Biennial Connections

The e-dialogue.

Biennial themes Shanghai and Liverpool

Today's event is a first time e-dialogue and conversation between the curatorial teams of the Shanghai Biennale and Liverpool Biennial.

Touching

On the 6th August at FACT Liverpool e-space lab presents an e-dialogue between the curatorial teams of the Shanghai Biennale and Liverpool Biennial.

Reflections

Our instigation of the 3 events this year prompt the creation of a reflective space to consider how to go forward in this evolving project.

John Moores 2010 UK and China

Live link at the Walker Art Gallery and No 3 The Bund

11.30 - 1.30 on 5th May at The Walker Art Gallery, the spiritual home of the John Moores and No 3 The Bund at the heart of contemporary art in Shanghai.

The dialogue was facilitated by Bryan Biggs, Artistic Director of the Bluecoat.
This e-space lab live link was inspired by the John Moores Trust initiative with partners in China to instigate a Contemporary Painting Prize in China, the first, and, to date, only non-government sponsored art competition in China!

Agenda
The agenda is about exploring the continuing vitality of contemporary painting in the UK and China, and providing a space of dialogue and conversation focussing on the exchange of current critical viewpoints.

All of these these perceptions will be grounded in the critical debates of our particular cultural contexts, separated by geography but linked through mutual engagement and a new type of sharing. This sharing process will be like a journey, so, in some ways, this invitation to join this process is an invitation to a voyage of discovery.

In Liverpool the panel included:
Reyahn King, director of art galleries at National Museums Liverpool, responsible for the Walker Art Gallery, Sudley House and the Lady Lever Art Gallery.
Ann Bukantas, Curator of Fine Art and leading the fine art curatorial team.
Bev Bytheway, John Moores Trust.
Angie Samata, and Pete Betts.

In Shanghai the panel included:
Gu WenDa and Zeng Fanzhi (Artists and Judges of John Moores Painting Prize ( Shanghai )
Wang Dawei (Dean of Shanghai University Fine Arts College)
Zhang Xiaolin ( The director of China Contemporary Art Research Center)
Liu Jian ( the secretary-general of China Artist Association )

Project organised by Philip Courtenay of e-space lab and Min Ling of Shanghai University College of Fine Arts

Agenda 15 April the Bluecoat Liverpool & Shanghai University

Breaking news

The agenda for the video-streaming cultural exchange and dialogue now includes the artist Yang Jianping who has recently produced a large scale art work for the Shanghai World Expo. His work is positioned in a key location, beside the entrance and the Chinese Pavilion.

Bearing in mind that art in the cities will be exploring the exchange context of the Expo over the next few months, this is a great opportunity to begin to see how things look.



Here is a movie clip to give a taster of the emerging situation on the Expo site with just two weeks to go before the opening.
The city breathes with the - air - water - light - from the Leeds Liverpool Canal



Our friend Paul Domela cannot be with us, but Lewis Biggs will join the dialogue to speak about the context and vision behind last September's Urbanism 09 programme and conference.

The schedule will follow this sequence:

11.00am Introductions Philip Courtenay in Liverpool and Lingmin in Shanghai to introduce the theme of the dialogue on this occasion.

11.00 -11.10 Introduction from Yang Jianping ( Artist) who has recently completed a large scale project in front of the China Pavilion in the World Expo site in Shanghai.

11.10 - 11.20 We will see his work on the video documentation shot on the Expo site.

11.20- 11.30 Invitation to both audiences to ask questions or respond to the presentation.

11.30 - 11.45 Time to look at Urbanism 09 videos.

11.45 - 12.00 Squash Nutrition introduce their approach to the project.

12.00-12.10 Lewis introduce Urbanism 09 relates to the wider issue of art and the city

12.10 - 12. 20 Invitation to both audiences to ask questions or respond to the presentations

12.20 - 12.55
Peter Appleton to introduce the Shangpool project
followed by open dialogue and exchange of ideas for this "work in progress".

Urbanism 09 and transformational contexts

Following our last art in the cities live streaming dialogue we have been considering how to deepen our explorations concerning the roles of pubic art in the context of urban and social fabrics.

One type of urban and social situation seems to have moved into the foreground of our thinking. It is a situation that has several significant features, but the obvious fact is probably the most important, a fact that is elemental, and although it is bounded and defined in and by the urban fabric, it is has a powerful transformative quality in itself for many people, it is the natural element, water.



