As we move through public spaces our experience is often secondary to the endless monologue in our heads; re-examining the past or anticipating the future. Even if just for a moment, I want to draw people into a present moment experience of an environment they might pass through every day, and see its beauty.

The idea for my proposal stems from my interest in the development of the European choral tradition, the history of which is bound intimately to the architectural development of cathedrals, monasteries, churches and chapels. Music and architecture informed each other endeavouring to create experiences that brought the audience to a heightened, spiritual state of mind. Whilst my intention is not religious I want to progress the relationship between music and architecture into a modern urban setting, and still maintain that powerful, positive impact upon the listener.

I want to discreetly position musicians (probably woodwind, brass and other loud acoustic instruments!) on buildings around urban centres like Exchange Square in Manchester (see pictures). Through a combination of improvisation and composition the musicians would play into the space. The composition and the musicians would respond to the sound environment making use of the acoustic qualities of the space, but also reacting to sounds that occur within the space; a pedestrian crossing becomes a fluttering melody that dances around the space; a buses screeching brakes produces a rich sequence of chords. The music would not be like the city centre samba band that imposes itself upon the space, but more like a tune that emerges in the back of your brain opening up your senses and bringing your attention to everything around you. The result would be the realisation of an array of disparate sounds as melodies, rhythms and motifs within a lush and beautiful piece of music.

I am a multi-instrumentalist, musical director, composer and workshop facilitator. Over the past 5 years I have composed for film, theatre, dance and installation. Some of this work can be seen at www.myspace.com/3rdfloormusicproduction.

I have delivered composition and ensemble workshop to a wide range people, and have musically directed a number of large-scale young people’s concerts and theatre productions.

Proposal by creative practitioner Nela Milic

This work deals with the concept of the unused that is interpreted on two levels – one that presents the object as never used and the other that looks at the object as underused. The idea comes from the fascination with the consumer culture that forces both “must have” and aesthetical questions ahead of practicality, utility, content… The embodiment of such a tension between capital and happiness is the wedding dress. It is looked as a promise of happiness and long lasting marriage, the loaded artefact in which so much is invested. Hence, it is costly, but used only once, if at all… The exposure of it on its own, outside of the wedding ceremony or a store and with no body to support it exposes its’ impossible nature. So, I would display it in a glass box, under one of the Regents canal arches. It would not be lit as this glossy white material glows in the dark, staring at us like someone wanted to get rid of it.

Many wedding dresses are disposed in dry cleaners after the deed is done or are sitting lonely in boxes on the attic, waiting for another opportunity to come out… The dress that does not go out needs to be seen again, by the public that wants one, harbours one, can’t wear one, is ashamed of one. The dress with so many implications makes us stare and this is why it is an artwork in itself, however much it costs… A life?

Location images: Hereford and Regent’s Canal

I am a visual artist and a writer working in film and theatre. I use drama to express the themes I am interested in, for which I develop prints of images and text on screen, textile and paper. I particularly use mosaic and collage as they contain stories and recall memories of the place, age and circumstance. I often merge poetry with photographs, creating installations and publications – e.g. oral histories turned into audio tour and graffiti. In creative writing workshops, I present my poetry and inspire the participants to visualise what I saw/felt to write such words and create such melody. Drawing on imagery and the sound, I engage them in writing their own visions and stories.

My work centres on the theme of identity – lost and regained through leaving home. It explores the sense of belonging and the stages of adjustment to the new environment. This gives me a number of themes for my artwork – past, present, future, memory, roots, migration, displacement, identity, a sense of place, integration… I present them in various formats; from video, fashion design to architecture and film. My artwork is predominantly presented as interactive installations which invite people to act as they are on the stage, in the set design. The audience makes up their own story from the objects they see, touch and walk through while I illuminate the paths to the narrative.

NO HOT ASHES

Proposed Triumphal Archway

How should we remember the 20th century? Life in the city, wheelie bins: our own personal time capsusule on every street. We just love making holes and filling them up again.

Let the design echo the circumstance at the municiple tip. This is our vector in the big mess of History.

NOTE TO FUTURE SELVES: Please choose the object you want to be remembered by carefully, we already take up so much room.

