Of Work Made and Un-made

For the fortnight after Easter weekend, Forest Fringe are taking over The Gate in London, with a really exciting line up of artists and projects. Our regular collaborator Chris Thorpe is curating the first week, and performer Dan Canham is curating the second.

For Chris' week, he's performing a different one of his brilliantly complex story-monologues each evening, and presenting something(s) from (a) guest artist(s). On Monday 9th April I'm going to be showing something of/talking about a new project Cape Wrath.

I would hesitate to call it a work-in-progress. A work at the start of its progress, perhaps. Though that said, it has been in process in my head for a while now. But this talk at The Gate marks the beginning of making the thought-and-travel-and-research-and-conversation-process-so-far, into what will be a performance. Of some sort. At some point.

Last September I travelled from my home in Sheffield to Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point of the British mainland. (I tweeted about it as I went and you can read a Storify of that, here). I went because over twenty years previously, my Grandad had undertaken the same journey, from his home (in Walsall) to Cape Wrath. When he got there he sat and looked at the sea for a couple of hours and thought about his life. Then he got back on the bus and went home. I've known for a few years that it would be something I would do, too.

I don't know exactly when the performance of Cape Wrath will be “made” by, or what it will eventually be. But if I've learned anything about making work in the last 17 years, it's that you should trust your instinct and that the next thing you make should be the piece that you, or your collaborators, need to make next. The thing that preoccupies you. The story that bothers you, or moves you. I'm interested in letting Cape Wrath evolve, rather like the touring version of Class of '76 did, into whatever it will become, partly through try-outs like we'll do at Forest Fringe. So, I'm going to be talking about the project, trying out a few things, reading some stuff, showing some video. Taking the next step.

The following week (on Wednesday 18th) Annie Lloyd and I will be talking about The Dust Archive, our book of performance memories from Leeds Met Gallery & Studio Theatre. I've written about The Dust Archive a couple of times on here, but talking about it now has added poignancy as the performance programme that survived the closure of the Studio Theatre itself also came to a close last month. In one of those timely not-quite-coincidences, the final performance in that programme was Dan Canham's 30 Cecil Street, the piece he is presenting nightly during his week at The Gate. Dan invited Annie and I to talk about The Dust Archive because of the elegiac nature it shares with his beautiful documentary/dance piece.

Given that The Dust Archive marks the end of something, albeit unintentionally, and feels like the closing of a chapter, it has been gratifying to see it take on a life of its own. Perhaps that's just what objects are able to do; as someone who mostly makes performances and screenings that I am then usually present at, I can sometimes forget that exhibits and books are out there, meeting audiences on their own. Yes, of course that's what books are able to do. Anyway. An example of that is an article by Saini Manninen in the latest volume of the Journal of Media Practice. In The art of leftovers: Memory, matter and decay, Saini discusses The Dust Archive in relation to the work of Alastair MacLennan and to Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth installation in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, arguing for the idea of an archive “as something which does not resist decay but partakes in its processes.” You can read more about her article here.

And you can still get a copy of The Dust Archive itself. There are still a few copies of the Second Printing left, so Annie and I will be selling copies (at a discounted price) when we talk at Forest Fringe (and signing them should anyone want), or you can get them direct from us.

What Is Story Map?

The What I Heard About The World UK tour draws to a close this month, culminating in two, 12-hour performances of Story Map at The Core at Corby Cube on Saturday 17 March (where the final - for now - performance of What I Heard... happens the night before), and at The Albany in London, on Saturday 24 March.

The performances run 10am - 10pm, free, no need to book: just turn up whenever you want, and stay for as long or short a time as you like.*  If you can't make it in person, you can follow the performance online [click here].

And what is Story Map? This video by Hannah Nicklin explains all:



If you've seen What I Heard About The World, or indeed, if you haven't, but have thought of any stories, from whichever country, that might fit in with our quest for stand-ins, replicas, replacements and fakes - we'd love to hear them. Come in an see us.

