Peer-to-Peer Project Launch

A few images from the launch of the the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks project.

[photos by Nikki Pugh, Makoto Shindo and Karin Kihlberg]

introduction to the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks Project

Working with Springhill Institute I will develop a creative strategy for investigating an artistic landscape. This will initially involve the design and hand production of a series of books of ‘blank pages’ to which artists will be invited to contribute a fragment of their current work. Each participant will then be asked to pass the book on to an artist of their choice for completion of the next page. In this way, the process of gathering these contributions will result in a sort of highly subjective cartography that maps out the current terrain of specific individuals and also the links between a progression of artists.

The journey of each book will be logged here and it is hoped that the final contributor to each volume will then return the book to me.

In the first instance I will make 26 books each with 26 blank pages. In addition to starting trails here in the UK, I will also take several books with me when I go to Japan in September. Here they will act as a means to develop existing relationships and also to initiate new ones.

To signify the start of the collation process, we hosted a one-night event at Springhill Institute in which artists were invited to leave their mark on blank pages that will then be compiled to form the first volume.

Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks is funded by Springhill Institute through the Springhill Project support, 2006.

renga boogie

The weather was a bit cold and rainy, but the food was plentiful and the music was loud so we soon settled into it…

A Flickr slideshow of the day can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikki_pugh/sets/72157594234326888/show/

Liam’s festival renga

Liam was let loose with a camera. Here is the renga session at the 3 Estates Festival as seen through his eyes…

…and his speciality grape-in-a-doughnut™ added a certain je nais ce quois too!

freight

Hawkesley Square renga

Anthony asked us if we could get the kids a park to play in, instead of his wall (I don’t mind the hanging/but it’s the rubbish I can’t stand).

Liam started off by telling us about how he was often chased by the police. But stayed with us all day and wrote several nice verses (I fell out with my girlfriend/Norma/and got her back).

Joan came back again and was on as good form as last time (the bees in my bushes/are much too big/they’re black).

One of last month’s verses really hit home for a man whose son had returned home from Iraq that day (love goes home/to battlezone sighs/and Basra baggies).

cartography

An idea arrives completely out of the blue; you spend weeks thinking that it’s arrived completely out of the blue; and then one morning whilst in the shower suddenly you can point back to loads of influences that produced the idea…

ISP draw our network workshop:

Degree show thinking network diagrams:

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index.cfm

Open planning:

We are the artists:

http://www.wearetheartists.net/

Conversations about conversations and inviting along someone you want to have a conversation with.

closed

Following on from this, I’m very much interested in the process of remote selection: the idea that once I send off a piece of work to this fax machine I have no further control over it. Particularly that work may or may not get selected for display (by whatever means) at all.

I’ve devised a series of computer-controlled processes that I will use to exagerate this process of arbitrary selection and rejection. I will submit works to it and then these will get filtered in a fairly random manner before being faxed off to Manchester.

The automated aspect of this needs some computing resources I don’t have with this particular set-up so things are stalled at the moment whilst I try and get those sorted. Let’s hope the un-announced close date for the show is a little way off yet…

open

I’ve been trying to chart the processes involved in the forthcoming [insertspace] show, Open.

It’s hellishly difficult/complicated:

Participation in the project basically involves submitting artwork by fax to the MILL-WORKERS space in Manchester. From here your work is completely in the hands of the MILL-WORKERS tenants…

Whether it gets displayed/whether is gets destroyed/how it gets displayed/when it gets displayed etc etc.

I gave up on the data flow diagram too:

Obviously the only sensible way to respond is by making the process even more convoluted…

renga snippets

Nice things from being sat in the middle of a council estate shopping precinct on a Saturday in June whilst writing poetry and inviting passers by to join us:

Joan – not sure what she had originally planned to do with her day, but she spent about 6 hours of it with us.

Joan – not sure if she really understood what we were doing, but she didn’t ‘alf come out with some corkers.

Gloria – initially intensely suspicious of what we were doing and our motives for doing so. She went away to think about it, but re-appeared 10 minutes later and contributed a verse.

Gloria – likes botany.

Diesel – local mc from the estate. Presumably spends a lot of time working with words and performing in front of crowds.

Diesel – Didn’t half look nervous when he was sat down talking with us.

Gang of youths – hanging around looking dismissive of what we were doing, but making sure they could hear what we were saying. “They’re writing poetry man, and then they just all go quiet.”

Maxine – Works in the cafe, but managed to join us for a while at the beginning of the session.

Maxine – Would join us on one of the Saturdays she’s not working, but she’ll be akido training instead.

Paul – for gently (but persistantly!) pointing out that, as of lunchtime, none of my verses had yet been selected!