somethingaboutthesea-blog1

[somethingaboutthesea-blog1]

WORKING FROM HOME: NEGOTIATING CONTEMPORARY RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE WORKING ARTIST AND DOMESTIC SPACE

Working From Home (2016) Niko Wearden Sound by Jo Martin-Kelly

Images from live streamed performance: displacement (2016) Niko Wearden

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Gentrification across major world cities, in particular centres of cultural and creative significance increasingly causes the out-pricing of low-income earners from previously affordable areas.

Often, an influx of artists or other creative practitioners moving into an area in search of affordable property is a major contributing factor to this process.  A report commissioned by the Greater London Authority looking into the provision of affordable artists workspace in London stated that;

‘Artists are victims of their own success, moving into affordable areas, contributing to gentrification and then being forced out with rising prices’. (Greater London Authority, 2014).

Ross Jardin gives an example of this complicated issue in a text produced to accompany ICA Friday Salon; ‘Making Room: Domestic Spaces as Exhibition Places’. Her example recalls a 2009 dispute in Hamburg whereby the ‘Right to the City’ movement, made up of over 200 artists, protested the gentrification of the Gangeviertel area by occupying empty buildings. The city authorities chose not to evict the occupiers, recognising the valuable cultural capital they provided and offered tenancy agreements allowing them to stay. This appeasement of the group tangled the occupation into the gentrification process, making it part of the problem it protested against (Jardin, 2014).

Ross Jardin’s text continues to discuss the autonomy artists may find in using their own homes as exhibition spaces, free from the constraints of institutional structures, and without the financial pressure of renting an external property (Jardin, 2014). Exhibiting artwork in domestic spaces is not a new phenomena, however it is important to consider why artists have been lead to start doing this, and how the domestic increasingly forms an integral part of the artists working process as the provision of an external studio space, becomes less likely in a soaring rental market.

It has been argued that the domestic is the enemy of modernity, particularly in relation to Fine Art. Cultural historian Walter Benjamin noted that being ‘without the home’ is often seen to have greater cultural value, suggesting that the modernist idea of the painter is one of a ‘flaneur’/ ‘man of the crowd’, cursing the hours he must spend indoors; instead choosing the pace and romance of cafes, nightclubs and brothels (Reed, 1996). The pronoun ‘he’ is used here deliberately, as it is often considered that the domestic space is the reserve of the female and it is often female artists that consider domesticity in their practice.

In the post-modern era, many artists have been drawn towards the home as an ideology; a way of talking about private and public space. For example Tracey Emin’s My Bed that takes a personal, intimate and difficult space and places it in the public realm.

In 1972 Womanhouse a feminist art installation by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro utilised the home as a way of talking about womens issues. In a dilapidated mansion the artists collaborated with their students to create a ‘female’ space, commenting on female oppression in domestic settings.  

BBC 4 documentary If Walls Could Talk explores the cultural history of the home, presenter and historian Lucy Worsley explains how the bedroom was not always considered to be a place of privacy and identity. However, it’s now a popular consideration that the right to ones ‘own room’ is fundamental to acceptable living standards (‘The Bedroom’, 2012).

Referring back to the issue of gentrification it is increasingly the case that individuals may have to share a living space even into their early forties. House sharing is no longer a situation associated only with students and young adults. According to a study by the flat-share website spareroom.co.uk as many as one in eight of users looking for a room in London are in their forties (O’Connell, 2012). Sociologist Anette Steinführer proposes:

‘As a rule, flat sharing bridges two distinct events in the course of ones life: the leaving of the parental home and the foundation of the first independent household. Thus for a restricted period in time, it is a flexible household type adapted to the situational needs of its members (Steinführer, 2009)’

As this transient time is prolonged, it could be argued that the need to feel ‘at home’ in ones personal space is intensified. For this reason, perhaps, the bedroom may become an essential space for flat-sharers as a space to express identity.

In a 2010 Guardian article, journalist Tim Jonze discusses the trend for musicians to record and produce from their bedrooms. Not only is recording in the bedroom financially viable for low income artists, Jonze argues that it contributes to the ‘entire aesthetic’ of the music. The article gives a quote from music producer Mark Hedras a.k.a Perfume Genius:

‘I think the isolation and relative comfort of being home helps bypass the idea that anyone will ever hear what you are doing. Someone else over my shoulder – I think I would intuitively try to spare them the creepy bits and icky earnestness.’ (Jonze, 2010).

This quote suggests that ‘the bedroom’ and the domestic have a direct impact on production processes, therefore affecting the aesthetic of the outcome. In this new instance, like for Emin and Schapiro and Chicago, the notion of the privacy made public is still critical, but is a byproduct of an enforced situation rather than an active choice.  

Tim Jonze makes an important reference to the internet, an essential tool for the bedroom-based artist as a platform for the mediation of material (Jonze, 2010).

Relating these ideas back to contemporary visual art, it makes sense to look at ‘internet artists’. The inclusion of Amalia Ulman in Tate Modern’s recent exhibition Performing for the Camera is the perfect example of the growing acceptance of this area of practice as a legitimate art form. The display of this work at a top art institution certifies its position in art history (Berner, 2016).

Ulman’s work Excellences and Perfections involved a fictionalised version of her ‘private’ life publicised via Instagram (Berner, 2016). The work negates the need for a studio and could perhaps be used as an example to argue that gentrification has pushed emerging artists onto online spheres, allowing the production and sharing of work from home without financial implications.