The thought connections involved in this process of consideration are simply linked:

• Thoughts concerning scale, public art, social fabric: These thoughts were prompted by our dialogue and exchange concerning the larger scale, including the infrastructural scale of the Shanghai Metro development, type of public art project, that in the UK is normally viewed and discussed in the popular media as "public art". For many contemporary artists, designers, architects and curators there is a much bigger picture that includes urban territories that are off centre, marginal and peripheral, but for practical and spatial reasons is where most of us urban inhabitants actually live.
• Thoughts concerning contemporary art practices and the spectrum of possibilities for a public art practice: These thoughts were, and are, being prompted by suggestions raised in Shanghai during the dialogue on 02.02.2010. The way the Dream project has, and continues to have, a transformational impact upon a sense of a place, the meaning of a place, the memories of a place, or re-defining a place as a natural or re-covered natural environment, is, as we say, a result! However there are transformational processes that of equal impact but within different terms and different scales, where the fabric of environment is balanced by the need to re-define the social context and experience.
• Thoughts about the benefits that come from the live project, projects that are about the experiences that flow from social engagements, and how these types of experience have a quality of transformative potential that is the more powerful because it is ephemeral, of the moment, performative, and connected to the flow of the practices of everyday life. Artists, designers, architects and curatorial teams provide the context for marking and making these moments and memories.
  

These thoughts easily led to Urbanism 09:


The press release gives a very clear idea of the vision behind the events that took place 16-20 September 2009.

Liverpool Biennial presents Urbanism 09: five days of exhibition, exploration, discussion and celebration along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, stretching through South Sefton and North Liverpool; a vital green/blue lung in what many mistakenly perceive as an area of urban decay.

The route of the event runs along the canal from St Winefride’s & St Richard’s School (St Winnie’s) on the canalside in Bootle to Bank Hall in Liverpool. Following in the footsteps of Utopians before them, St Winnie’s has been transformed by architects Raumlabor, artist Kerry Morrison and food activists Squash Nutrition into an Urban Arcadia while Danilo Capasso presents Porto Allegro on the canalside at Bank Hall.

In Urbanism 09 Liverpool Biennial presents new commissions by international artists and architects invited to respond to the canal over the past year as well as the exhibition of muf’s Feral Arcadia and the five shortlisted designs for Waterworks, a mobile hub for watersports and environmental education on the canal and part of the groundbreaking Art for Places Sefton community engagement programme.

Visitors can travel from the Promising Land to Porto Allegro with the artists, architects and food acitvists on 17 September 2009, to examine real case studies of creating positive spaces. Talk to the bees, talk to the sky, drink tea in the floating Tea House, paint in the floating studio, explore the Feral Arcadia museum, make chutney in the Squash vegetable garden, take a swan pedalo down the canal and make plans for the Happy City . . . with David Bade, Ben Parry, Kerry Morrison, Squash Nutrition, Raumlabor, Majciej Kurak, Danilo Capasso, Muf Architecture, Public Works and Rob Sweere.

Taking its cue from architect Carolyn Steel’s inspirational book, Hungry City, the Happy City conference on 18 September 2009, in association with Places Matter! the architecture centre for the Northwest, explores alternative ways of planning and redesigning our cities and neighbourhoods, starting with the premise of not simply providing more houses but improving the quality of the spaces between them and the wellbeing of their inhabitants. Speakers include Pete Halsall, CEO of visionary developers, Bio-Regional Quintain, Joost Beunderman Research Associate at Demos, Ian McArthur Regional Director of Groundwork and Michael Palwyn of Exploration Architecture.

The week reaches a climax on Saturday 19 September 2009 in a water-borne parade including an upturned Black Cab, a floating Mint Teahouse and a whole variety of crafts created by artists and residents who live in the neighbourhoods along the canal; giving a whole new meaning to the traditional processional ‘float’.

The events

Urbanism 09 Boat Parade from Liverpool Biennial on Vimeo.

Urbanism 09 Boat Parade



Urbanism 09 - Ben Parry’s floating mint Teahouse



Urbanism 09 - Lambert Kamp's Canal Taxi


Urbanism 09 - David Bade’s Charity boat


Kerry Morrison - Poo Performance from Liverpool Biennial on Vimeo.

