Liverpool Biennial 2010: Touched - the book.

Art The pavement outside the headquarters for Liverpool Biennial is an unlikely setting for an attack of the collywobbles and yet just before I stepped through the glass front in order to pick up a gratefully received review copy of Touched – the book, I had to take several deep nervous breaths. Regular readers will remember that I spent almost the whole of the 2010 festival visiting and writing about the experience on the blog and during that time I’d often wondered what was at the nucleus of all the activity.

I knew that it had to be just a plain, simple administrative office, yet it felt like I was crossing a cultural line of demarcation, revealing something which we’re not meant to see in case it punctures the enigmatic façade which is constructed in the years between the festival bursting out across the city’s venues, exciting and confounding the population. I needn’t have worried; because this is a plain, simple administrative office the enigma was retained.

The book (available online here) is similarly enigmatic, largely ignoring, give or take an interview, the creation of the festival and detailing too strongly the curatorial aims in favour of photographically recording the artwork and essays based on the series of Touched Talks held before and during the festival. If the Biennial catalogue was the introduction to an experiment outlining the aims and research methods, this explains the results and suggests areas for further study.

Like the visual arts section of the festival, the Touched Talks transcribed here are a heady mix of the accessible and the impenetrable. A Philosophy of Fidgets wouldn’t be out of place filling the interval of a live concert on Radio 3, as Steven Connor investigates in minute detail the various forms of fidgeting from hair twirling to doodling, with literary allusions when necessary. I’m an inveterate fidgeter participating in most of the displacement activities described.

Coco Fusco’s Defiant Abjection is a useful investigation into the growing protest movement in Cuba, a country which the writer correctly indicated tends to be viewed through an anglophile prism based on its relationship with the US. Bloggers have been branded cyberterrorists and it’s a much needed reminder that for all free health care and the political reforms announced by the other Catro brother in the past few days, it remains a dictatorship in which free expression is quelled.

Ziauddin Sarder suggests (I think) in his essay on art and religion in the twenty-first century that both are part of an eco-system of intellectual thought and that to marginalize either at the expense of the other, through the encroaching element of modernity in society, “limits our critical faculties”. He’s fighting against plurality of thought; if everyone had the same opinion we’d have nothing to argue about. The problem is, of course, when that argument descends into violence.

When you buy the book, my advice is to approach these essays in much the same way as you probably approached the festival, in short bursts, then consume, then contemplate. They perfectly capture the spirit of the Biennial and the hours I spent with them took me straight back to the golden days of exploring the venues never quite sure what I’d find behind the next corner, at the top of the next set of stairs. I wish now that sometimes the artworks also included as many useful footnotes.

Between the Touched Talks, photographer Mishka Henner has been asked, as Paul Domela explains in his introduction, “to focus on the responses of visitors the exhibition and give us glimpses of how art touched the city”. These are usually faces locked in concentration either on the artwork or their mobile phone photographing the artwork, human and digital memory capturing the installations and paintings for later recall which is apt considering the aims of the book.

Humanity still sneaks into the exhibition section which inhabits the larger proportion of the pagination usually in the public realm or to demonstrate the reaction to interactive elements. The experience of flicking through these photographs by Thierry Bal is rather like finding holiday photos from a distant holiday, a flood of memories with each turn of the page and because many have been taken at night there’s also a sense of still being an interloper into private moments.

The Biennial space at Rapid Hardware no longer exists in actuality and yet here it’s remembered and to some extent mourned now that it’s becoming integrated into the usual mass of urban renewal, a Sainsbury’s opening were once stood a garden shed containing a rather good café and shop. The A Foundation has also sadly gone now too of course, but if we close our eyes we can probably still hear the sound of scissors cutting which resonated between its echoing walls.

Even after visiting and writing about the experience on the blog for all of those weeks, I never did quite feel as though I’d completely taken advantage of everything that was on offer having missed most of the talks, and though they’re available on the Biennial website, these transcripts have allowed me to give them due attention with photographs which perfectly capture everything else. Touched – the book is a much needed full stop on the Liverpool Biennial 2010 experience.

Touched - the book is published by Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art.£22.50. ISBN: 978-0-9536761-9-4. Review copy supplied.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Epilogue

Art The Liverpool Biennial completed yesterday and though I missed the closing moments due to work, like Sachiko Abe's final performance at AFoundation, I did think of it and wondered why it had effected me so much this year. Was it that the main theme "touched" had worked its teeth into me or just that because I'd decided to really work at seeing as much as I could for the benefit of this blog, it has just repaid me in kind.

After day one, the excitement continued with the launch in the main hall of St George's Hall, the most entertaining moment of which was watching Lewis Biggs battle against the racket of a performance work, a pile of steel drums being erected in the centre of floor (see above), only once stumbling over his words, then the expectation of the crowd that music would ensue only to find the volunteers posing for pictures.

As my bus passed up Renshaw Street on its usual route into town this morning, I couldn't help peering at the visitor centre hoping for signs of life, that perhaps the Biennial had decided to give it just one more week.  Just one more.  But apart from signs of a final party last night, bottles and paper plates on the picnic tables, the interior lights were off for the first time months.  All gone now.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Feedback: The Good Stuff

Art Yesterday's list of qualifications aren't necessary here.

