RECIPROCITY at VIVID

In summer 2009 I was selected to develop a project at VIVID, Birmingham. I worked on a number of different projects under the title of Reciprocity during the residency.

Firstly I used my time at VIVID to get to know more about Birmingham organisations and practitioners and held a number of studio visits at VIVID. The rational for this was to know the context in which I would develop a project.

The project also involved 2 other practitioners: Trevor Pitt and John Hammersley who developed their own projects in parallel to my own. Trevor Pitt mapped a personal history through the Birmingham music he grew up with, inviting key people from his youth in to map their personal histories and connections. John Hammersley presented a work interrogating language. The work necessitated audience participation and people were invited to send responds to '100 Possible Understandings of This'

In response to John's work I worked with Karien van Assendelft to create a new work entitled I was Like Whatever. This work was drawn from the artists extended archive of overheard utterances, taken covertly from passer-by in the streets. Karien's work took John's 100 Possible Understandings of This and inserted overheard conversations, completely changing the context and meaning of John's project. This work was installed along with John's at VIVID, together with Karien's archive.

Karien van Assendelft, I was Like, Whatever

Another strand of the project was a collaboration with London based group Supercream. Supercream use the open source of Youtube as a mapping device for curatorial and artistic practice. I invited Supercream to present a weekend of Youtube screenings at VIVID. They in turn asked artists, curators and critical theorists to make Youtube playlists that mapped the varied sources that had influenced their practice. Practitioners I had met earlier in the residency, during the VIVID studio visits also contributed to the playlists.