, I traced back the material, archival footage from contributors, to understand where they’re coming from.”<br /><br />“I have tapes and other obsolete material alongside new material I’ve shot with interviews that retrace things from the past and throw light on how things have changed and where the anger comes from.”<br /><br />Clara talks about her film on Chernobyl in similar terms. “It’s an experimental montage of archival footage with testimonies of those cleaning the contaminated site.” There’s the apocryphal story of the amusement park being opened during the crisis to provide a distraction for the people, “the whole story of fact and fiction, whether the park was open before the due date, you can’t prove it was a distraction. It starts like this and unravels with scenes of the Pripyat town being built in the 70’s, and ends on a fictional note, leading from the concept of half-life, the thirty years needed to reach a safe level before people are safe to return back to the environment with the new dream of building a new town. It’s not a political piece, necessarily. I’m an observer, there’s multiple perspectives, interviews with scientists and witnesses, and archive footage. I try not to fetishize.”<br /><br />The storm arrives with the comforting sense of turning on a warm shower. Heavy drops as we walk from Rogue Studios with distant ominous thunder. It wasn’t forecast, no one is prepared, it would be no use anyway. Our plan is to head to Granada where Clara has an editing suite which she shares with the composer Robin Richards with whom she is collaborating on </span><a href="http://pripyatbirdsong.co.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Birdsong – Stories from Pripyat</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, and maybe we’ll find somewhere to talk on the way, so we have to get off at Saint Peter’s Square. At that point there is no shelter from the rain and the only place we can retreat to is the Central Library. In the few metres dash not even my socks have survived. Clara is still not sure whether a trip to the studio is even interesting, except for my personal curiosity. Maybe she’s worried about setting up expectations, maybe it’s a reluctance to drag me out of my way, maybe it’s uncertainty about whether we could have a good conversation there. We’re under cover here, at least. They do coffee. We’ll stay here.<br /><br />Each of these projects share an underpinning that Clara is careful to be clear about. She chooses her words thoughtfully, there is a line of enquiry that she wants to lead me through. There’s the link through the use of archival footage, and her desire to re-contextualise, and play fact and fiction off each other. In a recent project she was invited by Lauren Velvick to respond to the work of </span><a href="http://cjh-paintings.tumblr.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christopher Joseph Holme</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> who was trained as an artist and later diagnosed with schizophrenia. “It’s thinking about the concept of outsider art and how his illness affected his career”. Finding her way through the work “I picked, there was so much material. The family saved most of the paintings. He had great support from the family.” Between the five artists engaged on the project they chose the work that interested them which was taken to a space. “I was particularly taken by a folder of charcoal drawings of faces of patients and staff that Chris drew whilst he was hospitalised in Preston at Sharoe Green, their anonymous faces really grabbed me. Then I interviewed the family and asked a psychiatrist to give a diagnosis of Chris’ illness based on his paintings and drawings.” These works link with Clara’s previous practice which involved video performance among other mediums “I became interested in space and mapping. Doing the performance tracing shadows, that lead me to thinking about place and time, and research around the ecology of space, it all unravelled organically.”<br /><br />We’re secure in the library, like a capsule protecting us from even the knowledge of what’s outside, the havoc being wrought and the international fame that Manchester storm is generating. Clara’s quiet intensity as she works out her answers and how she can best explain what interests her and how she works. “I don’t mind jumping from one thing to another, they feed off each other, and I don’t work in a linear way. Approach and interest are the same.”<br /><br />“I don’t like it to float, suspended. My work it’s rooted around historical research, archival footage which leads to different references. I’m still working on methodologies of working with archival footage, I’ve not finished exploring that yet, I want to make more work around it.” That work is broad in its reach by engaging with the details of the stories that Clara engages with. The images of Paramount Books and the changes of the Savoy bookshops in Manchester through the years places the viewer very carefully in a particular story, while the way the work of Christopher Joseph Holme is seen in relation to the family and the environment engages and provokes the viewer; this is not a dispassionate response. “It becomes specific with subject, I am interested in personal histories. When looking at the Chernobyl project for example, I look at the political through personal lens through the stories and testimonies on the incident. My work has an anthropological approach. In an interview I did with Michael Buttterworth, he talked about history and politics but I was interested in capturing these thoughts from a personal angle."<br /><br />The rain has eased off when we finish talking and Clara asks if I want to see her space at Granada where she is working on the Chernobyl project. We’re still wet anyway, and having crossed the city it feels like a natural part of the night to explore where the latest project is taking shape. Its long empty corridors and anonymous doors to the small studio she shares with the composer. It’s just about large enough for the pair of them, not luxurious but practical and I can well imagine the lack of distraction and comfort encourages a work ethic for those parts of the project that are perhaps more solitary, that perhaps require more discipline. But Clara is keen to get going, and once she has seen me safely out of the building she will get back to work picking apart and piecing together the latest edit.<br /><br />I wonder how the people she talks to reassess their stories through the conversations. “I couldn’t say if it changes their perspectives. I’m curious. In the research for the Savoy film, I enjoy taking the city by foot, knocking on doors and talking to people. It has an investigative quality and I’m surprised by how many layers it unravels.” Sometimes it feels like it could be disruptive, and her subjects are explored in ways they may not have experienced before, so when interviewing Paul Smith from Paramount Books “I had to ask him to turn off the background music as it was impeding on the filming, he’d not turned it off in thirty years since the shop’s been open.” She’s pleased that the results speak for themselves. “I am as passionate with the Chernobyl project, I get more and more physical with the research process.” Clara didn’t have long to get the material together, she only had two days in Chernobyl, three days in Kiev,. “It’s hard to be exact, things went pear-shaped at times, I used relationships I formed before we did the trip and that eased our stay there. I wish I could have stayed longer in the zone as that might’ve helped getting a better sense of the place.<br /><br />It was a powerful atmosphere that pervades the area, that seems like a Cold War hangover. “You were very aware of the paranoia surrounding the threat of radiation; couldn’t see it, couldn’t touch it, but the fear and paranoia that was emanating was making the invisible more tactile.” This comes through for Clara in the way she edits and the way she integrates the testimony, and how the two are refined. She’s enthused for the results of this work on Chernobyl; as it engages with how you deal with trauma, “not how you get over it but how you live with it. I’m really excited to see it.”<br /><br />On the train home, the rain has stopped and I watch the lightning dancing over Prestwich.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">_________</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">* as long as getting time to type it up - it's now Wednesday 2 November.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">** the site of a previous achievement of mine***, and I was glad to seethe place again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">*** the first oxo conference, with Did He Pushed Or Was He Fell.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">conversation with Clara Casian took place at Manchester Central Library café on Tuesday 13 September 2016 from 6:00pm // @ClaraCasian // <a href="http://www.claracasian.co.uk/">www.claracasian.co.uk</a> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Clara was recommended by <a href="http://therudiment.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/meandering-mersey-natalie-bradbury.html"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Natalie Bradbury</span></a>. She in turn recommended Sam Meech.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-17899800059142990012016-07-22T15:03:00.001-07:002016-07-22T15:03:31.161-07:00Joop // Owen Rafferty
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Some things get lost
in the midst of time, some things get lost in the midst of suburbia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You lose your bearings, forget the sequence,
unremarkable things merge in to each other in the memory and steps are no
longer clear, orders, methodical or mapped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Things which don’t seem important at the time can only be invested while
anonymous routes can still lead to exciting destinations.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Owen seems to occupy
a unique position in the local theatre community, involved as sound designer
and operator on a large number of the most high-profile independent companies
in their most prestigious projects and yet always a sense of independence; the
scene in no way revolves around his work despite him being a common thread that
connects some of the most interesting and successful recent work, from 24:7
projects including Away From Home, long-standing relationships with Black
Toffee and Square Peg, and work that has been taken internationally with House
of Orphans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His work would be seen as
integral to the success of all these shows, and yet he’d not viewed – and
doesn’t view himself – as any sort of lynchpin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>How he has made his way to this position is instructive, and how he
works with each company is illuminating.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Owen largely puts his
progression down to word-of-mouth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since
finishing his studies at SSR four years ago his work on one project will often
lead to those involved, or those who experience his work, calling on him for
future projects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One strong reason why
Owen’s position may not be as visible on the scene is down to the way he will
tackle each of those approaches; he doesn’t appear to have a signature style but
while he will bring his experience and tools to a discussion with the director
and an analysis of the script, he does consider that he adds something subtle and
unique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He studied sound at SSR where it
was the post-production elements that caught his attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That’s what I enjoyed most, it’s a really
good background, you focus on the technical skills, this is how you’ll use this,
learn the fuck out of that technical stuff first – then you are free to be
creative with it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s given him a
breadth of ability that companies find invaluable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">“Early on, I’ll want
to get a general feel for a show, whether it has high production values or is
quite minimal, in early discussion.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These might well just be email exchanges, and doesn’t only set up the
style of the piece but how he’ll work with the director.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I don’t like to get too specific, or pin
down the finer details, but get the woolier stuff right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recently, I’d already met the director, I’d set
up a dropbox, threw in a couple of ideas and got feedback, but then I wanted,
more generally, to know about the director’s taste in music and I put in some
songs to suggest tone and he came back saying ‘Oh no we don’t want any songs.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for Owen if wasn’t about any specific
songs or creating a soundtrack, it was about a general feel, which all feeds
through to the final piece.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">To an outsider the
sound designer’s position in the rehearsal process can seem disjointed from the
main company, if only because of the different tasks that are required.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“With sound, you do need to go home and do
the editing, so generally I’ll be there once at the readthrough, once a week
until the last week when you’re in most days.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And when he’s in the rehearsal room, “I’ll sit at the side with a
notepad, ass odd questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Working with
Square Peg they’ll bring me in, others I’ll wait till the end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the early days, I was less quiet, working
in the fringe everyone’s chipping in, you get to know when you’re not being
helpful.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Owen gesticulates to emphasise
how ridiculous his earlier default position would be when a rehearsal
discussion reaches an impasse: “I know!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We could fix it with sound!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll
just put some music over the top!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Although he
understands now that sort of approach isn’t always helpful, and that as a sound
designer that will always be his main way of tackling a problem that isn’t
always appropriate, it’s clear he values those collaborations where he’s free
