Ongoing marginendeavour work in construction

The back and forth on soundcloud

marginendeavour recently created an audio work in response to Caitlin Merrett King's call for works to be part of a podcast. Our contribution to the podcast is a reflection on our collaborative process and explores the potential of the spoken word; emphasising the rhythmic, layered and repetitive qualities within the narrative.

The audio file can now be listened to via soundcloud

https://soundcloud.com/hshaddock/the-back-and-forth

marginendeavour feature on Group Show Series 2 @ The NewBridge Project

Group Show is an art podcast series curated by Caitlin Merrett King covering topics like work, collaboration and criticism.

Series One was conceived of as part of 12o's S/S17 curatorial residency as an exploration into expanded curatorial practice. Each episode includes a mixture of interviews, sound commissions and regular features covering artist-led activity around the UK.

Series Two was produced at The NewBridge Project, Newcastle for the Practice Makes Practice residency in March 2019, and features music, sound pieces and interviews from studio and associate NBP members.

Series 2 episode 1 features an interview with Rebecca Huggan, the Director of NBP, sound pieces by Gobscure and marginendeavour and a chat between Tamara Micner and Yael Roberts who is currently on Collective Studio based at NBP.

David Foggo and Helen Shaddock work collaboratively as marginendeavour to explore our affinities with text and design. Our contribution to the podcast is a reflection on our collaborative process and explores the potential of the spoken word; emphasising the rhythmic, layered and repetitive qualities within the narrative.

Group Show Image by Eva Duerden (12o)

LAUNCH - Friday 26th April

The first episode can be listened on

iTunes

Spotify

and http://www.caitlinmerrettking.co.uk/

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WordPower: Language as Medium

Unintimacy - Friday 26th April - 7pm-12am - The NewBridge Project

Unintimacy

Friday 26th April 2019

7pm-12am

The NewBridge Project

Carliol House, Market Street East, Newcastle, NE1 6NE

The launch event of the latest series of podcasts about collaboration curated by Caitlin Jean Merrett King. Episode 1 features an audio work by marginendeavour, collaborative duo David Foggo and Helen Shaddock

Join us in the foyer of Carliol House for a night of performance, film and music which has been co-produced by various artist through collaboration. These collaborations are made up of partners, friends, lovers and family, formed through both closeness and distance, admiration and mimesis, love and care, desire and lack.

Unintimacy has been co-curated by artists Caitlin Merrett King and Grace Denton. The duo will kick off the evenings events by presenting new experimental performance works made together but remotely between Glasgow, and Newcastle. The event will feature films by Harriet Plewis & Rhodri Davies | Cherry Styles & Laura Robinson | Competition & Sophie Soobramanien | Sophie Chapman & Kerri Jeffris | Alex Sarkisian & Bahar Yürükoğlu | McGilvary/White | Yeah You | Georgia Lucas-Going.

Following the screenings local radge pop band GGAllan Partridge and, NBP house DJs You F***in Wot will play a collaborative DJ set. Dancing is widely encouraged!

FringeArtsBath Festival - 24th May - 9th June 2019

I'm delighted to announce that I will be exhibiting at Fringe Art Bath Festival 2019 in the exhibition 'Telling Spaces' curated by Vicky Vatcher.

For more details take a look at the website, which is constantly being updated

https://www.fringeartsbath.co.uk/

WordPower: Language as Medium - available now

WordPower: Language as Medium, the publication that my work features in, is available now, online and in print through the following channels:

Direct: Our short print run of 100 copies have almost sold out. Available at £20 + P&P (Postage only available to UK mainland, USA, Canada, Australia and some parts of Europe - delivery can take up to 10 days)

Amazon: BOOK I and BOOK II (can post to any worldwide destination in 48 hours) Note: This is a general release edition - no poster artwork included

View online: BOOK I and BOOK II

Beginners Mind

Beginner's Mind

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00040gl

In this BBC radio 4 radio programme, 'Suryagupta, chair of the London Buddhist Centre, explores the Zen Buddhist concept of Beginner’s Mind, which encourages the viewing of the familiar with fresh eyes.

She discusses the first time she discovered the benefits of Beginner’s Mind, at a retreat in Wales. While meditating, Suryagupta became fascinated by the sound of birdsong, feeling as if she was hearing it for the very first time. This meditation encouraged her to experience life anew, through help from texts such as Suzuki Roshi’s classic title Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.



Suryagupta considers the obstacles that can hinder Beginner’s Mind, such as pressure and the burden of expectations. She suggests that attempting to return to the simple and spontaneous innocence of the child’s mind can help us overcome these obstructions, in order to experience moments of revelation and wonder. She concludes with a quote from Henry Miller, who celebrates the benefits of sharing these discoveries with others. In doing so, we can connect deeply with one another, and experience an interdependence that is freeing and refreshing.'

I found this way of thinking to be hugely helpful in my studio practice and in life more generally. In the arts there are no answers and so it can be difficult to get a real sense of achievement because the artistic process is always evolving and has no set end conclusion.

The latest from marginendeavour - 3 potential Eyesore billboard designs

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Kelly Richardson - Pillars of Dawn at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland

Kelly Richardson's current exhibition, Pillars of Dawn at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, (NGCA) features a new video animation and a number of large digital prints. The landscapes that Richardson has created are empty with no sign of animals or humans. The trees are formed from thousands of crystals that glisten in the twilight.

