…and it’s a day in the re:bourne trenches with the production team, all of us surely hoping there are no major obstacles waiting to be unearthed. Of course if they ARE waiting, if we haven’t unearthed them maybe they’ll remain buried? Yeah, I know…I know…
Jul 232010
I surely won’t be the only culturista blogging today about the convergence of arts and technology, having just returned from the very enjoyable Shift Happens conference. The challenge with emerging from such a whiz-bang, upbeat, the future is NOW (dammit!) kinda event is that one can feel quite dazed, in much the same way that too many Christmas presents or too many sweets can make you feel a bit ill at ease (or just plain ill).
Such feelings are, of course, largely misplaced: tech, whether high or low, will not save your arts company from bankruptcy or propel it to a BAFTA, if such things motivate you. Twitter, immersive 3-D, motion capture suits…all merely tools, like a shoelace or a crab pick. But that’s an increasingly heretical view these days in the arts. While no one is likely to brand you as obsolete if your kitchen lacks a crab pick, if you’re out of step with the latest tech there are some who think you might as well float skyward and explode in a shower of light, a la the grim 30th birthday ceremony in Logan’s Run. I’m only half-joking here. At Shift Happens, one breathlessly overconfident speaker asked, in a very shouty way, who amongst the crowd did NOT have Twitter or Facebook at the centre of their life. After a moment, a brave woman limply raised her hand. The speaker was gape-jawed; in the crowd, a silence reigned like that of deep space. If there was an App for virtual tarring and feathering, I would have feared for the brave woman’s virtual life.
For all I know, this Twitterless wonder is a shit-hot artist (I never found out: a dozen men in bright white hazmat suits immediately rappelled from the rafters and bundled her away, reportedly for radical reprogramming). But isn’t it enough to be a shit-hot artist these days, tech or no? I ask not out of Luddishness, having worked for years in the Silicon Valley in jobs that brought me into daily contact with the bleeding edge of purportedly world-changing technology. I have my Twitter and Facebook, my AudioBoo and Beejive. And of course, I have my blog(s).
But there’s an increasingly noisy little voice in my head urging me to turn off (my iPhone and laptop), tune out (of Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Wordpress, Posterous, etc) and drop away from a race I’m not likely to win, nor ever find myself interested enough in to try. The race, I think, is for me to become sufficiently one with my technology so that it guides my personal, professional and creative life, every bit as much as I guide it. To win the race, one has to surrender to the race itself.
Here’s an idea. Maybe it’s time for an antidote to events like Shift Happens and its inspiration, the much-moneyed and ultra-hip TED. Maybe a conference not with high tech or even low tech, but with NO tech! Just minds, hands and voices…y’know, old school, keeping it r-e-a-l. Hmm, this might have legs. A quick round on my Twitter feed, and it should develop nicely.
Jun 172010
Q: When is it better to have your delicate, multi-media experimental show in a blaring, bustling shopping mall than in a lovely studio theatre?
A: When it’s designed and promoted that way.
Alas, we found ourselves on the wrong side of this equation at the recently-concluded Pulse Festival Fringe in beautiful Ipswich. I know it’s considered déclassé by some to admit that one’s show has anything, ever, than a stellar, Earth-shatteringly successful run. But let’s face it, you learn as much from what doesn’t work as the opposite…even, as in our case, when what didn’t work is largely the result of the mercantile equivalent of deux ex machina.
Let me declare at the outset that the tumbleweed blowing through the ranks of empty seats at our ‘Burning Out’ shows had nothing to do with the folks at Pulse (we love you guys! honest!) Pulse had the great idea of taking its offerings straight into the commercial heart of Ipswich, grabbing a nice empty shop space in the Buttermarket Centre. We were one of several shows in that space, to be offered free of charge, with us and the Pulse gang working the tiles to convince the Buttermarket’s bag-toting legions to stop in, take a load off, and experience something more interesting than another overcooked Starbucks latte or a manic crowd-surf through New Look.