to make those suggestions and they are accepted or dismissed on their own
terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s not imposing anything,
ideas are just ideas, they’re not threatening.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In that sense his way of working with Square Peg does fit with his
style, while also being unlike his other working relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yeah, it’s definitely unique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They came to watch Hidden, they were friends
with Laura Lindsay, they asked, they poached me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was nice was I was discovering myself,
they were discovering as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the
time I was in they had the Waterside commission, and it was early in the
process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For them the devising process
includes the sound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had the corridor
ambience in the hospital, and live microphones we wanted to incorporate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll have prepared some scrappy drafts, 3 or
4 ideas, and in the rehearsal room test which ones work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With physical theatre it’s very
time-sensitive, matching sounds to movement, so you might have to go back to
the drawing board.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for what Owen
might be manipulating live “microphones are really the only thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They can be a nightmare, it’s very live, but
it’s my favourite part of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes
I’ll have a few sound pads, reverb, echo.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Owen’s cat seems
fairly interested in our conversation at this point, or it could be the
meatballs and pasta Owen has ready for us when I arrive but which we wolfed
down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To contemplate that, from this
small suburban cul-de-sac where the garden isn’t a wild-flower meadow but is
simply overgrown, Betjeman’s Metroland now placeless with pattern-book architecture,
can emerge the sounds of a World War Two sinking, a Martian space station, or a
return to the beginning of consumerism of the 1950s; this is always strangely
unsettling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Out of the rehearsal
room, much of Owen’s work will be done in front of a computer screen with
headphones or his own stereo set-up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s the antithesis of the hurly-burly of the rehearsal, the tech or the
adventures of touring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taking a show
into a space, especially when touring, “can be challenging, if the sound system
is terrible, rickety, or there might be feedback issues.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first thing to do in a new space is to
“play one of the songs, that way you get a fuller range of frequencies, and you
tweak until it neutralises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember
Korova, it was a really tiny space, such a tiny space, and quite a bit of set,
so the speakers ended up behind the set and I had to unmuffle them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes limited space is a blessing;
wherever they’ll fit, that’s where they’ll have to go.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most time lost with tech Owen says is when
high expectations can’t be met so easily, so for one show Owen was presented
with enough speakers and not enough amps and spent two days re-jigging and
experimenting, “and we did manage to get the prop speaker by borrowing a hi-fi
from our flat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You do tend to fill
whatever time you’ve got, limits are not always a bad thing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Owen has been lucky,
a lot of his time devising with companies has been in the performance space,
and he’s become used to knowing what the requirements of a space might be, from
the shape of the room whether it will be harsh or brittle, or muddy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All these words, it appears, have a specific
meaning, and he talks me through the scale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Do you want me to get technical?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He has to try to recall some of the specifics, where wavelengths aren’t
a part of his everyday vocabulary “but for working with directors it’s
great.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instinctive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s one of my favourite things,
communicating like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Directors can
be apologetic, ‘sorry I don’t know the technical term, but it sounds a bit
boxy?’ but it makes sense.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Owen
relishes the relationship that he can have using these descriptions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“One director came to be and he wanted
something really specific but he didn’t know how to tell me and in the end he
just said it’s a sort of joop effect and I was like, got ya.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a crescendo, it’s the sound of space
sucked into a vacuum, of the world being drawn to a freeze-frame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a sound we all know from our cultural
reference points, a trope that we can all indentify, a piece of our contemporary
vocabulary and best described by an onomatopoeic pursing of the lips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world of the sound designer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Owen doesn’t hang
back with his ideas in the rehearsal room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I’m pretty proactive communicating how sound can be used, I want to
make it all tie up as much as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Man Who Woke Up Dead is a good example of that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The character of Evelyn is under medication,
and there’s a character who washes up on the shore, so you take out the
frequencies apart from the very low and it makes it sound underwater, but also
a bit like you’re on drugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When sound
moves from one medium to another it loses a lot of energy, bass sounds have
more energy so they’re able to cut through.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s a detail in the explanation for a simple effect that we’re all used
to hearing in television or film as a figure gets dunked into water and the
sound-world is evoked from their point of view, and it resonates in the theatre
unexpectedly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">“Music will depend on
the show; for One Hand Clapping we needed fifties music and Lucia Cox
picked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Roseacre I picked, from a
playlist and songs I suggested.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
music isn’t where it’s at for Owen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m
much more interested generally in sound design, it can be more
unexpected.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mixing it up is something
Owen tried with a project we did together, Yawp, producing a show that was
different each performance and that responded to random elements within the
show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It was something I wanted to
try.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It needed more prep time to figure
out what worked and what doesn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m a
sleep-on-it guy, there’s been a few times when I’ve not been as prepared as I’d
have liked and it’s affected the work, or it’s been unclear what the show is
going to be till quite late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s better
to be over-prepared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing I’ve
regretted creatively but it’s less stressful.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">“I’m careful who I
work with, and I’ve been lucky to work with people who like to try ideas and
push boundaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People who don’t see
sound as an afterthought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some ideas
have great potential, but in the end they get stripped down.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s clear Owen finds this frustrating,
whether it comes from a lack of resource or ability but especially when it
seems to come from creative cowardice or a falling back on the safety net of
convention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Owen doesn’t often find
himself in those preliminary discussions about creating a production, and
although it does happen more now than it used to, the way sound is brought in
on a production will radically affect how it is utilised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It really helps to be in at an early stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Otherwise it can just be incidental – okay – here
they are in a park - park sound – fine - now they’re in a café - café sound” as
he parks the production setting with the appropriate background ambience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What he really likes to do is present to a
team “this moment has this power” as he draws his fingers in to a singularity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“How can we underpin that moment?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I wonder whether he’d
ever suggested changing or replacing a line, and he almost panics at the
idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I don’t know if I’d be brave
enough to.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suspect he would be, but
it would have to be the right place, the right production, more importantly the
right collaborators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a great
openness and lack of defensiveness to Owen’s approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He recalls a time he’d brought a sound to a
production, “and the director just wasn’t digging it, there was something that
needed to be brought out, and someone suggested something and then was like,
oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean,
she wasn’t part of the production, and it was obvious she felt immediately like
she shouldn’t have spoken, like she felt it wasn’t her place but I was, like,
yeah, that’s it, it was really helpful, and I wasn’t sure but it set the ball
rolling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like it when ideas can come
from anywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got into it because of
the teamwork.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or even, as in this case,
outwith the team; ideas can come from anywhere, they can lead anywhere, and
they can all be attended to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">There’s plenty of
work in the pipeline to keep Owen occupied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’s off to Edinburgh, and with shows lined up into the autumn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But creatively?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m bored of drones for a start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an easy way, to get tense atmosphere
with a drone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m looking for other ways
to do simple things.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has a sound
from the recent Square Peg show Roseacre that he picks apart, with loops and
rhythm; “and I’ve got into drums as well.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so we start to discuss our own possibilities for collaboration
[conversation redacted], and his cat returns for some attention, and the wild
flower meadow garden draws the eye and the evening draws in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">conversation with Owen Rafferty took place at in his back garden in Withington on Friday 8th July 2016 from 6:30pm // @soundowen // <a href="http://www.owenrafferty.com/">www.owenrafferty.com</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-92001429338757831652016-07-05T14:15:00.001-07:002016-07-15T09:19:36.925-07:00A Man of Style // Darren Riley<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I arrive at Darren’s
end terrace three minutes early and still angry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So is Darren, though he’s bounded to the door
with panache.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He expected a flaneur such
as myself to have no trouble finding the place and he’s prepared with that
assumption, less of the dandy cravat, disappointingly no artist smock or beret;
instead practical walking shoes and a smartly pressed mod shirt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t stop for a brew but head off uphill
to Bob’s Smithy, small talk on the way, interview at the pub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Small-talk consists less of gossip on the
mores of family and friends and more on the Brexit aftermath, and we’re not so
much angry at the result as the incompetence and duplicity that took us to the
vote and shows no sign of abating.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Darren’s obsession
with photography came out of holiday snaps, from taking a point and shoot
digital camera to European cities where he found lots he wants to capture and
thinking of treating himself to a SLR before “in a museum shop in Munich, I saw
a lomography camera, loved the idea, it sounded fun, I could use it as a
creative tool, I could be experimental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The digital SLR idea went out the window and I bought a lo-fi plastic
camera.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were then stranded in the
airport after the Icelandic volcano, so I ran around taking pictures which
turned out to be abstract shapes and colours because I’d taken the pictures
with the long-mode exposure by keeping the button pressed down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than seeing them as mistakes, it was
almost like I painted, and I was down the rabbit-hole.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From the picnic table
outside the pub, Manchester stretches out beyond us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We wonder if it’s lost its way, the