One issue with this argument is the entanglement of Ulman’s work with social media– her work, by design, mimics a real Instagram account. The work comments on social media users’ sharing of private lives and spaces, it is therefore essential that Ulman also operates in domestic settings to make the performance convincing. For this reason, it cannot be argued that the sole motivation for this artist to ‘work from home’ is financial, and perhaps this aligns her practice with the work of Emin and Chicago and Schipiro, in that is intentionally ‘domestic’. However perhaps what separates Ulman is her generation. It could be suggested that internet based artists from the first generation of digital natives, like Ulman, have an ability to utilise their adolescent experience of mediated domestic environments as both a financially convenient and conceptually exciting way of making art.  

‘A Nations Theatre’; a collaboration between The Guardian and Battersea Arts Centre, has commissioned a number of ‘Artist’s Bedrooms’ in a new residency space. The comissioned artists have created immersive experiences as well as a ‘live/ work environment’. Artistic director David Jubb describes the project: ‘The building, its development and its spaces are all performances in themselves.’ Battersea Arts Centre’s decision to create a domestic performance space feels timely. Guardian theatre critic Matt Trueman suggests that ‘when artists talk of a home they often mean their workplace too – somewhere that offers support and a stage for their work.’ From April to May 2016 the artists designing the rooms will host digital and live performances. This actively encourages artists to consider the domestic environment as ‘a stage for their art’. Trueman concludes his Guardian article on the project by stating ‘…the heart of the whole project – the way people and performances turn bricks and mortar into something more powerful. Home, you might say, is where the art is.’ (Trueman, 2016) Although this is a slightly sentimental view of the artists home, it does perhaps suggest that the artists relationship with their homes is indispensible, performative and core to working processes.

Glasgow Open House Arts takes place across the living rooms/ domestic spaces of artists working in Glasgow. Director Laura Campbell spoke to The Skinny magazine about the project ‘Why just show to your friends when you can open up your flat exhibition to a much wider audience? This is about opening up Glasgow's close-knit, grassroots art scene to people who don't necessarily know how much goes on behind closed doors.’ Participating artists included Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Ellie Harrison. Glasgow Open House Arts brought this type of event into mainstream consciousness, therefore giving the ‘home exhibition’ cultural significance and validating it as a legitimate way of displaying artwork (Hashemi, 2015).

From 1988 to 2005 Home Live Art ran salons out of the Camberwell home of co-curator Laura Godfrey Isaacs exploring domestic space as performance and exhibition space (Home Live Art, http://www.homeliveart.com/about-us/, no date). Works included an Electro Acoustic sound performance using kitchen items (Home Live Art, 2000) and an installation by Franko B exploring his complex relationship with domesticity (Home Live Art, 2001).

The BAC bedrooms, Glasgow Open House Arts and Home Live Art all reflect a growing trend for the use and representation of domestic spaces as platforms for sharing art and also the consideration of how the artist operates within them. It could definitely be argued that this reflects a new kind of relationship for the artist with their home due to both gentrification and also shifts in the way art is mediated, via the internet and often from home.

Gentrification and rising rent prices have seen the rise of ‘Live/ Work’ spaces. Acme studios, based in East London is a charitable housing association dedicated to the provision of affordable space for artists to work and live. Acme calls these spaces ‘work/ live’ spaces as apposed to ‘live/work’; the organisation maintains that the focus should be on the work of the professional artist and not on the accommodation. In a case study on the ‘work/live’ units Acme provides, Acme states ‘For many artists combining studio and living space is a way to reduce costs and devote more time to their practice. Well-managed work/live spaces can reduce the need for travel, create mixed areas and help the local economy.’ (Acme Studios, 2009) Bow Arts Trust offers a similar program using a guardianship model to provide low cost artists ‘live/ work’ spaces. These schemes bring together of a community of artists, providing opportunity for ideas-sharing and collaboration. It is perhaps often difficult for a work-from-home artist to find such a community without renting an external space amongst other artists. Schemes such as this allow artists to work from home, whilst still providing a creative community (NFASP, 2010).

This shift away from the external studio suggests a new type of working process for working artists, having to develop a routine that fits their professional practice around their day-to-day domestic life.

Townley and Bradby are a collective, and a couple from Norwich, UK. Their recent work explores the domestic and family life as art practice. Townley and Bradby are slightly different to the artists predominantly referenced in this text as the motivation to work out of the home is not financial, in fact the pair do also rent an external studio, however they choose to heavily utilise their domestic environment because they are parents. Working at home allows their art practice to fit around the persistent routine of family life. ‘Grounded in the Domestic’; an essay by Judith Stewart, Anna Townley and Lawrence Brady states that ‘An art practice that is grounded in the domestic takes place in whatever slices of time can be found. It has to find a place within the on-going routines of the household: this is the only way it can continue. Although it occupies short, disconnected periods of time, the art practice grounded in the domestic makes use of long timescales. It is cumulative over weeks and months.’

The idea that a home-based practice must fit around the routines of a household is paramount to this discussion. The act of going to the studio creates a distinct working environment, allowing artists to ‘go to work’, and then return later to their domestic tasks. It is plausible to maintain that for an artist working from home the domestic becomes an integral part of their artistic process: hanging the washing up between drawings or unloading the dishwasher whilst waiting for a painting to dry. At this point, considering the ideas explored in this essay, it is perhaps not unreasonable to conclude that for an artist working from home the experience of artistic process is totally different than that of a studio-based artist. Consequently, it may be the case that this difference in artistic process filters its way into the aesthetic of the artwork and can also affect how the work is exhibited or shared.

Greater London Authority, [2014]. We Made That: Artists Workplace Study, London, UK. We Made That LLP.

