Compass Festival of Live Art, Leeds

Held over three unfortunately miserably wet and windy and days in late November, the Compass Symposium and accompanying live arts festival is a new venture by East Street Arts, festival curator Sarah Spanton and director Annie Lloyd. The programme of events, workshops and discussions set itself apart from other similar arts festivals through on two fronts; its setting in Yorkshire (and the Humber) an area keen to expand its realtively small live arts community, and a strong focus on socially engaged practice. Both of these aspects appealed straight away to the research agenda of RECITE PhD one, and with links between Compass and the Sheffield School of Architecture already established through MArch tutor / fellow researcher Carolyn Butterworth, the decision to attend this exciting-looking 3 days of art just up the road (or train line) seemed like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, other commitments in Sheffield meant that I didnt see a huge amount of performers, and as a result this review focuses on the symposium half of Compass.

While I have a genuine appreciation / interest in live art as a spectator, I sometimes feel that the elusiveness of the language that is often used to describe some the practice is a little difficult for other academic disciplines to access. This was certainly one feeling left by Intimacy and Generosity, a workshop held to question issues around how willing people are to share their deepest feelings, public & private space, one-to-one encounters, and the awkward relationship between contemporary society and the 'intimate'. Although the coordinator Rajni was very skilled at creating a real sense of intimacy within the group, I felt the personal level conversations perhaps restricted a more interesting debate about the wider social context of the issues.

This theme continued at the late afternoon Show & Tell session (where the Pecha Kucha style format quickly broke down reinforcing the cliche of artists being unwilling to stick within the rules). While I was not really in a place to be too critical of the presentations (having failed to find the time to produce one myself) there seemed to be several practioners who either failed to either gauge their audience or were just simply not interested in socially engaged practice! Fortunately many of the others were fascinating, and both Rita's smartphone dance documentation and Rich from Invisible Flock sparked really useful conversations and plenty of ideas.

The trade-off for a friday night back in Sheffield was a very rushed Saturday morning to get to Sensing the City, and after the first day full of discussion it was nice to be told that the workshop would commence with a silent walk. The walk is of course a well used tool for the urbanist-artist, and there was little embellishment here other than the suggestion of a 'perfomative' single file parade, and an instruction to really focus on the relationship between your body and the soundscape. Artist Bob Levene suggested that experiencing the sometimes harsh urban environment in this concious method enables an 'awakening' from the dominant passive modes of experience. A number of aspects of the sound walk, not least the intrusion of the somewhat in-your-face documentor, meant that it somehow fell short of providing an immersive subjection by the environment. I think the fairly linear route to Patrick Studios (and with most of the attendees having already walked there yesterday) made it feel more like a 'route' to a destination rather than a journey or drift. The tone was (dramatically) shifted by Bradley Garrett's ethnographic research into the (sometimes literal) underworld of urban explorers, venturing into Victorian sewers and to the top of half-built skyscrapers. A well-paced delivery of fascinating anecdote and theory mixed with hyper-real photography was well-received, with the suggestion that this activity, apparently 'useless' in capital terms, was a meanwhile use that fell outside or subverted the sensory experiences normally 'on offer in the city. Some of this grandstanding stood him for criticism, particularly the some strong critiques of his method, the overt 'masculinity' of the explorers and the underplayed ethical / political implications of this type of work, particularly when disseminated via the stylised imagery.

Sennet's idea of the regulation and pacification of the body in 'public space', very often for capitalist consumption, is one strong theme that emerged from several of the workshop and informal discussions, and one of the key contributions that can be made by art/performative practices is to be critical / transformative of this situation. Coming from an architecture background (and SSoA in particular) participatory practice, social engagement, intervention, mapping, site, space and are second nature both in terms of design and research, and the wide range of other disciplines that engage (or are now engaging) with the same set of issues is therefore very interesting and may open up space for more collaboration. From the point of view of an architecture trained researcher/practioner, one potential criticism of artists working in urban public space that struck me over the weekend (albeit perhaps a generalisation)is that there seems to be more of a concern about making an impact and not so much interest in following up or developing the situation to develop a more tangible legacy. Legacy could be in terms of feeding back responses to inform policy, establishing new programmes, or proposing wider projects off the back of a performative intervention. Perhaps there just needs to be a better understanding of just how much an architectural toolkit of skills can contribute; it was perhaps telling that the architect-dominated conversations in the third workshop, Intentions and Unitentions, architecture was still thought of by most as being concerned only with static / permanent buildings designed for a paying client.