destruction of history, the bland conformity of the building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Darren surprises me with a sneaking
admiration for the new office on St Peter’s Square.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could see the Beetham Tower from the
canteen of his old employers, never sure of what it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We wonder how the skyline will change with
the new development.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Darren was never one
for art theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He didn’t read much
about photography apart from the occasional blog that he’d come across on
technical aspects but not much else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I
do live online. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a <a href="http://filmphotographyproject.com/podcast"><span style="color: #cccccc;">film photography</span></a> podcast, it was just starting as I was starting, and it felt like I
was growing with the podcast, learning with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That helped to fuel the obsession.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His relationship to aspects like framing and
proportion is much more instinctive than planned; “sometimes I’ll be thinking
about them, yeah definitely, sometimes not at all.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s another aspect, “because I’d been a
musician, photography got me out of the house, reconnected with nature and
countryside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a musician you never
have to leave the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you’ve got a
camera, it forces you out of the house.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Darren could never be one of those artists who works on the same single
subject over and over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I get bored
photographing one thing, I jump from thing to thing.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Looking out over
Scout Moor, Darren tells me I have to go and visit, how amazing it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The turbines are stark against the
moorland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You don’t like them, do you?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They intimidate me, I feel they could become
animated and take to marching across the landscape oppressing everything in
their path, and that’s what appeals to <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/darrenriley/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Darren</span></a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I’m very interested in – possibly the only concept I used in
photography – I’m interested in what effect man has on the landscape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pylons in a landscape, or fences in a lot of
my photographs, the ones I’d choose, for an exhibition say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All lacking in people but evidence of
people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did a series of stiles, that
was a bit of an obsession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Almost every
walk with Becky she’ll point out, bit of rusty metal there Darren.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“There’s always a
story behind the things Darren picked as subjects, and they chimed with his
interest in green issues, the extent to which we are destroying the planet and
we’ll simply leave our own traces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“My
house may turn up in photos someone else takes in the future.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A photo of a large concrete block on Winter
Hill, which must have had a purpose once but now lost, “is an interest in the
stuff that has been left behind, it was like a theme in my work, and actually
my photography has declined since I realised that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I’m much more discerning about what I
photograph and because I can’t get that film developed until the roll is
finished, I take less and less.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the
pen took over.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“In 2012, I decided
I’d draw a popstar a day.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It lasted, it
appears, three or four months before Darren started to feel confined by the
format and the hour a day it was taking to draw the portraits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it made a few things clearer; “I realised
it was okay to make mistakes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doing one
every day, only in pen, having to share it online, freed me from errors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In school, using pencil and erasing, I was a
very slow artist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then in 2014, I love
this because I can really remember, I follow Darren Hayman on Twitter, who was doing
postcards and sending them to people, so I bought some watercolour paper for
going on holiday and I went on Twitter and invited people, and sent one to
Darren Hayman tweeting him that he’d inspired it.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Every so often if you
follow him you’ll notice Darren say he’s taking a break from Twitter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What this generally results in is a few hours
hiatus before something catches his attention or provokes him enough to
re-engage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His utilisation of social
media is a masterclass and the results are evident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not to go overboard – he doesn’t have the
clout of Stephen Fry, three random words wouldn’t get the tens of thousands of
retweets a Justin Bieber would accrue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He has, however, been able to make those connexions he does have really
count.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s not to say he can’t be
knocked by the vagaries of a medium which is exposing, especially to the worst
of human nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of his watercolours
provoked a criticism that struck home; “it was not especially good and someone
saw it and slagged it off and it really pissed me off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next morning Darren Hayman has posted my
postcard to him, and someone complimented it, recognising the location, and it
was Andy Miller.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since then I’ve met him
a few times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wrote a book, about when
he lost his love of reading and he sent me a copy and everything he said was a
reflection of my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, it’s a
common thing, our generation; but ultimately it inspired me, to become a
part-time artist, to develop the talent I’ve got.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By-the-by, the beer
we’re drinking is called Guzzler; “how can you not choose a drink called that,”
and I’ve not done an interview drinking alcohol before, and I’m starting to
worry about my note-taking abilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But Darren has learnt that it’s okay to experiment and not worry about
the results, and it seems to be something he’s learnt relatively recently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I always thought I was okay at school, but I
didn’t know what to do with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went
on to Art and Design at Bolton Institute and was thrown in with a lot of people
who were excellent, but the tutors were not enthusiastic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One would just sit back at his desk reading
Playboy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was doing graphic design and
at the end of the first year I was put into 3D design, pottery and sculpture,
when I wanted to draw, and it felt like I was being punished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the year I became really good as a
musician.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stripped and built a bass
that year, and I failed the year.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now it feels new, his
artistic style is totally different, quickly worked up, much freer, more
confident, happier to fuck things up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“That’s come from my music.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
uses techniques that he seems to have retained with memory, using pen and
watercolour with which he was familiar from childhood, nearly all straight onto
paper, and so when a mistake is made it’s captured as part of the process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He started experimenting with acrylic about a
year ago; “I love it, the difference is it dries pretty quickly.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He used oil for the first time a couple of
weeks ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Can be messy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Printers ink can be the same.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we talk about subjects, I ask about
landscapes, and the sorts of subjects he captured with his camera, but the idea
of getting the materials together to go out and do a landscape seems too much
of a chore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t have a studio and
works at home in the kitchen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I
couldn’t justify a studio financially. I just about cover the costs of
materials, and I don’t know how I’d work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I do have distractions at home.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He reflects that he’s
been struggling in terms of subjects for painting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of his heroes are musical, so there’s a
lot of popstars, and he tends to be drawn to black figures, with no idea
why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A current series of album covers
are almost like a commission, but a self-commission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is alert to the commercial viability of
his work, mostly, although it’s still important to recognise when a subject demands
attention. His recent portrait of John Lewis is one case; “I was driven to
paint him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His inspiring speech, his
history in the civil rights movement, he’s well used to sit-ins.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to be a corrective to the nasty
stuff of British politics. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But
generally, someone might like to buy it, maybe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s a reason for the pop stars for sure.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He takes a high-end digital image of
everything he produces, everything is available for reproduction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The worry is that’s what’s driving my art.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Darren despaired a
little at the range of galleries in Manchester, compared to London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My take was slightly different, and
especially when you consider that London might cover the whole of Osborne’s
Northern Powerhouse if only we had a comparable transport network.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Darren regularly visits the Yorkshire
Sculpture Park, but has no inclination to produce 3D work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I love walking round the sculpture park but
have no interest in making that work, I’m not driven, I’m not critical of most
of it – there’s one piece,” he rolls his eyes in exasperation, “it’s just some
steps, like what Bolton Council would put in – otherwise I’m just that’s nice,
that’s nice, that’s nice, that’s nice, that’s nice.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His visit to the Francis Bacon currently on
in Liverpool genuinely excited him, to see the physical work in real life, where
he was *almost* tempted to buy a Francis Bacon t-shirt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But it means more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like when you see Cy Twombly in a book and
you think ‘what?!?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then you stand on
front of one, and you see this is made for a massive wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m still a beginner.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There’s a slight
sense that Darren is daunted when he says that which quickly passes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s not what he seeks to emulate and
instead he has a cultivated naïveté in his approach to producing art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a musician he was driven to make the
sounds no one else was making and if he’d loved everything he’d heard he
wouldn’t have made music at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While
he claims to know very little about the art world, he has been exploring, being
inspired by the things people are pointing him to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not the final product that drives him,
but again and again it’s process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s
the instant quality to working that appeals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He says everything about a particular piece would be unplanned and capricious,
from subject, materials, medium, although he always incorporates drawing and
enjoys having a signature drawing style.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I’d like to try and get my painting to go the same way, to draw with
paint rather than colour things in.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While he loves
drawing people, something malleable, Darren is working to get his figurative
painting slightly more abstract, and the same for his photography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I always said I didn’t want a record of a
split second in time but a memory, fuzzy.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is the reason why his recent sequence of album covers are
deliberately blurred.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What’s the point
of painting what you see?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hate that
hyper-realistic style; it’s like a twenty minute prog song, it’s just showing
off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want my painting to be visceral.
