Latest articles for Welcome to Bridgeland
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in transit
by Jodi Rose 22 Mar 2010
Almost time to leave now for the bus en route to Helsinki (I am flying but that’s another story) after a wonderful Glasgow sojourn.
Relaxed and reconnected after the weekend – tambourine lesson on the front lawn in Saturday sunshine, talk of invented rituals and ideas for the ‘opening’ ceremony. Lowsalt initiation of Vestiges Park BBQ on Sunday: perfect weather, great company and tasty food. More excellent development conversations about mediums…
Thanks to all the magnificent Lowsalt crew, household and friends for their incredibly warm generous welcome and adventures.
That’s my very short teaser update, next stop Manchester!
Vestiges Park BBQ -
*if you cannot find us it is because we have fallen off your maps
by Jodi Rose 19 Mar 2010
Here we are again. Interfacing through the computer.
Brain meld.
We have to stop meeting like this.One day, you and I, on a bridge…
Don’t you sometimes wish everything would just stop?
Not forever, in some fatal morbid way.
The relentless incessant never-ending having to get things done.
Keep all the plates spinning, the balls in the air, the belief that what you’re doing is worthwhile and somehow maintain the faith that it will all work out?
No?
Yes!Whatever it is on those plates, we all seem to be enacting the same impulses. Survival, love, annihilation, distraction, control. I need to be outside this for a moment. This flesh, this world, this mind, this skin – you can tell I haven’t been meditating lately. It’s a jumble in there. Thoughts emotions ideas fleeting impressions all cracking up against each other, shattering and dissolving to the winds. Let’s not even start the debate on the value of culture…
That’s what I like about bridges – and art. They give you a moment to be released from whatever it is your day demands of you. To not be whoever you are. Imagine some other worlds. Well, they do when they’re working. Sometimes it’s transcendent.
I have that weird homesickness feeling for a place I’ve never been. I know it, I dream myself there – it just won’t materialise.
This is my motivation for Bridgeland. A space to create the world we can imagine together – not as a utopia, or a dreamstate – but to be inhabitable. Not that I can claim to imagine for anyone else.
Although I would like to imagine on behalf of those who need it.Seriously, if you can’t start to imagine somewhere different, then how on earth can you ever start to make it real?
I went to visit the Vestiges Park today. It’s under construction, a beginning sculpture park – wonderful, magic. The scaffolding was in place and a sign taking shape. The feminine knotweed has taken over the land, winding roots so deep that the site can’t be developed commercially – a brilliant ploy on the part of nature.
“A Collective Intervention into a Forgotten Landscape
Vestiges Park does not exist, cannot exist, will not exist. The artists involved deny all knowledge of the project and the authorities are mute. In some cases these artists may not actually exist – they split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, dissolve and merge until truth and fiction, science and magic become indistinguishable. Vestiges Park is a chimera – there and not there – dare to find us, dare to enter and let us take you to the edgelands, the rotting places where nothing is as it seems…
…and if you cannot find us it is because we have fallen off your maps
*Jim Colquhoun
Vestiges Park is inspired by the 1844 anonymous publication of ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’’. The book, written by Scottish journalist Robert Chambers, exposed a cosmic theory of transmutation which pre-dated Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ by 15 years."
This is the Lowsalt group project happening simultaneously (with Bridgeland), in the wilderness next to glasgow sculpture studios, and I think part of a unique vision. It’s an amazing community to be so warmly absorbed into, with such passionate artists, craftspeople and musicians creating deeply rich synergy. Taking me into their home at Maxwell Palace (ironic in case you’re wondering, although it is bohemian palatial and wonderfully abundant) and opening all kinds of local connections and welcoming spirits…
Today we visited the marvellous wardrobe mistress of the Scottish Opera, and arrange the hire of the most fabulous costumer – sorry my lips are sealed, you’ll just have to be there!
We have no map for Bridgeland, the way to arrive is up to you. I hope you will be here there now and then.
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Bridgeland on-site
by Jodi Rose 16 Mar 2010
I’ve had an amazingly productive and inspiring week since arriving in Glasgow last Wednesday. Today was possibly the most successful site visit ever – Marco, our lovely council structures advisor said ‘Yes’ to all our questions and requests (oh I love that), writing back a few hours later to confirm the vital access to electricity and cherry picker to install. He was very impressed by our nicely realised and detailed technical drawings and plans – nice work Mr Bernard!
He drove off smiling and listening to the cd of bridges I gave him, definitely the start of a beautiful working friendship. Perhaps we need a few dignitaries in the opening ceremony to mark the support of the city. Even more exciting is the design for our sign, all signed off by the fabrication consultants Dav went to see yesterday, and now working out final details for the font and rigging structure.
Last night had a follow-up musical development meeting with the Glasgow Bridge Band, talking through structure and concept. Everything from trolls to the cats cradle bell-ringing inspired by a Herzog documentary (on Jesus in Russia) could find its way into the piece. The first time we met on Friday, Guy and I started playing earlier compositions to each other, and every one of them had a strangely synchronous almost-spooky relative pitch and texture. At one point, he put on the mesmerising La Monte Young tambura drone piece, and Dave started improvising to this on his double bass – gorgeous. We played around with my contact speakers, and tried out a few ideas to create different atmosphere and mood. It’s a beautiful start, with more to come.
Thursday was diving straight into the deep end of the Glasgow scene, taking a trip to tramway with Dav to watch him set up the projectors for a show on Saturday as part of the Live Arts festival; then going to see the artist talk in the apple shop. Bizarre, although Hiroaki Umeda did a brilliant job there, covering up his powerbook logo with black tape while giving a minimalist and charming presentation on his work. It’s so precise, every move seems choreographed, although he told us that it’s actually 80% improvised, within the frame he sets up of music and light.
