Sound Fountains

Caroline Locke's Sound Fountains will be at Nottingham Contemporary on Sat 26 and Sun 27 Nov between 11am - 4pm and Sat from 7.30pm. Drop in, free. Find out more at http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/event/caroline-locke

By Caroline Locke
One of the functions of the installation is to explore how sound moves visually - deepening the understanding of what sound really is– a series of movements in time - a transmission of energy by a series of vibrations.

Caroline Locke, Sound Fountain, 2011

I first developed vibration tanks when exploring wave formations and before replacing the motors with speakers. I went on to create The Maasticht Sound Fountain – a permanent sculpture commissioned by The University of Maastricht - where sound waves move through the water allowing the spectator to experience the sight of sound.

I am interested in exploring the relationship of the spectator and the performer and the opportunities to blur their respective roles within contemporary art practices. I have been investigating ways in which a spectator can engage more in my work through direct interaction. For example: a spectator will become performer and integral to the work by triggering sensors, which orchestrate changes within the exhibition space.

During a 3-month residency as Visiting Academic at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, I began working with Casey Rice - a noted sound specialist and Max Msp software programmer from the USA.

Caroline Locke, Sound Fountain, 2011

In April 2007, the Arts council of England funded a further period of research with Rice, to develop our initial experimentation. I flew out to work alongside him in his studio in Melbourne, Australia. The outcome of this research forms the basis of Sound Fountains.

Over the last 2 years we have updated and extended this research within the Faculty at The University Of Derby. Alex Gibbins, Lecturer in Multimedia Technology has worked with myself and students using Max Msp software and Interactive technologies. We have used this project as a case study, exploring and experimenting with new devices – giving students access to cutting edge equipment and challenging ways of utilizing it.

I am now enjoying the process of building a new version of the work for Nottingham Contemporary – bringing the research back home after along time working away. The work shares some of the concerns of Weber’s, drawing on natural forces, using sound vibrations, water and notions of order and chaos.

Rehearsals for the live performance began last week with musicians Steve Truman and Sam Hempton. For some time I have been alone with the work, it is good now to share it with fellow admirers. We feel like we are part of a laboratory experiment. Looking at the water surface of the sound fountains is like staring into a fire – we become absorbed.

Zebra Logo

By Klaus Weber

Klaus Weber

The zebra is related to art expressly because it has a pattern. What I like abut zebras is that it’s a camouflage against a background.

My logo was actually influenced by homeopathy. The Local Homeopathy Society of London and Bristol has two lions fighting with each other. This symbolises treating like with like. In homeopathy you treat an illness by inducing the same symptoms. This is feeding fire with fire. The logo is feeding art with art – fighting against art with art.

The logo is really intense. It represents artistic attitude. I wanted it to be something that represented the best an art institution can represent in terms of its spirit and attitude.

In homeopathy the remedy is very diluted – but from the perspective of homeopathy it’s intensified. Dilution makes it more effective than the orginal. It is so dilute that you can’t prove the solution contains the remedy. As it becomes more potent you lose the scientific rationale. Art is more potent, too, as you lose a scientific rationale.

Logo by Klaus Weber

Zebras are also beautiful animals. And I love nature. Nature and art are totally on the same wavelength because both are anti-civil. One is by nature anti-civil – and art itself should work against civilisation.
The zebras are definitely fighting, they are not playing. There is a German saying “where there is love there is also fighting.” They are gay, but they have never told anyone.”

Klaus Weber, If you leave me I'm not coming and Already there! can be seen at Nottingham Contemporary until 8 January 2012. http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/

New Season

by Siobhan Carroll, The Space Programmer
It’s a new season at Nottingham Contemporary and we are really busy over the next 8 weeks with lots of screenings, talks and events to coincide with the Klaus Weber exhibition and some performances that have nothing to do with the exhibition but are there to be enjoyed!