Or, if you're not near Corby or London whilst we're up and running at The Core and The Albany, you'll be able to submit stories online (and follow our progress), at the Story Map site, or on Twitter using the hashtag #whatiheardabouttheworld and by following me @AlexanderKelly.**

Although we'll be working through the world one country at a time, you can send us a story whenever you want, and we'll put it on the map when we get to the right country. At the last run, at ARC in Stockton, we got 130 stories for the 202 countries we put on the map. So, again, we'd love to hear from you.


*Current audience (jointly-held) long-service medals are for 11 and half hours viewing at ARC.
**I'll actually be a digital simulacrum operated by @hannahnicklin for the duration of the story mapping.

"what is and is not news"

Our friend, the artist Rajni Shah sent me this email this morning. I asked her if I could share it here.

Just read this in Stanley Cavell's beautiful essay "The Avoidance of Love" and it made me think of [What I Heard About The World]:

"We no longer know what is and is not news, what is and is not a significant fact of our present history, what is and is not relevant to one's life. The newspaper tells me that everything is relevant, but I cannot really accept that because it would mean that I do not have one life, to which some things are relevant and some not. I cannot really deny it either because I do not know why things happen as they do and why I am not responsible for any or all of it. And so to the extent that I still have feeling to contend with, it is a generalised guilt, which only confirms my paralysis; or else I convert the disasters and sensations reported to me into topics of conversation, for mutual entertainment, which in turn irritates the guilt."
(originally written in 1967)

It's such an important topic, and my work is also a response to this feeling which is why I relate so strongly to it - the work is a way of trying to allow us to see again, or to have some agency in our seeing, our knowing, in the world.

r.x.

 This really speaks to me about one of the strands that's there in the show. Thank you, Rajni.

"theatre for the enquiring mind"

Half way...four weeks into the tour. We're having a good time, and enjoying the different feel and atmosphere the show gets in different spaces.

Audience response has been great, and there are some very nice reviews out there. So, if you're interested - and with the inevitable SPOILER ALERTS - you can read the What's On Stage review from Soho Theatre here:

This is no mere travelling show of oddities, a simple freak show of human weirdness, but a true spoken museum.

and the Public Reviews piece from The Junction, Cambridge, here: 

This sublimely devised show is faultless in its presentation and originality bringing difficult subjects to life.

Dani Abulhawa has started a new Live Art blog, and her response to the show is the first entry on it, which is great:

[it is] constructed in such a way that the stories flowed in waves of emotion and energy.

And here's the review from the Northern Echo, reproduced with their permission, as it isn't on their website:

Northern Stage, Newcastle - Third Angel & mala voadora
What I Heard About The World

Review by Helen Brown

Third Angel is an international, experimental performance company producing theatre, film and video, while mala voadora, which incidentally means ‘flying suitcase’, is a Portuguese company who explore social issues and the nature of theatrical spectacle.  Quite an unlikely marriage, but its offspring production is something quite unique and brutally entertaining.  

Arriving in the auditorium, we find three men, Jorge Andrade, Alexander Kelly and Chris Thorpe, already on stage in a kind of live photograph of a dwelling that could be anywhere on earth. Their stories come from all corners of the globe and although some must be made-up, all are streaked with an uncomfortable reality, like the woman in Antarctica who cut the cancer from her own breast with the aid of a surgeon on the internet; a silent radio broadcast in Israel and a donkey painted to look like a zebra in a Zoo in the Gaza Strip. We are invited to consider global warming with the aid of salt poured into water and we meet Flat Brian, the cardboard replacement dad.

The structure of this performance is hands-on and punctuated with Thorpe’s excellent guitar solos.  Pictures are drawn, a great deal of Jameson’s whiskey is consumed and by the end of the show the stage is littered with confetti, paint, water and laughter.  All three performers are impressive; in particular Andrade, who breaths believable life into every move he makes. 

This is theatre for the enquiring mind; a journey through other cultures to find strange and wondrous stories that leave your jaw dropped and your mouth open. 

Anything is Possible

This is a piece I wrote as the programme note for Forest Fringe's first International Microfestival, at Culturgest in Lisbon, which happened this weekend.

**

Anything is Possible

From an original base in a dusty, under-resourced hall above an amazing cafe in Edinburgh, Forest Fringe have achieved remarkable things.