Like Francis Bacon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And – can I say
this? – Rolf Harris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still remember
how he’d make those huge pictures, I loved that physicality.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Size is a bit of an issue, and while he’d
like to go larger and doesn’t see himself as a miniaturist, there are
logistical constraints.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alongside that,
he’s building a portfolio, selling online, printing up copies and thinking of
how to approach galleries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s been
frustrated<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by their insistence on a
concept when for Darren process is the point, and he claims that once it’s made
it’s forgotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“One of the reasons I
post is to encourage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m convinced
everyone can draw;” I shake my head while he continues, “and everyone shakes
their heads like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More so than
music, and possibly writing, visual art is the easiest to get in to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As long as you’re doing it and enjoying it.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Darren is on a
journey with his art, and for as long as he doesn’t feel he’s reached a
destination he’ll be exploring an experimenting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He considers himself a learner, a student,
and finds it amusing that lots of people following him on social media might
only know him as an artist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In realising
he had a theme in his photography obsession, he found himself at a destination
and he disembarked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was quickly,
instantaneously on to another journey and his lesson is that is almost doesn’t
matter about the direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The minute
you stop caring is the minute you start working; fear of failure is such a
killer, the worry of getting everything wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As human beings worry is what we do but fucking up isn’t possible.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He laughs – he’s spent a lot of this
interview laughing – while he teases me with a line that he’s chuffed he can
finally get quoted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“One shit drawing is
shit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One hundred shit drawings is a
style.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One thing is certain about
Darren, he’s a man of style.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">conversation with Darren Riley took place at Bob's Smithy on Sunday 26th June 2016 from 11:30am // @panchoballard // Stuff Darren draws can be found at <a href="http://www.stuffdarrendraws.tumblr.com/">www.stuffdarrendraws.tumblr.com</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-53183054061215821612016-06-19T11:48:00.004-07:002016-06-19T12:12:44.521-07:00The Magic Three // David Hartley<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I wait at Java, David
arrives, conversation starts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Flash
fiction, performance, collaboration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>David flies high, his sentences left in the air like trails from a small
bird defecating joyfully in the clear sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’s eager and easy-going and free.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’s brought me a copy of his Dad’s novel <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ice and Lemon</b>, which he calls “curious”, although I suspect he
means he’s curious about its reception.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Dad’s been writing
forever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s a sixth form teacher, and
during the Easter holidays he’d lock himself away and we’d know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wrote, put on plays for students and
ex-students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he’d write little
stories for me and my brother and sister, it was part of family life.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But while he always received encouragement,
he wasn’t specifically encouraged to write, there’s no sense of anything other
than his own path.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We were supported in
whatever we wanted to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was aware I
was doing what Dad was doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I
started writing properly, at University, I was naturally drawn to it, I liked
it, and I had a skill for it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It occurs
to him it “leached naturally from Dad.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">David was evidently
very involved with his Dad’s creative work early on, seeing the productions or
being involved in the rehearsals; “Oedipus, Shakespeare, his own plays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was magical.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Writing didn’t come as a challenge,
however.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We’re different enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dad was always a playwright, and I did drama,
acting, I enjoy that side of things, but I’m not as interested in...” and David
struggles for the word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That side of the
process seems outwith how he generally thinks about the work he does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He settles on “stagecraft”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The logistics of production don’t interest
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m happy to be background, led
rather than the leader, I find the pleasure for myself in writing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s not necessarily even a comparison,
although David suggests they share a sense of humour; instead there is a clear
distinction; “my Dad’s work is aimed towards performance.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So it’s incumbent on
me to point out that David’s work is underpinned by performance; he laughs like
he’s been caught out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That’s what’s
been interesting.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was after
university when he started to explore the spoken word scene of Manchester “I
very quickly thought I need to get up on stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was incredibly nervous at first, but I enjoyed it and in the background
my writing started to transform.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>David writes
what he calls Flash Fiction, which is not [necessarily] to do with the speed at
which it is written, but while he’s toyed with other terms like short-short-story
and microfiction, it’s Flash Fiction that’s struck a chord with audiences; “it’s
a very sculpted story, boiled down to its bare essentials, an interesting
medium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the things I found
challenging was fitting neatly into the time allotted on the spoken word stage,
I had a lot more success with the shorter, snappier short stories.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has developed his practices; “I’m
increasingly conscious whether I’m writing for the page or for the stage.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the Spiderseed stories <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Trust The Tiles</b> becomes a performance,
involving the use of the Scrabble set ‘and audiences like it, it’s like a magic
trick, I use a bit of sleight of hand, how I take the tiles out of the bag,
it’s sweet, there’s a magic moment.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or
like <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Most Haunted</b>, as micro as
microfiction comes, “I really take my time over it, and while it’s not just
about laughs I can get maybe three laughs in a performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the longer ones work better on the page.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So I ponder on the
distinction between Flash Fiction and certain forms of poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I never call myself a poet, but there is a poetic
feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m very conscious of the rhythms
of a sentence, always geared towards telling a story.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thinks back to some of the Christmas
stories in his collection Merry Gentlemen, which he feels get quite poetic due
to the carols and seasonal songs going round his head when they were being
written.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He remembers one performance
when he was approached afterward to be told “stick a few line breaks in, you’ve
got a poem there.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s about how the
work sounds.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">David always writes
at home and he starts by just writing until he reaches a natural break when
he’ll go back and read it out loud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s
found it’s a good way to editing himself and he’ll make a point of doing it,
and if he’s writing for performance he’ll do it a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s glad that the sense of the rhythmic
comes through the performance, powered by the meter under it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I wonder if that comes from my Dad,” he
reminisces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I used to act quite a lot,
drama, A-levels was Macbeth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a
period of time late high school and A-levels when I was doing a lot of
line-learning, reading, scripts, acting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There’s a logical link.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“My writing flows
quite naturally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s sometimes a curse,
overwriting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a three-line beat,
I’ll say one thing, then say it again slightly differently with an extra
metaphor, then say it again with an extra simile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know I do it, I’m very conscious of it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His writing group ensure he’s aware of when
it happens too often.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">His writing starts
with a concept, an idea that he wants to write about linked to some unusual
angle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He grabs at the copy of
Spiderseed on the table and looks up <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Trails</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I wanted to write about my least favourite
animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think it’s a slug.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can I write about a slug that makes me
change my mind?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted a way in.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suggest that his work has the feeling often
of an extended metaphor, and he agrees, there’s something behind the story
that’s never made explicit while David gets to present only what he wants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or occasionally “sometimes a story will come
together, and I don’t even know how.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The title story of Spiderseed came from the image provided by an
internet submission, the image of a tree breeding spiders which came to be
about a father-son relationship utterly unlike his own with his Dad, and using
“that weird idea of spiders growing out of trees.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The way David’s