Urbanism 09 - Kerry Morrison Poo Performance



Urbanism 09 - Canal Club Lantern Workshop


Urbanism 09 - Discussion about Canal regeneration




Urbanism 09 - Squash Nutrition



Art for Places: Sefton Waterworks Project Award ceremony at Urbanism 09

Peter Hatton of TEA (Those Environmental Artists) and e-space lab brings the experience and example of the project Nothing but Flowers commissioned by The Lowry Centre in Manchester to explore the changing urban context of the Manchester Ship Canal.

TEA Processes and techniques
Each new project involves new negotiations and encounters and selecting methods and media that are appropriate. First we identify the personal, spatial and conceptual parameters of the situation we find ourselves in. These determine how we engage with the place and people. For example, in Boat Trip: Nothing But Flowers the contested margins of the Manchester Ship Canal were explored using on the ground activities and encounters, video, fiction and documentary to construct narratives of various locations along the banks. The device of public boat trips brought together live and mediated, current and remembered experiences of the area. A secondary experience was offered to a wider audience through a publication and CD.

Ideas for dialogue?


Propositions for a Happy City

As part of Urbanism 09 David Bade talks about projects of the past and present with the propositions for a happy city.

Are there themes to discuss here?
Better life?
Better City?
Happy City?

Join the dialogue

the experience of exchange

Left to right in the Bluecoat performance space: Philip Courtenay and Jonathan Kearney of e-space lab, Paul Domela from Liverpool Biennial, Brigitte Jurack of Foreign Investments, Lewis Biggs and Laurie Peake from Liverpool Biennial. On the big screen Wang da wei, Dean of the School of Fine Art, sitting next to one of the directors of the Shanghai Metro in the digital space at Shanghai University.


Yesterday our morning/midday (Liverpool) and evening (Shanghai) skype exchange was enthralling.


Flow of ideas
As we have noted before in the post preparing for our meeting and talking together, the special quality of the video link has something to do with the spontaneity and engagement that is somehow part of the way we naturally work with the situation of this shared communication experience. In this respect there is something truly public about this type of situation where stranger talks to stranger in a place where valued experiences are shared.


Questions
For our friends in Shanghai the free-wheeling nature of the conversations was a good contrast to the usual practice of the delivery of papers and presentations, so the "live" quality really does add to the way ideas and questions spontaneously register across this overlapping of cultural zones.


Audience response
The special qualities identified and evidenced in the Dream project and that resonated with the Shanghai participants seemed to be about the qualities of the site, its relationship to landscape and communities, of the ambition and the resourcing of that ambition, and the benefits actual and potential that are already flowing into the social and economic context.


Learning from the cities
For the Liverpool audience, that included artists and a representative of art students from John Moores University, it was fascinating to see how artists and designers are involved at all kinds of levels in the hugely ambitious infrastructure development taking place with the Shanghai Metro. The concept of public in relation to public art, and how that was integrated into a strategy for taking on the overall functionality of the Shanghai's transportation system was impressive. The work of artists occupies this important and subtle influence upon the quality of spaces, with the aim of enhancing the quality of human experiences in this translocalmotion environment as explored in the 7th Shanghai Biennale.


Really listening
One of the dis-advantages/advantages of the difficulties in live links is the extra attention everyone has to make to looking after the the communication process. It seems from an outsiders point of view rather slow but when you are in it this "slowness" really helps the quality of engagement to grow more and more, and the regular return to sorting out potential mis-communications is always interesting.

Outcomes
Thinking about the next stage is always a good sign!
Following through
In the lead up to our next events we plan to organize some virtual get-togethers between students in Shanghai working on the Liverpool Pavilion for the World Expo opening in May, with students studying in Liverpool at John Moores University.

Contemporary art and public art
the ephemeral - the performative - scale
One of the questions raised in Shanghai during our event was the relationship between public art and contemporary art. This is an important thread and theme to follow. Thinking about the April 15th agenda, thinking about introducing examples of small scale/temporary/performative examples, stressing contemporary art/public art methods and processes would provide a series of alternative strategies to those we were exploring in this last event.

