The Practice Exchange 11: Dr Nerma Cridge, Professor Jane Collins and Lorrice Douglas

Date: Wednesday 4th July 2012, 4-6pm
Venue: Green Room, Chelsea

Present: Deniz Acka, Sonya Boyce, Jane Collins, Nerma Cridge, Lorrice Douglas, Maria Kheirkhah, Catherine Long, Robert Luzar, and others (17 in total)

Choreography for Blackboards, Dr. Nerma Cridge

Dr Nerma Cridge: Drawing the Sky

Nerma presented four projects to The Practice Exchange. She began with her degree project – The Sniper House – that she completed at the Birmingham School of Architecture. Nerma talked about the views of the sniper inside and outside the building, the crafting of lined drawings and the shaping of the emerging screens, the window and the wall cutouts. Afterwards, in the section called The Cloud, Nerma discussed her PhD dissertation, which dealt with architectural projects from the Soviet era, focusing in particular on those that depicted the sky and clouds. It was initiated by the premise that ‘architects are not supposed to draw the sky’, as the sky ought to remain in the domain of the artists; architects should stick with drawing buildings, confined to only what can be measured accurately and precisely drawn. The drawings ranged from projects that excluded the sky completely, showing the buildings literally and in a ‘painterly’ manner, to those with the cloud in the centre, where the subject and the focus of the drawing had become the sky itself. The ensuing debate included those projects that used the elements of the sky imagery as part of the building and those in which the building became the cloud itself. In this presentation, just as in her thesis, Nerma speculated, moving from ‘what if’, to ‘let’s assume’. One of the important suggestions included the assertion that some of the buildings were not simply unbuildable but were actually built, only in fragments, and in different scales. Comments from the audience included remarks about how attractive the idea was that a building may exist in two different places at the same time, because, rather than despite, not having materialised.

After this Nerma moved onto describing the project she worked on in collaboration with Oliver Klimpel and Sophie Ungerer for an international ideas competition Shrinking Cities. Their entry entitled Cropped Cities proposed literally to crop the disused sections of derelict buildings in city centres of Liverpool, Manchester, Detroit and Berlin. By cutting the structures down to the height of 1 meter, new activities could be introduced based upon an existing trace. This would enable cropped buildings and urban blocks to ‘grow’ better. Importantly, new horizons would be created and opened up. There was a comment made of how interesting it would be if buildings were only meter high, with large part of their structure buried underground.

The concluding discussion focused on the project entitled 5xHandrail that Nerma completed in 2010, in the Drawing Space in Melbourne. Here, a real handrail of a five-storey staircase was echoed five times in five different shades of grey, ranging from dark to almost white. Made in this way, drawing fragments migrated, stopped and continued over the surfaces of the three-dimensional space: on the ceiling, the floor and finally ending on the window pane, visually in-between the inside and the outside. Curiously, the project ended up exactly where it started, with the ‘literal’ sky.

A number of the artists present were fascinated by the discussion on architectural training, in which architectural students are constantly confronted by rules and don’t have the same kind of freedom that artists experience throughout their practice. Also, the ways in which drawings and other visuals can be used very effectively and powerfully to create a strong impression of buildings that do not have an actual physical presence. This is how such buildings were made present and more active in people’s lives than many real built structures. They also continue to influence real buildings and architecture, acting as a constant point of reference. Nerma’s final remarks emphasised the importance of pushing the limits and drawing what can be visualised and not materialised, or perhaps not materialised yet. The kind of practice in both art and architecture that crosses boundaries and rules, or the one that borrows rules from a different discipline, often comes out with the most promising solutions.

Professor Jane Collins and Lorrice Douglas: Staging the site specific between fine art and theatre

Bureau, 2007 - Lorrice Douglas

Jane Collins and Lorrice Douglas presented a discussion with the aim of seeing where the performances they both make fit in relation to each other.

Jane referenced Henri Lefebvre's writing on space: e.g. The Production of Space 1974 (English translation 1991) and Miwon Kwon’s One place after Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity 2004.

Lorrice presented a work she made in her first art residency at Grizedale Arts in 2001. PAGEANT - A Lakeland Variety Show was an event made in response to the foot & mouth crises, staged at Water Yeat Village Hall and organised in collaboration with Audrey Steeley, a playwright and member of staff at Grizedale Arts. The work involved blurring the distinctions between fact and fiction.  

The poster that she used to advertise the event was made during the early stage of her residency when the countryside felt very quiet and isolated; the footpaths were closed. There was much driving around, and many encounters. Lorrice sited her hand-made posters in obscure shop windows and forest locations, and made tickets from local playing cards. For the event, a mystery guest from London appeared as the headline act.

Lorrice referred to the making of the project as 'creeping in through the back door' (ie. negotiating amongst established institutions and relationships). During the event, heavy rain and a very intense atmosphere emphasised the distinctions between out and in. Lorrice showed images from the PAGEANT publication, especially images about staging and taking things down - props and scenery from the event.  She raised the issues of how you leave (finish) a project that is so much about encounters, and how you leave a place.

The following year during the Grizedale Live exhibition, she constructed a billboard in the forest depicting an interior of Water Yeat Village hall. It was installed without signage, a title, or name. The idea was that people would chance upon it whilst walking in the forest and that it would naturally fade away as the PAGEANT poster had. Lorrice is interested in how people respond to work when it is unclear who made it and what its function is. She questions what the role of the audience is and acknowledges the many people who contributed to the project.