Becky and I took off to the Trades Hall for a talk by Alex Farquharson, the Director of new cultural space ‘Nottingham Contemporary’. We found our way to the relocated venue in the ballroom of Sloane’s – an ornate space with lace wallpaper and chandelier – which formed a fitting backdrop to Alex’s entertaining and surprisingly political presentation of the program. Working on a pre-opening series of events including the lace trade and slavery, 40 years after the 68 revolution, and the Foucalt inspired re-imagined inhabitation of the palace of justice, the building itself is now open and drawing queues of fascinated cultural visitors every weekend. The building itself is extraordinary; built into the cliff-face and celebrating the lace-making history of Nottingham with a gorgeous pattern in the concrete – set off perfectly by the lace wallpaper projection surface. Their ‘brand’ designer had the brilliant idea of inviting artists to create different logos, and so the centre now boasts a fabulous Las Vegas style sign, along with backwards text in the outside stone wall and bench; and a pair of zebras inside. The current show is ‘The Future under Communism’, featuring a giant cosmonaut and gives me hope that art is not entirely apolitical.
Speaking of which, I have to find the article Becky sent about public art and politics. I think there is a place for work that can embrace the poetics of place along with all the grit of the reality.
Discovering more about our site – for instance it’s between the city and a major courthouse, so the bridge is heavily trafficked by lawyers and ‘lawbreakers’, along with a highly visible and regular police patrol. The divide between Gorbals and Glasgow is also an interesting aspect pointed out by Dave for exploration.
Somehow the burlesque element is disappearing from the piece, in favour of a mediumistic almost-spiritualist bent – there are voices in the air – and a quest narrative journey. Abstract of course. Met with Guy again on Saturday and he extracted all kinds of philosophical confessions on bridges and other things, typed up into freeform notes as I spoke in a very engaging collaborative process.
On a practical note, Dav took me to the plastics factory and we checked out the polycarbonate as a lettering material. The sixwall is quite special, with a kaleidoscopic light refraction and the possibility to change the colour using dye, or lighting gels.
Not to give away too many secrets, perhaps I’ll stop now…
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my utopian practice
by Jodi Rose 4 Mar 2010
One of the dangers inherent in any creative practice that involves imagining or inventing different possibilities for inhabiting the world is the inevitable gap between what you can imagine and where you are now. I find myself stumbling into this dark abyss more often than is good for me, spinning into a freefall through the empty space in momentary lapses of concentration or focus and landing with a thud on the concrete.
This reminds me somehow of the trip into the wormhole experienced by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. After listening for alien transmissions and finally picking up and interpreting the signals to build their enormous egg-beater travel machine, the scientist who takes her place on the voyage is subjected to an intense nightmare as he goes into the darkness of his own mind. While our Jodie, in all her innocent goodwill to humanity, goes out into a distant planet where the waves flow backwards on the beach, witnesses a celestial event “It’s so beautiful, so beautiful, they should have sent a poet. I had no idea,” and has a heartfelt talk with her long-dead father. On her return, no-one believes the event took place, as she hasn’t moved from her chair, only the 18 hours or minutes of static recorded on her video camcorder bears testimony to her journey.
A little like The Abyss where Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio goes into the alien depths and experiences an underwater world of such phenomenal beauty and mystical connection, while her evil crew-member is again tormented by nightmarish beasts and apocalyptic visions “It was like a dance of light… it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t think they mean us any harm… We all see what we want to see. You have to look with better eyes than that.” Incidentally some gorgeous high tensile cable zings and pows in the soundtrack remind me of something…
So be careful what you wish for – or dream of – when entering mystical other-realms, whatever means you use to get there, it seems they do tend to reflect the state of your own mind.
There is a forum on the fansite for recent film spectacle ‘Avator’ dealing with the post-utopian trauma in thousands of viewers who can’t stand to return to the world after seeing the beauty of this imaginary land, and finding the damage we have done to our own planet unbearable. Ways to cope with the depression of Pandora being intangible and Avatar renders this earthly life meaningless include the following:
“I watched avatar a few weeks ago and I’m feeling depressed and sad. It’s like I want to reach out and be in Pandora. I’d do anything to be in Pandora. I’ve tried so hard to dream about being on Pandora but it hasn’t worked”
“Because you know you can never actually go to Pandora, as it exists only in our imagination… sigh…”
“Start living like Neytiri: in touch with nature, the environment, and not being greedy and wasteful. Don’t get swept away by the wave of negativity, live your dream. Your life has only two switches, to shine or not to shine. There is no “apathy” setting. If you’re on apathy setting you might as well sign your world away to destruction. When you get discouraged by everyone around you, be courageous like Jake, and jump on the leonopteryx. Be the change you want to see in your world. There are only so many people on this earth, the more of them that are doing positive things, the less of them that are out there doing negative things. It’s unfortunate that we live in a world where, just by pulling a trigger or making a corporate decision, one single greedy human being can wipe out the hard works of love of many people. What will our money buy, when everything that is worth having is destroyed? The only way you can fill the emptiness you feel after this movie, is to jump on the leonopteryx."
A friend writes to me today saying ‘I want to live in Bridgeland now’. Take me to your utopia.
