A christmas song
Battleships : Ocean Apocalypse!
What to do with a room full of model boats in display cases? Play a 3D, to-scale version of Battleships of course.
One autumn in the late 1960’s the finest model ship builders were summoned to the Science Museum in London and put to work with tiny chisels and miniature rivets in pursuit of an exhibition of exquisite models to echo Britain’s naval prowess and glory, and long did they toil. But not quite as long as the exhibition has been on display.
Before the current multi-mediated, intimately interactive and well thought-out exhibitions, there was the display case. The window to the past, the incubator of time, the proud bearer of artifact. We’d push our faces against the glass turning the object round in the mind, imagining all it’s potential uses, all the possible and impossible situations it had survived, unable to tell whether it were real or no.
I was floundering in this nostalgia last week at the Science Museum’s Shipping Gallery, where we were designing Battleships : Ocean Apocalypse, a live, fully dimensional version of the classic vector thriller. Next year the thousand or so models, mini-engines and navigation equipment will be disappeared and replaced by something more current and exciting, so we’re taking this opportunity to inject a last bit of life into the hulks and the paddles and the turbines. This is the non-deleterious war the brittle liners have been dreaming of! Where ancient Northumbrian fishers can fight alongside Britain’s first nuclear submarine! Two teams will assemble a fleet from their favourite models and battle it out across the vast floor of the gallery. Miss! Miss! Hit!
Museums should activate the imagination and stimulate the mind and while most of the new generation of exhibitions are excellent, I reserve a place in my heart for the simple, static object who’s history can be whatever I imagine.
Battleships : Ocean Apocalypse takes this Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd October from 11am to 3:30pm in the Shipping Gallery at the Science Museum, London. Games run every 30 mins (and take 15 – 20 mins).
ATOMKRAFT Scratching at BAC
What are you doing on Thursday night 9pm? Why not come down to BAC and see what I’ve been cooking up (apart from my hand) in Edinburgh. This scratch featured as part of the BAC Summerhall activities. Poor old Summerhall, jumped a bit too quickly into very serious art dealing and ended up with it’s head up its arse. Nice sofas though. And lovely box office staff.
Nevertheless / alwaysthemore, I had a good time and was able to include my favourite imagination – that of Mamoru Iriguchi – into the scratch. BAC have been jolly nice in asking us to re-do it at their place, so on Thursday (that’s right, the day after tomorrow) come down and check us out.
Here’s the rather good E-flyer cooked up by the BAC team. I did the copy though. Do you like it?
And don’t worry if you miss this one, because I’m developing it more and doing it again on 21st October down at the Riverside Wankhouse, where with the marvellous SHOWTiME team (Present Attempt to those in the know), we’re trying to de-wankify the place.
ATOMKRAFT Research 3
06:55 Rubidium 06:50 47 billion years 06:45 Is this a dream? 06:40 Uranium 228 06:35 4.5 billion years 06:30 Take off your mask 06:25 Uranium 235 06:20 710 million years 06:20 Who are you? 06:10 Thorium 06:05 80,000 years 06:00 Are you going to die? 05:55 Plutonium 05:50 24,400 years 05:50 How long have you got left? 05:40 Americium 16/01/1900 05:40 Is it true you’re retiring? 05:35 7,950 years 05:30 Who’s going to inherit your enormous wealth? 05:25 Carbon 05:20 5,730 years 05:15 Is this a myth? 05:10 Radium 05:10 What’s wrong with you? 05:05 1590 years 04:55 Human 04:50 38 years 04:45 Do you believe in God? 04:40 Caesium 04:35 30 years 04:35 Do you think your plan is irresponsible? 04:25 Strontium 04:20 28.1 years 04:15 Stand up 04:10 Cobalt 04:10 Tell us about your theory of heat 04:05 5.3 years 04:00 Does that mean that a Lizard is effectively solar powered? 03:55 Calcium 03:50 164 days 03:45 Tell us about the water 03:40 Phosphorus 03:35 14.5 days 03:30 What’s going to happen to your body? 03:25 Iodine 03:20 8 days 03:10 Radon 03:10 How did you get your cancer? 03:05 3.82 days 02:55 Tritium 02:55 Tell us about the air 02:50 64 hours 02:45 Is that a wig? 02:40 Sodium 02:35 15 hours 02:30 Tell us about the ground 02:25 Potassium 02:20 12.5 hours 02:15 Show us where your cancer is 02:10 Technetium 02:05 18 minutes 02:00 What’s that noise? 01:55 Flourine 01:50 66 seconds 01:45 Where will you be buried? 01:40 Love 01:35 5 seconds 01:30 The ground you love so much 01:25 Polonium 01:20 0.00000004 second 01:15 01:10 turn it on 01:05 Beryllium 01:00 1×10-16 second 00:55 It’s time 00:50 Go down 00:45 Sing
ATOMKRAFT Research 2
In Tuesday’s news the Indian nuclear authority plays down the risk of contamination of it’s workers, or future workers. India is (or perhaps was) keen to fire up the mighty turbines of Nuclear Power, and had been approached by the Chinese who offered their reactors. The Indian government politely rejected the offer on the grounds they wanted their own technology and presumably their own profits. Nigeria had a similar offer from the Russians this week and have all but accepted.
