We are the Interstitials

Foreword:

This post has been brewing for several days now and has just been tipped into existence by the latest post on Museum 2.0 about deliberately unsustainable business models. Other kindling includes: this comment from 2007 where I suggest some metallurgical references for renaming structural holes; Pete Aston’s tweet about being comfortable with the idea that he’ll be doing something completely different come 2015; and the job titles I variously use to describe to people what I do which include “transdisciplinary independent person”, “investigator” and “interstitial”.

We are the Interstitials is a metaphor based on principles of interstitial solutes in metals.

We are the Interstitials:

We are smaller than the structures around us. We inhabit the gaps the host matrix cannot occupy itself.
Our small size gives us speed and responsiveness and though the sites we may occupy are ultimately determined by the host matrix, we are mobile and select which of the available positions we inhabit.

Our host is rigid; bound to the other similar entities around it in predictable patterns. We are independent; we may cluster around locations or other interstitials, but our interactions shift as required. We frequently move on, jumping between adjacent sites. There’s no problem, it’s just how we are.

Our host may regard us as defects, but though our numbers are small, our effects are wide-reaching and can drastically change the properties of the matrix we operate within. The energy-fields around us, induced by our presence, often make it easy for us to interact with other types of perceived ‘defect’, often impeding their motion or changing the way they in turn affect the matrix.

We are small, we are mobile, we affect. We are the interstitials.

Lever, crank, bell crank, cam and ratchet

Lever, crank, bell crank, cam and ratchet was an installation of a series of sculptures I made specifically for the GOODS In group exhibition (Saturday 28th June, a one day event in a disused warehouse space).

It was the first time anything like this had happened in this space and location-wise it was outside the usual destinations and a little bit tricky to spot (amusing considering the size of the place!) so it was good to see so many people track it down and come and have a look over the few hours it was open.

As per usual I ended up producing something that needed active participation from the audience in order to function: Lever, crank, bell crank, cam and ratchet consisted of 5 small cardboard models of each of the named mechanical components connected to each other and to weights via threads that arched across the room.

The sculptures were made so that rather than forming an array of mechanisms that combined to produce some overall useful effect, each one worked in isolation and therefore was limited to a basic repetitive action.

Apart from a few extras to form the axles and pivots (and the occasional rubber band, of course), the units were made from A4 cardboard picked up when I worked as a temp for an examining board. This is the cardboard used to reinforce the envelopes in which adult basic literacy and numeracy exams are returned.

I’ll leave you to form your own connections and meanings…

The way it worked out, there was no signage to accompany the works in the show so it became quite interesting for me to watch and see how people overcame (or otherwise) the usual gallery barriers to interact (or otherwise) with the mechanisms.

Many people wouldn’t operate the levers and handles – even when told they could, and even when they’d been looking at them for some time presumably wondering what would happen if…

As usual, the best way to get people participating was to lead by example and just get on and have a play and then invite them to join you. There were some nice cascades where for a while we’d have 3 or 4 people all operating different parts of the installation.

Also, as with other projects, those that got over that initial participation barrier tended to become ‘power-users’ [to borrow a term from a recent post] and get properly stuck in. I’m definitely talking about Pete here as demonstrated by the final scene in this video:

Lever, crank, bell crank, cam and ratchet from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

await further instructions

The Emergent Game website is.

my new camel

This morning I went along for an introductory visit to the local primary school where I will be doing a project with some of the students.

I found myself in the staffroom with some teachers fresh from an assembly where they’d had two dancers performing. One thing led to another and suddenly the conversation had evolved into the one about Not Getting Modern Art. You know the one – it always starts with The Bricks and The Bed.

I let it go. I didn’t have the heart to introduce myself as the artist who’d just been asked to do something with the reception class’ bricks.

Observation became participation after stepping in to perform banana-opening duties at break time and the food-related theme continued with invisible chocolate soup and an invisible glass of wine with cream on top.