Quality of the work

The standard of work on display in 2010 has in the main been very high, across all facets of the festival, from the official to independents, some of which, especially in the public realm has been truly unforgettable. Do Ho Suh’s Bridging Home was probably, for me, the best of the festival (see above). The most engaging work has had the capacity to pull us momentarily from our own humdrum reality in that way that is only usually possible in the best fiction, transforming utterly how we look at the world. Time and again I gasped, I gaped, I was giddy. If you want to know what my other favourite work has been, I’d point you in the direction of my reviews; with one or two notable exception I’ve generally followed the policy of only talking about the work I’ve thought was worth talking about.

Iconography

The festival’s iconography was another triumph. The wolf silhouette appeared on posters and street signs, outside venues and across the front of the Biennial catalogue and created buzz simply through their inexplicable existence. Search Google and there are dozens of people asking “Why wolves?” and cleverly an explanation was only forthcoming for those who looked for it, either by engaging with Biennial personal or looking carefully at the merchandising. They were designed by Carlos Amorales who was engaged by the story of Edward I who exterminated the original wolf population of the country in the fifteenth century. Amorales was inspired to give the lupines a revenge of sorts by having the animals spread across the city for the duration of the festival “to create a contemporary folk tale as an image campaign for the Liverpool Biennial and bring back an antique image into our contemporary world.”

52 Renshaw Street

There was perhaps no greater symbol of the ambition of this festival than the placing the Biennial’s visitor centre in as iconic a local landmark as the old Rapid Hardware store. A giant street long advert on the main bus route, it was impossible for the residents of Liverpool this year not to at least have some awareness of the festival even if it was to wonder why some half naked person was lying enigmatically in one of the windows. But more importantly it was literally a shop window for the festival, one of its largest venues containing some of its most confrontational work, festival curator Lorenzo Fusi ably demonstrating the various facets of the Touched theme. Plus there was the sheer novelty of stepping through the automatic doors only to encounter picnic tables and some garden sheds. If only all cafes (which is what this turned out to be) could be this original.

Social Networking

As I mentioned when writing about the Biennial’s representation at the last Social Media Café, unlike previous festivals there’s been a genuine sense of this being an event spread across three months rather than an initial burst of excitement with the Biennial then falling beneath the radar, only really approachable by those in the know, who care to seek it out. One of the reasons for that has been the social networking strategy, of advertising and getting news of the festival out across Twitter and Facebook and blogs and interacting with visitors, making them feel like participants as well as customers. Being invited to the press day was especially instrumental in leading me to offer this much coverage across the festival period rather than the simple top ten which has often constituted my contribution. More than any other year I’m genuinely sorry to see the festival coming to an end.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Feedback: The Bad Stuff.

Art Heavy sigh. Having spent the best part of three months being upbeat about the festival and trying desperately to be its ambassador as best I can, I think it’s only fair, now that it’s nearly over to offer a slight post-mortem on what didn’t work, the frustrations, the annoyances. Note before reading this that I accept this won’t be everyone’s experience and also that people have different standards, are potentially more patient about some of these things than me. I know. I know. And so, in order of annoyance from top to bottom. Let's get this over with quickly shall we?

Maps

Across the years, the Biennial maps have been of variable quality. In 2004 they were so broken I actually had to create a key for myself so that I could find out which other venues where even open in a given area. In terms of the International venues, this year’s was the best yet with big red numbered dots and a clear key as to the locations of the Touched venues and public realm works (even if I spent over half an hour on the first day trying to find the gable end of 24 Fleet Street).

Hidden in amongst those however were the green spots of the SQUAT venues, unnumbered and entirely confusing. Although generally bunched together on the likes of Seel Street some of these green spots didn’t seem to correspond to a venue at all, and although a ferret through the Biennial catalogue usual brought some indication of what I might be looking for I’d argue that finding an exhibition space shouldn’t be an act of detective work. On one occasion I was so exhausted by the time I got there I wasn't much in the mood to look at the work.

Information

Or more specifically a lack of consistent signage. Whilst I had a magical day on Seel Street visiting the SQUAT and Independent venues, I missed a couple more because I hadn’t realised the otherwise normal looking house or whatever was an art venue to and not happening by when it was actually open. Part of the problem with the map could have been solved if some kind of logo had been placed on the front of a given building indicating that this was part of the Biennial too and which strand. The official Biennial wasn't entirely immune to this as my odyssey around the Black-E demonstrates.

And in this new world, when people have less time to themselves, the more information they have about what to expect at these ad-hoc venues the better. There’s nothing more dispiriting than walking miles only to be confronted with a video work you don’t have time to watch all of the way through or a tiny exhibition containing a few paintings. I know this isn’t just true of the Biennial, but a festival that prides itself on being dipped in and out of should at least be able to say if something can be seen in a lunchtime.

Noise

Too often my experience of an exhibition was spoilt by the ambient noise. Sometimes this was due to the poor placement of a work, complex video art in an essentially public place were the noise of life outside meant that it was sometimes impossible to give my full attention to a work. Sometimes it was other visitors, quiet moments with paintings ruined by someone standing nearby with a mobile phone. None of which can be helped.

But sometimes, in fact often if I’m being honest, it was the staff.  When I worked as an invigilator one of the things I was very conscious of was making sure that the visitor wasn’t disturbed from the reason they were visiting, the art. But over and over again I’d be unable to hear a video piece or I’d have my concentration blown because of gossip or some meeting or other about the internal workings of the venue and in one case the invigilator conducting a long, loud mobile phone conversation that reverberated around the building.