Jardin, R, [2014]. Making Room: Domestic Spaces as Exhibition Spaces ICA, London. London, UK. ICA.

Reed, C, [1996] Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture. New York, USA. Thames and Hudson.

Tracey Emin - My Bed: Tate Shots, [2015]. YouTube Video, added by Tate. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv04ewpiqSc (accessed 12th March 2016).

Chicago, J, Schapiro, M, [1972]. Womanhouse Catalog Essay. Womanhouse. [Online] Available at: http://www.womanhouse.net/statement/ (accessed 12th March 2016).

‘The Bedroom’, [2012]. If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home, Episode 3, BBC, 10September 2012.

O’Connell, J, [2012]. The new mid-life crisis… house sharing into your 40s, The Guardian. [Online]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/may/19/house-sharing-into-40s (accessed 21st March 2016).

Steinführer, A, [2009]. Flexible-inflexible: socio-deomographic, special and temporal dimensions of flat sharing in Leipzig (Germany), GeoJournal, Volume 74: Issue 6, pp. 567-587.

Jonze, T, [2010]. The bedroom artists who prefer creative solitude, The Guardian. [Online]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/apr/04/tim-jonze-indie-music (accessed 12th March 2016).

Berner, S, [2016]. Instagram artist to feature in major Tate exhibition, Dazed Digital. [Online]. Available at: http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/29342/1/instagram-artist-to-feature-in-major-tate-exhibition (accessed 20th March 2016).

Trueman, M, [2016]. Bed, board and brass bands: sleeping over in Battersea Arts Centre, The Guardian. [Online]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/apr/04/battersea-arts-centre-artist-bedroom-commisions (accessed 1st April 2016).

Hashemi, F [2015]. Be My Guest: Glasgow Open House Festival 2015, The Skinny. [Online]. Available at: http://www.theskinny.co.uk/art/interviews/glasgow-open-house-festival-2015-feature-2015 (accessed 1st April 2016).

Home Live Art [2001]. Franko B - Oh Lover Boy, Home Live Art. [Online]/ Available at: http://www.homeliveart.com/event/franko-b-oh-lover-boy/ (accessed 1st April 2016).

Home Live Art [2000]. Salon 3, Home Live Art. [Online]. Available at: http://www.homeliveart.com/event/salon-3/ (accessed 1st April 2016).

Home Live Art [no date]. About Us, Home Live Art. [Online]. Available at: http://www.homeliveart.com/about-us/ (accessed 1st April 2016).

Acme Studios [2009]. The Fire Station - ‘Work/Live’ Rather Than ‘Live/Work’, Guaranteeing Employment Use, Acme Studios. [Online]. Available at: http://www.acme.org.uk/download.php?pdf=77 (accessed 1st April 2016).

NFASP [2010]. Case Study: Bow Arts Trust Poplar HARCA - Live/ Work Studios: a Social Enterprise for Artists and Communities, NFASP. [Online]. Available at: http://bowarts.org/sites/default/files/studios/BowArtsPoplarHARCA.pdf (accessed 4th April 2016)

[somethingaboutthesea-blog1]

SOMETHING ABOUT THE OUTER HEBRIDES

indigo and i went to hebridean pride 

and we read a selkie song to one another 

it rained a lot 

‘stornoway sunshine’ said one person wearing only a pink polo shirt and jeans as their clothes drenched through

how empowering it was to walk through stornoway with queer island folk - visitors and locals

queer people are e v e ry w h e r e  

thank you for having us gentle islands of harris and lewis

from our homes, in orkney and skye 

T r a n s R i g h t s N o w 

i love you indigo, dear selkie firend 

hiking with our homes on our backs

swimming in the sea 

island love 

we got very wet 

soft love to all queer and trans selkies, these places are yours too

you are welcome, we see you, we are making space for you

to all who are making space for queers in all places big and small, near and far

t h a n k y o u // tapadh leibh // 

[somethingaboutthesea-blog1]

FOLDING, MEDITATION, THE EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL AND TRYING TO BE MORE THAN JUST TRANS//

This is a journal I kept during the fringe festival making a piece of work at Summerhall, involving repeating the same origami shape over and over again out of fringe flyers. 

You can read more about the work here and here. 

0. As well as making this piece at Summerhall, I will also be working at another fringe venue. A job I have been doing for several summers. It started as a student job. It allows me to be here and leave less broke than most people.

Working at the fringe, I’ve seen everything. I recognise the patterns in performers energy levels; I also become consumed by the rhythms of the festival. I wanted to make a piece that was slow, productive and nourishing to counter the collective exhaustion that the city tells you is necessary to be here. Meditating for an hour a day during fringe, is activist action. Performer:Maker is performed as a methodology for coping with the festival. I’m not standing out in the streets relentlessly flyering. I’m not draining all of myself by putting it on stage for audiences to devour ungratefully. I will not be overstimulated by art, exhausted by work and drowning in alcohol. Although I will also be those things, but for an hour a day – I will not be. During the site build at the venue I work at, I injured my back because I was binding my breasts whilst doing heavy lifting. I bind to alleviate dysphoria. However, as an artist that works with, and cares about the body, it goes against everything I believe in. Even though I am sure not advisable, I’ve chosen to wear it in my performance. A friend of a friend, a feldenkrais practitioner, offered to try and help me undo some of the damage, to get to a better place ready to perform. We talked about bringing awareness to sensations within the body. She didn’t judge me for binding, and I felt like she gave me permission to stay with the contradictions of binding and meditating.

