Got a fresh new podcast out on Artists and Friends where we’re talking to Anaïs Comer all about her art practice and various other issues that came up! You can listen on >>>here<< and we highly recommend checking out her amazing website right >>>here<<<
We’re also very excited to be making some work for a festival called Aespia which is this crazy 24 hour party where you’re are taken away on blanked-out coaches and shuttle buses to a secret woodland location. The concept is is all based around creativity and discovering a meaningful connection to the things and beings that surround you. It’s also quite interesting because it’s got a ‘no phone’ policy supposedly to enable you to leave your reality behind and immerse yourself in an alternate world. But our job as participating artists is to transform the woods into an engaging outdoor gallery. Our proposal is below.
Every year in August and January Football fans are treated to the excitement and drama of Transfer-Deadline day. It is the day when the player exchange markets close and the teams for the following four months are set in stone. Due to the pressure of the deadline an extraordinary amount of transfers are finalised in the last few hours of the evening as teams scramble to sign players that’ll strengthen their squad. Due to the intense (and fairly childish) historic rivalries between clubs there is often a lot of drama as these final hours unfold, all of this can be watched on twitter or on specialist transfer news channels. As a fan it’s very exciting. As a player in this situation, most of these deals are out of your hands, one day you might be playing football in Hull and the following morning you’re heading to live in Moscow because CSKA have agreed a deal with your agent. Most professional footballers are extremely well paid so it’s very hard to sympathise with situations such as this one, their wage and market value looms over them, dehumanising them, making them seem like fictional characters in a game or a heroes/villains in a cartoon. This dehumanisation makes them bizarre cultural icons, the basis of which is grounded in the inhuman levels of monetary exchange as well as the subjectivity of evaluation of skill.
We want to bring Transfer Deadline day to Aespia. A fictional football club existing only for a day is desperately looking for new players, and the Chairman, Manager and Director of Football are determined to work through the night to bring the best talent to the club for the season ahead. Upon being greeted by the Manager of the club you will be met by the Chairman who will run you through your contract. Sign or decline, it’s decision time. If you decide to sign for the club you will be asked to wear your new club shirt and pose for photos from the press in front of an advertising board. (The press will be illustrated through camera flashes). At this point the new player will be issued their club training ID card on a lanyard detailing the information of the club they play for as well as their name and what position they play. Each player will also receive a pin badge featuring their new club’s crest so they can display their loyalty to the club and the fans throughout the festival. A healthy half-time orange will also be included in the induction pack to make sure the players remain fit and healthy for the season ahead, which will undoubtedly be tough.
We’ve also figured out a structure for the exhibition we’re going to curate at Light Eye Mind in October. We were thinking about ‘teamwork’ – what the word actually means as well as where it’s used effectively and its relationship to art. When artists and curators get together to put on a group show it’s a team effort; each individual contributes something different, some go unnoticed, some are more relevant than others but holistically they make up the structure that supports the concept, the works, the whole show. If a group of people are trying to build a fire together and they separate to all fetch wood, people are going to come back with different types of wood – twigs, branches, logs etc. all of these components have their own necessary place in the process of making a fire but may not be visible when the fire is lit.
We want to look at the space where conversations happen before the final event; essentially, the kindling that gets burned in the process of making the fire. This is where teamwork is visible and perhaps when it is most effective. When Sid was about 11 years old he went for a backstage tour of the old Arsenal stadium, Highbury, the memory that stands out for him the most was the changing room. Individually the players had their own distinct traits and skills, but ultimately their success was mainly governed by their ability to work effectively as a collective. The room was arranged for viewing by the public, there were no smelly socks lying around, but pristine football boots and ironed shirts displaying the surnames of each of the players. It’s presentation contrasted what the room was; a place for planning, debating, celebrating, arranging, changing, delegating.
Light Eye Mind is in a very interesting position geographically; being so close to the Emirates Stadium there is a meeting of two dedicated factions of interest; Art and Sport, Art fans and Sports Fans. While the two groups don’t need to be pushed together it’s interesting to consider the similarities and differences; how much of the mind set of one party falls into the same basket as the other.
Running off the idea of Teamwork and the space of the Footballer’s (or general sportsperson’s) dressing room, we would like to insert exhibition into the idea of the changing room, or at least, what that sort of space represents. Artists will be allocated small booth sections, however they will in no means be discouraged from spreading beyond this structure. They will also be asked to decide what their art is in the role of the team, this can be anything they decide, from making work that’s referential to another artist in the exhibition, to providing a public service that gives some traction to the proceedings of the show. It’s up to them to consider their position within the team of the group show.
