WHY IS THE BIKE PATH BEING ERASED?

early rise drive

Got up early to help Chloe to experiment placing abanded chairs in the park before our lecture, was a laugh cyclign with them!

mmm man with trailer drove through - can I use a trailer frame somehow?













meanwhile I grabbed out my chalk for a split second on the paving and around the dog poo










































quick search on the internet (www.pavingexpert.com) - that these tactile paving slabs are called
blister paving (in a sqaure pattern)- indicating pedestrian crossings with dropped kerbs

offset blister - used at train stations, parallel to the platform edge
lozenge - platform edge warning on street setting like tram lines
hazard - warning i.e bottom of steps, should be parallel to edge of hazard
cycleway - indicate cycle lane laid parrallel with direction of travel, same slabs used on pedestrian side of path but running across the other way
directional - to indicate safest direction of travel

An Excursion with Ella

- I brought this tape dispenser, as I wanted to quickly make temporary paths across the roads and paths.
- Taking notice of short cuts people take, a more convenient path although there is a crossing a few meters up. Chloe had mention in Israel its illegal to cross the road unless the green man lights up.
- Adding colour to the continuous grey stretches

Excursion with Ella and Owen





































I invited Owen to wonder with me "an excursion with Ella", with the intention to tape some paths together and explore. We ended up walking round to Area 10, to the Hannah Barry Gallery, by the Bussey Building.
We tried to get up onto the roof, which supposidly has superb views over all of London as it's the tallest building in Peckham.
But as we were climbing up and up and up through the dark stairs on every floor there was a different Christian Church - picture 'alter of mercy evangelical center'. There are so many hidden christian centers in Peckham!

I wanted to try and tape a path across Peckham Road to college as many people don't use the crossing. With Owens help he held one end of the tape and I ran across the road, problem was that it didn't stick and the cars stopped. Darn! The tape would look so nice! So instead we played football with the tape that wouldn't stick.

Ideas:
inviting people out to play throughtout the project

proposed routes for work

1 Spontaneous public interactions - paths of cars/walking/running/bus/bikes…
2 Construction of play tools, drawring instruments - paths of cars/walking/running/bus/bikes…
3 List of objectives


1 Spontaneous public interactions performance - paths of cars/walking/running/bus/bikes…
Working unannounced in public, I will break routines, accepted and expected behaviour by ‘joyful and exuberant behaviour’ in the form of an action, intervention, installation, and drawing. I will aim to do a performance everyday on various scales so myself, the process and outcomes becomes integrated as a daily occurrence. Training myself to look with potential that any environment can be a playground, contrasting the frantic pace of modern urban life. Questioning and reflecting upon how my actions effect the location, surrounding people and how it could be seen as antisocial behaviour

2) Construction of play tools and drawring instruments - paths of cars/walking/running/bus/bikes…
Explore temporally or permanently placing colour in the streets. Using the vast stretches of roads as a canvas. By constructing ‘play tools and drawring instruments’ so that myself or others, singly or collaboratively can add colour. Dr Majora Carta: ‘you shouldn’t have to move out of your neighbourhood to make it a better one’. Taking inspiration from Robin Rhode I will explore using materials such as chalk, graphite, crayons and water paint and scrubbing clean. So that my trace is visible for a period but not damaging to the environment and so that I lower the risk of it being apposed by public and authorities.

3) List of objectives
• To encourage and inviting participation on various levels from passer bys/ community – satisfaction of achievement and involvement
• Brightening the everyday dullness
• Site-specific
• Humour and play
• Illusion and reality
• Artist/activator
• Raw energy/surprise/randomness of an incident on the streets element of spontaneous performance/ instant
• Physical education and learning
• ‘ The cats away and the mice will play’ play in empty Camberwell and Peckham at night
• Lottie Child: ‘Research is wandering, talking, looking, thinking, and Intervention might include talking to strangers, drumming on street furniture, climbing trees, …..sitting around, listening to the sounds of the night, shouting’

random thoughts that I text myself, in bed at night

exploring a perfromative element

After writing my self evaluation for my elective in Live and Performed Practice I want to try and include a performative element in my work.
I feel that I have lost a sence of spontanity within my university work. I want to explore interacting with my immediate enviroment , getting me out of the studio or my bedroom when producing work.

Robert Luzar - No Horizon (performance)

part of Camberwell Arts Festival on Windsor Road, SE5 June 22 07

hands covered in graphite pigment searching for a transparent tape on a construction boards around unused houses

Robin Rhode

Hard Rain (2005)


I was really excited to visit the exhibition at the Hayward of Robin Rhode a performance artist who grew up in Johannesburg, as I have liked his work for a few years. He creates energetic narrative performances that evolve around his drawings in chalk and graphite, using the street, and in his later work gallery walls as his canvas. The documentation is often in photographic storyboard sequences or animations, Rhode transform his flat drawings of everyday objects into three-dimensional ones through his playful physical interaction. The simplicity of the medium, body chalk and surface is refreshingly unfussy, and the work has a sense of humour and play while often referencing political issues.