A member of the audience asked: Can it be recreated somewhere else? Lorrice responded that it cannot be moved or toured, however the book circulates. The book is not the event, it is the way she chose to portray the making of the event. For her, the process, the ephemera, and the making of the event were the artwork.

Sonia Boyce commented on the value of conversations and ephemeral material. Lorrice responded that in her work, there is always more than one location.  In PAGEANT - A Lakeland Variety Show she embodied that other location. There were many different roles and everyone played a part.

Jane presented a project she undertook in Bali, working with the local women and other members of the local community – such as health workers - to make a play. After the play was presented she was told words to the effect of: ‘Thank you very much that was wonderful, but please don't come to our village because you will be stoned’. For Jane this brought up the issues of the varying layers of local knowledge, emphasizing that knowledge is only partial.

Hyderabad, 2011 - Professor Jane Collins

She then presented a staging of The Duchess of Malfi, a Jacobean Revenge tragedy, at the Nightingale Theatre, in Brighton. In this dark and brutal but very charismatic and seductive play, the actors and audience moved through various rooms of a pub, and at the same time the actors moved in and out of roles. For Jane, the theatrical authenticity in this event occurred as the actors moved outside the theatre space. The narrative was going on in the moment. Actors make jokes to charm the audience, then the tone changes as they begin to torture the heroine psychologically. The audience found themselves trapped in the situation. The issue of how the audience position themselves was crucial here – this was shared by Lorrice’s project, as was a blurring between the fictional and the real.

Lorrice commented that as PAGEANT took place in a small village hall, there were different layers of participation and familiarity with the play. Everyone was playing.

Jane added that performance can get beneath surfaces in a particular way. This developed into a wider conversation around the question: at what point do the audience say stop?

Jane described The Duchess of Malfi production as moving and responding to the moment and the audience. But it was clearly a play. There is freedom because it is not real. The audience want to know what's going to happen next.

Lorrice referred to Music Hall where the audience were 'active' responding audibly and physically to the performers and their performance.  

Jane referred to the performance artist Marina Abramovic who hates theatre because it is fake. For her, performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real. It’s about reality.

But surely audiences understand the nature of theatrical illusion? Jane responded that there is a lot you can do within that fakery.

Lorrice presented her time-based installation, Bureau, exhibited at RSVP: Contemporary artists at the Foundling in 2007.  The show was curated by Gill Hedley and produced by Commissions East.

The Foundling Museum was founded by Thomas Coram in 1741. The downstairs of the museum houses the social history gallery. Handel was a patron of the Foundling Hospital. Lorrice chose to stage her installation within the Gerald Coke Handel Collection. Her intention was that her installation should look like furniture and blend in. It comprised a gentleman's writing desk, a chair and a Bakelite telephone. There was a small flashing red light on the telephone instead of a ringing bell. She was concerned with the visitors’ perception of what they can or can't do - what they can or cannot touch - in a museum or heritage setting. She left clues on the writing desk - an invitation - but it was completely up to the visitor how much they engaged.

Lorrice played a one-minute audio recording of the sounds that the visitor would have heard on picking up the telephone receiver. By sitting at the desk and picking up the receiver the visitor became implicated.

Jane described this as bringing the theatrical into the museum context. The object then becomes part of a play which the visitor becomes a participant in. There is a temporal element and a spatial dislocation through a particular type of voice.

Sonia commented that there was a certain amount of time-traveling going on in this piece.

Lorrice spoke about the Foundling Museum context – it was London's first home for abandoned babies. For her, it evoked an awkwardness of making contact, an awkwardness of communication, time, discomfort. If the visitor puts the receiver down the circuit is broken.  

Jane commented on the differences between her and Lorrice’s practice – Jane’s work is very directive, while Lorrice’s is less controlling.

Lorrice added that the flashing red light on the telephone is very subtle but it's all about that - the moment of finding something and almost having missed it. She spoke of the challenge of documenting work about the audience encounter.

Jane presented an event she staged in Hyderabad, India, in 2011 that was about site-specificity and site mobility. She started with no script - responding to the place - the Drama and Dance Departments of the University.  Having been impressed by the incredible presence of the security guards, she decided to use Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as the narrative drive. The audience were shown around the site by a security guard.  Homeless people thought the set was a potential place to stay.  They got moved on. As the play progressed, the security guard's story took over: the local took over from the colonial narrative. At the end, he took the audience right out into the forest. The set was a site of cardboard effigies - a tradition in India. The security guard claimed the story and told his story.

The question was asked: can you take this production to Deli? In this case, the context was moveable as it is about relationships. 
Jane referenced Doreen Massey: openness, trajectory and relationship. However the heavy rain and the journey into the forest were so specific they could not be recreated live. 

In Delhi there are security guards everywhere and many homeless people. Here Jane used backstage areas, placing the story there. In future performances she will consider giving the audience the option of either watching a spectacle or journeying behind the scenes with a security guard.

Lorrice’s closing thoughts: People seem to be dressing up but are they actually dressing up as themselves?  What is theatrical authenticity?

Jane’s closing thoughts: What are the nuances of and differences between working with people and working with actors?