The Biennial Blog

26 November:

DaDaFest – The Freak and the Showgirl - In this comic cabaret of striptease, freak show and song, Julie Atlas Muz, Miss Coney Island 2006 and performance artist, and Mat Fraser, film, television and stage actor and presenter, perform their greatest hits, new work, daring duets and hilarious audience participation.

27 November:

Art Mediator Tours | Sam Jones – Sam Jones is a Liverpool-based artist focusing on public art and digital works as well as a lecturer at institutions such as LJMU and Leeds College College of Art. Her tour will be of works that speak to her. Book FREE tickets.

Liverpool Live Event – Guillermo Goméz-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes (La Pocha Nostra) – Corpo Ilicito - La Pocha Nostra’s immersive performances have inspired a devoted international following and were last experienced at the Bluecoat in a legendary performance to open the 2002 Liverpool Biennial. Using their bodies as sites for political reinvention and poetic prophesying, they explore the Bush administration’s criminalisation of the brown body and the emerging culture of hope that has developed in response.

The Dark Behind My Eyelids – A conference in collaboration between Liverpool Biennial and DaDaFest. The conference aims to rethink the relation between art, thinking and normalcy. What are our assumptions when we distinguish between thought and feeling, body and brain, identity and difference? How is (dis)ability marked by these assumptions and who’s interests are served by them in the space of art? Book by contacting the Bluecoat.

28 November:

Art Mediator Tours | Sophie Bower -  On her mediated tours Sophie offers further information on selected works but asks participants to note down and discuss the thoughts that come to mind throughout the tour. Previous participants have mentioned how tricky it is to ‘catch the fleeting’. As the Biennial Festival develops, she is compiling these thoughts as a work-in-progress on a large hand-drawn floor plan, which can be located on the wall by the black shed in the Visitors Centre. Come back and see your anonymous thoughts up there amongst all the others!  Book FREE tickets.

EarlySundays Tour with Elfin Spurs - Elfin Spurs will take you on the ultimate Touched tour. Experience live music, costumes and a wonderful Sunday morning mixture of wit and beauty.  Book FREE tickets.

DaDaFest – The Feral Four – Hysterical screaming was integral to the Beatles’ music and The Feral Four were formed to concentrate upon exploring this theory by screaming at the audience while dressed as a Beatles tribute band.

27-28 November:

Spray Paint Graphic Wolves - Like Carlos Amorales’s graphic wolves? Want one on your shirt/bag/skateboard/anything?  Every Saturday and Sunday 12-4pm in the Visitor Centre – stencil whatever you want for £2.  Fabric safe spraypaint (red, black, and white) and stencils provided. Bring whatever you want a wolf head on.  Any questions – email mary@biennial.com

Roswitha, a volunteer invigilator for the Liverpool Biennial Festival, reflects on 52 Renshaw Street in general and Enjoy Yourself in particular, taking photos on her mobile phone

Today my invigilation took me to the first floor of 52 Renshaw Street, where I overlooked the work of Aime Mpane, Y. Z. Kami, Markus Schinwald and Oren Eliav – all excellent art works, but among these four artists I chose my personal favourite style for narrative work, execution and colour (sorry, a splash of colour always works for me) – Aime Mpane’s paintings.

There were a lot of visitors during lunch hour, when besides the normal amount of lunch visitors the students from Liverpool John Moores University arrived, equipped with all their sketch pads etc. Most of them took a photo of the Cuban Artist Loidys Carnero’s ‘tongue-in-cheek’ work Enjoy Yourself (click here to download more info), part of which is basically an old dilapidated fireplace on the first floor.  Very often was I asked by people if this was part of the exhibition while they wore a big grin on their faces.

However, one visitor to Liverpool built her own installation.  She took off her rucksack and placed inside the chimney and took a photo of it!  But little did she know, that I stood behind her and took a photo of her whilst she was creating her own interactive artwork…  Unfortunately, my image it is not totally focused as we all moved a little whilst rushing… She was very surprised when I showed her the photo that she had been ‘caught in the act’ and her friends really loved the idea of the double take.

Tonight is the Long Night!

All of our non-gallery, Public Realm sites are open until 9pm.  At the Visitor Centre, we are open until 10pm and DJs will be spinning tracks from 5:30 – 9pm, creating a Touched mood to accompany your stroll through all the artworks in 52 Renshaw Street.  We will also have special Long Night book deals – Festival guides will be £2 and many other books will be £5 and under!  Perfect late night reading for arty-types!