Jean Rouch,  Les Maitres Fous

There are so many events that I am looking forward to, but some of my highlights include:

An evening of Jean Rouch films including the incredible Les Maitres Fous – the last time I saw this film was an unforgettable experience of being in Mary Kings Close, a underground, spooky part of the Old Town of Edinburgh, with Spartacus Chetwynd’s film ’The Call of the Wild’ screaming in the back ground! For this event there won’t be any screaming but we will have comfortable chairs and a great introduction by Elizabeth Cowie, Professor of Film Studies at The University of Kent –I’m sure the impact of this film will still be as strong, Rouch’s films are must see.

I am looking forward to welcoming The Free University of Liverpool to Nottingham Contemporary on 9^th November to find out more about their programme which is considered and dynamic with the important underlying commitment to free education for all. They describe what they do as a protest, one which seems to have more and more presence as we slip further into this age of austerity.

Jonathan Rée is one of the most respected thinkers today combining art, history and philosophy. In Weber’s exhibition the artist represents the body various ways including Death Masks and vegetables, heightening our conscious relationship to our own bodies, flesh, organs and how we represent this.  I am delighted that we will be welcoming Rée to Nottingham Contemporary on 16^th November to consider this relationship, and to examine the challenge that modern science and medicine bring to traditional ideas of the meaning of bodily existence.

Forced Entertainment have been at the forefront of performance, theatre and writing since they began in 1984. The Sheffield based company, will be at Nottingham Contemporary on 19th November performing their new work ‘Void Story’ a  bleak and comical contemporary fable performed as if it were a radio play, sitting at tables, turning the pages of the script, ‘doing’ the requisite voices and adding in sound effects for gunshots, rain and bad phone-lines. Tickets are available now; I am particularly interested to go to the post show talk by the company after the afternoon performance.

I have to send a lot of leftfield invitations asking specialists and academics to be part of our public programme here, but I think the most random invitation I sent and one of the most gracious responses was from Professor Vivienne Brown, Professor Emeritus in Economics at The Open University, who is one of the leading authorities on the moral philosopher and so called godfather of capitalism, Adam Smith. Considering both Weber’s Bee paintings - paintings that were made by leaving primed white canvasses on a bee-keepers grounds in Berlin, to be painted by the bees during their  annual 'cleansing flight' and his failed proposal to Edinburgh City council to cover the statue of Adam Smith placed on the Royal Mile in a swarm of docile bees - Professor Brown has agreed to come to Nottingham Contemporary and present the Adam Smith’s thought on the “hive” – as a model of productivity described in Smith’s text ‘The Wealth of Nations’. On the same evening we have also invited expert urban beekeeper Alison Knox to describe the joys of the apiary and the importance of the bees “cleansing flights”.

This kind of events is an example of what I enjoy most about programming events; bringing two people who would never normally be together, to discuss their specialism’s in relation to a work of contemporary art – through this process I hope that we can appreciate the connections that we might never have seen before, not because they are direct but because they can sit next to one another, quietly informing.

As I mentioned this is a packed 8 weeks, it was really difficult to choose these few to talk about! It is also sadly the last Public Programme that I have programmed with the incredible Daniella King, who has been the Inspire Assistant Curator at Nottingham Contemporary for the last 2 years and who is leaving us in a couple of weeks – we had fun programming it, I hope that you have fun at the events!

For full listings: http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/events/whaton

Animatronics, a Beekeeper and Windscreen Wipers

By Abi Spinks, Assistant Curator

What links an animatronics expert, a beekeeper in Berlin and a manufacturer of industrial windscreen wipers? The answer is Klaus Weber’s forthcoming exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary. Along with a team of engineers from the University of Nottingham, all have been involved in creating artworks for this German artist’s solo show.

The exhibition includes several new commissions which Weber proposed specifically for Nottingham Contemporary’s building and I have worked alongside the artist on bringing these artworks to fruition.  The process as a whole has been both exciting and taxing – in ways I could not  have imagined. One of the things I find enjoyable about my job is the need to develop new and diverse areas of expertise, every few months.  The journey from an artist’s idea, through stages of research and development and onto a (sometimes) physical end result, can lead to the most unexpected conversations and experiences.  