Here’s a description of a scene:
The following takes place over the period of one hundred years. Twelve people are resent on stage. Half are professional nuclear workers and half are professional theatre workers. Due to the deep level of research and extremely long rehearsal period, both parties can be said to be proficient in both professions.
(Do not forget at any point forget they are in a theatre. You will not be transported. You will not be moved. There are no love stories nor battles of will nor the revelation of certain salacious secrets. There will be zero surprise, zero thrill, and no music. There will be no interval. There may be no end, but there will be a beginning and that happens now.)
Lights up on the twelve people standing in a line. They are in pairs. One pair has a phone each, another a big red button, another mops, the next a large metal wheel to turn, and the final pair have a 10-year-old.
A voice, off and loud: Good evening. Boom.
The phone pair pick up the receivers and dial frantically
The buttons are pressed
The mops are abandoned and the moppers rush off
The wheels are turned frantically
The eyes of the children are covered
Blackout.
ATOMKRAFT Research 1
>>These are some notes from the process, I’m writing them here in the hope that some of you that read this may comment, this is a huge subject with many polarised opinions so I’d love to know what you think. You can comment below<<
Boom! I’m starting work on ATOMKRAFT, at BAC. I’m resident for the week, staying in one of the newly constructed bedrooms. To my delight, also here are Little Bulb, Hide and Seek, Gemma Brockis and Silvia Mercuriali, all of whom I’ve worked with in some way. Apart from Little Bulb, but I did jam with them in a cave. Very exciting to be here in such famed company.
I’m working mostly alone and have invited a few people along for a chat and some improvisation or scratching around. There is such a lot of information and constant news related to the subject, I feel I will be doing quite a lot of ‘crunching’. As a kind of sketch book, each day I will make a short performance, intervention or installation in response to what is returned by the Google alerts service term “Nuclear Power”.
On Friday and Saturday I will make a showing here at BAC, then hop up to STK on Saturday night to show a bit for Word/Play.
The main casting task this week is to find a nuclear worker and an actor who resemble one another. London contains no Nuclear power stations, but it does have a lot of scientists. No shortage of actors.
Fascinated this morning by unfinished nuclear projects from Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, to the abandoned Yucca Mountain waste storage facility. Each has already cost about $10b
Onkalon – Finnish solution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN25RTYjjIg + http://spectrum.ieee.org/video/energy/nuclear/a-nuclear-waste-repository-grows-in-finland
Yucca Hill – abandoned waste depository in Arizona http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0Mivu-ceE
I love the timeframe in the Onkalon video, “The seal should be good for 100,000 years” I can imagine some intrepid future archeologist excavating the tunnels and getting a nasty surprise.
For a story, the length of these timeframes is appealing, Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Agency admits it has “no medium to long term plans” for the safe disposal of it’s toxic waste, and most scientists admit it will be 100 years or so before anyone will know how to process the stuff. It’s the kind of thing JG Ballard would have loved, a 100 year narrative that climaxes in the discovery of ‘the end’.
