The festival had an ambition of attracting internationally renowned artists while retaining a clearly sense of locality, and of the exhibits that we saw for one day in the city, it seems to have achieved this. But we began by making our way from Forster Square via the 'hole in the ground' - the disaster that was to be the half-excavated Westfield Shopping Centre, which now dominates a huge part of the city centre to the north west. At least they have now taken down most of the signs promising 'urban energy' and other nonsense (ridiculed in Owen Hatherley's new ruins of Britain). A particulalrly half-hearted attempt at an 'urban garden' occupies the section that isn't a huge hole, but at the moment (and even in the bright autumn sunshine) this 'temporary' intervention only serves to depress the spirits further. We also later found out that this was in fact one of the sites of the festival - but the photographs stuck onto blue hoardings hardly shouted out 'outdoor gallery space'.
At the one of central sites for the festival, the national media museum, we were distracted by the hugely popular exhibition of retro computer games in the foyer before making our up to the Donovan Wylie exhibition. Having been awarded the 'Bradford Fellowship' he had meticulously documented the everyday and mechanical nature of sites of conflict, in Northern Island and Afghanistan. The landscapes photos, almost all of military outposts, are packed with incidental detail and were fascinating to stare at, with the scale and lack of people making the photos appear more like intricate scale models of battlefield gun emplacements and radar posts.
Next up, the Gallery 2 at the NMM had a retrospective of the early work of Daniel Meadows. As a newcomer to his work documenting British life (particularly in the 1970s and 80s), I was enthralled by human portraits of people on one Manchester street, the colourful moments captured at the Butlins holiday camps and documentary videos of the 'Omnibus' tour around Britain, undertaken in his early 20s. For me, this (apparently well known) piece of work got to the heart of the 'Ways of Seeing'; both in the political spirit of this free portrait service, and the subsequent documentation of the moments captured - then reunited with their owners 30 or so years later, which often left a sad trace about the passing of time and snatched memories.
Leaving the NMM and heading via a fry-up in the sunshine, we got to the relatively newly opened 'Impressions Gallery'. This forms the 'cultural bit' of a slightly uninspiring arcing commerical development that forms one edge to the 'regenerated' Centenary Square (ie its going to have some new granite paving, funky shaped seats and a new lighting scheme). The urban realm has yet to be finished, but the given some of the other occupants of the new units (budget drinking establishments) the future 'success' of this public space is still in doubt. Our arrival at Impressions coincided with one of the festival talks - on curating photography - but unfortunately (not being particularly interested in this subject) the lack of a dedicated event space here meant that it put the rest of the Red Saunders exhibition out of bounds - not too good for a Saturday afternoon!
This wasn't too big a deal, because the aspect of the festival that first drew me in was the four interactive 'adventure games' created by Invisible Flock, which also began from the base in Impressions. These games, each designed around mobile phones and semi-scripted treasure-hunt style routes across the city centre are another good local precedent for the work I hope to be implementing next year. Unfortunately this event also began with a let down. As the artist's assistant at the gallery explained - the augmented reality / QR technology for our preferred route only worked on Android phones and even then was prone to be 'buggy'. Sure enough, 5 minutes outside of the gallery and the first tile (hidden on the exterior of the crumbling Odeon cinema opposite) failed to scan. Undeterred, we opted to try out a different route that relied on far simpler SMS technology and 'physical clues' scattered across the museums and public spaces of Bradford. Structured around John Ruskin, early Daguerreotype photography, and a riddle about the sea this became a hugely enjoyable 2 hours, and even though it took us back into places we had already visited (the bloody Urban Garden) it demonstrated many of the pervasive / immersive elements that make this art form 'work' so well in the context of urban exploration and forcing you to stop and think about your surroundings. The 'showstopper' moment and perhaps the most memorable aspect was the culmination of the riddle back in Centenary Square, where for a fleeting moment (and if they solve the clue), players get to 'control' the big TV screen normally reserved for rolling BBC sport. Great fun, but while it was perhaps meant as nod to the idea of being able to become an 'author' of your environment, a look around at the rest of the public realm in the city centre (especially the big hole) is a stark reminder that the citizen has very little say outside of the rules of the game.
A quick skirt around the nearby popup gallery (complete with slightly condescending red sign declaring its 'PopUp' status - in case the people of Bradford haven't yet heard of the concept) and we headed home.
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