Am I being intolerant? Probably. Just unlucky? Maybe and I should add that my experience of the invigilators in some venues was exemplary, especially when they were obviously passionate about the work and keen to make me passionate too. When you're travelling about the Biennial alone, this can often be the only human interaction you have all day and in most cases it was very welcome. On a couple of occasions I even questioned my own customer service abilities because they didn't match up.

But there at two venues in particular the staff were especially insensitive and I had to leave a section of an exhibition in the case of one and the venue in total in the other because I was just wasting my time.  How do you broach a subject like this?  Can you stop screeching about so that I can listen properly to how this woman lost her baby, please?  The presentation of an artist’s work isn’t just about bricks and mortar but the whole experience and I just don't think a visitor shouldn’t be expected to make these kinds of allowances.

Conclusion

Again, please take this criticism in the spirit within which it was meant and with the proviso that I'm not the best navigator, have a habit of overlooking things and can be pretty cantankerous for my age. I just thought it important for the purposes of this blog to give an overall picture of the experience but to do so outside all of the opinionating about the art. None of this was enough to spoil my experience of the Biennial as a whole.  This has been a magical, magical time, as I'll explain when I write about the good stuff.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: MA Fine Art Exhibition at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Duckinfield Street.

Art Seems strange to think that in just over two weeks the Biennial will be over. Will there be a party? I can but hint. Having reached all of the main venues, there's just time to try and locate some of the smaller shows, at least those which are still open. The Liverpool School of Art and Design MA Fine Art Exhibition sits in an exhibition space at the back of the building, its mostly glass walls looking out onto Brownlow Hill, somewhat resembling one of the living rooms Kevin McCloud gets excited about. Another venue I didn't know existed until someone put an exhibition there.

In one corner are the results of a twelve month research project by Jane Fairhurst and Tim Fielding into the now not so new town of Skelmesdale in collaboration with Lancashire Museums and the North West Film Archive. There are original planning models for the houses and shops, and though a contemporary video shows the area after forty years of rot, it's impossible not to feel the sense of hope seeping out of the contemporary promo films with their vibrant editing and excited, if not entirely convincing voice over which includes such lines as "residents can enjoy the fresh air blown in from the sea ... just twelve miles away ..." (my emphasis).

But aesthetically, my favourites in this show are David Hancock's numerous illustrations or to list their titles in full, Crash #2, Crash #3, Raw, Hero, Auto and Crash #1. These are a series of near monochrome watercolours of various youngsters playing Playstation games (judging by the controllers) against white backgrounds. Beautifully detailed each retains the intensity of play in each pair of eyes as well as the blank face of concentration, accentuated by that blank background which suggests that the only world that now exists for them is on the screen.  I would invite gamers to visit and see if Hancock is holding a mirror up to them.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Sachiko Abe, Antti Laitinen and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries at AFoundation.

Art Visiting AFoundation is always a disconcerting experience. I worked there, as an invigilator, during the 2006 Biennial and each time I've walked around since it's been impossible not to look at the spaces without filtering them through the memory of the work which I knew so well from back then, dozens of installations strewn through the many rooms. It's especially difficult this year, since only two artists are represented. The spaces seem particularly spartan though I imagine someone else might consider it a pleasure to be able to see work in such an uncluttered atmosphere.

Drawing the most media curiosity during the opening and somewhat since is Sachiko Abe, not least because unlike most of the performance artists who graced us with their presence during the opening weekend, she's stayed and continued her work rather than leaving the aftermath in the space for those of us coming late to ponder (see this Min Oh). Abe is still offering matinee "performances" twice or thrice daily and it's one of the most intense experiences I've had during the festival.  Judging by the comments at the AFoundation's blog, I'm not the only one who feels that.

In Cut Paper, the old factory floor at the back of the building is now entirely empty but for, at the centre, a giant constructed of web of paper drawn upwards to the ceiling like a spider's web. The giant space echoes with the sound of scissors cutting and we look up to see the source, Abe sitting on a small balcony above the manager's office delicately shaving around the edges of the paper pieces of which fall to the concrete ground. She's deliberate, intent and undistracted by my plodding presence blundering about. Below her sits an invigilator, in the case of my visit reading a book and trying to blend in.

The visitor participates simply by being there, simply by looking.  It's captivating. A religious person might search for some kind of spirituality in the scene, some deeper meaning being expressed. I on the other hand pondered the level of concentration required, not just to cut the pages with this skill but to also ignore all other distractions, though photography I think is banned now so that must help. Throughout the period I was in there, she didn't flinch, only now and then stopping in a bid to reignite the momentum of the cutting.  Which she always did.

But there is also the concentration of the invigilator; when no visitors are passing through it's simply them and this living sculpture and the constant sound of the cutting. They only interact at the close of each performance though Abe is clearly open to questions. The invigilator told me that Abe has been cutting this paper for over six years and that initially it was just something she did to pass the time, only later did she turn it into a performance, perhaps realising that it's always best to try and make money from the thing you're good at.

Sharing the AFoundation is a retrospective of Antti Laitinen's work from the past decade which also includes the artist himself creating a site specific piece, a wooden boat which will eventually set sail. Laitinen was indisposed when I visited so I concentrated on the video records of his earlier pieces.  In it's own way, It's My Island, is just as compulsive an expression as Abe's cutting as he constructs a tiny desert island made from sandbags in what looks like the middle of an ocean. His motive seems to be to demonstrate that even though no man is and island, this one man can at least build one.

Until 28th November. 