Colour Chart (2006)
A stop motion animation, shot from above with the figures lying on their side. It portrays a battle between a figure dressed in white and coloured opponents confronting one enemy after another, the performance is symbolic of racial conflicts that Rhode has grown up around.

Click To Play

I find living up in Peckham uncoloured in terms of the enviroment, I miss the green fields that I see from my window at home, I think I'm going to look at bringing colour to the streets, without getting arrested! I had been thinking about this before somehow making cycling paths and routes that people take more interesting.
Although I want to add colour, the documentation of Rhodes work from above clears out all the clutter, the street becomes a is a large plain canvas which emphasises the drawings, Rhode mainly use just chalk and graphite - less colour is more.

ideas
draging chalk behind bike; rake type drawing implement to place on back of bike? somehow rotates in certian way to create a pattern
water colour paint blobes that spread
huge wooden spirograph
look at Heath Robinson, crazy inventions

Felix Machines at Gasworks Vauxhall - evening event of contemporary music machines

On Friday I went along to Gasworks at the moment they have an exhibition of south London based artist and musician Felix Thorn. He creates these crazy magical musical machines from a broken up pianos, glockenspiel, drum kits, animated by solenoids springs and motors when connected to his computer. Each element of the machine has its own LED which light up when in use in the various compositions.

The machine in performance is mesmerizing so many parts emitting sound and light. Created as a way of visualizing the rhythmic structures in the music. ‘People are use to human performances, the machines remind the listen that the satisfaction received from music can happen without the intervention of a human performer’

The machines are continuously evolving ‘the early badly measured parts can be seen next to the newer, better-constructed components. The whole process is on show, which I suppose, indicates what I have learned since the beginning of the project.’ 



Gasworks: www.gasworks.org.uk
Some text taken from interview with Felix Thorn off the Gasworks website

What I am doing? - Need to do?

Peckham Space

Peckham Space:
Launched in 2008 the programme includes four commissions per year supporting collaborative projects practises between the arts and the local community. It will feature workshops, public events, and public talks as part of each commissions. Peckham Space will be built on Peckham Square London SE15. Partnership between Camberwell College of Arts, Univeristy of the Arts London and Peckham Programme Southwark Council.

Projects include:
-Peckham TV - developed in response ta a period of research carried out by the mother ship collective into the future of Peckham local communities groups stated 'it's not Peckham that is the problem it is the media's representation of it
- 'Street Training- Lottie Child - with Glouster Primary School & public talk about play and participation in the public realm
- CCTV Station - the office of experiments and media shed - a media shed will be sited on Peckham Square for local surveillance, to create short films that will be screened in a mobile structure titled airdrop


Thoughts and notes listening to the Particpation and Contemporary Art podcast Lottie Child and Clare Cumberlidge

• invitation to find your own relationship with london, sitting in odd places, interactions with security guards
• callum dubland training videos
• body language
• humour, prankster as a subversive activity
  
• judgements of limits of appropriateness
  
• catalytic fun
• shadow lines as a type rope
• pigeon bowling
• devious
• holding your breath
• safety within london - if you want to be safe stay inside?
  
• positively change your environment and yourself
• change - committed/invested time scale
• encouraging self confidence
• some boundaries you need some boundaries you don't need
• formalised techniques of the everyday actions we ignore
  
• what do we ignore?
• didactic; designed or intended to teach, intend to convey instruction and information as well as pleasure and entertainment
• quote from Dr. Majora Carter you shouldn’t have to move out of your neighbourhood to live in a better one
• integration of participation
• community spirit
• www.spacehijackers.co.uk
  
• people owning the transformation that happen in their environment
• oasis USA, open access participatory mapping system of their immediate environment using that data to campaign for change
• passing on celebration of what was and could be either led by me or others
• Thinking about some of the participatory events, workshops I have been involved with, for me a nurtured time with a small number of people is more important than achieving large number statistics
  
• book: design and landscape for people, can architects, designers,landscapes and artist make a real difference to people quality of life?

Camberwell Arts:
arts organisation promoting arts in Camberwell, workshops involve in developing participatory and socially engaged practises on local estates school, collaborative networks and art oganisations. Co-ordinated by Camberwell Arts in partnership with Camberwell College of Arts and the South London Gallery

- Camberwell Arts Festival - live art, open studios, exhibitions, commissioned projects walk and talks.including:
historian Eleanor Margolies leads a walk around Camberwells hidden wildlife,Rachel Gomme's walk through Camberwell following the natural growth through, concrete, brick and Robert Luzar’s work,installed on park noticeboards throughout Camberwell , looks at how information gets disseminated and censored in public spaces.

next festival 20th – 28th June 2009, contact Kelly O’Reilly kelly.oreilly@camberwellarts.org.uk, for exhibitions, performances and events in Camberwell

http://www.camberwellarts.org.uk/


Website links:

• Neal White - the office of experiments: http://www.nealwhite.org/
• research into mobile structures combining art base activity and scientific principles, worked with John Lathem - event based theory in art that Latham pursued in his home Flat Time House in Peckham

• Media Shed - http://www.mediashed.org/
• free media making things or doing art for little or no finacial cost by usign public domain software and recyled eqipment. video sniffing using wireless CCTV signals
  

my artist cv / Lottie Child / Jessica Thorn

After writing my artist statement for my CV (well this is what it is for the moment) I think that with this project I should try to direct my work:

Abandoned, forgotten objects, my changing environment from country to city and exploring historical buildings and cultural sites inspire me. From moving from a house surrounded by fields to a residential area, I’m interested in the spontaneous and prescribed notion of playing within a city and green spaces, inside and outside, with provided objects or imagination.

I know that at the moment that Jessica Thom is the residency artist at the South London Gallery as part of SLG's 'Making Play' project. "Her project for Sceaux Gardens is to research and map children’s play on the estate through a series of visual and scientific explorations of the local environment, its history and imagined future." (SLG website) Which is an interesting idea so I'll try and see if I can chat with her.

Lottie Child:
Also on the South London Gallery website I saw that an artist called Lottie Child has done a few events - Camberwell Urban Napping (3/8/08). Developing Peckham Street Training collaborativly with Peckham Space and Street Training in Camberwell

Street Training in Camberwell :
launching the Camberwell Street training Manual (21&22/6/08), as part of Camberwell Arts Festival a 24 hour urban exploration which involves research and intervention:
"Research is wandering, talking, looking, thinking, and Intervention might include talking to strangers, drumming on street furniture, climbing trees, visiting people, being asked to leave shops, lighting a fire, sitting around, tracing magic symbols on the ground, looking out for the dog with one eye, kissing, foraging for fallen fruits, listening to the sounds of the night, shouting and smelling flowers."
link to manual: http://malinky.org/files/camberwell_v4_ARTWORK.pdf∞

Climbing Club:
started in 2002 and met monthly for three years, to explore the buildings of the city of London by climbing, traversing and scrambling all over it. No equipment is used, and the pace, scale of adventure and time it lasts, is up to the participants. "Bring your kids and your grandmother, wear long skirts, have a hangover." Urban climbing looks at the city with new eyes on its potential for play. Climbing club was started as a faculty of the University of Openness- a group of artist inspired by Copenhagen's free university.

Street Training:
"is the art judging how and how not to interact with place and people on the street, by regularly, safely and joyfuly exploring ourselves and spaces we inhabit, like a martial art it also balances rigorous physical exertion with quiet still meditation by 'doing nothing' typically by lying on the ground in a public space"
"During the session you may learn such things as:
Guerrilla gardening, urban climbing, using the acoustics of city architecture, hanging from ledges, trespassing, entering secret derelict corners, chalking, psychogeographising, getting into the bushes, hiding and finding things eating bananas, doing nothing, cartwheels, jumping over, building up, pissing on, nurturing or sidestepping barriers physical, social and psychological. but mostly you will be supported in doing your own creative/antisocial behaviour."

Accidental Holiday:
http://malinky.org/wikka.php?wakka=AccidentalHoliday
Is a guide book for a walk in Greenwich Peninsula, in the area around the Dome, created at a period of planning for a “ master planned community” for the area. The guide invites you to engage with area in playful ways that call into question the appropriate uses of public spaces.
It is a result of collaborative research. Including a local councilor, children and parents from Nillennium Primary School, local residents, workers and employess of the company developing the area Merdian Delta, and local media arts company Independant Photography who commisioned the project, each with their own perspective and link to the area.
All over the Greenwich Peninsula, plants are bursting through fences and breaking through concrete. Sometimes in big cities, the people are doing little more than surviving, while in forgotten corners a diverse array of plants and animals, birds and insects are really thriving.
This leads to the question, what do people need in order to thrive in the city? Do we need to copy some of the characteristics of wild and feral plant and animal life and be:
lawless devious exuberant curious trusting
challenging risky nurturing patient primal


My hopes of getting in contact/meeting with Lottie Child may have just been abolished due to me reading that on new years day she begins a residency in Brazil! anyway just reading some of her words for her residency here is what I've picked out:
researching the uniqualy Brazillian quality of malandragem untranslatable but interpreted as street smart....I will immerse myself in different urban and rural places always asking - how do i need to behave to be safe and how do i need to behave to be joyful in this place?


Website Links:
Lottie Childs blog: http://malinky.org/wikka.php?wakka=HomePage
her website has loads on and I've printed off some of the manuals/guides to try and do one
pinched most of the above info off there

Artist info / association sponsoring her residency in brazil : www.solarassociates.net/lottie-child
and a gallery of her work off the same website: http://www.solarassociates.net/picture-galleries/