stories end seem to reinforce their metaphorical nature, but of course the
endings of stories wholly depends, and sometimes he has what he calls the “bad
habit” of abandoning stories when he can’t get it to the ending that satisfied
him, if he’s trying to hit out, create an effect for an audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Spiderseed</b>
didn’t have the ending until he reached it and he says he’s learnt to write out
until the story forms itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
become evident that David doesn’t always start knowing the length of the piece,
although there’s often parameters, and often it’s to do with stage time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But with longer fiction he won’t know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of his animal stories reached two to
three-thousand words, one about five thousand, while a couple in Spiderseed
wouldn’t get to that length.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Rather
than abandon them, I turned them into Flash Fiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t let people think about it too
long.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, “I’m getting
better when I sit down, I’m writing longer.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I take the plunge and
ask about the Novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First draft done,
couple of friend’s have had a read, it’s been tucked away for nine months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says it’s been an arduous process, that
there’s a lot he needs to change, and that he’s finally keen to get back to
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>End of the summer, perhaps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It emerged from a project for his creative
writing module that he hung on to and which involved epic fantasy, world
building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Quite a big thing to take
on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I know my writing has vastly
improved, I’ll go back with fresh ideas, fresh concepts, and see where its
flaws are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel like it’s slightly
held me back, I had to get it out of my head, it’s been nice not to look at it
for nine months.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><a href="http://therealstory.org/2016/03/25/the-fourteen-stations-of-blasphemy-by-david-hartley/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">The Fourteen Stations of Blasphemy</span></a></span></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"> was written for
performance, “sort-of”, when David knew he’d have a ten-minute slot to fill, so
needed something hefty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s written
non-fiction in the form of <a href="http://www.davidhartleywriter.com/#!blog/c112v"><span style="color: #cccccc;">regular blogging</span></a> for some time, but this idea was
something different; “it’s real life in a way that feels like fiction is
written.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d been thinking about it, and
wondering what are the stories I would tell, and this was one of them.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet this was a very different proposition to
anything else David has worked on, as if there was a danger, a threat that the
piece could pose that required mitigation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I had to find a safety blanket, and I came up with the structure.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Structure in an explicit
sense is rarely present in David’s work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I don’t give myself a fixed structure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It goes back to the rhythm, and I trust my instinct and use the natural
breath points.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has on occasion
played with structure, rules or restrictions, such as writing a story exactly
150 words long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one project fifty
ghost stories started with fifty words, and reduced by one for each subsequent
story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“In performance it becomes quite
exciting as it got faster and faster.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Usually, however, his experiments with structure came about when
underconfident or struggling, “and then it becomes like a brace.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The
Fourteen Stations of Blasphemy</b> the piece had been started and there were
anxieties around how accurate it was, what were the facts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When I thought of the stations of the cross,
it fell in naturally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then,” as he
decided to up the ante, “I tried to match them up to each station, taking the
structure to extreme, trying too much to shoe-horn it in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you’ve got a natural guide, and the crucifixion
imagery, it’s like anchors, those things climbers put into walls.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I am not, in this
interview, going to be able to illuminate any more than any other piece of
writing in the history of mankind, the notion of how an author finds their
voice, when there is so much about a writer’s practice that is about taking
what they feel has worked previously and experimenting with things they’ve
never tried.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For some it may be the
grammar they use, or the length of the sentences; for others it could be the
types of characters they create and the worlds they inhabit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all the time I’ve known David and
followed his work, animals have created the trail that leads him through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet David thinks of this as a phase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yes, I do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When I came out of uni and I decided I wanted to give writing a go, I
had ideas for lots of wacky stories, grand themes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then some things changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I volunteered for the RSPCA, I still do it,
not as much as I did, and the influence of my partner, we got pets, and I
became vegetarian, then earlier this year vegan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All this time I’m still writing, having these
experiences, trying to find my own voice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I wanted to find something I really cared about, that I could write with
anger, write with venom.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
experiences with the RSPCA, dog-walking and at community events, taught him
much about the way the British public treat animals, the myths they hold to,
and how they can care but in quite misplaced ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This lead to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tyson/Dog</b>, which was accepted by The Alarmist magazine, “and I knew
I was writing something I was passionate about.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s occurred to me that all the stories I
know are of quite small animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>David
laughs with recognition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“British and
domestic, animals you come across.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More
recently I’ve written about an elephant, and that came about through a
conscious effort, I wanted to write about the exotic.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He repeats the word to capture it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Something I didn’t know.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wanted to write about hunting, and apart
from fox-hunting that would take him abroad to big-game hunting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To his evident pride, perhaps even relief, it
has been published by Ambit; his most high-profile to date.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“And, interestingly, talking about structure,
that has a very clear three-act structure; things happen, things happen again
worse, things happen again and it’s catastrophic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The magic three.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That one just gelled, I wish they were all
like that.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When I ask David
about his relationship with narrative, it would be wrong to say he hesitates; I
don’t think David hesitated at any point in the interview as the thoughts
flowed out of him steady but at times unstoppable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t speak quickly, he doesn’t use
esoteric vocabulary or sentence structures that are difficult to follow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a seeming inevitable purpose to
David’s delivery, so that even when he’s speaking to something he’s not thought
through before or over which he’s not got a clear sense one way, what he says
rarely breaks up to reflect that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“With
narrative fiction I guess I am less interested.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you’re trying to convey a whole narrative into three hundred words,
it feels false, doesn’t feel quite right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I prefer to drop in on a moment, let the weirdness of that set up point
towards other things.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t think
it’s quite about pulling the rug out from under the reader but maybe tugging at
it a little.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whispering in the ear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The uncanny, the unknown, the strange,
surreal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What you never quite see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Film studies was a big part of what I did at
uni, that’s often about what the camera sees, what the camera suggests, what
you cut away from.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is not a lot of
description in David’s work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“This is
something I struggled with writing the novel, it’s a big world building
thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To describe the world there were
descriptive passages and they were beautiful and flowing, but the writing group
said there was too much of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I needed
to be getting the fucking story moving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There’s definitely a place for it but Flash Fiction allows you to get
rid of it unless you use it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do avoid
description.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t like to force a
complete picture on the reader, and it can be incorporated into the mechanics
of the story, being clever with it, doing it through the dialogue, or in how
the characters interact with their environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He likes to take advantage of the baggage that his readers will come
with, so that the concepts, landscapes, creatures are pre-loaded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has written stories based on Metamorphosis
and Animal Farm, “and then a lot of the work is done for you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even just saying Scrabble.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It’s time for David
to head for his train, and while there’s more I want to delve in to I try to
wrap things up with the last ten minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But David is now in his element, there’ll be another train, and honestly
just doesn’t look as if he can be bothered to move.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve been talking of performance and how
David has never had his work read out by anyone else – rumours of a new