Expo 2010
In July we plan to run an event that is looking at the role of art and design in the context of the World Expo and in particular on the Liverpool, UK and Chinese Pavilions.

art in the cities - Shanghai - Liverpool - a new project

On 02.02.2010 at 11am Liverpool time and 7pm Shanghai time, an assembly will take place of people who have an interest in conversations about the way art enables transformational change to the ways we are able to see and experience things, places and, most importantly, each other.



The context of the event is real and hyper-real (virtual), using streaming video to create a hybrid space, with some sense of where we are and where our partners are too, merging into a new space full of possibilities. The e-space lab project and partners at Shanghai University College of Fine Arts are working together to realize some of this potential in a sequence of events through 2010. This will include events that coincide with the World Expo taking place in Shanghai from May, and the Shanghai Biennale, that is scheduled this year to parallel the Expo during the summer, and the Liverpool Biennial that takes place this coming autumn.


From the e-space lab explorations and experiments over the last few years, our strong interest in working in an international context relates to the way trans-national communication always involves some sort of conscious re-configuring of our assumptions about our knowledge base. In other words we know that we don't know, but we have an opportunity in our conversations with others in other places to spontaneously act on that knowledge, with a question, or some other probe, that may take the form of an art based activity as much as an exchange of information and concepts.

This is also a space where new ideas happen! They come into existence because of a conversation and a mis-understanding, mis-interpretation, mis-reading. In this space between listening, speaking, and trying to understand, this idea in a misunderstanding may possibly be the starting point for a new approach. In e-space lab during the period of the parallel biennials in Shanghai and Liverpool we discovered that conversations stimulate the instigation of new projects. Until our blog was blocked, along with loads of others in April last year, we were able to bounce ideas and research back and forth in a way that approached a sort of visual poetry through the juxtaposition of ideas and images that resonated out of the differences rather more than the similarities.

Where translation occurs, when fuzzy images pixillate, freeze and then resume, when ideas are first presented and then absorbed, it all takes time. This first art in the cities event is very ambitious in what it attempts to achieve, and so realistically it is good to be patient and to "chill out" in this space rather than chase the ideas too hard. In the e-space lab project we are used to this slow time, and it is very rich and stimulating to take the time to explore and understand. If we do not manage to cover all the material, address all of the questions that we want to, then the technology allows us to keep in touch, so the conversation does not end.

In Shanghai we will be in conversation with key agents of change in the development of public realm oriented projects. In particular we will be learning about how the investment in the public transport infrastructure of the Shanghai Metro includes an ambition to utilize the techniques of art to bring a new dimension to public experience in Liverpool's sister city.



In Liverpool we are presenting material about the story of a project in St Helens known as the Dream, or alternatively, "the big head". This is on of several large scale Public Art projects on Merseyside

The Liverpool Biennial has been involved in instigating a rich and diverse set of public realm art projects on Merseyside over the years.

Three projects in particular have gained a degree of public interest that is remarkable. These projects have created new identities in places that were often neglected, creating new meanings, and impacting on a wider social, cultural and economic sphere.

It is relatively straightforward to access imagery on the internet of the particular examples we are going to discuss, because the “public” keep posting their individual images and videos into the virtual environments all of the time. This I take to be a sign of positive imaginative connectivity between people and art in the cities on Merseyside.

Antony Gormley’s Another Place has opened up a new wider interest in the sandy beaches of Crosby with the installation of iron figures stretching along the tidal zone north along the coast from the docks at Bootle. Before the public art project was realised, this area was used to a much lesser extent than it is now, and mostly by local people. Another Place has generated a wider awareness and sense of ownership of this beautiful landscape with views of Liverpool Bay and, on a clear day, the mountains of Wales in the distance.



This awareness has now leaped on to a national scale, so when, for example, a national newspaper like the Times has a special section called Mapping British Business that refers to Merseyside, it is a photo of one of Gormley’s figures on the beach that is used to connect to a wider national consciousness about the region. It is iconic.



Turning the place over by Richard Wilson is another one of the Biennial instigated public art projects that has had some local and national impact, making a city landmark out of a relatively unspectacular part of the urban landscape.



The recent opening of the Dream on the site of the old pit, right on the edge of the Merseyside town of St. Helens, prompts our discussion of a specific example of public art on Merseyside.