When you first encounter them, as an artist, they ask you what you need. They haven't got much to offer – a few lanterns, a couple of lighting bars, a small stage with a large pulpit on it, some other smaller rooms – but they ask you what you need anyway. You tell them, and they say, “Okay, that should be possible.”

The other thing they ask you is, “What would you like to do?” They have no agenda to impose upon you, other than, “What would be useful for you to do in our space?” You tell them, and they say, “Okay, that should be possible.” A piece performed by five audience members, who are all wearing headphones, and a television set? A man repeatedly climbing up a step ladder until he is the equivalent height of space? A danced memorial to a closed-down theatre in a different city? An all-night cabaret of one-to-one live art performances? A performance in a video shop at midnight? Okay, that should be possible.

If you don't know exactly what would be useful for you to do yet, they say, “Well, just decide when you get here.” They trust you. As an artist. Because they are artists. So they trust artists to ask themselves the questions, to set themselves the challenges, that will produce the experiences that will be vital for audiences. And pretty much, it seems to me, whatever challenge you come up with, they always find a way of making it possible.

And what do they say to audiences? They say, “Look, here are interesting artists doing great work. Come and see it, experience it, do it – okay, you won't like all of it, but you will like a lot of it, and you will love some of it, and it's all free or just one cheap ticket for the lot. Come in, experience it, stick around and talk about it.”

From the dusty under-resourced hall above the amazing cafe in Edinburgh, Forest Fringe have spread their wings and begun to tour a micro-festival model, adapting their structure to different spaces in different cities, but always maintaining their core ethos: What would you like to do? What do you need in order to achieve that? Okay, that should be possible.

If you're not familiar with how the Edinburgh Festival Fringe works, it's difficult to appreciate what an amazing, influential achievement Forest Fringe is. It started when that amazing cafe, The Forest, invited some artists in to curate a not-Fringe programme of free events during the Festival. The Forest Cafe is now under threat, perhaps gone for ever, because some people find it hard to see the amazing in things that are also difficult and unpredictable. But the influence of what they started, when they invited the creation of Forest Fringe, still ripples out through the Edinburgh Festival and across theatre and performance in the UK.

At some point, you realise that they are not 'they' any more, that they are 'you'. That you are part of the growing family of artists who make up Forest Fringe. It's an extended family I feel privileged to be a part of, and it is a pleasure to be asked to help introduce Forest Fringe to Lisbon audiences.

I feel like I am introducing two of my best friends who have not previously met. Lisbon is my favourite city that I have ever taken work to and I have been fortunate enough to collaborate with some brilliant artists, producers and venues across the city. I count Third Angel performances at Culturgest amongst my favourite ever shows. I think the two of you will get along just great.

Alexander Kelly

Co-artistic Director, Third Angel

Artist, Forest Fringe

"When something is this good..."

A quick round-up. Into our third week of touring, and the audience response has been great - really positive and engaged. We're really pleased with how people are connecting with the work.

In the warm up to this year's State of the Arts event, Alison Clark-Jenkins wrote a really interesting post on the SOTA Liveblog about the trying to comprehend enormity of the theme Artists and the Future Environment. That chimed with how we sometimes felt making this show, so I was really pleased that in that context she wrote:

I went to see Third Angel’s ‘What I heard about the world’ last week. At its simplest level,  some stories about some people in some places. In reality, a beautiful piece of  theatre with a deep, connected, emotive narrative. When something is this good, it stays; gently applying pressure to recall as you slow for an amber light, or look out of the window in a long meeting.  So, something is activated, I’m connected.

We've also done a couple of interviews about the project:
Here's Chris talking about the importance of corroborating the stories.
And here's me talking about clipboarding in Coimbra (amongst other things).

On the subject of corroboration, two popular Story Map stories have appeared in the news during the last couple of weeks - the Japanese Zoo Safety Drill (which even made it to Newsnight) and the Robot Camel Jockeys... ahead of the news, that's us.

What I Heard About The World: Video Trailer

A video trailer by Lauren Stanley
What I Heard About the World by Third Angel & mala voadora
On tour now, full tour dates here.