spoken-word night in town that might mix this up a bit – so I wonder about the
Speak Easy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was asked by Annika of the
<a href="http://thesipclub.co.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Sip Club</span></a> in Stretford if he’d be interested in running a night, simple,
stripped-down, spoken word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No
microphone, twelve to fifteen performers a night, five minutes each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s become about discovering, uncovering
creative people in the area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He talks
about the Sip Club being very community based, knitting Stretford together, and
he wanted to tap in to that; so small-scale, no headliners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One guy came to an early night, very nervous
but performed and has performed every show since and David can see how he’s
grown in confidence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It has a very
loyal local contingent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It kicked off
nicely, it’s flowing nicely.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has a
sense of scale that comes from the space itself, and because it’s a bit out of
the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That can be a bit of a problem
when people have difficulty finding the place, but David sees that as part of
the attraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“There’s always a few
intrigued faces in the audience, people who just come along because they’re
intrigued.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people have
mis-fired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple of musicians,
musicians can go on too long.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
always reluctant to perform the first time I attend an open-mic, preferring to
visit simply as audience first, and I think David understands that urge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I have a lot of respect for people who come
along to watch, and then come back.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My first experience
of David’s work was a collaboration with his musical brother Rick, which I
loved and which struck me as different from a lot of work I’d seen
locally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Rick’s very talented, very
hardworking, he’s available, and he does what I say.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The twinkle in his eye reveals this isn’t the
whole story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a creative energy
that David acquires from his collaborations with Rick that’s pretty unique, and
that informs both his enthusiasm for making work and the texture of the work
itself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We did <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tether</b> together, it was good fun, there was a lot of energy
particularly in performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sent
music over, his music influenced my writing, a couple of times we flipped that
around.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was the challenge of
filling a half-hour set for the launch of Spiderseed in what David was anxious
to be a creative way, so he thought to do it with Rick, experimenting on
stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Especially reminiscing one story
that Rick accompanied with the snare drum, David excited performs a little
air-drumming and appears slightly in awe of what his brother did during that
performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It all ties back with
poetry and rhythms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I listen to Rick’s
music a lot when I’m writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I listen
to music when I write, people say that’s unusual.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He shrugs, I don’t comment because I also
often write to music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I have a specific
set of albums that will help me get into a frame of mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it’s a lot of Rick’s music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the beats and rhythms enter the piece
that I’m writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tether</b> was wordy at first, performing it to Rick’s music helped get
rid of a lot of that stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s not
very good at self-publicity, part of the reason why I wanted to collaborate
with him, like at First Draft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s got
a <a href="https://soundcloud.com/rocketship-forest"><span style="color: #cccccc;">new band</span></a> now, as well as productive at the moment, four or five track EP a
month of his own solo electronica project <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://rickerly.bandcamp.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Rickerly</span></a></b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he’s a constant source.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It seems apt,
somehow, that we finish with David focussed on a collaborator, a creative
force, and a family member who has had such an influence on the way he writes,
the words that he chooses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not sure
what’s next, but as David wraps his bag around him and strides off for the
train, I’m putting Speak Easy into my diary for the first Thursday of each
month.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">conversation with David Hartley took place at Java Oxford Road on Thursday 9 June 2016 from 5:30pm // @DHartleyWriter // Spiderseed is currently available from Sleepy House Press @ZzzHousePress // Speak Easy is hosted by Stretford's Sip Club on the first Thursday of the month</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-28736773582200630862016-06-14T16:35:00.001-07:002016-06-14T16:53:22.166-07:00Salmon and Cream Cheese // Helen Parry<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It was over an hour after arriving at Helen’s cottage-like retreat before we sat down on the sofas for the formal interview, while I’m full of apologies, explanations, caveats for the process and Helen takes it all in her stride. Helen Perry is hospitality personified and so first of all I have to eat all of the salmon and bagels – because they’re going away for a theatre jaunt to Stoke and it can’t be left – and we have to catch up, share our thoughts on the shows we’ve seen recently and our bucket-list of theatres we want to visit – Minack, Georgian Theatre Royal, Chichester – and this is as close to small-talk as we get. I try not to talk about work. Helen updates me on family news.<br /><br />Although we don’t do this often [enough], there is a sort-of routine. It was Helen that gave me my first break in the Manchester fringe scene. This was when the only fringe work in Manchester was 24:7 and occasional work at the Kings Arms through Studio Salford and supporting spaces like Taurus. Somewhere Trevor Suthers was thinking up JB Shorts, Not Part Of was in the offing a few years down the line. The Library Theatre hosted Replay, and as part of that was the annual Replay Debate. I have no doubt many people said many interesting things, and I very clearly remember David Slack railing against the use of the term ‘fringe’. All I could think was – how do I get to join in on this conversation, where’s the network to connect with between annual debates. So of course I ask and no one has an answer except to keep trying, and I exit the theatre vaguely despondent as I feel a hand touch my elbow and Helen is there insisting I send her some of my writing.<br /><br />Years later we’ve not been able to make the production happen, but the people who have been attached to it over the years are some of the stalwarts of the local independent theatre scene and have become the figures I’m most often excited to see work. Helen has through her longevity and attitude brought under her wing a huge and immensely diverse range of theatrical talent. She’s currently teaching at ALRA North, and was a teacher at Arden from its founding by Wyllie Longmore, whose integrity and vision she says was never surpassed, until her retirement in 2007. You feel it’s her work with students that invigorates her most, or practitioners who have the attitude of students, and she talks with great affection of many productions that would have only been seen by friends and family.<br /><br />“When I taught in East Ham, it was a time when the Ugandan Asians were being expelled, and I was working with a diverse cast, so we had the idea of different colour t-shirts for the Sharks and the Jets, which worked perfectly. We had the help of the PE department, but not the music department, so the music was on a cassette. And they all had to go and collect their brothers and sisters, or their pets, which they were supposed to be looking after, so the rehearsals were utterly chaotic.” It’s clear although this manic production of West Side Story may have been a baptism of fire, Helen feels this is exactly how it should have been. The joy and energy, the rehearsals with all the families jostling, are so far from the rarefied atmosphere usually associated with the rehearsal room it seems to undermine everything that’s said about how to prepare a production. “The dancing was fantastic, because we has the co-operation of the PE department, and the families were involved. It’s about the story-telling, I am who I say I am.”<br /><br />I’d hoped to tease out of Helen her approach to the rehearsal process and the text, but I suspect I already know the answer to this. As she outlines her role at ALRA, and the modules she’s teaching, I ask her how she works with students; whether it’s about training them up with skills or exploring the possibilities with each individual. “You’re picking a year group, a range of skills, types, diversity. Some come with lots of experience, drama at school, while others have a passion.” She gives me an answer that feels definitive, text book. “For each student you’re looking at the potential of each student within their limits, or realising they don’t have any limits.” I’m not sure I grasp this as an any more concrete idea, however. “For first and second year there is no public work, as you work through different areas – comedy, Shakespeare – so you’re putting actors out of their comfort zone, in roles they wouldn’t be cast in, wouldn’t be right for.” There are three projects a year, one a term, placing the students in different groups, replicating what it might be like after graduating, and learning something else that she learned from Wyllie; “How can you still work with integrity when not everything is great.”<br /><br />So she works with her students in the same collaborative way she works in her freelance directorial role; “you show me and I will shape it. I discard the things that don’t work.” Her hand gesture here I find quite telling; in truth it doesn’t feel as if those things are discarded as much as placed away to one side. She places an imaginary box off her lap as if nothing is useless although it may not fit, and should be kept in decent shape in case it’s needed in future. Privately, I start to worry that this discussion isn’t combative or incisive enough; this approach to working is not unusual but it could be slightly unfashionable, and I may end up with an article that is opaque about process. So we take a case study.<br /><br />Blackhand’s production of Look Back In Anger in September 2011 was, I felt at the time, a perfect example of a Helen Parry show. It was unusual to the extent that it wasn’t a piece of new writing, which speaks more to the Manchester scene than Helen’s own interests. The production had all the hallmarks I had come to expect; authentic production values; simple but not abstract; a strong ensemble performance; an honesty to the words. “I always start with a day or two sitting round the table reading through the text. Often I’ll have an actor who wants to get up on their feet, and I say we don’t understand it yet.” The word ‘understand’ is given a plaintive quality that makes it clear she appreciates the desire to move but in some sense regrets that inevitably a chance to engage with the words more deeply is then lost. Later she tells me, “I say to actors, you have to serve the play. The writer has taken a lot of time over each word, it’s your duty to speak the play as it is written, and for the company to tell the story of the play.” Initially working on my own play with Helen was the first time I’d ever worked with trained actors, and I’d presented them with what I worried was a challenging text. Expressing my concerns, Pete Carruthers looked non-plussed at the idea and just said “text with a capital T.”