There are dozens of other activities going on around Liverpool for the Long Night, so be sure you download the full catalogue to make the most of it.  Have a look at our partners’ activities below for extra doses of Biennial goodness.

the Bluecoat, Tate Liverpool, Open Eye Gallery, FACT, the Cooperative, and the John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker

Below are two surveys which allow you to have your say about how Liverpool Biennial as well as Liverpool cultural organisations in general are doing.

Due to the clocks going back, all public realm sites (i.e. none gallery/Rapid) will be closing at 5pm everyday.  The Visitor Centre and exhibitions at Rapid/52 Renshaw Street will remain open unil 6pm everyday.  Please check the opening times and dates of the galleries you wish to visit in order to plan which days to come.  Tate Liverpool and A Foundation, for instance, are not open on Mondays.

Below are the opening times of each venue including <City States> at the C.U.C. and John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker:

Tate Liverpool

A Foundation – Tuesday to Sunday 12 noon – 6pm

Open Eye

FACT

Contemporary Urban Centre

The Bluecoat

The Walker

Please note that SQUAT Liverpool and The Cooperative, which have multiple venues, have more limited opening times.

This is another guest blog is written by Doug Herbert, a Liverpool Biennial Volunteer Information Assistant as well as model for Daniel Knorr’s The Naked Corner.  These are his personal perspectives on his experiences invigilating the works in Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Afoundation, and the Wood Street garage.  New Contemporaries runs until this Saturday.

You might be interested to know that I’m writing this in Afoundation and that, despite it being close to freezing in the New Contemporaries exhibition, I’m sweating. Is it because I’ve just been looking at the Patrick Coyle piece, This Works – which is just graphite pencil on the wall which reads, “This Works is extremely fragile, Please do not touch.” For some reason it put me in mind of my first piano teacher, which is enough to make anyone break out in a cold sweat, but no, that’s not why I’m sweating.
Has everyone here seen Toy Story 3? Remember this? That’s why I’m sweating. Just like Buzz and the gang I got the shock of my life a moment ago and I suppose to explain why we need to talk about this morning.
I spend a lot of time in the public realm, this morning I was in Raymond Pettibons garage on Wood Street. I like it there, its home to My little red flip book and a video piece called Sunday Night and Saturday Morning. The video is from 2005 but the paintings were done specifically for the Biennial, apparently there is quite a good story behind them involving lots of red wine. Funny how all the best stories include red wine. I am clueless about art but I like the animation and some of it is really funny. If you can stand the cold it’s worth sitting through the whole hour. It’s quite cryptic but what art isn’t?

I particularly like the reference to Dennis “Beach Boys” Wilson, “Dennis you’re the only one who can surf, Dennis you’re the only one who can’t sing.” This is particularly meaningful to the residents of my flat because “Dennis Wilson- Pacific ocean blue” is the equivalent to the Marvin Gaye LP my dad breaks out on special occasions, very special occasions. Yep, when Dennis is rocking, don’t come knocking. In fact, if Dennis is rocking, just stick Born to Run on your head phones and reach for the whiskey.

Anyway, this is meant to be about volunteer experiences not volunteer “experiences”. So as I was saying, I spend a lot of time in the public realm so when Joёl comes over the radio warning “all volunteers, there is a large group moving through the building so be prepared.” I get all smug, sip on my luke warm tea and proclaim to whoever I’m with (this morning it was Craig), “Mugs, listen to them making mountains out of molehills.”

This brings us back to Afoundation, New Contemporaries, Toy Story 3 and me, sweating. I experienced my first large group, they were foundation year art students and they tore through the building like a tornado, I was all “Don’t touch anything!”, “Please don’t run!”, “No horse play!” I sounded like a teenage life guard trying to control Wavertree pool during the inflatable fun afternoon. I now have a sore throat.  Luckily nothing has been damaged, which is good, because I’d quite like to come back.

The stuff here is good, I like the Nathan Barlex paintings for no other reason than I like the colours, (how valuable you must find my in-depth analysis of art) and I like Untitled by Daniel Lichtman, it reminds me of The Catcher in the Rye. If you’ve read it you’ll know the books main protagonist, Holden Caulfield has a thing against phonies, well the two artists commissioned by the Biennial here are anything but phonies.  Antti Laitinen built a boat out of old tree bark from his native Finland and sailed the thing across the Mersey, having just seen it I’ll tell you I wouldn’t even sit on it. His exhibition is great. There’s a video of Antti building an island out of sand bags, I don’t know why he did it but I’m glad he did.