Across the way is Bloomberg New Contemporaries the annual exhibition of work by recent graduates and new artists, this time selected by Mexican artist Gabriel Kuri, Turner Prize winner Mark Leckey and painter Dawn Mellor. As ever it's a bit of a mixed bag with plenty of work in which an artist hasn't had the funding to follow through with it, plenty of money but no good ideas or precious little of either. But as I've discovered with all my failures, you don't discover what works until you at least try. David Hockney and Paula Rego are both alumni. And Damien Hirst too if you think that's a good thing.

Both of my favourites hinge on great ideas, literally in the case of Theodoros Stramatogiannis's Untitled. Yes, I know I have a general disdain for "untitled" but this is worth making an exception for since as an object it's perfectly legible. It's a door. A massive white door which constitutes the entrance door to the exhibition and stretches well into the space (causing the visitor to have to dodge around it), which looks almost but not exactly like the doors I have in my flat apart from the fact that its seven of them all stuck together.  And it has a lock.

It's simplistic, it's surprising, and once I'd realised what was going on I was skipping about on my feet saying "It's a door, a massive door" in a way I've not done since being Le Defence in Paris and shouting at The Grand Arch, "The Grand Arch! It's a grand arch." Brilliantly (according to this explanation) its purpose is to simply draw attention itself and that it's up to the viewer to decide if this apparent doorway is instead functioning as a wall. In other words what John Cleese says of the TARDIS in this video:



But the award for a little going a long way is Daniel Cichtman's Untitled in which artistic endevour is reduced to a Power Point presentation displaying a series of letters which its implied where written by him as a child. They're not terribly detailed, are often filled with mundane items about breakfast and friends (oddly always listing using their full name, christian and sur-) slowly building up a picture of a suburban middle class family with all of the compulsion and subtle pain of some of the more melancholy stories of This American Life and it's impossible to take your eyes away.

Until 14th November.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Tactful Rituals in the "Quebec Pavillion", part of City States in the NOVAS Contemporary Urban Centre.

Art If the intention of certain aspects of City States is to offer a tantalising taste of the Biennial’s rival festivals in other corners of the world, it more than succeeds. Passing into the area designated Quebec Pavilion, for example, an exhibition called Tactful Rituals it’s impossible not feel the sense of entering a different cultural époque (because I can’t think of another word), even if the actual work isn’t that different, especially since the Touched part of the Biennial gathers international artists anyway.

In Catherine Sylvain’s Femme-Chien we’re confronted by Yuly, a two metre tall inflatable white dog behind which is a tiny screen showing her embracing the plastic animal on a traffic island in Montreal in 2003 (or is it Mantrevil, France in 2007?). She trying to understand why she saw more man/dog pairings on the streets than man/woman couple. It’s the Roger Sanchez video for dog lovers with the public surrealism of a Dom Jolly skit. What I wasn’t sure about was whether I should be hugging Yuly too; I decided against it. The gallery might not have a puncture repair kit.

Also worth noting are Adad Hannah’s two video pieces. Four Hands shows a table filled with food with some hands hovering above just ready to pounce. The more interesting Dinner Date offers a girl climbing over a table in a cafe to kiss her Chris Martin alike manfriend, limbs all over the place. Both initially seem like freeze frames, but after not too long we notice that the hands are quivering and that the kiss is causing both of the participants to look increasingly uncomfortable; these are actors recreating in actuality what a dvd pause button might do virtually.

The kiss is sustained for eight minutes and we can’t help watching to see if it progresses at all and yet through an act of certain will power, neither laughs at the predicament, no stage giggles. What we have instead is a piece that becomes increasing erotic as it progresses and we take in the different elements of the moment, were their hands are, the aftermath of the movement on the geography of the table and question if this is meant to represent a spontaneous act. My only disappointment is that we don’t see the aftermath the moment when they have to break because they’re unable to hold the pose any longer.

Until 28 November.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Cristina Lucas at Europleasure International Ltd.

Art Look at this photograph, really look at it. Because I stood in front of the building taking it, stood for a few minutes deciding on the correct angle, waiting for the cars to be in the right position, waiting for the pavement to clear, worked for the composition I wanted and at no point did I notice what had happened to the windows, not until I was uploading the thing to flickr ready for posting here. Even though it's perfectly obvious from the picture in the mock-up in the Biennial catalogue too, even though it's the title of the work itself.

But Cristina Lucas's Touch and Go has plenty of surprises. A fusion between installation and video piece, inside the building, accessible via the Scandinavian Hotel and past the room inhabited by the Alfredo Jaar piece, a film is being projected in which a series of older, respectable looking people, unionists, hurl bricks and stones at the building breaking these windows, aptly representing and re-igniting the public unrest of 1968. The screen is set on the floor of the building which still has, strewn across the it, the aftermath of the video, the broken glass and I think stones.

The surprise is that one of my neighbours is in there, proudly giving a house brick some welly, catching a window pain at a good angle. I've known her for nearly twenty years (blimey) and it's the last thing I would expect to ever see her doing, so proudly and with such a sense of defiance. But perhaps conscious that adults should not be seen to be doing anything too destructive, the brick enters slow motion as it hits each window pain and jingles as we see an interior shot of it flying through the air thereby nullifying, just a little bit, its destructive threat.

Until 28 Nov.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Touched Talk: Nina Power on The Wound of Work.