<br /><br />“I like to have some basic props; tea; smoking for example, some approximate costume. We’ll be inhabiting the world of the play.” She tells me with a laugh that she has recently been given the iron sourced as a prop for the play by Java, who played Alison in the Look Back In Anger production. “I don’t work chronologically through a play; sometimes I’ll pull out key scenes and go back to other scenes. I’ll sometimes improvise scenes to get at the core emotion. Java’s disintegration at the end we did like that, it was very powerful.” This strikes her as a strange dichotomy. “The rehearsal room, it’s got to be safe, a safe space, but also a place where anything can happen. It’s up to the director to create that, and the other actors to some extent.” This seems something commonly accepted but not thought about enough, and so the danger that can be allowed into the space is not allowed for and performances are simply safe, the productions bland.<br /><br />You have to go there in the rehearsal room, Helen insists. In a production tackling male rape, she spoke to an actor who she didn’t feel was getting close enough in rehearsals, and sure enough he broke down in one of the performances. “I was in the audience, I couldn’t get to him,” as if one of her own children was out of reach; “he got through it, but it was shaky.” So, anything goes in the rehearsal room? “Nothing physical,” meaning arguments should never get violent, “no personal shit. But I’ve never been a fan of confrontation; I don’t see the need for it.”<br /><br />“I’m against an imposition of a theory on a play. I don’t mind updating Shakespeare, for example, but not when a director you know comes with an agenda. I go into a lot of detail. Why are you doing that? I don’t formally block a play, it’s an organic process, I ask actors to move where they feel natural and you find patterns emerge. Actors find their own routes.” I’m interested in how she feels about moves being different performance to performance. “I’m not a stickler. Things change and things grow. I warn actors not to be too wacky or too wild, it can throw someone else off. Sometimes you find the ego of the actor becomes bigger than the piece. But if an actor comes to me before a show and say, Helen, I’d like to try whatever, I make a judgement. In one show an actor came on in one scene and, without checking with me first, threw glitter everywhere, and regardless of whether it worked in that scene. It ruined the rest of the play, there was glitter everywhere sticking to everything. I was livid.”<br /><br />The idea of producing the classic angry young man text had been discussed during an earlier production Adam Davies had been behind, his outing Working Title with co-conspirator Adam Jowett. They had been talking about Look Back In Anger, and how it was a favourite play of Helen’s, and she loves the film. It needed a good venue; hence the Martin Harris centre, and they all agreed to put in £100. They were allowed to run their own bar, which resulted in them making back their investment and paying their bills. The project was kickstarted with a phonecall from Adam and Java who were at Kim By The Sea, no doubt lubricated by alcohol, but Adam and Helen felt the play needed editing “so Adam came round here and we spend two days going through the text, sitting at that table. One of the </span><a href="http://www.manchestersalon.org.uk/look-back-in-anger-blackhand-productions.html"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">reviews</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, I was so pleased with this, said that it felt like a play for today, which was fabulous, a testament to the editing skills.” Helen says they were lucky to get cheap rehearsal space at White Circle; “They had some furniture already there,” a stage manager in Ellie Whitfield that makes Helen visible vibrant; “God she was good,” and three weeks full-time rehearsal; “four would have been good,” and when it came to the production she was happy with it, the tech-dress was comfortable “but I hardly watch the play; I watch the audience.”<br /><br />The majority of Helen’s freelance work, especially on the Manchester scene, has been with new writing. Do you have the writer in the rehearsal room? “You discuss what are the groundrules. The writer and actor should have as much freedom as possible,” except the writer shouldn’t disagree with the director in the rehearsal room in front of the company. “We should discuss it separately, go for coffee. It’s always a collaborative relationship.” Working on new writing is “so exciting. It’s a huge responsibility. You’re taking a writer’s work to make it better than they could hope.” It might not always be fruitful, sometimes they want you to do things that you believe don’t work, and then it can depend who’s employing you. Ultimately, however “having the writer in the rehearsal room, I enjoy that. It’s useful.”<br /><br />Earlier, Helen has explained that she had been surprised to be asked to direct Working Title, which seemed to her a very male project, and because she felt the two Adams were closer in admiration to another of their tutors to the extent she thought they might be entrenched in his methods. This puzzled away at me for a bit, because from the work of Helen’s that I’d seen, and from the conversations we’d had, this didn’t seem the sort of issue to concern her. She started in theatre as a champion of Black work, she’s a strong advocate of women’s work, and is currently a force in local LGBT drama. But it’s not her decidedly left-of-centre politics that have driven this so much as her ability to grasp an opportunity and almost accidentally fall into a gap in the market.<br /><br />After teaching in East Ham and her West Side Story experience, she became drama consultant at Abraham Moss, in the late-seventies to an ethnically diverse student group. “It happened out of necessity, and it becomes second nature, through common experience.” She was hired to direct A Raisin In The Sun, and a subsequent play in which one of the actors had been particularly abrasive in the first rehearsal “and I thought, this isn’t going to work. Then, at the break, he came up to me, put his hand around my waist, and said ‘are we going for lunch then?’ I’d been put under the grill, and then lunch.” Her production of Black Love at the Green Room transferred to the Library Theatre. “Chris Honer could see the queues round the block. No one else was doing it at the time, there was a black audience.” She also reminisces, “We put on gay plays at Dukes ’92, with Trevor Suthers and Michael Harvey. They were areas of work that straight white people weren’t doing.”<br /><br />Helen gets more impassioned as she diverts from her theatrical history to the personal stories that have driven her, and of course we’re now running out of time for me to reach my train. “I was turned down for a TV, in those days you could hire a TV but I needed your husband or father to sign the form so I had to take it to work the next day, which was humiliating. I remember being sat with someone on the phone and him saying ‘I’m sat with the lovely Helen Parry,’ those little condescensions.” One of her current teaching modules is on politics, for which she has invested in more books, and she finds that it’s the male speeches that are chosen even by the female students, “and I tell them, look at this, there are lots of male speeches, so few female – three. How little are female words heard; why not speak them?”<br /><br />She has a warm-up exercise using letters cut from The Guardian [other letters pages are also available], and having the actors pick them at random, read them out loud, in different ways. “You know, you get them signed by a group of doctors, or whoever. It leads to discussion. You don’t have to agree, but you need to empathise.” As I pack up and worry about whether the phone has captured the recording, Helen sums up. “I love working, I love working with young actors. I’m in a unique position.” And I stride away up the crooked lane past the bluebells.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">conversation with Helen Parry took place in her living room on Friday 13 May 2016 from 11:00am // @ParryMargaret</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-9703494531320384172016-06-02T11:57:00.001-07:002017-03-09T14:49:45.300-08:00Meandering Mersey // Natalie Bradbury<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We’re both slightly late when we meet on the approach to East Didsbury station and Natalie looks slightly puzzled as she tries to work out how to reach the footpath to the Mersey that is the thread we will follow. We both of us thought about bringing maps but neither of us actually have. While Natalie tries to work out the most practical way across the A34 in what I think must be one of the ugliest areas of south Manchester, I worry about whether the rain will hold off, and how I’ll make notes while on the hoof and carrying a coffee cup. We haven’t agreed a route, or a destination, or anything really. I suspect Natalie isn’t even sure what expectations I have, whether she’ll meet them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I can’t remember for certain how I first met Natalie, but it’s quite likely to have been an outing to have a guided tour of Preston bus station, Ingham and Wilson’s stunning late 60s building, the sad neglect of which created a space redolent of history and mystery, intensely visual and tangible and which Natalie reminds me would have been one of the first ever </span><a href="http://www.modernist-society.org/manchester/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Manchester Modernist Society</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> field trips back in 2011. It seems likely this would have been an early encounter; this is the sort of space Natalie likes to inhabit, not in a deliberate intention to take the road less travelled, but as she says later, “when I see a river or canal I just have to follow it; when I’m on a road I want to know where it goes.” This isn’t about deliberately seeking out the urban underside, but being more indiscriminate about where your route takes you, and more thoughtful in response to wherever you end up. <br /><br />My approach to Natalie to request an interview coincided with a </span><a href="https://manchesterleftwriters.wordpress.