And then, just before the Pulse programme opened, the unthinkable happened: the centre leased the shop. Out went our show, and it is to the credit of our Pulse friends that they managed to squeeze us into the New Wolsey Studio and hoof around some amended posters and flyers. But of course it wasn’t the same. A free, unticketed show only works if you’ve got the venue, promotion and environment designed for it. We were pleased and gratified by those folks who did come and see us, and our talkback sessions after the shows were lively and, for us, very encouraging indeed given the experimental nature of the show, our first created via our new Re:Authoring Project. But we’d looked forward to the rustle of shopping bags tucked under seats, the murmuring of slightly confused but intrigued voices, and after all was done opening the doors and ushering our dazed but hopefully happy audience back into their gleaming capitalist playground.
Even now, I’m not quite sure whether to be heartened or saddened that commerce won over art. No one can be against some new jobs, which presumably what our eviction produced. But is the better use of a mall–that collective watering hole for the modern masses–as a purveyor of culture or a perpetuator of consumerism? Maybe there’s a happy medium. If you’ve found it, let us know. Meanwhile, there are other slack spaces to commandeer, if only for a while.
Jun 052010
We can finally (finally!) talk about the exciting gig we’re going to lead this summer: a site-responsive, slack-space, community-driven happening in Sittingbourne (Kent) that we’re calling re:bourne. Nominally, this is a community festival…but it’s so much more. Re:bourne has narrative content, hidden spaces, surprises, interactivity and wonder; it’s visual, aural, performative and experiential.
All of it, though, is in service of a very clear and important goal: to allow the people of Sittingbourne and Swale to re-experience a familiar and economically-challenged part of their community (we’re using an entire section of the high street as the event space, including unused commercial spaces). More, the community will have created and directly inputted into what results in the final event. While we’re leading it, they’re creating it. When we’re gone, they will carry on with what’s been created.
The ‘we’ in this context is more than Nimble Fish; we’ve partnered with a new Kent-based arts organisation called Workers of Art, which includes some friends and colleagues we’ve known and respect for some time now. We’ve never embarked on a collaboration on this scale, in which we are joined at the hip artistically and financially. Scary? Sure. The level of communication required to keep all of us on the same page is remarkable. But as previous posts have underscored, we think this is the way of the future in the cultural sector.
Watch this space: we’ll be blogging a lot about re:bourne itself, the process of collaboration, and any number of things brought to light therein. Let us know what you think.
A lovely little bit on BBC1 the other night about the ongoing ‘human book’ programme run by libraries here and there in the UK. Lovely people doing it, lovely motivations behind it. In short, instead of going to a library and borrowing a book, you ‘borrow’ a person. They tell you something about themselves,and you can ask questions. Ideally, civil and enjoyable conversation is had, never something to be sniffed at in our ever-more aggressive world. As I said, lovely.
But while the folks on offer are certainly human, are they really books? I say no. A book, however it is delivered, is a work crafted by someone with a particular skill and intention; whether non-fiction or novel, it is a work of creativity, a work of art. You might counter that talking with someone can embody the same qualities that motivate literature, and certainly such a debate could go on into the night fueled by bottle upon bottle of one’s favourite tipple. But we’re talking about the differences both in process and product. The act of walking down the street contains movement, expression, motivation, intention and, in many cases, grace and beauty. But is it dance? After writing this, I will walk downstairs with my empty coffee mug, turn on the tap, wash it out, place it in a drying rack, towel off my hands, wander back upstairs, and probably return to my computer to complete some other things that need completing. Is that a performance? The cycle I described has a beginning, middle and end; it contains motivation, story (albeit a dull one), a performer, props, a setting….