I’d quite like to try the method I learned from the nuns hovering over the black stones in the mountain monastery outside Barcelona. In order to access the ‘Vortex of Montserrat’, one simply stands barefoot in the centre of the circle and throw your hands in the air – this apparently causes the energy of the vortex to flow through you and can bring on mystical visions or possibly enlightenment. I didn’t feel it so much, but my friend almost converted then and there. Maybe it works on a bridge too – that circular manhole set into the pavement of the photo on the pont neuf could well be the vortex of Bridgeland. Try it and see!
That’s one way to get connected.
The Suborbital Transport Terminal (Spaceport Berlin) is another. Promising ‘a time-efficient spatial structure which will transport Business Travelers / CEO’s with super speed to any point in the world in less than 2 hours,’ the shuttle is called EVE, ‘Evolution in Elevation’ and glides through the sub orbit, to fly from Berlin to Sydney in 90 minutes. Reminiscent of C-Base project to recreate the spaceship which they believe Berlin is built upon, with portals into the ruins existing in various locations – the Alexanderplatz tower being the central communications and navigation centre.
Friday vernissage Nicolas Wiese show ‘There is Bacteria’ and later an evening of live audiovisual sound performances and videos about transmission and transcoding with incounter and artkillart label (more on the bridge spirit voices vinyl release with them later) at The Tipping Points exhibition in HBC, which promises ‘a shift in consciousness’. I’m trying to get ahead of my schedule so I can go enjoy. Or find a bridge vortex.
“Tipping Points is a new exhibition bringing together artists working across a number of artforms: sculpture, film, sound and performance. The focus of the show is an interrogation of material, media and technology and the ways in which artists exploit these in order to affect viewers perception of their work and the world.
A tipping point is a moment of tension where the future hangs in the balance; where small changes, of context, media, arrangement or reproduction, can have a profound effect upon the resulting work, its form and meaning. Imagine a set of scales in which one grain of sand effects a dramatic shift bringing the measure crashing down on one side of the other.
In an increasingly mediated world Tipping Points engages with the continual transferral and transformation of data. What it brings to this is not a reaffirmation of the general distancing and dehumanisation of our worldly view but an engagement with the distinct texture, grain and shimmer of mediating technologies hi-tech and lo-fi. A glorying in the potential for visual or audio trickery, unexpected beauty and the altering of perspective which these approaches allow. What is at stake is a shift in consciousness."
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Berlin No-wave and beyond
by Jodi Rose 3 Mar 2010
I had the pleasure of seeing Blank City screening at the Berlinale, an excellent documentary about the no-wave DIY film culture and cinema of transgression in 70’s and 80’s New York. The vibe of everyone starving and making projects together was resonant with the kind of activity happening in Berlin – and Glasgow, although the shift towards gentrification is already well under-way. The film-makers collected an incredibly thorough archive of the works created by an engaging community of artist/musician/actors/directors, which left me wanting to see more of the original material. The interviews with many of the artists were fantastic, Lydia Lunch and Jim Jarmusch in particular giving in-depth commentary and inspiring the get-up-and-do-it style of creating as part of everyday life. It was interesting to see these initial experiments in light of their future careers, and watching the shift from ‘downtown’ to a wider audience – a film showing uptown for the first time! As the commodification of the scene took place along with the ‘clean-up’ of New York streets, the cinema of transgression was born in a conscious attempt to keep life and art on the edge. The artists also spoke of their excitement with the current technological situation where anyone can take the tools of production into their own hands and create whatever they can imagine then distribute it to the world. A democratisation of the production process, although of course access to wider audiences is still mediated and filtered by cultural gatekeepers in various forms.
Later the same afternoon I was taken by some friends visiting from Barcelona to see the latest Bruce laBruce film L.A. ZOMBIE at Peres Projects. It was an intriguing follow-up to the documentary, dark, decadent, debauched – with an astonishingly well-muscled hero/villain porn star roaming the streets and waterways of LA, both as a homeless man and a zombie. The artist writes about how many of the crew dropped out when they managed to find paid work, and so he ended up doing some of the filming himself along with his assistant.
“Now I remember why I love filmmaking. What other pursuit allows you to experience despair and jubilation all in one day, and twice over? Jason picks me up in his trusty Datsun and we head for the lofts on Wilshire where the production office is. Because the big car crash scene has been changed to a location in Topanga Canyon to be shot on Sunday night, we have the opportunity to shoot another full day of Francois in various locations in LA both dressed as a homeless person and as an alien zombie. Sometimes disaster can turn into advantage.
We did have an awesome, experienced First A.D. in place, but he dropped out about a week before shooting when he got a paying gig. A lot of the people who have volunteered to work on this project for little or no money are dropping off like flies because they just can’t afford to turn down other work if it becomes available. I suppose it has something to do with the economy. I guess the economic disaster also explains why there are so many more homeless people than I’ve ever seen in LA."
According to Heidegger, ‘homelessness is coming to be the destiny of the world’, perhaps we all end up metaphysically under the bridge in the ‘oblivion of Being’.
“Due to this negligence of the meaning of Being, man has lost almost all his connections with Being and lives now in a technical, artificial world: man has lost his “ground”, he is “homeless”.
Heidegger also had plenty to say on bridges and the intersections between earth and sky, divinities and mortals… The bridge as a place that creates location, while it divides and connects, there is also the possibility of moving between places, between worlds.How do we re-establish our connection in relation to Being? I nominate dancing. It’s an age-old practice to invoke being present in the body, and overcoming the absence of ground.