1. I was very focused on physical sensations today. I folded a lot. But I was mostly aware of my body, and my binder.

I heard Travis Alabanza on Sofie Hagen’s Made of Human podcast say that ‘perhaps on stage is the real me, and out in the world is the performance’. As soon as I finish I have to go home and take my binder off, I am in so much pain. Now I have to go to work without my binder on.

After finishing folding, I bumped into an old friend. I don’t know her so well, but she’s always so full of joy and love. She invites me to a queer cabaret night this evening. A rush of relief fills my body. I know I have to take care of my body, because it’s going to be a challenging month, but I say ‘yes, that sounds like what I need, I’ll come for a bit.’

2. Beside the work itself, I have to collect flyers. I would normally ignore the flyerers but this year I engage with them. I listen to their sales pitch. ‘Is it your show?’ I say with interest, knowing full well I will not have the time to see the show.

Each paper box is made up of four flyers stuck together with masking tape. Each morning I have to fold and cut out around 40 flyers, taking about one and a half hours before the performance. This in itself is endurance action.

I had a lovely night last night but today I am beyond exhausted. At times I felt a bit like crying when I was folding. The colours of the flyers are so noisy and it makes the meditation difficult.

3. I spoke to my mum about my work; she recalled a book I had as a child called 365 Things to Make and Do; ‘You were always collecting things, 20 shoe boxes to make a dolls-house, 200 loo roll tubes to make a sock holder, you’ve always been collecting things to make other things.’ I’m attracted to multiples of the same thing. I never stopped collecting things. It was a nice memory to pull up around this performance, and one I hadn’t really considered before.

4. I was binding all day today. Back at home, after performing and working, my chest and back tell me this was a mistake. I take off my binder and stick together some flyers for tomorrow, I realise I don’t have anywhere near enough. I climb into bed, more tired than I have been in a long time. It’s day 4, I wonder how I will make it one month and wonder how much binding will define it.

5. I left my flat early to go on a flyer hunt, after failing the day before to collect the approx. 180 flyers I need per day. I bought a fancy coffee, just because I saw an overflowing flyer rack in the coffee shop. Then I struck gold at Guilded Balloon at The Museum, where discarded flyers were strewn everywhere, clearly not cleaned up from the previous day. I didn’t bind today and my dysphoria wasn’t too bad.

6. I didn’t bind again. When I was in my box I felt dysphoric and at one point almost like crying. I brought my attention back to the folding and breathed deeply. The meditation is so good for me; it’s keeping me going. I believe that, and I stay with it, I hold the trouble of transition in my body and fold, and fold again.

7. I shave my head again and I put my binder back on. It’s bliss. I love the way my bald head feels, and I am delighted to relieve dysphoria. Today, I don’t care about the pain of binding. I’m so happy to feel like a boy again. Sometimes I’m upset by the fact that I feel the need to bind to feel embodied as a trans person, but today I don’t care, I am just happy to feel embodied. I walk to Summerhall smiling and even though my back hurts a little I am calmer and more able to meditate through the hour of folding.

8. Fancy lettering with the title of my piece and my name has been stuck to the front of my box since I was last here, it looks great. I clamber inside and an avalanche of origami flyers tumbles into my lap. There are now so many and I am not yet even halfway through. Much of the hour is spent clearing a small space in which to fold, then folding more and more. After my hour is over, I look at the box that has filled up so much from the outside. It looks amazing and I feel excited to see it grow more. I am so fond of this daily practice, and the evidence of it growing with me through the work. I am proud of myself for maintaining this meditation through the noise of the city which is getting louder around me each minute, each day.

9. I arrived today and Summerhall had pounding Radiohead playing across the speakers. A show goes into the venue closest to my box at 13:15 and today it was incredibly busy. It must have got a good review or won an award. People stare at me in the box and chat loudly. Meditation is impossible.

The show goes in and I overhear a dispute between latecomers and front-of-house staff who refuse them entry. I feel panicky and fold quickly.

My paper mountain is now a paper landslide, slipping down on top of me all the time, needing to be pushed away to make space to fold. I fold faster.

A man enters from the terrace outside, he says loudly and obnoxiously in an English accent ‘what is she doing? Origami!?’, apparently that is the best insult he can come up with. I wince at being misgendered. This attempt at an insult is a bit like the old line queer people hear so often ‘what are you? Gay!?’, as if we didn’t already know. And as if in some way origami, or gay is something one should be ashamed of doing/ being. I sigh and breathe soft form into my next origami box.

A few people come, they watch for a while. They are softer, and gentler than others have been. They give my work a few moments and then they leave.

Another two arrive and watch for a while, also with a softer gaze. I clamber out of my box after a whirlwind hour and see that it is Nene who is watching, a friend I met at Scottish Sculpture Workshop. Nene is a performance artist based in Glasgow, and I didn’t know they were across for the fringe today. They say ‘that was beautiful Natalie’, we joke about problematic white-guy comedy and I feel calm.

10. I am beginning to learn sound cues from the show in the venue next to my work. I know when I hear orchestral music I have only a few minutes left to go.

11. A group performing a miniature theatre production are performing outside on the terrace, in front of my work. For this reason they keep the door open, it is a horrible rainy day and during my performance I am cold. The sliding of paper boxes on top of me is now getting even more ridiculous. I am cramped and have very little space to fold. The space is uncomfortable and because I am cold, and the performers outside speak loudly, meditation is impossible. I try my best to get through today, breathing slowly but my nose is bunged up, I am ill. I am still not half way through and my body is responding badly to sleeping in a room with so many people and having so little time to myself. I hold it in my folding, that this is the time and space I need, I am making it for myself, even if the only way to make it possible, is to make it as work.