Philosophy Nina Power is amazing, and I use that adjective very specifically. Words spill out of her, but not just any words, but clever words, intelligent words, intimidating words and although as she might admit herself they’re not always coherent words, as I discovered tonight, to listen to one of her lectures is to find oneself at the epicentre of an intellectual tsunami, your brain sprouting its own metaphorical limbs in a vain attempt to keep afloat against the encroaching tide. It’s impossible to process everything. Often she’ll use phrases like “circuits of desire” but is so florid that her next thought is already forthcoming before the rest of us have even sensed or managed what we’ve just heard.  She's like verbal caffeine.

Lord knows what it's like to be one of her philosophy students at Roehampton University where she's a senior lecturer, especially if all of her seminars are this stimulating. In The Wound of Work, Power employed Herve Juvin and John Howe’s book The Coming of the Body and Melanie Gilligan's art film Popular Unrest (which looks like Flash Forward directed by Alain Resnais) to investigate how our own bodies have become the only element of value in the world and how in the post-Fordist society everything we do when we’re not sleeping has an element of work involved, with an assignable value. The boundaries between work and leisure no longer exist, the two are inextricably linked and that there's not now anything we can do about it.

During the inevitable Q&A I wondered if indeed, if that was the case, if rebellions against work in the form of strikes aren’t in and of themselves an important and productive part of the work process, a kind of system of checks and balances which stop a business from going to far in one direction, perhaps even to financial doom (noting as an example the single photograph in the Tehching Hsieh piece at FACT Liverpool where the artist breaks uniformity by throwing his hair in front of his face in one of the photos). In other words that strikes are a necessary way of increasing productivity. Power noted that the leaders by putting an end to solidarity and restricting the reasons why people can strike, reaffirmed the hierarchical structure.

Note I’ve just gussied up what I really said which was a stream of consciousness that stretched on for what might have been an eternity. At least at the end of Power’s lecture, when she’d made what she thought was the final point she said, “Ok, that’ll do” apologising that she didn’t have a better ending. This blog post doesn’t either really. Other than to say that when the Q&A strayed onto the topic of social networking it inadvertently led to a realisation for the person sitting my chair that, as the Wachowski brothers prophesied (and the people they borrowed from), we now live in a society were probably if someone disconnects from the web, they almost cease to exist. Is that why I’m still blogging after all these years?

Nina Power's book, One-Dimensional Woman is out now.

Update: Nina's talk has now been posted by the Biennial so you'll be able to hear me stutter through my question:

Touched Talks: Nina Power from Liverpool Biennial on Vimeo.

Isn't that remarkable? [via]

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Marina Rosenfeld's P.A. in the old Renshaw Hall now car park on Benson Street.

Art Last night was the visually stunning if slightly chaotic Lantern Parade in Sefton Park of which flickr is awash with images. But during the Biennial, Liverpool is also wired for sound in various spots, one of which is the old Renshaw Hall now converted into a car park. On the far wall opposite the entrance are two massive gramophone-type speakers which like many other items in this Biennial appear to have dropped in from another dimension, in this case one were Bosh are at the steam punk cutting edge contrasting sharply with the formal metal girders and mechanisation of the cars.

Assuming the audio has been turned on (I had to phone the visitors centre and a volunteer duly rushed in and pressed the relevant buttons) the speakers vacilate with a series of disjointed and uncertain electronic sounds and random eerie voices of no fixed explanation. Rosenfeld seems to be primarily an atonal musician who also likes to create installation art (of which there are plenty of examples here).  Allow the sounds to wash over you and an anarchic pattern eventually does emerge.  That she gave an interview to experimental radio station Resonance FM underscores the genre within which she works.

Stand for long enough beneath the speakers and you slowly realise that there is a complex web of performance at play. Firstly we stand and listen to the "music" from the speakers. The music is also being performed ambivalently for the functionary visitors to the car park, perhaps not even aware of its existence as they park their cars. But the sound they make, the engines stopping, children, shouting, laughing, mobile phones ringing add an extra complexity to Rosenfeld's soundscape, almost becoming harmonious within the echoey space.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Marianna Mørkøre and Rannvá Káradóttir's Magma in the Nordic Pavillion as part of City States in the NOVAS Contemporary Urban Centre.

Art When it first opened/began broadcasting, Channel 4, faced with the twin dilemma of a charter obligation to service minority interests and fill hours of television with a tiny budget, offered a far more eclectic set of programmes than we're used to now.  As anyone who's watched the rather good Adam and Joe survey will know that included some fairly way out material, the likes of Naked Yoga, Laurie Anderson and Countdown with its rumoured Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain broadcast in the same timeslot as our generation's version, Grand Designs.

I wasn't old enough to appreciate any of this of course, watching Moonlighting and Dallas on the other side instead.  I've often wondered what my reaction would be and I hope and expect it would something akin to the enthusiasm with which I greeted Marianna Mørkøre and Rannvá Káradóttir's Magma, a five minute short film exploring minimalist movement projected behind a screen in the Nordic Pavilion (more of a room hidden at the back of one of the exhibition spaces) which was a mix of "Oh wow" and "Oh this must have been what it was like to see O Superman for the first time" and "I can't wait to see what else they've done."

This trailer offers just a flavour of what is one of my favourite pieces of the Biennial.  In Magma, a group of girls portray what might be futuristic nuns lost on a kind of manic retreat in the wilderness (or the Faroe Islands) taking part in a ritual that looks like it has the capacity to shake the foundations of the planet.  After a time, some kind of initiation ceremony takes place, perhaps suggesting the moment when a girl becomes a woman, but it's not clear.   Nothing's clear, but for once, because the imagery is so mesmerising both in terms of editing and lighting, I don't care, I just let it wash over me.