PQ 011_day six

A warm day six began with a trip back to the Veletrzni expositions, as I was particularly intrigued by the Netherlands' walking trip '7Scenes'. This IPhone walking tour / treasure hunt / game was part of the new genre of 'performative user experiences' that are not theatre in the sense that they do not necessarily involve a live actor, but utilise mobile technology (phone, gps, bluetooth, 3G) to network 'live players' either together or to some central system. In this way players create their own experience from the instructions or narrative given by the creator of the performance. The freedom in space and time that these forms open up was demonstrated by 7Scenes, where players were guided on a route through the city using picture clues. The 'performance' was constructed around a set of old photographs, taken in Prague in the 1960s. When you arrived near the scene of one of the photos, a GPS trigger played a audio clip, instructing you to take a photo inspired by the original. As you couldn't see this, the audio offered a series of clues, such as 'take a self-portrait with your eyes closed'. The heightened awareness of being 'part of something' had a tangible impact in terms of framing the city - opening your eyes to things that otherwise might have seemed banal. Having said that, the mobile interface became a bit of a distraction. The nicest touch was that photos were automatically uploaded and printed in the exhibition space (alongside the 1968 ones), providing a fascinating insight into the multiplicity of ways that people looked at the city and interpreted the instructions.

There was just enough time for a coffee on the roof terrace before a hurried tram ride across town in time to get a seat at the packed architecture section where Professor Marvin Carlson was giving the task of answering the central question of the section, 'What is a theatre?'. This was a hugely relevant talk for both myself and the large crowd gathered in St Annes, as he sought to cram the recent history of site-specificity and future developments into a hour-long lecture. Taking Peter Brook's 'empty stage' quote as a point of reference Professor Carlson explored notions of scenographic control, the framing of the everyday (optical unconsciousness), through to the techno-theatre of Smartphones. He suggested that the digital (web 2.0) era had further opened up Peter Brook's ideas about 'I' to 'we' (can take any space, real or virtual, and call it a theatre). Interestingly this statement was qualified using the social science term 'interpolation' whereby the creation of something (theatre) just by giving it a name relies on your 'authority to do this, ie. you still need an 'audience' willing to 'buy into it' or 'go along with it'. Responses from Jane Rendell & Christopher Baugh were also though-provoking, and raised questions about a new definition of 'architecture'.

After 2 hours of exhausting notetaking I needed a break, and got to the Czech Bridge just in time for the start of Christina Bosse's hour-long public 'situation' and to see what was going to happen in the place of 500 people. The bridge had been closed to traffic and it appeared that she had managed to get some chairs - after a slow start people began to congregate around these focal points, and individuals / groups of people subtly but gradually took over the bridge as a public space. Here is a link to an animation I produced as a web-based documentation experiment and as part of my learning process of flash.

The remainder of the evening was spent talking with Doina Petrescu, tuesday's keynote architecture speaker (and my Masters tutor), but I also managed to catch he Scenofest Fourth Act installation, where an interesting back street had been converted into a outdoor living room - but lacked any real invention beyond the use of furniture in an unlikely setting.

PQ 011_Day Two

Day two began with a wander through the sprawling market district of ... where the purchase of a small day bag (somehow forgotten) was successful despite my frailties in the Czech language and a market seller determined to try to charge 10x the price I was willing to pay!

One of the architectural installations I had been most excited about was the 'Boxes' an intervention on the Piazetta of the National Theatre. This outdoor showcase formed a central part of the Intersection (Intimacy & Spectacle) 'undisciplined' programme of events. The highlights were the audio installation for one person by Hans Rosenstrom, and Monka Pormale's beautifully simple installation of two local performers frozen in embrace in a glass box. While you had to be a PQ accredited to gain entry into the intervention, two public spaces a cafe / bar and open air cinema for the evenings are perched over the top of the boxes. Here I met the architect of the pavillion Oren Sagiv, who gave his insight into the project and after two years planning, he was clearly excited about its inhabitation (though he had mixed feelings that the building would last only 10 days). An enjoyable morning was topped off by a birthday lunchtime treat of a beer & Czech pasty in the sunshine.