12. The miniature theatre people are here again. This time the rest of the theatre is bustling. I realise how much I think in this time. My brain is so abused by this festival – I am constantly having to think about where to be, how not to bump into other people – being a person in the world is hard enough without having to share space with quite so many other bodies and ideas. But I am supposed to be meditating, but instead I am so often doing admin in my brain. I ask myself what is pressing and urgent to do once I get out. But I am happy to have this routine. I hold that.

My friend Lizzie comes to see my work, she sits with me a while and I am so grateful for her presence, it is so centreing.

13. Lizzie and I ate so many nachos yesterday. Before that, and after my show we went to see Volcano Theatre’s Century Song at Zoo Venues, a hundred years of black women’s history told through opera and movement, piano and percussion. It was astounding and I am thinking on that when I am folding today. Thinking again, endlessly thinking. Can I even really call this a meditation, if my mind is so busy all the time.

14. Yesterday evening, Summerhall forwarded me an email containing the mobile phone number of someone filming for the BBC, Nish Kumar’s Edinburgh Fringe Nights. They were looking to get in touch with me regarding filming my work. I am sceptical, I’ve learned not to get excited as these things often don’t work out or actually ever happen. I text the person, she is called Kelly. She replies, tells me they’d love to film Nish delivering some lines about experimental performance at the fringe in front of my work tomorrow (well today now). I laugh to myself; ‘Well here I am, at the fringe, experimenting, with performance’, I think. I text her back ‘yes, sounds great, look forward to meeting you tomorrow’.

Nish Kumar was lovely. He had time for me and my work. All the production people were lovely too. Relaxed, efficient, professional but warm and considerate of me. It was all very exciting. Nish quickly films his lines, then rushes off, banging on the Perspex to say goodbye. I wave, I don’t normally acknowledge my audience, but for Nish Kumar I make an exception! They also film some close ups of my work, and I cross my fingers it is used on the TV. However briefly, being on the BBC would be kinda great!

15. I have two performances today, the first, I’ve just finished, folding as usual. Later I perform an extract of a new work entitled SELKIE SKIN, a work involving live felting, spoken word and folk songs, exploring trans and queer metaphors within Scottish and Nordic folklore. 

Folding, and I’m thinking again, I am thinking about the selkie performance. Hoping I am prepared, worried that I do not have everything that I need. I am looking forward to this evening though, because I know that there will be other queer people there, and I am drained by misgendering, by the overwhelming cisness and heterosexuality of this festival.

16. I was out late. Today I am a little hungover and extremely exhausted. Weirdly this spacey state makes the meditation easier. Ignoring the bustling theatre feels completely possible until a customer is so horrible to the front-of-house staff outside of my box. I want to jump out of the box and hug her. Her supervisors come and assure her when the show ends he will be kicked out. I am astounded by the entitlement of this man and feel so angry but do my best to focus again on my folding and try not to allow my body to be filled with rage.

17. I went out again last night. It was great I met up with more queers. I got home at 2am which feels early for the fringe. I find my lovely roommate with a temperature and covered in a nasty rash. My mind screams ‘meningitis’, because I had that when I was his age. I insist we call NHS 111, they give us an emergency appointment and we jump in a taxi.

In the hospital the doctor immediately recognises the rash as a very aggressive allergy rash and gives my roommate some strong drugs. We take a taxi back, and clamber exhausted into bed once he has taken the drugs.

I wake up at 8am, after two hours of sleep. There is no way I can fold today. I am exhausted and the stress of being awake all night, in a hospital. Experience with life threatening illness has taught me to fear hospitals. Worrying that I might have to help someone through an illness that traumatised my body so much only a few years ago was extremely stressful. 

I am filled with relief this morning when I see my roommates rash has already improved and he is sleeping peacefully. I email Summerhall, say I won’t be folding today. I curl up into my other roommates arms who I share a bed with. They hold me close. I am grateful here we are all together. Trans got trans back, always. We, trans kids getting each other through. I love them both so much and I start to cry softly into the duvet. Trans kinship is so important and I am so lucky to have that here through this month.

18. I am back folding again. The rest has served me well. Meditation feels possible as the theatre is quiet. A Monday, when many of the shows take a day off. I am grateful that I have this work. I am cramped in the corner, leaning against the back of the box, so little space to fold. A mountain of paper boxes. A few people come by and watch. My back hurts from binding and I wonder why I chose to wear it today. ‘I’d have been okay’, I think. I think about top surgery. I think about being a boy. I think about all the trans boys in the world, and recentre my meditation for them. Hoping they’ll find some sort of space to be quiet in the world, or at least something close to quiet.

19. The theatre is busy again. I chuckle as I open the door to the box and ten or so paper boxes tumble out. I spend a few of the first moments in the box rearranging the space, so I can be inside, and so the door will close. My meditation is soft and gentle today. I overhear the front-of-house team discussing my work with some passers by, I feel grateful that they seem to understand what I am doing. I keep breathing as I am misgendered yet again. I inflate another paper box.

20. I’m folding, folding, folding. The box is so full. I am cramped. Even though I am not binding my back aches. Today went by quickly. As I finish, I open the door and literally hundreds tumble onto the floor. I throw them back in, and more fall out, and more again. A technician laughs at me. I persevere, pushing the door shut with a satisfying ‘phut’ sound. I decide today I will go and see a show before I start work, and before that sit and drink soup in the Summerhall café. I feel sad that there is not so long to go but excited to see how much folding I can finish before the end of the festival!

