I saw this film for the first time last year and fell in love with it. During this research project it keeps drifting into my mind as it seems to represent, if somewhat more ordered, the approach to the research i have been engaged with.  As to be expected, i find myself constantly expanding my gaze in search of some metaphysical positions to rest upon and then contracting to specific points that are equally universal, but may enable me to place my ideas in more accessible framework.  Maybe it is the space between these positions that i find the most enjoyable; the wondering, slightly lost, in search of something, never quite sure what but when I find it I am certain it’s what I’ve been looking for all along.

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 In the film the camera and distances travelled are very formulated, precise and controlled, if only the camera was to split into three and head off in often seemingly random directions, rather than in one straight ordered progression of ten, it would be closer to my approach. It is as if with every page I read there are ten more footnotes to read and then ten more pages and ten more footnotes and ten more pages… I suppose the art is knowing when to stop reading and start making. I have discovered countless new ideas and thoughts that will take time to bring to fruition, and there is still some vital theory i still need to get my head around. With this in mind i have decided not to attempt to cram all of my ideas and findings within the Longhouse project but instead will use Longhouse as a springboard into a larger body of work. I will now make a triptych of work, of which Longhouse will be Phase 1(of 3).

Artist Profile

My work is mostly live, but sometimes sculptural and usually exists within the public realm. I play between art and politics, the absurd and the earnest. I always attempt to open up both the internal and external spaces for ridicule and contemplation while attempting not to fall over or fall asleep. Collaboration and participation, either by choice or coercion, are often core to my practice.
I was a founding member of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and have recently collaborated with the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, Station House Opera and Quarantine.

Action Research Bursary – The Democratic Paradox

For the action research bursary I aim to investigate the ‘democratic paradox’ (Chantal Mouffe) and the notion of inclusion and exclusion within democracy and more specifically digital-democracy.

There are people who live and work in the United Kingdom who are ineligible to vote, either due to age, incarceration, homelessness, lack of citizenship or those who are in transit. These people are a whole subclass in a democratic society that prides it’s self on inclusion. There is a large collection of people within the United Kingdom who are not part of the democratic process but who live by it’s outcomes everyday and who work to support it’s goals and ambitions.
We live in an age in which Britain and America’s main export are ideas, and their leading brand is ‘Democracy’. Democracy is a large global club where, if you sign up to the clubs ‘terms’ you receive new money, protection in the global playground and trading/swapping links beyond you wildest dreams. If you do not join the ‘club’, it may gang up on you and either; slowly cut off your food supply or march into your house and form a new ‘Lord of the Flies’ ‘democratic’ family unit. Democracy is viewed as a friendly, cozy system, something that is open and welcoming, however outside of that process, it is a different case both globally and nationally.
I would like to actively discover what it is like to be politically outcast in a democratic society? How does it affect people’s behavior towards a society they have little power to legitimately change? Is there a better way of allowing people to be part of the democratic process even if they cannot vote, and what ramifications would this inclusion, or continued exclusion, have on political mobility? And how does the rise in digital-democracy expand or contract these issues?
I do not aim to find answers for these problems but to open the wound and poke a little, to play with the problem and see what spills out.