Ways of Looking Festival, Bradford with Donovan Wylie, Daniel Meadows & Invisible Flock

Its always a pleasure when my somewhat obsessive phd interests happen to coincide with my girlfriend's more regular ideas of how she'd like us to spend the weekend together. Last weekend Bradford was the setting for this fortuitous coming together of interests at the UKs newest photography / arts festival 'Ways of Looking'.

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.

PQ 011_day three

A slow start had been planned for Saturday morning (day 3), but a talk at the Veletrzni Palace caught my eye; a panel discussing on the future of scenography with reference in particular to trends in the PQ expositions and Intersection programme. It was well worth the effort as a lively panel led by Arnold Aronson explored the surge of recent developments and fragmentation of a discipline which now informs (and is informed by) a multitude of (performance) art practices beyond the text-based narrative of traditional theatre. Richard Gough, Artistic Director of the Centre for Performance Research gave a particularly engaging presentation, drawing a divide between the redundancy of 'museum-like' national expositions and the enchantment of more immersive and performative environments. Following this I made my way down via the student submissions of which just a few stood out as truly inventive or beautifully executed; students from Serbia composed dramatic characters and compositions by extrapolating the details openly accessible on a random selection of facebook profiles, the Australian submission mapped the forensic traces of urban walks through Prague, and one of the Spanish exhibits was a pod for exchange crafted from recycled juice cartons.

The main programme looked a little empty for saturday afternoon, but a quick check of the PQ+ events found that the nearby Fabrika arts centre (which boasted a beautifully detailed industrial interior) was hosting a 'site-specific' opera by renowned director and scenographer Pamela Howard. Her staging of Bohuslav Martinů's 'The Marriage' broke

down the formal conventions of the opera by taking place in a backroom / warehouse-type space, with the orchestra packed in one corner and the audience seated on a random assortment of chairs and tables on hastily constructed terraces. While the plot and scenography did not only faintly referenced the unusual setting, the overall effect was to bring the incredible singers immedaitely proximate to the audience and give the whole performance a fun, community feeling - a radical departure from the stuffiness of most opera events. Of course, such an the informal arrangement is likely to have potential downsides, typically the acoustics (which were great) and/or the sight-lines, and though I was well positioned the woman next to me repeatedly disrupted the atmosphere by complaining she couldn't see!

An already busy day was completed by the first of 'Six Acts', a series of site-specific performances created by Scenofest students in collaboration with an experienced performance-maker. The First Act took place at dusk in the atmospheric Frantiskanska gardens, with a large audience free to move around and follow a series of alien creations using paper/cardboard costumes and animal-like movements. As dark fell, the choice of setting became magical, as sound and light in particular were used to 'key' each new performance in a different space - the audience were kept in flux; rushing, turning, moving and crowding round to see the next strange character. The most popular of these was a comedic ball-on-human-legs in the rose garden, and as viewers moved round onto the four sides of the space, the creature revealed itself as a girl (albeit still a crazy girl) who had been holding up her paper dress. By the end the group had the spectators exactly where they wanted them confused yet delighted and on tenterhooks as to where the next spectacle would show up. And as we drifted away at the end, there was the sense that they had not only created some entertaining physical theatre, but a palpable feeling of community and 'shared experience' among the audience.

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!