Just the sort of thing to fill the gap between Ken Loach's latest Film on 4 and Club X, alongside a rerun of some ancient Bunuel/Dali effort defaced by a red triangle in the corner of the screen.  Shot on 8mm, featuring dancers in strange costumes against a barren landscape and employing haphazard editing, a less intended reference point is the behind the scenes footage and production stills that appear in the extras on Doctor Who dvds, perhaps for some lost 60s Troughton, featuring some cousins of the Drahvins ready to fight off an attack by the Yeti, a suitably stimulated Fraser Hines just off camera waiting for the end of the rehearsal.

Until 30th November.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Me at number 22.

About In other news, Creative Tourism's latest top 25 UK Arts & Culture Blogs list is out and "I'm" still there, holding on at number 22, something I can only attribute to all the Biennial coverage since there are plenty of better blogs than "me" on there.

Other local interest: Ella's Run Paint Run Run, Ian & Minako's Art in Liverpool and The FACT Blog. Congratulations to them.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Social Media Cafe at 52 Renshaw Street.

Liverpool Life One of the many successes in this year's Biennial is the increase in their presence across the range of social media employing it as a promotional tool, both to mass publicise events and exhibitions and as a promotional tool to allow people to interact with a festival, which in previous years has had a tendency to be a bit monolithic and distant, on a more personal basis, the pinnacle an offline ARG game across the streets of Liverpool.

The process of this strategy was described in some detail in the first talk of the latest Social Media Cafe, held last night at the information centre for the Biennial, in an area tucked just behind some sheds, very public yet also somewhat private. Head of marketing for the Biennial Antony Pickthall and mastermind of the strategy Alistair Beech unfolded across a range of slides how the audience has responded in kind with exponential increases in followers and genuine engagement.

The result, at least for me, has been that the Biennial has felt like a genuine festival something ongoing across the three months, unlike some previous years when, after the initial opening weekend's burst of excitement for most of us punters everything has died down a little (although I'm willing to accept it could also be because I've worked at it -- perhaps festivals are like relationships -- if you want to be rewarded you need to put in the commitment).

All of the talks shared this artistic theme. Peter Goodbody explained the history of the FAB Collective, the group of Liverpool photographers whose work I've previously enthused about, which at its heart, like the Social Media Cafe itself and all of these events, shows how the web allows people to gather under-common interests virtually (oh what did we do before flickr?) before taking that interaction to this so-called real world and the ensuing problems which can sometimes occur when that interaction goes back online again.

The final introduction was from Adeyinka Olushonde to the FENG office suite which is being employed at the back and for the Liverpool Arts Regenerataion Consortium's online map and calender website, larcmap.com which is being used to promote participatory arts programmes throughout the North West and to track were council investment is actually going. The plan, all being well, from what I understood, is that it'll eventually expand to cover all the arts and sport, anything cultural which brings people together.

Update: Alistair Houghton of the Daily Post, who's rather handy with shorthand, has a longer, more detailed review that includes quotes from the speakers.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Future Movements, part of City States in the NOVAS Contemporary Urban Centre.

Art  Something which I've often wondered about and some of this Biennial has put into sharp focus, is if, like so many other art forms, exhibitions have an optimal duration.  In other words, if some exhibitions demand a stroll or some a glance and if, when we get this wrong we're doing the work a disservice.  Does some work only fall apart if we dawdle too long over it, think too long about it and in contrast the work which must be experienced over a longer period is misunderstood because we lack the patience or time to dedicate to it?

Other than the obvious, a greater understanding of what it’s like to live in contemporary Jerusalem, the Future Movements section of City States seems also designed to demonstrate the latter, that some art takes time.  I spent just over an hour strolling about this small room, letting each video and audio piece play for its full duration.  As other visitors stepped through briefly, I was uncertain if they were really getting the most from the work, if they could really say they’d seen the exhibition. In seeking the instant cultural hit, they missed everything.

Certainly if they simply glimpsed Boucha Khalidi’s Mapping Journey #3, all they’d see is a video of a map with a pen scrawling across it. But absorb the subtitles and the story of the artist and they’d discover as I did, that he was describing the journey from Ramallah to Jerusalem to see his girlfriend before and after the blockade, in which what was once a fifteen minute car trip has become an epic trail through remote villages and hills so as to avoid checkpoints, a Michael Winterbottom road movie in three minutes.

What would the dozen or so people who opened the curtain at the doorway to the pitch black room in which I sat and listened to Jakob Jakonsen’s The Ramallan Lecture have made of the scene? Me on the floor (no chairs) listening intently as an actress, Marina Vismidt spun out across fifteen minutes these vignettes of life by the Danish artist, visiting friends, navigating the streets, being hassled by a stranger about the infamous cartoons, punctuated now and then by illustrative photographs lit up briefly on the walls.

Over and over, light would flood in from the doorway, I’d lock eyes with a visitor and then the curtain would close. The effect wasn’t unlike a live version of that Silas Fong piece in the basement and each time I hoped someone would join me and we could share the experience. No one did.  If I was a paranoid person, I might assume it was something to do with me and my scary features, but it's most likely that they simply didn't have the time.  Well, the text of the piece is available here (and far more besides).

Which is fine, except, once the visitor has realised the satire at the heart of Anna Brogan's How Long Is A Piece Of String 2001-10 which employs maps of the world to express the implications of the Israeli separation wall, all of the prints seem to be making the same point and its time to move on.  Similarly, the sensory overload of Bassel Abbas and Ruanne Abou Rahme's Contingency 2010 with its mirrored walls, white noise and LED displays barking orders recreating life in Ramallah demands a short sharp shock.