21. I can feel the end approaching now. I can also feel my body settle into my daily ritual, meditation, practice. It is called a practice for a reason, because as you practice you become better at it. I am beginning to look forward to clambering into my box. I find it easier now to clear thoughts from my mind and carry on folding, to block out the noise of the theatre and maintain my mental focus.

The performance is drawing to a close. Climbing out of the box, calm and focused, I worry I’ll loose that focused feeling and daily practice if I don’t keep it up. I know I will have to take a break from meditating to do the get out at the venue I work at, and to move house. I know when it ends, the hectic life around this daily practice won’t end, and the time I’ve spent folding, meditating, will quickly be consumed by my busy, hectic life. I hope when I move into my new flat, that I will have time for yoga and meditation.

And then I think about how at the beginning of the festival I had considered how the only way to have that time in the festival was to enforce it, by making it work, making it a performance, for an audience.

‘You’ve said you’ll do it and people are watching, so now you have to’.

Can I find the strength to maintain a meditation practice only for me? Can I find the time? I hope so.

22. As the box is so full, and I am swallowed up by an origami ocean, many people comment on the box. ‘Wow, she’s done so many’. I shudder ‘she/ she/ she’ I hear over and over again. I’ve put myself in this bizarre situation where my audience are allowed to talk and to express opinions, but I cannot respond. I am like a machine to them, an origami robot without emotions. There are definitely parallels to performing fringe theatre for the month and my work, but also there are differences – and not being able to address my audience at all, as they talk about me as if I am inanimate or unable to hear is completely absurd. For the most part people say ‘wow’, they take pictures or short videos for their Instagram stories. More often than not they do also say ‘she’.

I hear two voices having a conversation about my work ‘performer, maker’ they read from the lettering on the front of the box. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’. I wasn’t prepared to hear this. ‘It’, I am not ‘it’. I am ‘they’. ‘Are they a boy or a girl’ is also a horrible question, but I am so taken aback at the use of the ‘it’ pronoun. I try to fold, but my attention falls for the first time in a while to my binder. ‘It’s a boy’ says one, ‘Natalie Wearden’ reads the other from the same lettering they read the work’s title. ‘Girl’ they declare triumphantly. Front of house make the call for the show they are queuing for to go in and I am so relieved that they won’t be interacting with me anymore. I try not to cry and manage somehow to find enough focus to carry on folding.

23. Penultimate day. I slide down into the box. The boxes like balls in a children’s play centre surround me. I love the noise they make as I push them away from my body and they rustle and tumble around me. Swallowing me up. Viewers from the outside will now only just see the tip of my head if they do not come close enough to peer in. I have perfected a balancing act for getting in to the box now, but still every time I climb out the boxes fall all over the floor and I have to throw them back inside.

I think about the thousands of flyers for thousands of shows. I think ‘this is exactly how many origami boxes you would have if, if instead of performing a fringe show, you were to fold origami boxes for the same amount of time.’ As the vast majority of fringe shows are performed everyday of the run, for one hour, I imagine the box in relation to this labour. How thousands of people across the city have put in this many hours, this much labour, into performing. Making is a bizarre thing. I have created something tangible, most performers do not. My labour is evidenced here in a Perspex fronted container, theirs will litter the streets, and eventually be swept away or destroyed in some other way. The flyers in my box get to stay though. But I am glad that it is not possible to tell who’s show the flyers promoted before they took on their new origami form.

24. I didn’t want it to be over. It went so quickly. My brain is in the work now, finally – it’s a rhythm and my body doesn’t understand that this is the last time I’ll be folding inside this box. I climb out. It’s overwhelmingly full. It looks beautiful. ‘Goodbye lovely box’, I say. The security person laughs at me. I mean it though; I love this goddamn box.

After the fringe.

My box will stay at Summerhall for another month, so visitors to the arts centre can come and see it. I hope they think about the festival, and how it travels through the city. Walking through Edinburgh streets today, the city feels like it’s breathing in deeply, slowly healing. And I am healing with her. The sun is shining and Edinburgh dances in the light.

Everybody needs to sleep, and to breathe in, particularly us with the extra battle of being here and being trans, or being here, and being anyone other than an educated white middle class heterosexual liberal. It’s all tough, it makes being here an extra fight. I got through because of meditating with and in this work and forging out queer space for myself in a time that’s not going to be kind to me otherwise. By living with other trans people and creating a little bubble to come home to. At times it’s intense; sharing a room, living on top of each other. Working, performing every-single-day. But today we laugh, Logan throws skittles at me and I narrate the final episode of ‘Trans Big Brother: Edinburgh’. We all collapse into laughter. My heart is so full of trans love.

And the streets are covered in flyers. The venue I worked at recycles millions of boxes of flyers. I knew my origami folding wasn’t going to save the planet, or make any kind of impact at all on the abominable quantity of waste produced by the fringe, but seeing so much thrown out emphasises the insignificance of my action. And I feel small in a bigger way. I am reminded of my position in the world, and the insignificance of my art practice, of my trans experience, of my meditation practice, but I also remember that inside of tiny insignificant actions there is a whole world. A world that is activist, radical, just for existing, for rejecting hegemony and pushing on despite it’s futility. I breathe deeply. I am moving on, but I am holding this time in my body.

A Final Thought

The BBC show aired with my work in it. It was a good minute of my work on screen, and it was much less background than I expected.