Even a brief internet search for nuclear and power reveals the corporate driver behind operation of all utilities. It could be an argument for the state taking control of these things, if the state could be trusted that is. Today the Italians can vote in a referendum on continuation of development of nuclear power, the privatisation of waterworks and distribution, and total immunity from prosecution for Berlusconi. Presently the Italians suffer huge electricity bills because they buy it in from France and Germany. Even so, allowing Berlusconi to control production of power by nuclear means would probably cost more in the end.
I find the nuclear issue a suitable metaphor for the human condition, and the problems with how earth and people are governed. It’s in the perception. The risks have always been the same, but confidence has shifted away from it. the same with global finance “The markets received a boost of confidence” What we are living through is a period of complete fiction. Climate change is a sprawling story of proof and refutation, financial deals and the securities they are made up of far exceed the actual amount of money and monetisable stuff on the earth, while the dramatised-through-advertising ambition to keep societies growing and growing to provide larger and larger markets is undimmed. I think we ought to decide we want less stuff. Try to ignore advertising.
The Human Condition:
“”There’s a huge problem”
“oh, shit. What can we do about it?”
“Nothing, it’s a disaster”
“Ah well, no point in worrying then, let’s just cary on”
“Oh but wait! It seems like there might be a possible solution in 20 years based on this research.”
“Great, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel! Carry on then”
One Pound Portraits at BAC
We had great fun hanging out at BAC for the One-on-One festival over the last week. There was a fantastic atmosphere in the building and we were happy to contribute. I invented the One Pound Portrait a few years ago in Marbella on a research trip with The Other People (Ant Hampton, Gemma Brockis and me) after seeing this grubby sketch artist try to get customers for an €8 portrait. I thought it would be interesting to try it for one euro in one minute, those constraints meaning a complete failure to make a ‘beautiful’ drawing or to provide enough money for the artist to survive.
There is a moment of great drama (totally worth a pound) when the portrait is revealed to the subject. The pound / euro stays in view for the duration to remind the sitter of the transaction, and at the end they are thanked for their patronage.
The artists were Sara Lehn and I, with guest scribbles from Neil Bennun, Andy Field and Gregor Henderson-Begg. Over 3 days we made about 140 portraits. On the night all four of us were working we made enough money to have a few drinks and purchase tickets for a Dan Deacon gig later on. (click on the thumbnail to see full image).
Doris Day can Fuck off, week 2, Cambridge
Monday 28th Feb, London
To Westminster! to meet ACE on STK business. Sang a conversation with Gary all the way there, even serenaded the receptionist, but as our contacts arrived I felt the force of propriety, sensed the distance between the technical business of securing means for art and the execution of it, and the melody was gone. How strange and disappointing my hypocritical fear that to engage with the benefactors in the style of my practice would lead to rejection. It certainly would have made the conversation longer. Meaning evaporates in the wrong context. And even if I can be understood while singing, there’s little hope of being taken seriously. Dismay. I mean what I say, regardless of how I say it.
In English we are supremely aware of tone: it takes the place of a polite form. So we track inflection (which could be called mini-singing) looking for added meaning. What accounts for the greatest part of meaning there, what you say or how you say it? Probably how you say it.
‘I hate to be spoken to like that’
‘What did he say?’
‘Well, nothing really, it was just the way he said it’
Luckily Bananarama are on hand to cover all aspects of socio-linguistics and contextual trixyness.
Really saying something is a story about a girl overcome by the way a boy wears his shirt open – which seems to say more than all his chirpsing.
And this one tells us that it ain’t what you do, but more importantly the time and place you do it, that gets results. Probably more about sex than using song to examine performance contexts, but hey, two bananarama videos!
Wednesday 2nd March, Cambridge
Back to Cambridge and working this week in the studio with musician / composer / sound designer Manuel Pinhiero. He’s getting over flu and his ears are blocked. It is still very cold outside, but the studio is very nice, warm, comfortable and the soundsystem is accurate. I’m getting a little bit nerdy about sound fidelity lately, which is quite funny as this project is throwing up questions about faithfulness to the source. I have not sought permission to use the voices of those I record, and in most cases I’m manipulating what they have said, ‘making’ them say and mean different things in the performance. Is this fair, or even legal? In most cases the source does not know I am recording them, and I’m actually using quite a lot of material I didn’t even hear / notice at the time, so I could define this as ‘found material’, or claim I am problematizing ownership of utterance. Except that I’m not. Or I wasn’t…
This is especially interesting in the light of how we access song in our lives. We listen to the recordings. Occasionally we’ll go and see a live performance. So the common sung voice is the recorded voice. If we are feeling happy we tend to put on a happy tune rather than sing one (that’s my experience, please tell me if it’s not so). Recording the voice not only confers a possible immortality on it, but grants it existence. In many ways in contemporary life, if it’s not recorded it doesn’t exist. This chimeric aspect is what defines all live performance, but it’s starting to feel like if you fail to properly record and document the work then for the majority of people it may as well have never happened.