I also don’t know why Sachiko Abe has decided to dedicate 10 hours of her day everyday for two months to cutting paper into tiny strips, the accompanying sculpture is beautiful and Paper Clouds is amazing. I don’t know why she’s doing it, but again I’m glad she is. It’s my highlight of the biennial so far and I have no idea why. Coming from a man sat sweating in a freezing cold warehouse watching a video of Emma Hart playing Dice with the sea I’m not sure how much weight can be put behind this statement but to paraphrase my friend Joe, artists be crazy.

We are art monsters from Melbourne, Australia. We aim to engage the community and promote non-violence by creating a dialogue about violent human and monstrous urges, both individual and en masse. Monsters get a bad rap for eating brains. John and Yoko got a bad rap for promoting peace. We’d like to show you that even out and out monsters can contribute to a better society, and indiscretion or two aside.

We demand monster-rights!

We’re better educated than Sarah Palin, and we have even better hair than Kim Jong-Il.

Viva la Monsterpiece!

Yours Sincerely,

The Monsters xx

Watch us

Stuart Driscoll, a volunteer invigilator for the Liverpool Biennial Festival, reflects on his experiences so far – the good and the bad

Prior to me volunteering at the biennial I’d been living away in Asia and Europe for 10 years. Of course I’d never lost contact with Liverpool, but following my return when I heard about this volunteering opportunity I thought it would be a great chance to…kind of in keeping with the theme of the biennial… get back in touch with my hometown.

The locations in the public realm such as The Black-E, The Scandinavian Hotel and The Oratory had long been features of everyday Liverpool to me, but I’d never been inside any of them before. And I’m not the only one. I’ve noticed that a lot of visitors are drawn to the biennial out of a curiosity to visit some enigmatic local landmarks that have been out of access to the public for a long time, and once inside they tend to stick around.

I was in the Black-E when a couple came bouncing in full of tales of how they used to hang-out in there during their younger years, then they looked up and noticed Kris Martin’s Mandi XV hanging down above their heads. They were blown away by it and asked me questions about the size, weight and construction of the massive sword which I was happy to answer with the help of some insider knowledge. They left happily leaving echoes of “Boss that” swirling around the dome.

And while I enjoyed some autumnal sunshine outside of The Scandinavian Hotel an older couple who were local to the area passed by. They were curious as to what was going on in there and was it being renovated. They told me it was a fantastic building in the past and I managed to persuade them in for a few minutes to look at the films and the building. They left a good while later, to wander around the corner for a real-life look at Cristina Lucas’s Touch and Go.

Such interactions with visitors are great, it often starts with a discussion on a piece of work in the biennial and leads to someone telling you about their own painting or sculpture that they practice in a lock-up garage/studio in Southport.

Mind you its not always so positive, a mad, aggressive person threatened me with a car key at the Cathedral. The man clearly needed a touch of peace and calm in his life, and if he didn’t find the priest that he was looking for and if I had been braver…I’d have recommended him a therapeutic visit to The Mending Project at 52 Renshaw Street.”

Lee Kendall, a volunteer invigilator for the Liverpool Biennial Festival, writes on the Government’s cuts in reference to Kris Martin’s Mandi XV, a giant sword which hangs in the Black-E.

Britain’s newly unelected Prime Minister has announced a raft of public spending cuts the likes of which the citizens of this country have never before experienced, not even during the austerity drive following the end of WWII.  The real reason that we are all in this mess, the global financial crisis and the impact of profligate bank practices in the City, that still remain unchecked, is being sublimely, gleefully ignored.

As with all of the other public sectors that have been most affected by swingeing cuts, the arts sector has been hit by a hammer blow. Or should that be sword?

I took a walk inside The Blackie this afternoon, set against the gloomy backdrop of crepuscular storm clouds and drenching, icy rain, and Kris Martin’s phenomenal Mandi XV (2007), suddenly represents not just a physical manifestation of the fabled Sword of Damocles, but the absolute physical reality of what these gigantic cuts are going to mean.

I stood, open-mouthed, beneath the deadly point, watching the massive blade swing slightly in the breeze funnelling inside the space from Berry Street, and wondered whether we will ever be fortunate enough to see such a fantastic piece of art in such a wonderful public setting again? The sword seems glaringly malevolent today, the eve of the spending review announcements that will mean the end of many community arts centres such as The Blackie all over the country.

How fitting it would be perhaps, if the whole edifice were to come crashing down?