Those people who maintain that art and life should be kept separate may disagree, but I’m always happy to find an unexpected burst of creativity in the midst of everyday life. Whether it takes the form of a forgotten sculpture tucked away into the bypass of a freeway, or a moment of spontaneous performance with random strangers, it’s something I hope to create space for on bridges and beyond…
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How do I get to Bridgeland?
by Jodi Rose 25 Feb 2010
Good question. I’m still trying to figure that out myself…
Bridgeland is everywhere. Any bridge can take you to Bridgeland. It’s already in existence, there is nothing to create, all we have to do is learn to find our way.
walking in bridgeland – pont neuf, paris january 2010I’ve been discussing details for the opening event with the wonderful Lowsalt crew, who made another site visit last week and came up with a perfect site for each of the musicians, ingenious technical solutions and deeper concept synthesis of the performance in relation to the location. Now to continue the process of negotiation with council and local authorities. I’m sworn to secrecy on the details, so you’ll just have to come find out what they are on the night. Friday 23rd April, in case you’re reading this in Glasgow. Very excited to be coming in two weeks and getting onto making signs and costumes and music!
On an esoteric level, all those ideas from transmediale and my trip are swirling around in a transtemporal soup going through my mental filtering process. Something about making a transition between times is important, and the idea of perceptual time, non-linear, mythic – all the ways you can experience temporality.
I hear another take on the idea of moving through time in a talk by the ‘agent of displacement’ at NGBK whose main point is that ‘art travels through time’ and hence artists also. While the work is in process it’s alive, once it’s declared ‘finished’ and ‘you’ the artist named as ‘the author’, well then “you’re dealing with a corpse”. He talked about relational art, and seeing through to the other side of the wall, telling a story about his grandmother knocking on their dividing wall every evening to say goodnight, and his failed attempt at 8 to break through the wall, which has informed his entire art practice. Although simple and even a little banal at the time, the idea is still resonating.
What is on the other side of the wall? (or the bridge…) His piece in a Rome exhibition was to show photos of the rooms on the other side of the gallery walls, and in another Italian city, tried to convince the inhabitants of the apartment around the gallery to allow him to bring strangers in to their homes and observe the spaces as part of his artwork. One neighbour, a journalist, agreed and gave him the keys, while another elderly woman reluctantly allowed him to come into her apartment but refused to change any of her habits for his visits. So the gallery audience was brought through in small groups, kept behind velvet ropes as if in a museum, to observe this woman in her home, ironing or cooking or watching TV. He said it was a quite uncomfortable experience, as people tried to connect and say bongiorno, and excuse me, while she completely ignored them; A ‘relational artwork’ that failed to relate. He realised that any relation, even a negative one is still an interaction. I like the image of her steadfastly ironing away while all these art people traipsed through her home – of which she became the star.
Speaking of stars, it has been suggested that a fabulous red satin dress, corset and skyscraper heels form part of my bridge conductors outfit for the opening ceremony. (I’m thinking a tesla coil could be built in somewhere too – maybe on the hat?)
There’s something inherently decadent about dressing-up, it’s one of the reasons I love Glasgow so much, every time I visited for about two years the fantastic Maxwell Park crew had another dress-up party, and everyone went to such extravagant efforts to transform themselves and create a magical playground – with dancing! Becky just gave me the coolest opera and diva costume places in town, and I’m thinking that everyone needs to make or find an outfit to enter Bridgeland.
The Bruce Sterling idea of simply dressing up and inhabiting the future world in which you would like to live has taken hold here! There’s such a joyful celebratory feeling created by a whole lot of people in outrageous costumes. One of my favourite short films at transmediale was ‘permanent residents’, with a series of LA inhabitants in wonderfully bizarre outfits going about their daily life, from the laundromat to vacuuming the house, looking extreme and extraordinary. I think we can make this event spectacular and amazing, taking our wildest sartorial fantasies to the streets and celebrate crossing into Bridgeland.
700 brides for 700 bridges – pont battant, sonorama besançon 2009So, get your sewing machines out, it’s needles at dawn! Ok, well maybe sunset.
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transmediale 10 no.5
by Jodi Rose 22 Feb 2010
People, places, cookies and clocks.
One of the things about attending these festivals is that they bring so many people from the field into a confined space at the same time, which makes for lively conversations and random meetings… while overloading the participants with visual, aural mental and social stimulation.
Every now and then I took refuge in the comforting darkness of the cinema, where the diverse Film Program turned out to be one of the highlight of the entire festival. Everything from the first GDR Science Fiction film, to Arab Shorts in Agit-Prop Punks and Poets: Digital Media between Film, Video and Activism in the Arab World (an unwieldly title for a fascinating and intimate selection of films); the gorgeous ‘Studies in Light and Space’ with the Siberian mythical Moon Geese; fabulously bizarre science fiction short films made by artists including the enigmatic and hilarious ‘Captain’ by Swedish Bjørn Melhus and the very flamboyant, decadent and extravagantly perverse world of ‘Permanent Residents’ by Isabell Spengler. I only saw the shorts for Der Schweigende Stern (First Spaceship on Venus, 1959) the first space movie made in the GDR, which pictured the “dark vision of a failed civilisation”, and was presented in ‘Total Vision’ (the East German wide screen equivalent of the American Cinemascope) “revealing how a global visual canon of utopian ideas began to be created in the 1950s; and further developed throughout the following decades until eventually coming more or less to a standstill for lack of new utopias..”
strange sci-fi cinema moment:
By the last day I was unable to follow the timetable or make any kind of plan, so decided to hold my own transmediale dérive* through the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. I drifted around the Future Obscura visual arts exhibition again – still entranced by the white noise and Ryoji Ikeda, intrigued by the multi-layered trip through Murcia’s home-grown cultural scene, charmed by the fly-catching robots, panoramic wifi camera and imaginary alternative analogue film-transfer process of Parallel Image and not so engaged by some of the other works… and as is often the case in even the biggest media art exhibitions, some of the more interesting sounding pieces either didn’t work or required a long wait in a slow-moving queue for the fantastical Optofonica Capsule.
