So, I've been ill and not venturing out much. I did however go to Elizabeth Price's talk at Tate Britain on Tuesday evening. In fact I spent almost two days at Tate Britain this week - first at a very enjoyable event with the Plus Tate partners and guests, and then I brought some people from one of our Collectors Collectives to see the Turner Prize and Elizabeth’s talk. It was a really nice thing to do because they had done a studio visit with Elizabeth, and Philomene Pirecki and Nic Deshayes, when they were in-residence at Wysing over the summer. Elizabeth was right in the middle of editing The Woolworth’s Choir of 1979 at the time and they were keen to see it finished and installed as part of the Turner prize. This is a group of lawyers and insurance brokers, some of whom had never been to Tate before. It went really well and they all definitely think Elizabeth is going to win the Turner Prize. Anyway, turns out that while we were waiting to go into the talk one of my group (of 10) recognised someone he used to work with – a solicitor – and started chatting to him. He was Elizabeth Price’s brother! Which reminded me of the time when we had a flower arranger – a lady called Joan – in to do flower arranging with some artists on a retreat and it turned out her brother makes a lot of Yinka Shonibare’s work. Funny. Anyway, the talk was really interesting because she approached it as two halves; during the first she showed us her working method in which she finds something she is interested in and compiles literally hundreds of pieces of information on that subject in an immense archive on her computer hard-drive. This is information that may or may not emerge as content in one of her videos and is only likely to emerge if that set of information relates in some way to another set of information. In the second part of the talk she expanded on how that information is given a voice almost, through text, music and movement. It was fascinating to hear it described, and see clips of all the recent videos. After the talk we went to the pub and I got chatting to her parents who’d also come along. When her father told me that was is a retired headmaster I suddenly realised where this thirst for knowledge had come from.  It’s like she has created a library of information on these subjects, from every possible angle, and uses video as a way to allow this information to speak.

Tags: elizabeth price | 

Well, I’ve been at Wysing for seven years and in all that time have never taken part in the public performance of an artwork. I’ve had the opportunity, many times, but preferred to stay in the background. I decided though to take part in the re-staging of John Cage’s Radio Music (1956) with seven other people, and at the invitation of Philomene Pirecki, at our festival last week. I was intrigued by the score which the first time I took a look at seemed totally impenetrable – a list of apparently random FM frequencies. Then, when we had a rehearsal I realised how the whole score, for eight players, had been constructed so that the frequencies and notated silences could potentially collide with one another. I enjoyed the rehearsal better than the public performance because in the empty and atmospheric space of Amphis I could hear my score (Part D) tune in with the others; words and sounds overlapping and playing off each other. It was a lovely thing to have done.

Tags: john cage |  radio |  elizabeth price |  philomene pirecki |