For example, how does one produce realistic and continuous rain, indoors? This was but one conundrum I faced for the new artwork, ‘If you leave me I’m not coming’, in which the 7 ½ metre wide window of Gallery 2 will be turned into a giant windscreen, complete with oversized wipers and never-ending indoor rain. To tackle this, we turned to the aforementioned team of engineers at the Environmental Technology Centre at University of Nottingham, who have brought their expertise to one of the largest and most technically challenging commissions we have hosted yet.  Working out precisely the volume of water required and the exact droplet size which would allow for even distribution across the glass is one challenge we have set their scientific brains to. 

Oversized wipers for this artwork, each over a metre long, are currently being designed for production by a company in Redditch, which is more  accustomed to supplying wiper solutions for the Singapore Metro and large scale naval ships. Each wiper works tirelessly to clear away the “rain” which continually obscures the view both into and out of the gallery. This artwork functions as an alternative (and very suitably British) public fountain and alludes to the transparency of the art world, as it works to allow the public outside the gallery brief glimpses of the inside, before the eternal drizzle takes over again. 

 So what of the animatronics expert and the beekeeper?  Well, from 22 October, you’ll have to come and find out for yourself.http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/klaus-weber
http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/klaus-weber-0

Glenn Ligon

By Nadine Zeidler, Assistant Curator

American artist Glenn Ligon reflects in much of his work the difficulties for African Americans within contemporary American society. Investigating how minorities are still coping with the remnants of slavery and subliminal manifestations of racism, Ligon has become well known for his text based paintings. These works predominantly draw on the writing of such notable figures as Zora Neale Hurston, Jesse Jackson, James Baldwin and Jean Genet.

Glenn Ligon, Untitled (We are the ink...), 1992, Private Collection, Boston

Untitled (We are the ink...) refers to a famous quote from Jean Genet's memoir Prisoner of Love where he states, “In white America the Blacks are the characters in which history is written. They are the ink that gives the white page a meaning.” Being a white amongst blacks, Genet was fighting alongside the Black Panther Party, choosing his words carefully to speak on behalf of them. In this text painting Ligon subverts Genet’s outsider designation “they” and re-personalises the text using “we”. Working with stencils from top to bottom the grease from the stick thickens, increasingly obscuring the black letters. The duality Duality (physics)

The state of having two natures, which is often applied in physics. The classic example is wave-particle duality. The elementary constituents of nature—electrons, quarks, photons, gravitons, and so on—behave in some respects
..... Click the link for more information. of the black text and the white page embodies Genet’s metaphor of racial power relations and it questions how we perceive and construct oppositional categories of identity.

Glenn Ligon, Untitled (Malcolm X), 2006, Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery

 

Untitled (Malcolm X) forms part of a series of works where Ligon conducted an art workshop for young children. He asked the children to colour images that were intended to foster shared cultural knowledge and pride. Based on the children’s drawings, Malcom X – the Icon of Black Liberation – is subjected to a clownish remake. Through the investigation of racial stereotypes as well as the nature of representation, Ligon is interested in the slipperiness of the images he is using and also the anxiety around this slipperiness.

L-R Bruce Nauman, One Hundred Live and Die, 1984

Glenn Ligon, Excerpt, 2009, Courtesy of Private Collection, NY

Excerpt – another of Ligon’s pieces in the exhibition – is a direct reference to a larger neon work by Bruce Nauman entitled One Hundred Live and Die. Set against a dark backdrop the black tubes of “Black and Die, Black and Live” were nearly invisible and are not allowed any agency within the flashing spectacle. Ligon admires Nauman’s precise use of language and sampled this particular excerpt. Using visible black wires and black painted neon tubing so that the white light emanates from the back of the text Ligon’s gesture gives the text “Black and Die” and “Black and Live” its own realm of visibility and amplifies the brutality of Nauman’s words.

Jean Genet: Gallery 3



Simon Withers

by Simon Withers, Artist and Nottingham Contemporary Gallery Assistant

Having invested quite some time invigilating the current exhibition, my attention has been drawn towards two works, the bell from the Galleries of Justice (1858) and Walking man 1 (1960) by Giacometti. On a formal level I am forging connections between these two works – bonds which may or may not be essentially prevalent in the work. The empty triangular space between the legs of Walking Man echoes the pyramidal form of the bell – do I use the word pyramidal here imprecisely to describe a form that has feminine qualities? The bell is curvaceous in shape so perhaps it is more akin to an eroded ‘stepped’ pyramid rather than, say, a great pyramid in Giza.