Panorama Wifi Camera:
Everyone I spoke to (or overheard talking) about the Paparazzi Robot seemed to confer that it worked neither as a tracking device or a concept. The promise of seeing the resulting images in a faux-celebrity culture context online wasn’t visible anywhere in the gallery, so the work lacked a crucial dimension and the robots were said to avoid people rather than chasing them.
Likewise, while the Artvertiser held a certain appeal, offering to implant your own art into public space with an ‘augmented-reality’ set of binoculars displaying the artwork onto specific advertisments in the democratisation of commercial billboards, the documentation and installation didn’t really convey the depth of the idea or give an impression of the effect in situ (and you couldn’t look through them).
I was happy to drift on past the bar again and ran into Tapio, who gave me the rundown on last years floating M.A.R.I.N Residency, and plans for the next Baltic art cruise. Time Machines on the cafe stage created a textured and visually engaging performance, with an intriguingly old school instrument hand-built into two wooden boxes of amplified levers, springs and strange mechanisms, linked to digital alarm clocks with minimal electronic sounds.
Time Machines in action:
Then it was time for dinner, so I joined in with a gathering of artist/curators hanging out at the bar for an adventure to cookies and cream located in a dark alley with a gigantic chandelier hanging over the garbage bins with only a printed A4 paper sign indicating the entrance. We found our way into the building and upstairs to the minimalist concrete post-industrial restaurant where the handsome geek-chic waiter took our motley appearance and high spirits in his stride, bringing some of the most sumptuously delicious vegetarian gourmet food I have ever eaten. Green salad with champagne dressing, beetroot poached egg on a bed of spinach, parmesan dumpling, chocolate hazelnut mousse with gold leaf… magnificent!
Berlin glamour restaurant entrance:
Finally we trekked over to the WMF for Club Transmediale, where I promptly managed to lose the fabulous women with whom I had arrived – Eva, curator of Media Art at Vooruit & Timelab in Ghent; Annette, director Sonic Acts in Amsterdam; Angela, director Baltan Laboratories in Eindhoven; Teresa, director of UM1 International Festival of Experimental Intermedia in Lisbon – although soon found new people, until the minimal electronica sent me out into the night to find my way home dancing on the icy streets.
*The dérive (with its flow of acts, its gestures, its strolls, its encounters) was to the totality exactly what psychoanalysis (in the best sense) is to language. Let yourself go with the flow of words, says the psychoanalyst. He listens, until the moment when he rejects or modifies (one could say detourns) a word, an expression or a definition. The dérive is certainly a technique, almost a therapeutic one. But just as analysis unaccompanied with anything else is almost always contraindicated, so continual dériving is dangerous to the extent that the individual, having gone too far (not without bases, but…) without defenses, is threatened with explosion, dissolution, dissociation, disintegration. And thence the relapse into what is termed ‘ordinary life,’ that is to say, in reality, into ‘petrified life.’ In this regard I now repudiate my Formulary’s propaganda for a continuous dérive. It could be continuous like the poker game in Las Vegas, but only for a certain period, limited to a weekend for some people, to a week as a good average; a month is really pushing it. In 1953-1954 we dérived for three or four months straight. That’s the extreme limit. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill us."
Ivan Chtcheglov, excerpt from a 1963 letter to Michèle Bernstein and Guy Debord, reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #9, p. 38. (Now I understand this, having dérived almost continuously for three years or so)
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transmediale 10 no. 4
by Jodi Rose 22 Feb 2010
Time is waiting in the wings…
As the festival madness fades, I’m left with a few reflections on the nature of culture and the concept of time.
Bruce Sterling gave the incredibly entertaining and inspiring keynote Atemporality: A cultural Speed Control, which he started with an outline of the atemporal knowledge-generating process, where instead of ‘write down the problem : think really hard : write down the solution’, he engages in a series of social networking, data mining, meme activities which end not in the solution of a problem (or even getting to ‘step 1 – write it down’), but "a lot of work about its meaning and its value and its social framing, combined with some database mining and some collaborative filtering, which is far beyond you and your pencil.”
Bruce Sterling – atemporality on the streets:
The idea of inventing your own future by claiming the right to dress up and enact it on the streets resonated widely with the audience. His example: making yourself an astronauts costume and space luggage to embrace the desire for space travel, and if you look ridiculous, well in what context? He also talked of a reported conversation or quote from William Gibson on the strategy for writing futuristic narratives and ideas as though they were already twenty years in the past, to avoid the technological awe and ‘whizz bang’ factor which can so quickly make the ideas become outdated.
Next was Siegfried Zielinski with a more theoretical take on the historical dimensions of abstract and mythical time using hand-drawn illustrations on an overhead projector, then Jem Finer who shared his fascinating ideas about longevity and the creation of a one thousand year long musical composition: Longplayer
Greek mythological time:
The long conversation introduced the idea of ‘geektime’ aka ‘version time’ – where there is no definitive future, more a constantly evolving slightly tweaked version of the eternal now. Whether it’s ‘better’ or not isn’t really so relevant – sometimes progress is an improvement, others you just want to hit a button to roll it back. Ideas about natural and synthetic time flowed through the discussion, explorations of the notion of perceived time – expanded or condensed depending on the emotional state using a sports analogy, although this could equally apply to everyday life – and whether or not we’re running out of time.