Perhaps it's that the work dictates our approach and we need to be attuned to that or that it's up to the artist or connected information to indicate the optimum length of time they think is required to consume a piece of art.  Two minutes for Larissa Sanour's A Space Exodus (2009) in which she shoots herself, Defying Gravity-style on the first Palestinian moon mission, longer for Jaws Al Malhi's Tower of Babel Revisited 2009 panoramic shot of Jerusalem, the wall winding through.

Whatever.  In the basement later, just before visiting Zone East, I heard an invigilator enthusing about the Future Movement exhibition to a colleague.  "I just didn't know this was happening..." she said meekly, "...I just didn't."  None of us really can.  What I do know, is that in offering an emotional rather than a purely factual response to the situation, I potentially learnt as much in this couple of hours about these cities and their contemporary problems than a dozen news reports.

Until 28th November.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Elish Culley's An Element of Curiosity at Studio2 and John Hoyland at 3345 in the Parr Street Studios.

Art Since I'm still sniffling after being poorly ill/feeling sorry for myself for four days/man flu I hope you won't mind my brevity in considering Parr Street Studios, especially since the exhibition which was at the 3345 bar upstair, a selection of John Hoyland's abstract paintings, finished a week ago. This Google search offers a flavour of what you missed and Hoyland was interviewed on The Culture Show last year.

Other exhibitions continue at the 3345. Check press for details.

On the ground floor, at Studio2, is An Element of Curiosity, a collection of photographs by Elish Culley collected over the past five years. Photography, especially wildlife photography, always works best on a larger scale and Culley's splash their colour across A3, including a rather good shot of some cows grazing against a hill and sky picked out in primary colours.

Until 30 Nov.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Media Landscape: Zone East in the basement of the NOVAS Contemporary Urban Centre. Continued.

Art Part of the City States strand, the show gathers together artists from across the Far East, twelve different countries to demonstrate that right now it's impossible to catagorise media art, that like so many of disciplines the barriers have broken down and that artists no longer feel constrained in how they project their vision (other than money but let's not talk about that on today of all days). Most of the work appears on plasma screens, though there are some projections and nearly all require the use of headphones which means that the interaction is mostly one to one or two which makes the experience rather more intimate than at most venues at the Biennial featuring video art.

As I hope was conveyed in yesterday's post about the Silas Fong piece, this basement exhibition is filled with unexpected delights, not least the venue itself which as you can see from the photo above is a black hole in comparison to the bright light of the usual white cube spaces and far more atmospheric. Visually similar to the Cavern Club, it's also rather like a Christmas Grotto for adults, but instead of a recreation of Santa's factory or an unlicensed Disney tale, we have a collection of thematically complex stories and other rather magical fancies most of which work best without much prior knowledge, pinioned as they are on the moment when we realise what's happening, what the piece is about.  I'm about to spoil just two of the pieces.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Silas Fong's Stolen Times for Sale at Media Landscape: Zone East in the basement of the NOVAS Contemporary Urban Centre.

Art Just when you assume that you’ve seen everything there is to see online, you stumble upon the YouTube lift collectors and realise that it will never end. The YouTube lift collectors (or whatever collective noun they might go under) gathers on their profiles hundreds and hundreds of recordings of themselves travelling in lifts, all of them almost exactly the same, the only obvious difference being the location.



Some admittedly have a historic interest (see above) but most contain a near identical mix of glass and steel (see below). Over and over we hear the name and make of lift and location as they initially rush through the doors (information which is then diligently replicated in the title of the video). We watch as they select a floor, hesitating long enough to show a clear view of the buttons. We see a shot of the closed doors, perhaps accompanied by some commentary. Then the doors open again at the destination.



Their motivation must be similar to bus or train spotters of which there are many too on YouTube, or else they’re in competition, who can upload the most to the web, catch them all? The videos span the globe, lifters (?) in countless countries collecting, though it’s also a tragic reminder of how the whole world is turning into a giant urban landscape, millions of lifts taking humanity, upwards, then downwards.

But what struck me on discovering the phenomena, especially as I also scrutinise the Biennial, is how, if these videos were being projected in an art gallery, perhaps strung together in a collection running for minutes or hours, we visitors wouldn’t bat an eyelid; we’d spend minutes indeed pondering the very issues I’ve just discussed in the previous landscape, of man dehumanising his habitat.

That's what Silas Fong has tapped into in Stolen Times for Sale currently displaying on an upturned plasma screen at the Media Landscape: Zone East show in the basement of Novas. From what we can gather the artist has set up a camera outside a lift which, on remote control, stops and opens its doors so that he can film the reaction of passengers who did not request this floor.

Over and over we watch as doors open, the people peer out, then select their intended floor again and the doors close. It’s compulsive especially when the lift is full and a dozen sets of eyes all boggle with surprise on seeing us (or as is more probable the camera lens now pointed in their direction), eleven sets of eyes then momentarily glancing at the person nearest the buttons.

As the title implies, the artist is stealing moments from these lives as he pulls them out of the natural progression of their day; there may be cause and effect even, these could be the vital seconds that later lead them to missing a bus or train, extending the stolen time. That’s more noticeable when the passenger is focused on reading or texting or daydreaming and it takes even longer for them to react to the lift stopping.