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Manchester Left Writers’</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> show at </span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Castlefield Gallery</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> inspired by and creatively exploring the notion of the Northern Powerhouse. MLW is a group with a particular political and aesthetic approach, and this show seems to have given them opportunity to flex new creative muscles. A previous event had been a showing of reworked films from the </span><a href="http://www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">North West Film Archive</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> as part of the Manchester Literature Festival in October 2015. Natalie calls refers to the Archive as “amazing” with a special quality of enthusiasm. Manchester Left Writers read some of their own Precarious Passages writings over minor, esoteric and amateur films, from Stockport carnival in the 1930s to CND demonstrations, enabling them to find serendipitous combinations of city images and imagery, past and present. For Castlefield Gallery, by contrast, they made their own films and created the soundtracks as collages from sounds found when making the work using iPhones and a basic digital camera, along with some violin played by Natalie. This was accompanied by two nights of newly created spoken word and musical performances by MLW and Vocal Harum. It didn’t feel like a progression between the works, but simply two different types of project, a development through being able to make their own films. “The archive is a great starting point, a great resource, but the Castlefield show was riskier, challenging. The North West show was about historical and contemporary juxtapositions, the Castlefield Gallery about the now, about being in the now.” In the light of that, I wondered that happened to that material now that the show is over, but there doesn’t seem to be a plan. “The Cacophany performance, the piece with all four of us reading at the same time, those texts are in the Thin Vale publication that we produced for the exhibition. That’s a theme of the Manchester Left Writers, Precarious Passages, how you experience the city, how we interact with places. Mobility is a key theme, Oh, look at the ducklings, can you see,” pointing at the opposite riverbank; “ so well disguised.” <br /><br />The four that Natalie refers to are the current makeup of the Manchester Left Writers. Some of the work in the show came out of a particular dynamic between David, who grew up in Stockport, and Natalie who lives there now. “It was nice to show each other around,” and this is a really theme of Natalie’s practice to which we constantly return. “Travelling though is a big part of it, connected to the Northern Powerhouse, which is all to do with connecting places, both literally with infrastructure, and metaphorically. Stockport is about home and belonging/not belonging, identity, how you feel about it.” Natalie likes Stockport a lot. “It’s suffered from its proximity to Manchester, the town centre particularly. People don’t go.” Exploring the town “you find yourself high up unexpectedly, it surprises me, topographically it changes very quickly, and in terms of town planning Edwardian/Victorian villas and rows of terrace housing, then lots of suburban infill, and the open spaces, common, recreation parks, fields, horses, it’s easy to go from city to country, and I wanted to explore it.” <br /><br />Natalie has already told me by this point that she believes it’s important to explore the place you live. This belies the project, however, and I’ve spotted a heron. This isn’t a duty requiring a steely determination and a call on reserves of motivation. “It’s a compulsion to explore, I feel it like a responsibility, I need to know what’s around the bend, to know the lay of the land, I want to know where it goes, where I’ll get to. I’m interested in finding out how places are connected up.” <br /><br />There’s a sense of a gentle evangelical urge to Natalie’s feelings about her relationship with her environment. She tells me that “I see Manchester as being my countryside; instead of getting a train out I look for the green places around me.” It’s a vision, or a way of experiencing, that she wants others to have for themselves. “I don’t know when I started getting interested in sharing,” a sentiment I suspect every creative person in history can identify with and ‘sharing’ is the operative word Natalie returns to again and again as she thinks through what it is she does with the material she gathers through wandering. It’s not simply about a simple sharing of places or routes, however. With her zine, the </span><a href="http://theshriekingviolets.blogspot.co.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Shrieking Violet</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, “I want to challenge people’s perceptions. You might be saying it’s not a green city, but I’ve had these experiences,” as we walk a vibrant green corridor cutting the suburban sprawl of south Manchester. “I’ve tried to bring people’s attention to things. I like to be a guide- not so much;” as there’s a retraction from the notion of a person to take you round, point at things and tell you facts; instead “to give people the idea, and they go off and do it. Like the Manchester Left Writers’ films, they’re not setting out to create a particular aesthetic or result. We hoped people would think they could go away and do it too.” You want to inspire rather than instruct, I ask. “Sharing, this is a starting point.” There we are again. <br /><br />For someone whose most recent practice has been primarily writing and publication, the Castlefield Gallery offered “an opportunity to try something new. It was terrifying and exciting.” When younger, Natalie really wanted to be an artist “but I decided against it after A-levels, I had a crisis of confidence.” She picks at the branches as we pass. “I concentrated on writing which I felt I was better at and could develop more. Recently, I’ve thought, actually, I shouldn’t make that distinction. I can just be creative. It all comes from the creative drive and practice. I’ve gone back into singing recently and leant to embrace it, to not worry about it not being my main practice. Embrace the fear of failure, enjoy the process.” <br /><br />We are making our way closer to the A6. Natalie sees writing about this road as a turning point. Initially joining MLW she was “really terrified of their analytical, academic, politicised writing, against my journalistic work about place.” But she enjoyed having people to talk to, and taking some of their writing home, dipping in and out of it, “I didn’t know what to do with it, but I enjoyed it.” One particular piece was about the 192 bus route Stockport to Manchester, a journey that Natalie cycles regularly. “Cycling is a defining part of my life, disproportionate perhaps.” She later describes it in a torrent as a “full-on experience, the sound of it, the constant fear of death, the heightened awareness.” The piece took a long time to write but in the end she was much more comfortable and confident with her abilities. <br /><br />We’re talking about some of Natalie’s more recent inspirations, from the </span><a href="http://diaryofabluestocking.blogspot.co.uk/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Diary of a Bluestocking</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> blog and her encounters with the Manchester Modernist Society through which she met a lot of people who inspired her. As I’m just starting my interview project I ask about her experiences; interviews have been something Natalie has done since school, interviewing bands, through work experience on the Sale and Altrincham Messenger, to her blog and zine where the advantages of having no word count result in greater depth. So she can choose people she admires like the post-war industrial artist and designer William Mitchell, or a series interviewing buskers in Manchester, motivated by her time in Manchester School of Samba, a Manchester busking institution until banned, despite the exuberance they brought to the city streets. “I think that series is one of the best things I’ve done for the Shrieking Violet.” <br /><br />The zine is ‘kind-of’ ongoing, with the imminent publication of the Shrieking Violet Guide to the Public Art of Central Salford: Chapel Street and Salford Crescent, which emerged from a tour Natalie put together for UCLAN undergrads on public art and how Salford is changing. Projects emerge for Natalie from the ways she engages with her landscape. When she moved from the Salford side of Manchester, where she regularly walked along the Manchester Ship Canal and River Irwell, to the northern suburbs of Stockport, it was natural, she says, to ask “which river am I going to walk along” and it feels like a metaphor for her creative projects. There’s even a sense that her exploratory life is one of her creative projects. It could remain a private act of creation if it wasn’t bolstered, as she says; “I have a compulsion to create, and I love to meet people, that’s what I thrive on. I do find, as you know, group situations difficult, I don’t relate well to group dynamics, but one-to-one, that’s a luxury, there’s space for me and them. It’s an in-depth conversation about who you are, what you do. It’s important to have that dialogue.” Then suddenly we’re under the Co-op pyramid, which has caught me utterly by surprise and feels completely alien in this context. <br /><br />“The idea of repeating myself worried me, doing things just because I could and not challenging myself. Then I thought to make it about process.” It’s the word ‘about’ that is given the weight here, as if a change in emphasis here symbolises a movement in the way she thinks about her life as much as about the work she creates. Natalie’s life as a work of practice which threads itself round the streets and bridleways in a web from her home, rewalking and relearning and reorientating, and “I don’t actually know where the Mersey goes from here,” as we try and find our way under the Stockport viaduct which she says must be listed while I wonder how it hasn’t been replaced by something larger and blander. “I recognise what I’m good at, not spread myself too thin. People ask, can I knit or garden, and I’m happy to admit they aren’t where my skills are.” That said, “I’d like to be much better at Spanish, that’s something I tell myself I’d like to pursue one day when I’m retired, or go to the Cervantes Institute. I’ve tried but it doesn’t come naturally, it seems like a disproportionate amount of work.” <br /><br />We’ve taken the A6 north towards Heaton Chapel, and as we talk about the smells of a walk, or in Natalie’s case her cycling into town, and how they’re not seriously considered, we pass a field. With horses. “There you go. I told you. I love how you suddenly come across fields of horses. There, we’re just walking through the city, and there’s a field.” It’s not a triumphant vindication, it’s a joyful confirmation. Natalie knows the city and it continues to unfold surprises to her. In Heaton Chapel, it’s the McVities factory, then through the grease and grime disguised with incense to the traffic lights where it’s the smell of fried chicken, the tarmacy smells, and before us the towers of the city rise up and we fold our way between them.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">conversation with Natalie Bradbury took place along the Mersey between the A34 and A6 on Friday 20 May 2016 from 5pm // @Natalieviolet</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Natalie recommended <a href="http://therudiment.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/clara-casian-better-understanding-of.html"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Clara Casian</span></a>.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1841230055235465368.post-16221818551944437112016-05-31T14:52:00.000-07:002016-06-13T16:03:19.748-07:00Introducing The RudimentIntroducing The Rudiment, this is going to be an occasional series of long-form prose interviews with figures I come across on the cultural scene, speaking to them about their inspirations, experiences and practice, attempting to explore how they work and veering more towards practice and technique than general areas of interest.<br />
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The idea is that the interviewee will choose the circumstances of the interview; where it should take place, how long it will last and such like - although I've recommended that for adequate depth at least 45minutes to an hour should be allowed. They will get a chance to fact-check and a right to reply. They will also then undertake to connect me with someone else I can go to for a subsequent interview.<br />
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I'm hoping that these will build into a good wide-ranging selection of pieces, and not be confined to a particular area of the cultural landscape. As well as writers, actors, directors, composers and musicians, I'm interested to see where this leads me. I expect to make some exciting discoveries along the way.<br />
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I hope you enjoy them. Please do share them around and any comments and discussions they provoke would be very interesting.<br />
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Thanks, markAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01684214149338686005noreply@blogger.com0