I drifted in and out of the auditorium over the course of the afternoon, in-between meeting up with the fabulous women of ‘Faces’ media art professionals at the bar. Congratulations to Michelle Teran on winning the Transmediale Award with her beautiful work Buscando al Sr. Goodbar exploring the city of Murcia in 3 simultaneous layers – by bus, google earth and tracking down the local authors of You Tube videos and having them re-enact their performance. Intimate and intriguing, so lovely to see a playful work with human element and depth in the layers of interaction, bringing the ‘virtual’ back into the ‘real’ world.
Had a long chat with Alessandro Ludovico, editor of Neural.it about his latest research on the changing nature of digital and print publishing and ideas for creating a personal online archive. I made it back upstairs in time to witness the intricately evolving musical and video performance POWEr, based only on the sounds and video from a tesla coil – live on stage! – with an extraordinarily rich palette of aural textures and delicate organic imagery.
POWEr tesla coil:
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transmediale 10 no. 3
by Jodi Rose 5 Feb 2010
A session this morning on Cultural Organisations talked about the future of work – different kinds of co-working spaces and ideas about sharing resources with a common vision and low budgets.
Keynote speaker Dr Richard Barbrook gave a great overview of the imaginary politics of the future… we are already living in the future and now we have to invent a new one!
A relay conversation about the possibilities of the future then started and is still in progress – lasting for 8 hours and so far covering everything the angel of history may be looking forward towards: time travel to a new concept of time by Drew Hemment (geek time or ‘version time’), human time, compressed or expanded time and the necessity of waiting sometimes.
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transmediale 10 no. 2.0
by Jodi Rose 4 Feb 2010
A quick break in-between the afternoon and evening programs.
Film screening so far the highlight – Arab Short Films, incredible material from the people living in Beirut while the city was being bombed – after the ceasefire a beautiful street action with the flag stretched across a destroyed bridge. Watch a selection of the films on Arab ShortsShort interlude in the cafe with a battery-fluid inspired performance in homage to Volta involving glitchy sound made from very intriguing glass jars and scientist artists… Then back into the cinema for the science fiction short films, entertaining and bizarre;
Running into all kinds of people, Alex Davies now heading back to Australia after his time in Linz, who talked about his new augmented reality video works; Phil Niblock in the cafe on his eternal tour; Christina Kral making video documentation for eyebeam in NY – sorry! we never did find time for that interview; Miga from the migrating art academies project; Judith and Vincent from Ars Longa and Anne Roquingy presenting WJ-spots.
Sitting by Jem Finer’s work, listening to the ‘Long Player’ slowly evolving soundscape (played over 1000 years) and now upstairs for the Tesla coil performance… mmm electricity sparks fly can’t wait!
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transmediale 10 no. 2
by Jodi Rose 4 Feb 2010
Second day of transmedialala and I’ve already reached fuzzy festival saturation overload. The morning session of presentations and panel discussion about ‘creativity as an economic resource’ skirted around the issues of creating a different cultural economic model, with stories of three successful creative enterprises pitted against the seriously pessimistic academic reading of capital and creativity. Feudalism, rich white knights and the exploitation of your own labour resources were all touched on, without really exploring in depth any of the more interesting points that were raised, particularly about strategies for creating sustainable alternatives in a micro-economic scale.
Next is ‘Processual Media Art and Theory’ and/or Agit Prop – Art.
“We have no future because our present is too volatile. … The spinning of the given moment’s scenarios. Pattern recognition.” [William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, 2003]
Last night’s “Pattern Recognition” concert was a cacophony of white noise and minimalist drone…
both of which I enjoy in moderation and depending on context.The first peformance ‘Materia Obscura’, had a distinctly soporific effect, endlessly mutating imagery reminiscent of renaissance paint merging into a burning desert with accompanying transcendental music. The second piece, ‘Test Pattern’ was a wildly energetic abstract static and glitch extravaganza, melding the low deep beats with high frequency bleeps to create a satisfying immersion into the black & white world of Riyoji Ikeda. The overall effect left me unable to contemplate attending the OM deathmetal show at Club Transmediale, although I’m told that it was quite hypnotic, and somehow failed to notice that my favourite eclectic Berlin DJ, Markus Detmer of Staubgold was also playing.
I went back to visit the sexy immersive sound-helmet, but was foiled by a long and slow-moving queue waiting to experience the work. Today the fly-catching robots caught my attention – beautifully realised and quirky designs matching the concept.
So the plan is to fill out the names and add the links later…
Looking at ‘white noise’ magnetic tape installation by Zilvinas Kempinas -
transmediale 10 no. 1
by Jodi Rose 3 Feb 2010
I’m finally drinking my slow espresso – cooked on an iron – at the ‘feral trade’ cafe in the foyer of the haus de kulturen der welt venue for Transmediale Futurity Now. After a quick spin around the exhibition my head is whirling with papparazzi robots, the artifical full moon suspended in an Italian piazza by Chinese artist Wang, Yuyang and the gorgeous imaginary low-tech system for vision transfer sending every individual pixel of an image through a copper cable onto a grid panel. The cutting edge of media art and cultural economics are represented in both the artists, speakers and hundreds of attendees, waiting to dive into the melee of ideas.
Coffe in the Feral Trade CafeThe session on ‘Phuturama’ I wanted to attend is all in German and the workshop on free culture incubation was booked out, so now I’m about to head into the cinema for a program on ‘Media Personifications’ and latter the ‘Pattern Recognition’ performance.
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bridge between worlds
by Jodi Rose 29 Jan 2010
There is usually a very specific reason for my travels, setting up an installation (here), performing at a festival (there), or making a project on a bridge (everywhere)… so on this trip it comes as something of a surprise to find myself simply reconnecting with friends and collaborators from along the way.