In some respects it’s not too far away from Trigger Happy TV or its ancestor Candid Camera in capturing the reaction of the great mass of us when thrown into an abnormal situation. As ever, it’s all about intent. If someone declares themselves to be an artist – and as in Fong’s case has an international reputation then the work they display is art (with due respect to Joseph Beuys).

Plus, the video doesn’t just exist in a single form. The artist has genuinely sold these seconds at previous exhibitions, supplied to the visitor on disc, with a price based on various factors such as duration. Though the version at Novas is uncut, this YouTube upload includes captions that show which moments have previously been claimed:



I’m reminded of the original commercialisation of film, in which Mitchell and Kenyon and their contemporaries would pitch their camera in front of a factory or at some event and then hand out flyers coaxing their subject to come and see themselves on screen at a special show that evening. Except in this case, it’s strangers buying portions of other strangers lives. Shouldn’t they be receiving a cut of the profits?



Until 20th November.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Hacking your enjoyment.

Art The Guardian's published an "insider's guide to the arts", a kind of cultural life hacker. There are a couple of items which are certainly pertinent to getting the most out of the Biennial:

What's the best way to enjoy an exhibition?

Rain is always useful; it's the perfect weather for introspection. And mid-afternoon, midweek – when it's always nice and quiet.

Jennifer Higgie, co-editor, Frieze magazine

I'd add that it's still a good idea to have some music with you for those times when deep quiet or silence is impossible and you want to block out distractions. Loud classical seems to be best, some exultant Bach or one of the Beethoven symphonies. The problem with rock music is your brain starts making connections that aren't there.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Gareth Kemp and Nick Sykes at Bold Street Coffee.

Art On the days I've been "doing the Biennial", after much initial humming and harring (due to the usual malfunction in my decision engine), lunch has been taken at the Bold Street Coffee shop, an (as far as I can tell) independent cafe which was built on the rubble of the old Coffee Union.

Having only been open a few months, it still has an eager quality of wanting to please. There's a fascinating production diary here which underscores the many choices the owner had to make in relation to how the coffee would be made and how the fixtures effect the kind of mood that he's trying to create.

I do like the relaxed atmosphere of the place, young yet mature, like the suburban French cafes that appear in the films of the French New Wave (with no smoking). On my first visit, a Jean Seberg lookalike asked me to watch her belongings while she went to the toilet. Aaah romance!

The food is tasty, the ham and mustard sandwich a particular favourite.  I haven't risked the coffee yet, since as we know caffeine and art don't really mix with me.  I don't want a repeat of my shaky lollop through the Whitworth Art Gallery.  What I can say that it's the kind of place that carries copies of Monocle as idle reading material.

It's also a venue for the Independents Biennial and a rather good selection of paintings from Nick Sykes and Gareth Kemp which are well worth seeing if you're in the mood for something a bit existential.  Sykes attempts to create bleak urban spaces, but blurring the shapes to the point of abstraction.

Kemp, who I know from saying hello to at private views and because we worked under the same roof once, has spent several years painting snowy wastelands inspired by a selection of old family photographs employing an unusual approach to composition in an attempt to unsettle the viewer.

Like so many of the works at this Biennial, what both of seem to be attempting is to communicate the more abstract aspects of their memory to the viewer, Kemp obviously more literally than Sykes.  This certainly isn't the kind of identikit prints that coffee shops usually cover their walls with.  Good.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Hector Zamora at Mann Island.

Art Like many of the new public realm items listed in the Biennial guide, Hector Zamora's Synclastic/Anticlastic isn't accompanied by a specific explanation of the piece but rather a general overview of the artist's previous work. We're told by curator Lorenzo Fusi that Zamora carries out "extensive research into the socio-political topographies, as well as playing on the inhabitants' collective memories, myths and desires".

The artist deliberately occupies sites that are off the beaten track, presumably in an attempt to introduce the city's population to areas they might not necessarily have given much mind to. In Bogata, he filled the entire floor of an old building with bananas (one of the main exports of the city), then left them to rot, the decomposition process allowing nature in all its shades to reclaim this man made space. Which must have ponged a bit too.

In introducing us to Mann Island, Zamora has elected to recreate nature using man-made materials. Between the construction site for the new Open Eye Gallery and an office block, beneath a glass canopy, the artist has positioned dozens of concrete "shell structures" of varying shapes. Walking beneath them, I wondered exactly what they might be, these concrete kites whose title infers are mathematically unstable.

Then I glanced at the Mersey and realised: they're concrete sea gulls in various stages of flight, swooping, gliding, falling, an entire flock of them. The shadowy photos in the catalogue barely do them justice when seen in this landscape, against the sky when we look up, or the Wirral across the water in another direction, Liverpool's architectural heritage in another.  I wonder if there's also cheeky a reference to the liver birds which also perch high above them.

There's a paradox inherent in the positioning of the piece, perhaps an example of the playful irony Fusi also refers to in his introduction. The installation has been made on a building site, presumably so that the concrete of the wings can mirror the shades of the pillars holding up the buildings on either side. We're on a main road too, and so the area is flushed with noise, drilling and traffic. Security guards and workmen pace around in fluorescent safety tabards shouting into mobile phones.

Yet the shapes, which also resemble Japanese origami cranes demand meditation, demand silence, even demand concentration and it was very tempting to simply lay down on the floor and simply sit and look at them, imagine that they're not two hundred birds, but one bird frozen in time on two hundred occasions like a three dimensional Muybridge photograph. Luckily I had some Bach with me which was the next best thing.