You might argue that I’m making a proverbial mountain out of a proverbial molehill here; you might even be right. But in a world in which books are increasingly devalued–and in the UK, can’t we say the same of art in general?–it feels ok to be a bit reductive, perhaps even a bit pedantic in defending even the smallest, even the most innocent of further degradations to the idea of artistic process, intention and engagement. This is not about the form of the book: previous posts have laid out my position therein, which is that the medium is changing and in the process changing the message and how it is received and interpreted by audiences. That’s all fine. But if we can argue ’til dawn about when a book is a book, surely the lines must be clearer about when a book is NOT a book? Engaging someone in conversation, however valuable it might be, isn’t the same as engaging with a professionally crafted narrative. That’s chat, not literature. More than ever, it’s important to shout out the difference.
May 102010
When its a map….
These images were taking during a project at Marriotts School in Stevenage
I had my facilitator hat on
and was encouraging Yr7staff and students
to see and use space differently
We armed students with masking tape and asked them to
create a map of their experiences at school.
This map covered the entire floor in the hall.
Over 150 students contributed to it.
This was a very simple idea but the results were fantastic, students worked in groups, negotiating and collaborating. Spatial awareness was crucial as was developing a visual language together.
Some of the images created had obvious explanations
and some…
were a little more opaque!
Either way, plenty of things to discuss
and consider.
And the speculative answer is…the 2012 London Olympics. We can’t take credit for the question, however. It was posed by A New Direction, which has commissioned Nimble Fish as one of 14 London arts and performance companies to co-devise and deliver a sweeping programme of work–as many as 150 schools will participate–that will aim to make the question and answer match up. For more info, see their press release issued today.
We all know there’s been a lot of yadda-yadda about the 2012 London Olympics: the hype, the price-tag, the questionable nationalist bravado. As for the arts and education, the great fear remains that they will be, at best, bolt-ons or box-ticks in the great, commercial scheme of it all. For all the bonhomie of the recent Vancouver games, let us not forget that one could not set foot in many venues without first dropping many hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars.
What we like about the way A New Direction is approaching its engagement with culture, schools and the Olympics is its honest recognition of these perceptions, as can be seen in this Demos paper the organisation commissioned not long ago. The paper charts the history of cultural and educational engagement in modern Olympics and finds it wanting, usually lacking substance, commitment or money (or often all of the above).
But we also like the fact that A New Direction is putting its money and energy where its ideals are and recognising that, like it or not, the 2012 London Olympics will be a transformative event that will echo in the consciousness of our young people for some time to come. We owe it to them to help engage meaningfully with this event, one of the truly global happenings in our so-called global village. Through this programme, A New Direction is mustering an impressive and broad array of the city’s cultural organisations to help make this happen.
So, getting back to the question in the post heading, we’re thrilled to be part of the broader team aiming to ensure that the 2012 London Olympics are indeed the answer (and we’re particularly happy to be in such good company). As the jocks might say, bring it on.
Apr 162010
cross-posted from http://reauthoringproject.wordpress.com
Funny, the conversations you can find yourself sucked into while casually perusing a distant friend’s Facebook site. And so it was for me earlier this week, as I innocently replied to a posted article about the future of books; or more specifically, about the future of books as seen in these early days of Apple’s much-hyped iPad.
It was a thoughtful (if somewhat disjointed) article, the basic premise being that writers who start writing ‘for’ the iPad or Kindle or any other device as if it were merely a snazzier conveyer of a traditional form were doomed. The future winners of the Darwinian scrum now consuming the publishing world, the article concluded, were those who would think about how to tell their stories in a way that took maximum advantage of how new technologies engaged with their audiences. Making the story part-read, part-game, for example; or offering clues in the text that lead to embedded story enhancers on the web.
I’m all for such things as long as story remains paramount, which was the article’s primary point, and it was in this spirit I that offered a ‘huzzah’ on my friend’s FB page for bringing this tidbit to light. Alas, I was quite immediately flamed by another of her FB friends, who said essentially that he wondered what I was smoking. Surely, the flamer said, books were books and e-books or any other ‘e’ interpretation of text was something other than a book, and therefore not to be spoken of in the same hallowed tones as we must, so the flamer said, surely speak of ‘proper’ books.