Connecting with friends on bridges across Europe (Eric in Paris)Of course, I´m still working while on the road – a nomadic art practice never sleeps – and have just finished a composition Week #2 release on "Tiramuzu"http://tiramizu.free.fr/index based on days of the week, with each piece accompanied by an illustration. I’m struggling to make the transition to being a sound AND visual artist, drawing was never my strong suit, nor putting things in space or making objects… hence the ´conceptual sound art´practice! However, someone has managed to convince me to draw, and apparently it’s passed their critical inspection so will be included in the screen-printed booklet to accompany the CD.
The sound composition is called ´Norse Bridge Apocalypse´, and is based on a Norse myth about rainbows as bridges between heaven and earth, with my own interpretation. The illustration is a drawing of the beautiful Pont du Chardronnet in Besancon, which I had the pleasure of amplifying with the addition of various metal and wood objects turning it into a ´Prepared Bridge´for passers-by to play on during the recent Sonorama Festival.
The bridge itself looks like a sound wave, in deep blue, which inspired the drawing… somehow I find myself taking an element from the last project to remix into the latest, which changes every time. The selection is not at all random – although it can seem that way – more based on intuition and personal inclination or cirumstances, so that whatever is happening in my life at the time is woven into the work. Usually in a very abstract and coded way. Then placed into a completely different context where it can be read in whatever way the viewer or listener brings to the work.
Eric in Besançon testing the sine wave bridge for collaborationNow I´m in Barcelona, revisiting some wonderful friends and getting a taste of life in the South – a perfect week to be away from Berlin where the minus ten degrees cold takes on a life of it´s own, becomes an entity wrapping itself around you with every breath and cracking your bones from inside. The sunshine and high blue skies here are giving me an entirely different take on the world, everything starts to melt and open again. We visited an artist/designer/architect friend´s place last night to watch an amazing film ´Madeinusa´, the story of a very wild young girl in Peru – truly another world of superstition, magic and incredible strength.
That´s the strange thing about the ultra-nomadic life, is finding the culture is highly specific in every region, even different parts of the same city have their own attitude and philosophy – so that despite the cultural globalisation that seems to be taking place, I find the local pulse often feels far stronger than whatever is driving global forces and economies. We do find ways to create community and celebrate the moments of beauty and small joys in life, whatever our external circumstances or politics may be…
or am I simply an incorrigibly romantic utopian?This afternoon promises a return to one of my favourite bridges, the Calatrava curve over Bach Felippe de Roda, which had a sound strangely reminiscent of Spanish guitar. What I most loved about it on my first visit was all the people playing cards and volleyball underneath*, this time maybe we will have the courage to go and talk with them – if I get out of the house in time for my guide to make the trip before giving his welding course in the studio this afternoon. Ok, now out into the sunshine!
*Now a building site for the high-speed train from Paris, there is nothing under the bridge but temporary construction offices and bulldozing equipment. I do see a strong gypsy-looking woman pushing a shopping trolley filled with lengths of metal over the bridge, and wish I had the language to speak with her… but the vibrant community life underneath has vanished.
Calatrava ‘Bach Felippe de Roda’ Bridge, Barcelona -
Philosophy and Bridges - Part 1
by Jodi Rose 24 Jan 2010
In the midst of this excursion across bridges over Europe, let’s take a dive into the philosophy of bridges. This is the first excerpt from a conversation with an eminent Australian philosopher:
Justin Clemens
Interview Sunday 11th July 2004
Albert St, Brunswick MelbournePhilosophy and Bridges
JR: I’m talking with Justin Clemens
JC: It’s always a pleasure Jodi
JR: I’d like to walk you through the journey I’ve taken to record bridges around Australia, and help tease out the philosophical ideas.JC: Bees?
The German philosopher Heidegger was into bees. Lots of philosophers have used metaphors from experiments using bees. If you cut the bum off a bee and get it to drink honey… even though the bee is missing its bum, it’s still alive, so it starts drinking the honey. The bee doesn’t stop – even though there is honey pouring out of the hole.JR: Does it feel?
JC: That wasn’t the point for Heidegger. The bee doesn’t have any concept that it’s had enough honey, and continues to drink. Animals are poor in world, don’t understand or have feelings, senses, capacities and capabilities – lacking something in respect to human life.What us a world? A place humans create, that is at once a rupture to the natural world and still tied to it. Humans are thrown out into nothingness (I’m translating freely and in my own way here) environment unsound, Peter Singer disagree with Heidegger
JR: Are you talking about an awareness of self in the world?
JC: A particular awareness of self in such a way that one’s self is an issue for humans in their very being in a way it isn’t for animals. Humans suffer a rupture with biological necessity or programming or drives – not self-consciousness – against eminently thinking beings.Affect, feeling for human beings become an index of self and being, a co-implication of ones self and nature that is at once a continuity and rupture
That is why the bee is interesting for Heidegger.
Emil Bonveniste – great linguist of the Twentieth Century, uses an example in which he finds out bees can signal the presence of honey to another bee. They do a honey dance, “it’s in that direction! why don’t we go and drink some honey?”
The bee proves to be the brunt of the example, a bee with a bum.
The crucial point is, that the bee signalling has to have seen the honey themselves – they can’t tell another bee, “I’ve seen the honey.”Bee A tells me there’s honey over there. There is no reported speech for bees in the same way.
Bee B can tell bee C – linked much more directly
Bee B has to look for honey themselves
Something essential about the difference between human language and animal signalling.Heidegger says: language, that is the real rupture between animals and humans.