As we enter the gallery the invigilator explains how the artist has requested that the gallery be dark, and therefore he will close the door. This is no surprise to me, especially given the content of the work. As I watched the video I was bothered by the fact that I could see two of the digital prints in my peripheral vision. These distracted me, preventing me from devoting my full attention to the video. They also lit up the space and made me conscious of the other people in the gallery. I turned around to find that the invigilator had opened the door again and light was pouring in again. I wanted to feel immersed in the landscape, and yet the clinking of the coffee cups in the cafe and the warmth of the gallery felt too comfortable. Perhaps if there was a gentle breeze of cool air, and with no distractions from noise or light, it would be more engaging.

http://northerngalleryforcontemporaryart.co.uk/kelly-richardson/

WordPower: Language as Medium

I'm excited to announce that I have just ordered a copy of WordPower: Language as Medium, a new two-part publication exploring works by a selection of 100 contemporary artists who implement the direct use of language and the written word in their process. The publication includes a certain Newcastle-based artist, Helen Shaddock!

Reflecting on the shift from representative forms to simplified modes of visual communication, WordPower features practices ranging from socially engaged and participatory approaches to sculptural, conceptual, performative and new media formats.

For more information, and to purchase a copy for yourself, please visit

https://libraryx.org.uk/wordpower-language-as-medium/

Surfaces

Pattern experiment

On Exactitude in Science by Alan Butler at BALTIC as part of Digital Citizen – The Precarious Subject

"This two screen installation is a synchronized presentation of Godfrey Reggio's 1983 experimental film Koyaanisqatsi (1982) & Alan Butler's Koyaanisgtav (2017). Butler’s work uses the virtual worlds within popular video game Grand Theft Auto to create a shot-for-shot remake of Koyaanisqatsi. Featuring renowned music by Philip Glass, the narration-less Koyaanisqatsi presents a visual essay in slow-motion and time-lapse of the many cities and natural landscapes across the United States of America."

Koyaanisqatsi is a truly mesmorising film and Butler has enhanced this by creating a virtual remake of the entire film. It was only after a while that I realised that the film on the right was digitally created as opposed to being real life footage. The editing is seamless, and the attention to detail is faultless.

http://baltic.art/whats-on/exhibitions/alan-butler-in-conversation-with-alessandro-vincentelli

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings

Historian of emotions Professor Thomas Dixon explains how looking to the past can help us understand our feelings in the present.

Many of us still remember the images of Paul Gascoigne crying at the 1990 World Cup, Mrs Thatcher’s red eyes on leaving Downing Street, and the national mourning for Princess Diana. Over twenty years later, the tide of tears shows no sign of receding. From public inquiries to primetime TV, the Premier League to Prime Minister’s Questions, emotions seem to be everywhere in public life. With a cool head and some much-needed historical perspective, Professor Thomas Dixon opens the Free Thinking festival 2019 by showing that our emotions themselves have a history.

In recent decades, some scientists have claimed there are just five or six ‘basic emotions’, but the category of ‘emotions’ did not exist until the nineteenth century, and history reveals a much richer picture of passions, affections, and sentiments. Ranging from revolutionary feelings and the sentimental tales of Charles Dickens to the poetic rage of Audre Lorde, Thomas Dixon paints a historical panorama of emotions and ends by asking what we can learn from our ancestors about the value of stoical restraint. The lecture will be followed by an interview conducted by Matthew Sweet and questions from the Free Thinking Festival audience at Sage Gateshead.

Thomas Dixon was the first director of Queen Mary University of London's Centre for the History of the Emotions, the first of its kind in the UK. He is currently researching anger and has explored the histories of friendship, tears, and the British stiff upper lip in books Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears and The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rsw

The latest marginendeavour collage experiment

Start the Week - Emotions at the Free Thinking Festival, Sage, Gateshead

At the weekend Sage, Gateshead was host to the Free Thinking Festival, which this year, was focused on emotions. This week's BBC Radio 4 Start the Week programme, presented by Tom Sutcliffe, explores the art and science of communication. 

The American diplomat William J Burns played a central role in American foreign policy from the end of the Cold War to the collapse of relations with Putin’s Russian, including secret talks with Iran. He explores the language of diplomacy.

Harriet Shawcross is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist. She reflects on how as a teenager she stopped speaking for almost a year. In her book Unspeakable she considers the power of silence. Harriet Shawcross talks about how, when one does not speak about emotions, one begins to have a muted emotional experience. Speech makes the experience emotional. When writing a text message or an email, there is a lot of control, forethought and there is no room for spontaneity. She writes about ways to use speech as a cure to selective mutism. She discusses her experience of volunteering for the Samaritans and how volunteers are trained to not respond immediately (somewhat against the trend in social media), but sit with what is being said, not offering solutions, but trying to go alongside someone into the dark places that normal conversations do not normally go. It does not close down the emotion or dismiss it, but acknowledges that it is there and the person is guided through dealing with the emotion. 

The musician and composer Kathryn Tickell roots her work in in the landscape and people of Northumbria. She is the foremost exponent of the Northumbrian pipes, and tells the story of Northumbria with - and without - words.

Thomas Dixon studies emotional outbursts as the director of the Centre for the History of Emotions. He unveils the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of anger and weeping. He talks about the importance of distinguishing between passions that may be troublesome violent and evil and affections that may be gentle and virtuous. We dont need more anger. There seems to be a change in how society judges the actions that we take in a given set of circumstances to what we feel in a given set of circumstances. Whereas we used to judge people on what they did, with the rise of social media we are tending to see the constant re-representation of feelings which might be miles away from any actual feelings. By talking about anger are politicians legitimising anger? 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003t9g