The following is written by Allizah Spathia, a Liverpool Biennial  2010 volunteer envigialtor.  She explains and reflects on two works taking place as part of Tania Bruguera’s Catédra Arte de Conducta.

Núria Güell, Out of Place Legal Application #1: Fractional Reserve, 2010

In one corner of the Catédra Arte de Conducta space on the first floor of the former Rapid hardware store, there’s a fifteen-minute film about expropriating money from banks.  If you listen long enough, you’ll find out how Enric Duran, a Spanish anticapitalist, took out loans from a number of Spanish banks, amounting to €492,000 with no intention of paying them back, closed down his bank accounts one by one then left the banking system behind.  The expropriated money was used to fund “alternative projects and social movements”.

It all sounds pretty incredible, but Duran appears to be a pro.  The film, which imagines the viewer as a potential fellow expropriator, is a kind of tutorial informing us of how the banking system works, how to expropriate money ourselves and what mistakes to avoid.  For instance, he tells us that the banks don’t have the right to certain personal information such as your ‘work status’, unless you’re late with your loan repayments.  If the banks get hold of this information it could jeopardise your plan and therefore it’s of the utmost importance that you meet your repayments on time.  Besides funding projects, Duran’s action primarily aims to highlight the need for a change from ‘fractional-reserve banking’ which is currently practised by all modern commercial banks, and in his opinion is unsustainable given that it relies on non-renewable natural resources.  It’s an issue that’s very current in relation to the global recession.

The idea of this piece is to bring Duran’s action and ideas to the attention of visitors in the space.  Once you’ve watched the film and decided that you would like to follow in Duran’s footsteps, you can get further information and advice from professionals working for a company that has been set up for the duration of the biennial.  The company, ’100 Años de Pédron S.A.P.’, whose motto is to “work for a better future for people”, will offer their professional advice via e-mail to any intrigued visitors.  People can sit and read about the service on the computer that’s set up next to the film, take a business card away with them and e-mail in with any questions and queries they may have about expropriating money from banks.

The work is undeniably political, and also experimental and indeterminate in its outcomes.  Will people’s curiosity and interest be piqued?  If so, will they follow those reactions up with an e-mail to the company?  Is the company even real and do they genuinely have professional lawyers on hand to answer visitors’ questions as they profess?  In my experience invigilating this work, it seems that visitors need to be encouraged to engage with the piece if any interaction is to take place.  Perhaps it’s easy to walk past a TV showing a man speaking Spanish and not notice that the film is subtitled in English.  However, opinions differ when it comes to the question of whether an artwork should be explained, whether it be by an invigilator or by a label on the wall.  Personally, I find the work really interesting and informative but I’m not sure it would have drawn my attention had I not been invigilating the space.

Enjoy Yourself! by Loidys Carnero

Loidys Carnero’s numerous works, all entitled Enjoy Yourself! are “subtle interventions” located all around the former Rapid hardware store that set visitors on a secret trail around the building.  Visible only to those with their eyes peeled, labels have been placed by the artist on walls where there are no artworks; at least not in the traditional sense.  The labels point to odd pieces of plywood covering holes in the wall, or fireplaces that have been ripped out of the walls, and urge visitors to decide for themselves whether or not this is an artwork not without a sense of humour.

Carnero’s work responds to the gallery space, acknowledging the “construction errors” which are the legacy of the Rapid store and elevates them from mundane details to works of art.  Once a label is there, people focus their attention on small details, even photographing them, I have noticed.  With the title Enjoy Yourself!, the artist is calling for visitors to notice and take pleasure in these oddities.  The work also resonates with Liverpool Biennial’s continued practice of making use of dis-used buildings, such as the former Rapid store.  The remnants of the building’s previous use aren’t concealed but highlighted by this work, which seek to test the boundaries of the definition of art.  I find the work to be highly successful, drawing reactions ranging from curiosity and amusement to puzzlement, as visitors scan the walls looking for what the label is referring to.

Below is a guest blog by volunteer Adam Scovell.  These are his personal views and insights about explaining the festival to visitors.

What a statement to come out with on a contemporary arts festival website blog.  Then again who would take honest offense to this statement?  Taking that at its face value would be like taking Csaba Kis Roka’s paintings for simply what they’re of, which isn’t a very clever thing to do.

As a volunteer, this statement -”contemporary art isn’t art”-comes up frequently and is usually fired from mouths of people who seem intent on making sure you get their point of view at all costs.  Are they really wrong though?