JR: There is a particular Heidegger quote that I love, but don’t fully understand: “The bridge is a location, as such a thing it allows a space into which earth and heaven, divinities and mortals are admitted. It contains many places variously near and far from the bridge.”
Can you unpack some of that for me? I don’t fully grasp it.JC: A difficult point in Heidegger. The bridge makes a bridge between bee and bridge itself, what Heidegger calls the fourfold – ringing mirror play of the world is something only really open to humans. It has to be considered outside simple biological determinations of man and humanity, as a rupture with pure existence in a straightforward sense, and man is propelled into the home of being for language. A bridge for Heidegger – even though it seems to be something that’s erected on a pre-existing place, it seems banks were already there, the river is already there – seems to links two sides in instrumental fashion. It’s hard to try and get across wade, swim…
JR?: you can try and fly
JC: … the bridge that makes the place – that place becomes itself for human beings and dwelling only insofar as something is built across. Thrown out across the abyss, or river joins together places previously unlinked.
Both an actual and metaphysical bridge.
The building of a bridge makes the place a place.Building, dwelling, thinking – such a coincidence.
In later Heidegger he says: “Language is the house of being and there man dwells.” For Heidegger we come back to the difference between humans and animals.Humans rupture through the word itself, through language.
Language opens up in humans a completely different way of being in the world. Humans no longer have an essence in the way we can describe the species as having – rats, toads, frogs, bees…Dwelling in language is linked very straightforwardly to the image metaphor of the bridge.
Through the bridge, or the word – because words are in several ways bridges – not simply instrumental means of communication
There’s more to language than that, which I want to discuss.The place is made by the word, words aren’t tied to particular places – there is something de-territorialised about word and language.
That place, opened up by language itself makes possibility of human life
JR?: Is that biblical? The word creating the world?
JC: Words do have a creative power for Heidegger – in an analogous way to the bridge makes the place
The place making aspect of language allows Heidegger to forge an/his/the analogy between language and bridge – that’s only one example.
There’s also the jug, the void…JR: How does the bridge call into being earth and heaven, divinities and mortals..?
JC: That’s a very good question Jodi, I’m glad you asked me that!
One of the things the bridge does – it connects the disparate which it renders as disparate, after it’s made. The disparity and the linkage are only clear after the making of the bridge.Alll the technical stuff that goes on – the painstaking work of building, craft based; engineers, thinking about making this thing – brings together all the disparate aspects of human life, shows the unity of multiplicity and shows how humans can dwell on the earth in a particular way.
Projection to a future, to a memory of the past, transformation of place, through craftpersonship.
This very connection shows new possibilities for human life not predetermined by any sort of history or necessity. Bridge building brings together past and future, certain techniques, materials of place, certain means of shaping that matter, and brings together in one thing a whole universe, shows how they can be held together in their very disparity.
The bridge forges a connection that wasn’t previously there – it makes a whole load of new things possible. Ease, communication, new way of shuttling goods around, talking to other people, moving about. The bridge don’t just service instrumental or biological needs. The process of planning, building, shows all these things can exist together, earth and heaven – this world making achievement that is a bridge.
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on the road to bridgeland
by Jodi Rose 18 Jan 2010
I’ll be tracing the evolution of bridgeland here as the process develops, and exploring the philosophical and artistic background, social/cultural context and other tangentially related miscellaneous things as they occur. It’s very exciting to be invited by the excellent Lowsalt curators to create some kind of sonic bridge happening in Glasgow, and by PAR+RS to have this space to play and explore.
The two week pre-launch tour in Amsterdam started with a visit to Mediamatic for their strange and intriguing, extremely thought-provoking exhibition of video and images from Greenland, at the opening of the Bardot Proviant Club.
Lady in white fur at Mediamatic exhibition openingIt’s a completely immersive environment, the walls covered by large scale images of the magnificent landscape, juxtaposed with intimate picture viewer video screens showing documentaries from the Greenlandic community, that offer a very different take on the seal hunting and climate change debate….
Bardot Proviant Club installationOn the morning walk from Westhaven to the Moroccan bakery, I found an inspiring location for the creation of Bridgeland:
Miracle Bridge!
Yes, in Bridgeland all your dreams really do come true…
Mirakelbrug, Amsterdam -
Welcome to Singing Bridges, the story so far....
by Jodi Rose 14 Jan 2010
Singing Bridges is an urban sonic sculpture on a global scale. Listening to the sound of bridge cables, the voice of each bridge is heard as an instrument for an expanded urban musical experience, a Global Bridge Symphony. ‘The city is our temple, electronic networks our religion and the sound of the bridge cables is the voice of the divine.’
Every bridge is connected to all other bridges through the vibrations in their structure. Stretching the boundaries of art and technology across geographical and architectural borders into a new acoustic form. All bridges resonate with a secret music, transmitting and receiving messages, codes and signals, heard through the sounds of bridges in multiple locations.
The bridge echoes with a secret language, listening in to the vibrations within the structure: songs of the inaudible and inexpressible, desires and dreams, the voices of those who have crossed or passed over. Going beyond country borders, without seeking to collect and represent the sounds of each bridge into a structured hierarchy, or impose order from above in a singular artist composer viewpoint, but gathering, amplifying, connecting and disseminating a multiplicity of voices in freely evolving form.
“As harps for the winds of heaven, my weblike cables are spun.”
Joseph B. Strauss, Chief Engineer Golden Gate Bridge (1937)Even the engineers can hear the bridges singing!
R&D Engineer Rashid listens to Bangkok Mega Bridge under construction