You gotta love it.

Walk to Work – a proposal

I set Kevin the task of mapping out his normal route to work in terms of lefts and rights etc and asked him to set off one day from where he was staying in China and Walk to Work following his normal route and ‘do some work’ when he got there where ever that was. The definition of work is blurred here so do something – take photos write sweep the street – whatever.
Paul Conneally

An interesting proposition has come through to work with Paul Conneally and Kevin Ryan on the challenge of transposing people’s usual journeys to work onto different locations, and then performing some sort of work function at the new location.

Kevin’s walk in Chongqing resulted in some really nice images which you can now see on his photo gallery.

Meanwhile, I recorded my journey to work for Paul to do what he will with:

1. Right
2. Right
3. Left
4. Left
5. Right
6. Straight over
7. Straight over
8. Straight over
9. Right
10. Delay of 32 minutes
11. Right
12. Left
13. Left
14. Right
15. Left
16. Right
17. Straight over
18. Straight over
19. Straight over
20. Straight over
21. Left
22. Left

After some discussion, we seem to have a distilled version of my typical day’s work invigilating at a local gallery that Paul will reproduce somewhere else:

• Arrive at your location and set up.
• Perform a general tidy up of the area.
• Settle into your seat and become absorbed in your book/music whilst at the same time being attentive to the needs of others around you.
• Answer any queries in a polite and professional manner, asking any visitors if they wouldn’t mind adding their name to the visitors book.
• At about 4 o’clock ask if anyone wants some chocolate and then go to the nearest newsagents.
• Return to your seat as before.
• Start packing up 5 minutes early if you think you can get away with it.

That’s the starting point anyway – I’m really interested to see what conversations Paul’s presence might catalyse. We’ve been strict withourselves and dismissed the temptation of too many bells and whistles: Paul’s mission is essentially to sit, to be, and to watch.

Yamanote Stories

Checking the feasibility of telling the SoPG: Yamanote stories whilst travelling in between stations on the Yamanote line.

3 jokes

3 jokes told to me by a drunk Irish crack-addict whilst in London’s Hyde park:

1. Why does Tiger Woods wear two condoms? In case he gets a hole in one.
2. A meandering anecdote about going to the Bank of God. Punchline: Holy Spirit Bank of Christ.
3. Someting to do with rescusitating a tank full of eels.

renga roundup

Wow. Has it really been 7 months since I first agreed to go and sit under a tent in a housing estate and write poetry with strangers?

Yesterday we gathered in Keith’s house and penned the final batch of the 100 Verses for 3 Estates (Alec Finlay, Gavin Wade and Paul Connolly Paul Conneally Little Onion).

You already *know* there was a good bunch of people there and the atmosphere was great, but the food was delicious and deserves a special mention – thanks guys!

Does it sound like we didn’t work very hard?
There was some serious thinking going on too…

absurdity and the art of seduction

…Either people are truly gullible (fascinating hypothesis, but not too appealing), or else one must think that it is by soliciting them in the strangest, the most preposterous way, that they are seduced most easily. Indeed they want to be seduced, that is to say not solicited within their raison d’etre, and the same people who most obstinately resist justifiable, reasonable, explicit requests (requests for help, requests for opinion, affective a psychological requests) are prepared to play the arbitrary and absurd game of seduction. We are, in the end, secretly flattered that something is asked or even demanded of us for no reason, or contrary to reason: It spares us the commonplace and honors us in a more profound complicity. It is on this level that the seduction is played out, and rightfully so: There are few people in whom this basic reflex, this spontaneous response to the challenge of irrationality, has been destroyed by the habits of reason.

Please Follow Me, Jean Baudrillard

Volume 13

Volume 13 started off with sculptor Atsuo Okamoto: he agreed to fill in a page of the sketchbook and pass it on to another artist; I agreed to keep a small section of the artwork “Volume of Lives” with me until I die. Anything’s fair game in the world of artistic collaborations!