As the flamer and I traded broadsides, a spot of Googling revealed him to be a rather accomplished and reasonably well-known author himself. The broadsides gradually morphed into a kind of detente as our (rather long) exchange moved to the diminishing opportunities for professional authors, and particularly authors who focus on non-fiction, which requires great expenditures of time, research, and travel, and therefore money (as in, literary advances) to produce. The flamer, whose work generally falls into this category, noted sadly that he’d seen his advances go from livable to laughable to non-existent: this despite prizes, press, and decent readership.
We concluded our exchange with a virtual handshake of sorts since I, too, know several writers with roughly the same literary profile and trajectory. I didn’t tell my nemesis-turned-(sort-of)-comrade-in-arms that some of these writers, rather than howling about a changing publishing world, had made conscious choices to do things differently. I didn’t say that some of them were beginning to reap dividends from doing so. I left that exchange wondering if I’d ever see the flamer’s name on a book again. I hope I do; he clearly does great work.
I feel fortunate to have retained a fair amount of flexibility in my thinking about writing and its changing forms and audiences. But it’s all too obvious that there are many writers out there who cannot see past ‘the book’, or even a very specific idea of what makes for a worthwhile book. Exhibit A: at one point, amidst an exchange about self-publishing, the flamer wrote that surely if one’s book doesn’t crack the Amazon top million, it isn’t worth much creatively. A dubious assertion indeed in a publishing world dominated by the likes of Dan Brown and JK Rowling.
The author of the article that started this whole saga, who proudly admitted to being only 21, said with great enthusiasm that if George Orwell had had an iPad and other tech gizmos to enhance his writing arsenal, he would “have blown our minds.” Maybe: would 1984 have been any more potent had Orwell decided, say, to embed a tiny webcam in the e-book version and have readers surreptitiously eavesdrop on each other? Discuss!
But at the least, one likes to think he’d have understood that just as sheepskin gave way to papyrus, and painstakingly-rendered monkish script gave way to Gutenberg, the form, function and use of ‘the book’ is changing again. But people still want stories, and they always will. Every writer should find solace and light in that idea.
Mar 312010
This may be the only entry in the blogosphere to offer a creative comparison of the mega-blockbuster-smasheroony film Avatar and the economically more humble yet equally riveting French school docu-drama The Class. This is not a film review, though. It’s a consideration of high-stakes creative risk-taking.
Starting with Avatar, which I saw only last night, being surely among the last cinema-goers in the world to do so. A long New Yorker article published last year offers the best overview of the new film-making technology and processes invented–not adapted, invented–to create the wonderfully visceral world of the film. Of course, incredible sums of money were applied to making Avatar and we now know (as the article didn’t) that incredible sums of money were returned from adoring cinema-goers around the world. Fair play, really.
Say what you will about Avatar creator James Cameron, he took some remarkable risks to make the film, and to make it in such an uncompromising way. The New Yorker piece points out that Cameron hadn’t done a film in more than a decade, since the titanic Titanic. But that story, being practically legend, almost sold itself; by contrast, the eco-fantasy of Avatar was totally unfamiliar, with leaked early screening feedback making it sound like the extraterrestrial lovechild of Dances with Wolves and Mogambo (my favourite early review: ‘Smurf porn’). The money, the tech, the weird alien world with its decidedly terrestrial references…as a risk of, er, titanic proportions Avatar could have gone horribly wrong. It didn’t, but Cameron and his backers didn’t know that at the start.
And so, to The Class (warning: spoiler alert!), a risk-taking exercise not about technology but around narrative development. The film’s process began with a non-fiction book by former teacher Francois Begadeau, which chronicled a year in the life of a challenging school in the Paris suburbs. Director Laurent Cantet then worked with Begadeau to adapt the book into a fictional script to be filmed for the big screen So far, so Dead Poets Society.