It’s a difficult question to answer when put on the spot after a day of freezing to death in The Oratory and dealing the drunken people intent on exploring every corner of The Garage and really it’s one that should be addressed properly.

Do I stick my neck out and agree and lose the respect of my fellow co-workers?  Quite possibly.  As a composer/musician and not a visual artist, maybe this opinion could be taken with a grain of salt.  But, I don’t think it’s necessary, for once argued, the original opinion isn’t really that controversial at all and no more controversial than some of the Contemporary Art displayed for the festival.

The people stating this are right in my opinion but for all the wrong reasons.  That’s not a put down to the contemporary art/artists on show.   It’s a fact – as true as saying something like “film is not music” or “dance is not painting”; though, that’s looking at it from the most rigid point of view.  This niche of people seem to have approached the exhibitions with the same mentality as viewing the National Gallery and come with ideas of what to expect seeing the word “Art”, though handily ignoring the word Contemporary.  I’m sure if they went to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre expecting to see Singin’ in the Rain, I’m sure they would come out proclaiming, “Well that wasn’t a musical”.

I see the question of Contempory Art from the same viewpoint, and as a volunteer, it’s my job to try and turn people to see it from a different light.  The pitfall seems to be two factors.  The first being that it also uses the word “art”.  The second being it borrows from the media of art and can seem to be twisted forms of it, like painting, sculpture, etc. rather than the more pure forms seen in classical galleries.  In the sense of films though, films do exactly the same thing, taking aspects of drama, music, art, design maybe even dance and using it for it’s own means and yet no one seems too bothered and are quite happy to proclaim a musical as film and not as dance even though they’ve picked and mixed many of the Arts to produce a mongrel of an Art form.

Maybe I’ve got the complete wrong end of the stick, and I really don’t mind if I have, if I’m honest, as the sky in my world is a rather nice colour. Seeing it from this point of view though means contemporary art is not art.  Contemporary Art is Contemporary Art and I thank Biennial for teaching me this as I think a whole universe of culture would have slipped through my fingers without ever realising it.

Liverpool Biennial’s Artistic Director, Lewis Biggs, gives his opinions on the Government’s Cuts and how they affect the most vulnerable.

A recent letter from Sir Paul Judge to the Daily Telegraph (19 October) pointed out that the Coalition’s budget is funded by increasing taxes by the equivalent of £7,000 for every household in the country. Although this is an enormous burden, in every civilised country the state supports those in need by taxing those who have greater levels of wealth.

The charitable status of Liverpool Biennial does not allow lobbying for any political party, so I restrict my comments to non-party-political arguments. That is, it should be self-evident that the purpose of government (and the economy) is to encourage and defend civilisation. The purpose of governments (and the economy) is to support a good quality of life for citizens; and culture, health and well-being are the things we all identify as integral to ‘a good quality of life’.

Any government that always chooses to encourage the accumulation of wealth by some people at the expense of a better quality of life for most people is in dereliction of its responsibility and purpose. We see this happen in a minority of ‘pariah states’ in Africa and South America, as well as much closer to home.

Let’s put ‘the cuts’ in perspective. There is just one major issue we must persuade our politicians (‘on all sides of the House’) to sort out as an absolute priority: there has to be financial regulation that prevents investment bankers (or anyone) gambling with the livelihoods of people who have no direct stake in the operations of these ‘investments’.

High Street banks, along with the government and the economy, exist to support a level of civilisation / quality of life in society. Investment banks have moved a long way from this, and investment bankers, in the words of Lord Myners (former Chairman of M&S), are ‘socially useless’.

The trauma and devastation now being inflicted on people of low income as a result of irresponsible gambling by investment bankers is no different in kind from the ‘collateral damage’ inflicted on peaceful citizens during acts of war.

The argument that you cannot have financial regulation in one country (because investment bankers are as fully multi-national as they are careless of the results of their gambling) is a good one. It does not mean there should be no action. It means that action has to be co-ordinated internationally.

Since there can be no economic stability, and no end to the economic devastation wreaked on the poor by the very rich, until international agreement on financial regulation has been adopted and enforced, all voting citizens should insist that their elected representatives put all other issues to one side until this one issue has been satisfactorily tackled.

Politicians often look for a leadership role on the world stage. At this moment, the only leader we need is one who is prepared to stake his or her career on persuading the G20 countries to agree unanimously, and impose rigorously, regulations that prevent rich people from gambling with the current and future right to quality of life of innocent bystanders.