I had decided it was too much work to tell the BBC that I’m not a woman. And as my work would be in the background, I decided it wouldn’t be necessary as I didn’t expect them to directly refer to my work. But, the episode opens, it’s one of the first shots after the introduction, and in a proud voice Nish Kumar declares ‘this woman is…’…

As I hear it, my heart sinks into my stomach and I don’t hear the rest of the sentence.

I wondered how much transition, transness, binding would define this month. I wondered if I could make a work that wasn’t about transition in my trans body. As I hear ‘this woman’, and feel the pain of my tightly bound chest I realise that I will never be able to do that. If I want to live and be seen in my embodied truth I have to always come out. I have to say; ‘I am not a woman, and my pronouns are they/them’ before I say, ‘I am a performance artist’, before I say ‘I make durational work, and work with repetition and endurance’. Before I say any of that I have to come out as trans, in order to just be authentically in the world.

I breathe deeply. Being trans is real, and hard, and I feel the pain of all of the trans people in the world who want so badly to be more than just trans, and are so much more than just trans. But in the end, transition always wins.

My meditation is a meditation for trans people. My meditation is a futile attempt to escape, to find peace away from a gendered world, a busy world, that doesn’t have time for transition. But, however futile the attempts, I will keep on trying. Because asking questions with my body highlights both struggles and successes. It reminds me that there are multiple ways to be in the world, and practicing the most truthful way is the only way to get better, to heal.  

Thank you to everyone who came to my work with a willingness to watch. 

Thank you to Naoise McHugh and Logan Johnson for helping me to collect flyers and being solid pals and the best roommates a transboy could ask for the whole month. 

Thanks to Vivianne Ross-Smith for these lovely images. (And BBC2 for the screengrabs!) Thanks to my lovely employer for being flexible with me and making it possible for me to do this and all my colleagues for being such a welcoming team to share a month with.

Thanks to Summerhall for having me and especially their lovely front of house team who sat by my work everyday! 

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Rehearsal stills from performance documentation by Annabel Wicker.

Remembering to be soft and embodying softness.

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Snowdonia, Wales

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BACK IN THE CITY

A man was shouting and asking for money, it was a busy tube train and he had a St George’s cross tied around his waist. Intoxicated and singing loudly. “One year away, Brexit’s on its way.”

Trans things: a woman referred to me as sir, English wasn’t her first language and I doubted it was because I had somehow miraculously ‘passed’.

The Thames is always there. For a fluid thing, it’s remarkably solid. Unchanging. Herds of strangers, crossing over the bridges, so many faces every day. The Thames defines the city; identities of ‘North’ and ‘South’. Determined to make a ceaseless journey through the city.

Nature has its way in the end. You can see, in the cracks in the pavements; grass. Stains from acid rain, waring down the statues at Trafalgar Square. London is a city on borrowed land. Here for the time it takes for the earth’s eyelashes to touch.

I take the tube home from Embankment. “Mind the gap”. Weary faces like mine, “dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.”

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YARN - DOCUMENTARY

YARN is a 2016 feature length production out of Iceland directed by Una Lorenzen. Woven through the film are the poems of Barbara Kingslover who also narrates the film. The film looks at artists working with yarn, challenging the materials potential and showing how powerful it can be in an urgent contemporary world. 

The film opens on a farm in Iceland, the icy scenery a backdrop for sheep sheering. This action reminds the viewer how ancient this material is, how it comes from the land and has served a human need to keep warm for millennia. Icelandic artist Tinna Þórudóttir Þorvaldsóttir makes a small crocheted star from grey sheeps wool and nails it to a wooden fence. A tiny protest against the selective breeding of white sheep, as their wool is more valuable; ‘we need all the colours’ she says. 

Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam; an artist from Japan knits and crochets huge installations. These colourful structures are playgrounds for children. The artist watches how the children interact with her threads and notices how they are curious, testing its strength, discovering her web. She notes how much a child learns through play, and tells of how her structures have only recently begun to be recognised as art, but how for her there is no distinction between the playground and the artwork.

Polish artist OLEK makes garish feminist crotched works. In Barcelona she installs a huge crotched work reading, Keep Calm & Eat My Cock and crochets pink and black camouflage gimp suits, one shot shows a performer drinking through the crochet mask and a straw, another smokes a cigarette through their woolen face. OLEK collaborates with World Oceans Miami and crochets a mermaid that swims with marine mammals. Her punk attitude is loud, fearless and shameless, you feel she won’t stop until the whole world is made from crocheted yarn.

Cirkus Cirkör and Tilde Björfors from Copenhagen put on a woven circus show. This is perhaps the most poetic of the works shown in the film, as one circus artist describes how yarn is like life, it can be simple; a straight line, it can be tangled and a big mess, or it can be knitted into a complex pattern, it can be a creation. The circus is performed in a yarn wold, the repetition of movements, the hours of rehearsal seem to mirror the repeating motions of the artist, stitch by stitch creating the structures. 

Toshiko Horichi Macadam says ‘it’s like in life, every loop plays a role’, and perhaps that’s part of why yarn feels like such a current material. Overwhelmed by busy lives, we try and search for meaning and fish out what really matters, but if we think of our lives like a series of loops supporting each other, then every moment is a vital stitch, a part of the whole. 

Macadam talks about the meditation in knitting, and Þorvaldsóttir describes it as being like yoga. For all of the artists it is the process of production that is critical to their practice, joy that is found in the creation, and perhaps that’s really how life is like knitting, if we find joy in the making, in the repetitive, in the everyday, the product, whilst less important, will be beautiful. 