Rushing from the Piazetta I made it in time to get a seat in the packed spatial lab for the lecture from Charles Renfro (of Diller Scofidio & Renfro), who romped through the backcatalogue of the practice's projects, drawing a thread from architectural / performative installations to their current multi-million dollar commissions. While he was hugely engaging speaker and showed off an enviable array of projects (how could anyone fail to make a great project of the High Line!), not everyone in the audience (including me) was convinced about the theoretically-lite terms he explained the dramatic leap from installation (eg. blur building) to the huge museum constructions in Boston & Rio in particular.

Despite all of this, the unexpected highlight of day came from Voicequake, who used the streets and passageways around the Piazetta area to put on a walkabout piece that comprised of from a musical / choral troupe and physical theatre / clown troupe, whose performances intersected as we made our way through the city. The sizable and diverse audience (which grew and shrunk as we twisted and turned through the narrow streets) were guided simply by a lead and rear megaphones (!KEEP WALKING!), and were entertained by vignettes that were at one moment comedic and hauntingly beautiful the next. And of course, the flashmob-style appearance of 100+ people suddenly arriving outside of a restaurant of public square kept the passers-by confused and entertained.

Ulrike & Eamon Compliant, Blast Theory, Sheffield

This performance installation arrived in Sheffield as part of DocFest, the annual documentary festival which seems to have grown substantially in scale and ambition this year.

The mixed media, techno-philhic performance practice that is ‘Blast Theory’ have produced a range of game / performances that place the spectator-participant in direct contact with the reality of the city. In U&E, you are invited to assume the persona of one of two iconic anti-heros, Red Army Ulrike, or IRA informer Eamon. Whatever the choice, the work draws upon the documentary of the violent political lives of these figures, and provokes participants to contemplate the effect of these actions at an emotional / personal level.

Blast Theory’s physical unassuming physical installation is a plywood box that sits in the very centre of the Winter Gardens. Very limited instructions are given (or needed), the piece works on a one-at-a-time basis, so an assistant ensures that at least six minutes are left between each participant. The only device is a single mobile phone (and umbrella for the weather if required!), and upon dialling the number you are asked to choose which character to play.

The phone works perfectly as a device for this performance, on one hand the idea that Ulrike is ‘on the run’ suited the covert feel of talking to the invisible co-conspirator / narrator– yet it is such a ubiquitous piece of technology that you can carry out the whole 30 min piece on the line to the narrator – walking and briefly taking - without conspicuously ‘performing’ in public.

Ulrike’s story follows her separation from her partner, political activism, violent rescue of a comrade from prison, and loss of her children before she turns herself in. Though the story itself doesn’t relate to the urban landscape you are witnessing, I found that the disconnection from the reality of the city (that I know very well) heightened the sense of spatial and social interaction. And on the occasions when a moment in the narrative did ‘fit’ with the more filmic nature of the surroundings (under Fountain Precinct, down a back alley off Fargate) the suspension of belief crept in and the social reality began to erode.

When offered the final choice – echoing Ulrike’s choice of ‘flight or fight’ is asked “hang up in the next 30 seconds if you want to escape home”, and it transpired that you had to meet a man by nodding across the street, the first contact with an live actor felt all too real. He led you into the backstage of the Crucible, where a second box (mimicking the first) sat in a darkened room. This was lit with single strip light and designed to recreate an interrogation chamber, and a 10 minute grilling by the actor on your personal attitude of violence for the cause. It wasn’t entirely clear by this point whether you were still ‘in character’, but I found this manipulation process (akin to real interrogation techniques?) made me open up emotionally in a surprising way. It was also a final shock to realise that the interview was being monitored by a webcam through a two way mirror in the chamber, which was broadcasting a live feed back into the first box!