There is something about the cast object that interests me, as both of these forms have a degree of ‘fallible permanence’ – a hard-softness. These two constructs look as if they could be everlasting; yet they could be cast down to zero, whereby even the histories attributed to them shall perish and they could then undergo a metamorphosis and be cast anew. It is not surprising therefore that my thoughts turn towards death and rebirth. Whilst I am alive I have ample time to turn my thoughts to morbid things as William James did, saying the morbid ‘was an all too valid way of seeing the underlying realities of existence.’

As for the bell on the floor of Gallery 3, which once tolled in the execution of condemned criminals, it was made by Whitechapel Bell Foundries – Britain’s oldest company, founded by Charles and George Mears in 1570, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. This illustrious bell foundry also created the Liberty Bell, Big Ben and ‘Great Tom’ (the large bell in Lincoln Cathedral). The foundry additionally crafted the tenor bell of St Sepulcher in London, this bell long ago used to announce the imminent death of some unhappy wretch in the Gulag like Newgate prison. Incidentally, the tenor bell was at some subsequent date substituted by a large executioners hand bell.

As I stand observing the public in the course of visiting Gallery 3, some appear (consciously or otherwise) to adopt numerous qualities of the Walking man, they strike up similar gaits and stances. The emaciated figure, in stark contrast to the nourished individuals scattering the gallery space, is by comparison wearing an endurable sum of flesh and (perhaps stoically?) he strides out with resolution, as though on a death march towards that void – the white wall of the gallery.

Chasing the Visitor Voice

Maggie Hester

By Maggie Hester, recent Marketing intern, art museum and gallery studies post-grad (Leicester), and temporary source of American influence in the office

During my brief 8-week stint as intern for the Marketing team, I have had the pleasure of talking with visitors about the current exhibition Jean Genet. In fact, you may have been one of the hundred whom I recently spoke with. If so, thanks a lot! Your feedback is invaluable. How fascinating it was to hear from so many different people – each bringing to the gallery a unique set of knowledge, skills, interests and life experience that colors their interpretations and impressions. Such inner workings of visitors are incredibly important to museums and galleries today.

You see, museum professionals have recently begun to sense a massive shift in practice – one that is affecting everything from methods of exhibiting and writing about objects to the way we harness the ever-changing nature of digital innovation. Perhaps the most significant change happening in the field is the acknowledgement and affirmation of the “visitor voice”. Whether an art gallery or science museum, a country house or castle, or even a museum about quilt making – we're all chasing after what it is exactly that makes visitors tick. What makes you want to go to a museum or gallery in the first place? What causes you to enjoy your visit? What prompts you to come again?

Frankly, the act of looking doesn’t seem to be enough for people any longer. With the prevalence of the Internet, and its endless array of tantalizing information at our constant disposal, we require more complex and engaging content, don’t we? That and good cakes in the café. When in a gallery space, we want to be taught, entertained, uplifted, challenged, and inspired – depending on our mood and time available. We want to learn something new, feel connected to other people and places (both online and offline), experience good design, good food and, at times, just have a moment to “get away from it all”.

Like other cultural institutions around the world, Nottingham Contemporary has begun to take visitor suggestions to heart. When not spotting the Zebra around town, I have been analyzing comments and statistics in an effort to decode the various needs and wants of an increasingly diverse audience base. For Jean Genet, we received such great feedback that staff are thinking about what to do moving forward that will boost what works well and alter what doesn't, enabling visitors to enjoy their experiences in this place all the more.

It is an exciting (albeit daunting) time for museums and galleries in the 21st century – just as it is for libraries, charities and commercial businesses. Everyone is trying to remain relevant as the world becomes smaller, smarter and faster. With this in mind, as I shortly leave the UK in pursuit of my American roots, I can safely say that there shall never be a dull moment inside the walls of Nottingham Contemporary.