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INVISIBLE

INVISIBLE is a 2006 film directed by Roz Mortimer. An intense and inspiring film, thought provoking and beautiful, driven with performance, throat singing and spectacular imagery.

http://www.wonder-dog.co.uk/films/invisible/

when a boy catches his first seal he must lay himself flat on the ice then before the seal is dead his father must drag it across his back this will be prevent the seals from being afraid of him

We think of the arctic as a pristine wilderness, and when scientists went to collect breast milk from Inuit mothers, they were expecting to find the purest milk anywhere on earth. But the levels went off the scale. The milk of the Inuit mothers was loaded with chemicals which had migrated from the south and built up in their traditional food...the seal, whale and bear meat the Inuit people had been eating for centuries was slowly poisoning them. Today, scientists cannot find a single woman anywhere in the world who does not have these chemicals in her breast milk. In this beautiful and thought-provoking film, artist and film maker Roz Mortimer leads us on a hypnotic journey to the High Arctic. Using historical texts, medieval maps and contemporary first person accounts, Mortimer explores the traditional relationship Inuit have to the earth and gently challenges our Western relationship to science and knowledge. This poetic and visually stunning film weaves epic scenes of contemporary Inuit life with startling throatsinging performances and staged tableaux vivants set within the frozen Arctic landscape. INVISIBLE is driven by a unique musical score including free-yoik from Sami musician Wimme Saari, live and operatic throatsinging from Inuit artist Tanya Tagaq and an exquisite theremin composition from Michael Kosmides. Featuring the award winning environmental scientist Theo Colborn; the chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference Sheila Watt-Cloutier; and Inuit mothers who offer emotionally charged testimonies; this provocative film resists the conventions of science documentaries and questions how we live in the world today. Filmed entirely on Baffin Island, Nunavut, in the communities of Iqaluit and Qikiqtarjuaq.

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A STUFFED SELKIE IN THE ARKTIKUM MUSEUM

I headed north in search of snow, nature and isolation. To search for ways of being okay alone, and think about what it means to be queer outside of the cultural capitals and metropolitan cities. I hope at some point to see some seals for the sake of SELKIE SKIN but I am either too far south or too far east to be in quite the right spot to see the North Sea selkies who perhaps once ended up on Orcadian shores. However, I might travel to Luleå in search of some selkies one weekend, if I have chance, but seeing the North Sea selkies is maybe a trip for another time, and a less wintery month. In the Arktikum museum in Rovaniemi, a museum of the arctic, there was, of course, a display on arctic wildlife, including a stuffed seal, an animal often synonymous with the arctic ocean. 

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KOROUMA CANYON - FROZEN WATERFALLS

Hiking 5km along the Korouma Canyon in Posio you can see three incredible frozen waterfalls. Brave ice climbers scale the frozen canyon. The forest here is so peaceful. I feel alive. We make food in the wilderness hut. I run, knee deep in the snow.

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KEEPING WARM IN LAPLAND

Get a good hat.

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM KORUNDI - ROVENIEMI ART MUSEUM

Korundi Culture House in Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland houses a concert hall, art studio and art library as well as Roveniemi Art Museum. The focus of the art museum is on works reflecting northern and arctic contexts. The hoards of Santa Land tourists make funding this kind of cultural space a possibility, however, it is exciting to see how exciting contemporary art in Finland and the Nordic Countries is often displayed outside of cultural capitals. 

Two exhibitions are currently on display; Towards a New Dawn - Post-War Landscape in Lappish Art and Real Celebration! - Contemporary Finnish Art. Here is a selection of stand out works from the two shows. 

TOWARDS A NEW DAWN - POST-WAR LANDSCAPE IN LAPPISH ART

This exhibition explores how a destroyed landscape had to be rebuilt in Lapland after World War II. The exhibition is held in collaboration with the University of Lapland, as part of a research project; FEENIKS – art and culture as a part of mental and material rebuilding after the Lappish War. Romanticised depictions of the northern landscape reflect many an artists desire to celebrate, repair and preserve the country’s natural beauty after the war. In contrast, Reidar Särestöniemi’s use of black, white and orange and scratchy surfaces feel urgent and violent. Kaarlo Lamminheimo depicts an uncomfortable, barren landscape with visceral mark-making. 

Nimetön “Untitled” (1963) - Reidar Särestöniemi 

Pakkaspäivä Pyhätunturilla “Frosty Day in Phyäntuturi” (1955) - Nillo Vuopala

Pyhäntunturilta No 4 “From Pyhäntunturi No 4″ (1952) -  Kaarlo Lamminheimo 

REAL CELEBRATION! - FINNISH CONTEMPORARY ART

To celebrate 2017 as the 100th anniversary of Finnish independence, the 75th anniversary of the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation collection and the 30th anniversary of the Rovaniemi Art Museum, this exhibition seeks to celebrate exciting new art in Finland by exhibiting a sample from the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation collection. The icy colours of the exhibition are juxtaposed against stark shadowy contrasts, reflecting the famous snowy forests of Finland.  Natural elements from the landscape are used as materials - Janna Syvänoja’s stretched birchbark is a memorable work. This exhibition has a deep feeling of solitude and the heaviness of dark nordic winters is felt even more intensely as the short daylight hours end outside.

River (2002) / Beach (2007) - Sandra Kantanen 

Cloud of Dust Silences the Wood (2015) - Heli Hiltunen  

Icy Prospects 47 (2008) - Jorma Puranen 

Helmikuun Hopeinen Hakikanto “February’s Silvery Hard-Crusted Snow” (2007) - Janna Syvänoja 

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OUNASVAARA, ROVANIEMI

I want to know the snow The cold rushes through my veins And falls from my skin