“Nothing from nothing leaves nothing”

My working methods have always been intentionally repetitive and deliberately painstaking, reflecting my ongoing pre-occupation with Time as a subject matter. I think about time all the time. I have many questions about it and I use my practice to think them through: What’s the difference between History and the past? (A Secret Heliotropism, 2006); How will our behaviour now affect the future? (The Book Which Reads Itself, 2007); How might time take on a physical form? (Ten Years, 2008); Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of earlier generations? (Flashback, 2008); Can I start a conversation with someone who isn’t here anymore? (Escape Lee Krasner, 2009).

In recent months I have had cause to refine my methods. I have formulated a set of rules to obey in the creation of future artworks. These rules can be seen as both a set of guidelines and my own call to arms:

1. Remember that art is the best way of explaining how the world works
2. Put yourself in the position of the object being made
3. Keep books in mind
4. Work towards freedom from time
5. Acknowledge your heroes and pay your debts
6. Don’t let fashion or technology grind you down…

For further information on Nicola’s work, go to: www.axisweb.org/artist/nicoladale

City of Air Rights

Propositions for Merton

FT Static

Independent Traveller

Cliff Runways

Chorus Steel Works

Mary Yacoob’s work is based in drawing and visual languages, for example, repetition, mirroring, geometry, line and number.

These drawings are part of a series of works entitled Propositions for Artworks.

In these projects, Mary  Yacoob produces  drawings and collages based on or influence by images from text books and newspaper cuttings or photographs she has taken of particular sites.  The drawings propose large scale installations which are absurdist, humorous, impractical, or impossible. They are often inspired by the architecture or site in which the exhibited drawings are being shown.   Some internal logic of the found image or site is twisted and exaggerated to produce an absurdist proposal for an alternative reality.

Thus the drawings play with the nature of drawing itself and how it’s linked to the playful thought processes of the artist and viewers.  The drawings also invite the viewers to consider what is possible to imagine.  When confronted by a drawing that is essentially a visual rendering of an idea or proposal, does the viewer relate only to the physicality or aesthetic of the drawing, or do they move beyond that and take up an invitation to imagine what reality would be like if the idea in the drawing actually came alive.  Or perhaps the viewer might find the idea to be insufficiently radical and be spurred on to think of their own alternative reality.

Mary Yacoob’s work using drawing and visual languages to observe, figure out and communicate. What follows is the filtering of observation of everyday life through systemic techniques such as repetition, geometry, and extrapolation.  She appropriates symbolic visual grammars from architectural plans, geological maps, diagrams, and alphabets.

Some of her work involves documenting the minutia of daily life in diagrammatic form.  In other work, she creates systemic works about architectural spaces that question ideas of urban planning and public art through proposals for often unrealisable interventions.

For more information on Mary’s work see: www.mary-yacoob.com

Sea Parting Red

Doodle City of TEXT

This is a plan which is quite intrusive…..

Some dance would be filmed, and then transported into people’s homes, through their windows, by a portable projector. The projector person would have the role of a ‘good stalker’. They would stand outside the houses, almost like christmas carolling or trick or treating, but possibly more interestingly without the knocking, or pre-warning – like temporary graffiti. 

The film would be projected through people’s windows into their homes. This would also take place in other spaces like in clubs or outdoors onto walls. The projector could be quite small so it would appear and no one would know where it was coming from at first.

This could also take place in a range of locations, and if there was a collection of films which had a connection or relationship, it could be a blast of films – almost like the splurge guns in Bugsy Malone, when they burst into the Grand slam, with several projectors. Like a gallery attack in different spaces. This may be nice if the attackers are in 1920’s/30’s costume for the attack so that the actual film attack is part performance too.

The inspiration behind the project is mostly rooted in my career and interest in dance, and the lack of public awareness of it, and accessibility to it. Particularly contemporary dance, and the plaguing of reality of the nature of dance, and how it works for dance artists in comparison to what is seen on television with Louis Spence, and Pineapple Dance, and Glee. I earn money from promotional and marketing type jobs, and realise their benefit in educating, and encouraging the public to enjoy certain things.
It would be great to blast the public with an artistic approach to dance, and reflect the nature of dance that appears and then is instantly lost as soon as a performance is over, in terms of the projection disappearing once the blast is over.
The other inspiration was the fact there was a post with such freedom!

Lauren is an independent dance artist, choreographer, animator, and film maker.
She graduated in 2008 from London Studio Centre, which is facilitated by University of the arts London, gaining a first class degree in ‘BA Theatre Dance’.
Lauren’s work can be viewed here:
http://laurendance.yolasite.com/ (for dance)
http://laurenbridle.yolasite.com/ (for animation, choreography, art, and film)