Dream, is the dramatic new sculpture for St.Helens and the Northwest by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, launched with a spectacular event on Sunday 31 May that involved hundreds of people from the local community and visitors from across the country.

Chosen by a group of ex-miners and commissioned by St.Helens Council as part of The Big Art Project, the work stands 20 metres high, sited on top of the former Sutton Manor Colliery overlooking the M62, a gateway sculpture for both Merseyside and Greater Manchester at the heart of the Northwest.

The Dream videos – Chapter 1
Our first video chapter of Dream-The Story is a clip from the Channel 4 series of programmes that both documented and contributed to the realization of the Dream, in the context of The Big Art Project, an ambitious public art commissioning initiative from Channel 4 supported by Arts Council England.


The video shows some of the former miners from Sutton Manor Colliery walking over the raised ground that covers the old pit, recently “re-natured” rather than restored, by the Forestry Commission, another agency supporting the project. At this stage the project is framed by the idea of “a monument”.

The next stage involves the story that Paul Kelly and Brigitte Jurack of Foreign Investments will tell us about working with some of the community to explore new possibilities with and for the site.

The Dream videos – Chapter 2
The second video shows the unveiling of the selected proposal by Jaume Plensa. The work takes the form of the head of a little girl with eyes closed, seemingly in a dream-like state. It is the artist’s response to the brief and subsequent conversations with the ex-miners and members of the wider local community who wanted a work that looked to a brighter future and created a beautiful and contemplative space for future generations, not least their own grandchildren, at the top of the former spoil heap. The work has been fabricated in pre-cast concrete, with a very white, almost luminescent finish using a white marble/concrete aggregate mix in marked contrast to the black of the coal that still lies below.

The Focus Group unanimously chose Jaume Plensa, a world class artist who has exhibited and completed major commissions across the globe, including in Canada, Israel, Japan, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.
His hitherto most famous work was The Crown Fountain (2004) in Millennium Park in the centre of Chicago.



The Dream videos – Chapter 3



The third video chapter shows something of the process of realization and the sense of anticipation and passion for the project that grew among many members of the local community. The scale and design of the artwork, together with the nature of the site and former spoil heap, presented considerable technical challenges in terms of being able to translate the ambitious concept into a real 20 metre high sculpture.
Engineering firm Arup was appointed as the lead consultant responsible for technical design, tendering and overseeing the construction process, and, following detailed site investigations, a number of workshops were held to find practicable solutions to these challenges. The chosen material was a bespoke mixture of white cement, Spanish dolomite, and titanium dioxide pigment, in order to lend Dream a brilliant, reflective, luminescent, white finish. Full 3-D modelling was required in order to calculate the complex geometries involved and facilitate both the pre-cast concrete moulding process and the actual assembly of the artwork. Panel sizes, joint and fixing types and locations, plus handling, loading and transportation requirements were also paramount and discussed in minute detail.

Due to its size and weight, the eventual configuration was made up of 54 individual panels for the head element of the sculpture and a further 36 for the plinth, each one determined both by artistic requirements and the two-fold connection system used to hold the panels together and in effect create an integrated monolithic structure.
A series of highly specialised sub-contractors were involved and the spectacular result is in part a testament to their skill and commitment: Cheetham Hill Construction Ltd. as lead contractor; Cordek to manufacture the 90 individual moulds; Evans Concrete to cast and assemble the 90 concrete panels; ICP to help install them.
The Big Art Project in St.Helens has been delivered by St.Helens Council, in partnership with the national funders. The project was curated by Liverpool Biennial, with the active involvement of a group of former miners from Sutton Manor Colliery. Curator Laurie Peake, the Programme Director: Public Art at Liverpool Biennial, took the ex-miners on a unique public art "voyage of discovery", to Emscher Park in Germany, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and the Liverpool Biennial. The project has especially impressed many in the arts field in that the public response has been so positive and passionate, and that it provides a model for practice in this social dimension, there is no doubt.

The Dream videos – Chapter 4
The fourth video chapter is taken from a documentary on the artists’s work, available in various sections on YouTube. Here you can see the sense of excitement and celebration in the opening of the project and how the relationship of the artist to the former miners who instigated the project, and the local community is so important to the meanings being created through the project.