But then Cantet decided that he wanted real students, without any acting experience, to play the part of students in the film. He engaged an average (meaning, not BRIT School) French high school in the project then ran devising workshops that riffed on the script…and of course, ultimately changed it. The students became, in the film, devised versions of themselves, hence the film’s enigmatic blurring of documentary film and high-quality fictional drama. Begadeau also played a version of himself, and the teachers in the film are teachers at the school…although not necessarily, in the film, playing themselves.
The Class didn’t earn Avatar’s billions at the box office but it did earn the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival (the first French film to do so in 21 years) and has become almost required viewing for educationalists across the planet. It represents a different kind of cinematic thrill ride, a different kind of story.
Seeing both films recently reminded me that only by stepping off the creative ledge does one generate the potential for bringing something really new into the world. But stepping off the ledge isn’t enough: once over the abyss you can’t afford to look down, lest like Wily Coyote you realise just what you’ve done and proceed to fall painfully back to earth. In this sense, both Avatar and The Class are not only about risk-taking; they’re about total commitment to the risks taken.
We all know the reference, don’t we? It’s not about what you’re called but who you are.
And so it goes with Nimble Fish. While we do love sushi and consider ourselves to be pretty flexible thinkers, the name ’Nimble Fish’ is apropos of nothing in particular: it’s a moniker that just came to us when we were pondering the launch of our grand enterprise, way back in the salad days of late 2006. We might have given our company any number of similarly fun yet essentially nonsensical names–Elastic Elephant? Supple Salamander?–and yet we hope that the work we’d have done, and have done, would have made us just as proud.
But describing what we do–the company equivalent of ‘who we are’–has always been more of a challenge. The conversations would often go as follows.
Q: ‘So, you create original performance work and produce new performance work by others. You’re theatre-makers, then?’
A: ‘Er, well sort of. Except that we mainly create work for grubby shop spaces, roadway underpasses, the back of container lorries, places like that. Oh, and we do most of our work in schools and community settings.’
Q: ‘So you’re Theatre In Education?’
A: ‘No, we’re not TIE at all. We don’t write plays for schools and we don’t perform plays in schools. And we don’t have a touring van.’
And so it would go.
So, we’ve changed our front-page ’shingle’ to offer a new description of Nimble Fish as Cultural Producers. Traditionally, the term has been used fairly literally, a cultural producer being any person or organisation that ‘produces’ culture, as in arts, media, etc. But there’s an emerging idea around cultural producing that moves it to a more meta-aware level. Here’s a decent description, as found on the website of an Austrian university delivering an MA in this newly-defined field:
” ‘Cultural producer’ describes the new self-image of today’s cultural worker as producer, impresario, practitioner and cultural conveyer. Cultural producers are found within the traditional arts of music, theatre, dance, literature and painting and even more often in fields owing their development to new technological possibilities. They can be independent entrepreneurs or creatively active in cultural institutions, free thinking enterprises or private companies. They are, doubtless, producers possessing an uncanny sense of hyper-textual self-understanding, focused on the interrelationship to “users” and active proponents of narrative structures encouraging dynamic interaction with audiences.”
“Hyper-textual self-understanding”….love it! But we wouldn’t be a “free thinking enterprise” if we didn’t offer our own definition of Cultural Producing. Here it is:
“Cultural Producers establish, implement and manage a self-generated creative vision, typically outside the purview of traditional performance or gallery spaces. Cultural Producers are rarely restricted to a single artistic form, preferring instead to work with whatever combination of forms best suits a particular idea or theme. Cultural Producers often seek to animate or re-interpret public spaces in the context of the communities they serve, and consequently their work often has a strong component of community participation or co-creation.”
In the spirit of being, ahem, “active proponents of narrative structures encouraging dynamic interaction with audiences,” we would like to offer this definition as a work in progress, and invite your input, objections, amendments, etc. We think we’re onto something quite special here and we’d like to build on it, in the Nimble Fish spirit.
Lest this all sound too arrogant, we’re not making out like we’re the only cultural producing company on the proverbial block. But even if we’re not trailblazers, we like to think we’re on the trail while it’s still new enough for the surrounding view to be fresh, and the possibilities thrilling.