Perhaps that’s because there is little transference of content, learning a song for example, you know, that oral tradition that people keep talking about. My solution to this is to teach the audience a song. A short one with a pithy story and a scintillating harmony so that you’d want to teach it to someone so that you may sing it together.
Manuel plays me some Portuguese folk songs. Each one had a specific occasion; the sewing song, the milking song, the song to sing when making food together etc. Where are these songs now? On a record, or transmuted into an opera. I’d like to think they are still sung somewhere.
I went to the Cambridge folk museum to ask if they knew or had access to anyone associated with the troubadour tradition. The woman there completely ignored the fact I was singing, said she didn’t know anyone, and we spent a minute or two looking at each other as the phone rang.
Later the sun came out which cheered everyone up apart from the wonky-eyed Big Issue seller opposite King’s. I tunefully asked him if he’d considered singing to sell his magazine, “Not a chance” he replied. He then told me people’s pockets “get really tight” when the sun shines. Selling the Big Issue requires the right blend of get-up-and-go and get-down-and-out it would seem. Too cheerful, and the pity is gone – too fucked, and people are scared off. Ah J. J. Peachum, where are you now?
Just as I was wondering where the sound of need was, I heard something joyful, incongruous. The heads of the tourists all turned toward the sun which for a second seemed to be the same place as the source of the sound. It was a rhythm, yes, with voices, singing voices, a lot of them. I fairly legged it toward the sound. I started to pick up cheers and whoops. I really was completely overexcited, after a week and a half of hearing virtually no singing and sheltering in churches from the cold rain it seemed like God had taken pity on me and the poor people of Cambridge and provided us with a totally surprising gift.
I rounded the corner to a huge throng gathered around fifteen or so Zimbabwean singers, beautifully black against the pale people and buildings, smiling, all singing and either dancing or whacking a massive marimba. They sang about the joy of singing, that they were a singing culture, that singing brings the sun. I was deliriously happy, but also sad that my singing had not had the same effect. They finished and luckily went round collecting cash to give it a bit of context. I went over and sang to them that they had made my day. “Do you sing all the time?”
“Yes of course”
“I have to sing all the time as well”
“Why?”
“It’s something I want to do. Do you live here?”
“Yes we live in Sheffield, we’re going there now.”
Stayed the night at Andy Field’s parent’s house. Watched the Social Network on his TV. Nice couch, Andy.
Thursday 3rd March
Long day in the studio punctuated by an interview with Dr Ben Walton, professor of 19th C opera at Jesus college, it was a long conversation – I’ll get to the digest later.
In the studio we’ve been trying to create a vision: “What I want when I sing”. It occurred to me that one of the reasons I’m doing this is that I’d like reality to be much more like an early 60′s musical, and that by singing in the street or wherever, I might accidentally cause this to happen. It’s unlikely I know. But, if… No. When I heard the Zimbabweans, just for a tiny moment, I thought it was happening.
Had a good session looping my voice over and over, building up harmonies and fragments of story. The vision will be useful to define the persona (that’s me), what does he want or expect? That’s what’s missing from the itinerant slide-show so far. Back to London tomorrow to prepare for the shows at Camden People’s Theatre.
Doris Day can Fuck off, week 1, Cambridge.
Mon 24th Feb, Cambridge.
I’m resident at the Junction for two weeks developing Doris Day can Fuck off , a show built on my experiences of replacing all speech with song. I’m meeting musicologists and amateur choirs, big issue sellers and late-night drunken teens. Not very many people are taking up my invitation to sing with me, the people here exhibit a very reserved character. I thought there might be some interest in what I’m doing, but either they’ve seen it all before, it really is unconscionably odd, or it’s too cold and rainy for people to come out of themselves.