Born in Barcelona, Jaume has exhibited all over the world and completed major commissions in Canada, Israel, Japan, France, Germany, and the United States. His most famous work is the dramatic “Crown Fountain” in the centre of Chicago. Jaume’s public artworks in the UK include a laser beam light sculpture at the Baltic Arts Centre in Gateshead and, most recently, a spectacular new sculpted and illuminated glass dome for the BBC’s Broadcasting House HQ in London.

The Dream videos - Chapter 5
The fifth video chapter is a clip from the Big Art debates where Gary, one of the former miners explains how the exchange between artist and representatives of the community and former miners ended up in this very positive outcome. The St. Helens group respected but challenged the way the artist was trying to imagine the result of the project trying to see through the miner’s eyes. The respect given to the artist by the former miners resulted in the artist being invited to interpret the project through the artist’s eyes.



The first idea Jaume presented was titled The Miners’s Soul, which took the form of a large light akin to a miner's lamp on a circular plinth. Amazingly, the concept was rejected by the ex-miners and Steering Group on the basis that it was too directly representational of mining and the past.
Jaume then shared his original idea for the site which he had held back, fearing it possibly too daring/conceptual. That concept was the Dream which both the ex-miners and Steering Group unanimously and enthusiastically endorsed.

Dream takes the form of a 20 metre high girl's head with her eyes closed, seemingly in a dream-like state, resting on a plinth bearing the inscription "Dream Sutton Manor" inspired by the small, circular "tally" each miner carried as a means of identification.
The notion is simple but profound, for in Jaume's own words "in our dreams, anything is possible...".
The Dream concept was not only the artist's response to the brief and its ex terra lucem (out of the earth comes light) "Leitmotif", but also directly informed by Jaume's conversations with the ex-miners and other members of the local community about their aspirations.
What had clearly emerged from these discussions was that, far from wanting a mining monument, they sought instead a forward-looking piece that would provide a beautiful, inspiring, contemplative space for generations to come.
In Jaume's words, "Despite her wonderful vantage point and view, the girl's eyes are closed, looking inward. This is in part my homage to the miners and their dream of light when underground."

Dream was officially launched on May 31st 2009.
Bathed in glorious sunshine, thousands of people enjoyed a traditional Whit Walk to the summit of Sutton Manor, with a May Queen and her entourage, performances by the Greenalls and Valley brass bands and the Sing Out Choir, together with ex-miners and guest of honour, artist Jaume Plensa.

The Dream website says
The artwork has already had a substantial positive impact:

• Dream has generated worldwide media coverage and been shortlisted for the prestigious Marsh Sculpture Prize awarded for the best public sculpture of the year.
• Dream is attracting very significant numbers of additional visitors to the site and the surrounding region, including many photographers, coach trips, and people from abroad.
• Dream has already established itself as an icon, appearing in place marketing and inward investment literature, annual reports and private sector advertising.
• Local residents now have a new and enhanced leisure resource on their doorstep while the whole artistic development process has stimulated and rekindled passion, pride and creativity within the immediate community.
• In external research conducted at the launch, 85% of respondents believed that Dream can help create a positive image for St.Helens and attract people to the area, while 75% believed that Dream will become an icon for the Northwest.

A high impact legacy has always been an explicit objective for Dream, and the challenge now is to sustain and build on the positive momentum generated by its launch.
This legacy is intended to take three different forms:

• A direct Dream legacy: securing the permission and resources to illuminate the artwork; establishing a social enterprise to build on existing community engagement activities and get accredited training for volunteers/guides; generating revenue from Dream merchandising to reinvest in its maintenance and other public art initiatives; longer-term, the aspiration is for a visitor centre.
• A wider public art legacy: establishing a local public art board; producing a Borough-wide public art strategy; developing/delivering specific identified projects, including the ambitious "Industrial Alchemy" initiative inspired by Emscher Park in Germany's Ruhr Valley; lending critical mass to the development of a Northwest trail of world class public art.
• Broader regeneration impact: public art to become a genuine new USP for St.Helens within 15 years, helping to transform/improve St.Helens' image and so attract ever-increasing number of visitors, stimulate additional inward investment and indigenous reinvestment, while raising local aspirations and enhancing civic pride; catalysing the establishment of a new 300 hectare regional forest park and outdoor pursuits destination; strengthening the sub-regional programme of rural economic development being led by St.Helens Council.