I sought shelter in King’s college chapel during a service. The cutey-cute boys were not singing that day but there were some very good singers nonetheless intoning away and I wondered if that kind of singing is simply a way to glorify time, rather than act as a prayer of need. Afterward I asked the chaplain if it would be possible to record myself singing in the chapel, he said no. I did in fact sing the question to him, but alas the memory card in the recorder was full of the service.
Outside a busker sang Irish folk songs, and as the Chapel repelled his rich, beseeching tone, its echo cascaded around the spires, as did the chink of the coins in his successful hat. Makes me wonder if all power stems from the voice: an early human who could shout the loudest, or calm the Wooly Mammoth with a song… What differences are there between the voice of need and the voice of control?
It’s very hard in the cold rain, especially alone. All through this project the instances of participation have been few and far between. I’m starting to fantasise about the perfect response, the ‘Doris Day moment’ – I’m singing a thought and a passing bassoon player obliges with the bass line, a friendly driver toots his horn in tempo and a chorus of passing Stockhausen devotees ooh and glottal-stop the countermelody…
But it’s good to be here, to be making a start.
Weds 26th Feb, Cambridge.
Another rainy day. It’s half term and the youngsters outside the window are practicing smoking and drinking. They yelp and screech as loudly as possible. I’m interested in that kind of vocal practice, testing both the limits of the voice and social behaviour. To be fair the place outside the window is an ex car park with this theatre building on one side, a Travelodge on the other, and a Red Arrows simulator in the middle, so I doubt they’ll get any complaints. I sang to the man operating the Red Arrows machine, asking him how much. He pointed to a sign saying £3. I asked him if he’d done it a lot, but he couldn’t understand me. I tried again, but nothing, he looked very uneasy and I stopped singing. I said what I had sung and still he didn’t understand so I left. This is starting to feel like a visit to another country. I get the same horrific nerves as I do when trying to speak another language, the same bemused response from other humans, and the same sense of abject failure when retreating to the language I know. Jaques Derrida recommends that we embrace the ‘Law of the “Mis”‘, as in (Mis-communication, Mis-representation etc), arguing that any successful communication must contain within it the alternative possibility of it’s own failure. Through the singing I am wilfully imposing this ‘Mis’ so I wonder if by switching around, this misunderstanding can contain the alternative possibility of it’s own success?
Thurs 27th Feb Cambridge
Mark Thomas is in the theatre tonight, with his show about walking the length of the wall between Israel and Palestine. I sang to him asking if he was going to put anything in the show about the Gadaffi speeches. He seemed not to notice my singing and said he wasn’t. I asked him if I could sing to his audience before they entered the show, he didn’t seem to mind.
Friday 28th Feb, Cambridge
Last night at about 6pm I made some recordings at a suspended foot tunnel over the train station. It’s an odd structure, maybe 150m long stretching up and over the tracks. It’s covered by a fiberglass roof and has a lane for pedestrians and one for cyclists. I’d walked through it the day before and really liked the quality of the echo, and the fact that you can’t see to the other end until you reach the centre. I remember, a long time ago, hearing a radio programme about these two tribes that live on either side of a ravine. They had never met one another, but communicated by hollering over the ravine. The recordings were captivating and instantly locative. What I imagined the ravine and the tribespeople to be like was in the forefront of my mind as I waked through the tunnel. Cambridge is a town of two halves, the colleges and parks and punts on one side, the leisure complex, bungalows and normality on the other. It was easy to imagine the railway as being the dividing feature, and this suspended walkway as the only way across, or of course, the tracks as ravine and the tunnel as something to sing through. I stood at the bungalow end and sang “Can anybody hear me at the other end of the tunnel?”, no reply. I tried again, this time adding that if anyone could hear me they should send a signal. Nothing. Channeling the tribespeople (and alpine folk) I tried a yodel. There were thick lines of people passing me on their way home, but I got absolutely no recognition of my voice or presence whatsoever.
Heading back to London for the weekend and a meeting with the Arts Council on Monday. I will keep up the singing, fear not.
