Kickstarter and the Press

I've been so busy it's untrue, probably 500 hours+ spent on this trip and exhibition tour organisation. I've learned a lot, mainly not to lose £5,000, not to be in charge of a budget and not to imagine others to be as passionate about this subject as I am. When I talk about the forthcoming Chernobyl visit, people either say 'WOW!' or 'What?! WHY??!' You either get it or you don't...

Pripyat Apartment Block, a landing next to a lift shaft.

In other news, after 5 months of trying to source an East German/Russian-looking modernist 70's armchair reminiscent of those abandoned in many Pripyat apartments, for under £100 (or not) I found it impossible... actually impossible so I got this.

The lovely Alan of Kiwi Trading had this one tucked up in his lockup, and at a bargain price of course, in fact the money that is rattling down the side might actually cover it's cost. I'll have to work on it in order for it to become part of my installation, but I am aware it could all go horribly wrong and I'll still have to find another chair.

Of the period (just English)

And so our collective now has a name, it was a rush job but I am pretty happy with my suggestion. I did give the group a multiple choice and they went for this: '26:86 Collective'; derived from the date of the Chernobyl disaster -  26th April 1986. Specific yes but it's the single reason we came together after all and...it does what it says on the tin. So the press have started to take an interest, I've done 2 interviews and a photo-shoot with professional people, and it's not easy being shy(!). This is the first story to be published, a lovely young guy came round...

http://www.liveandloveteesside.co.uk/teesside-artists-explore-chernobyl-30-years/ 
If you read that you'll notice we've just started a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign... please consider pledging even a small amount as it all mounts up and you may not even need to part with any cash if we don't reach our target which is not looking likely to be honest :/ do it here: DONATE ON KICKSTARTER

The Last Part (Unit No.3) - a very delayed post!

I've just found this as a draft in my post list (from December!) so I thought I might as well publish it, I think I was waiting for a photo to choose itself.

So now I start the final leg of my MA - the Final Major Project and I am extremely excited... shall it be the culmination of something? I doubt it...I truly believe it is only the start. This whole experience has changed my life and my outlook on art, design, creativity and thinking. 

So after a restful weekend spent going to see 'The Lady in a Van', wrapping Christmas presents, making special cards and eating chocolate with my feet up behind my new double glazing (I actually can't feel the wind in my living room anymore) I am ready to start Practice 3. This is what I am going to do...

'My rationale is to bring together people, place and politics through carrying out work in situ in Chernobyl and presenting a video of this as a major piece of work. 

And produce a large-scale exhibition piece: ‘What Once There Was’ (working title) using life-size interior pieces for maximum impact and real human emotiveness which essentially will bridge the gap between space and time, between 1986 and now and between the Ukraine and here. It could be an immersive installation that will intend to convey the emptiness, the fear of what has happened there, what could happen here, allowing the viewer to connect and (only) imagine loss of this magnitude.'

This is how I am getting on - i.e. 'not well', it could be a major waste of time/disaster but who knows what will happen before I finish it, it is by working on it that I am generating new ideas, all the time :)

                
via GIPHY

Progress and ‘Thinking by Writing Things Down’…

The fundamentals and essentiality of my research is based on an inspirational (and to be repeated) trip to Chernobyl: initially being to look at self-settlers and their reasons for returning to a homeland that could potentially kill them. However, after in depth research, I soon realised there are a multitude of issues connected to the 1986 disaster that are still very much relevant worldwide today i.e. real-time safety issues regarding the highly radioactive waste still stored at Chernobyl, recognition of the disaster as catalyst for world change (i.e. Glasnost), collective memory – a cognitive resonance, relating to the sudden evacuation of Pripyat and displacement trauma, as well as the effect of human error on mass population (responsibility) and not least the heroic, almost suicidal bravery of individuals who really did save the world. After initial research, subjects broadened (to include the Holocaust, Dark Tourism etc) and became too much. Therefore I have concluded what it is I am most interested in – ʻChernobylʼ and the ʻpoignancy of a fleeting moment in timeʼ and through this message –visually and emotionally communicated through my work, I will selectively choose particular resonating ʻsnapshots in timeʼ attempting to raise awareness of the wider and far- reaching issues through a textiles exhibition piece or installation, the title of which should definitely be…

'What Once Was There'

or rather

‘What Was There Once’

The next step is more research, but not exclusively as I need to produce physical work – which will form the basis of my future ‘mastery’. This ‘mastery’ can also be of my subject, my concept. In the first instance I therefore need to extend my memory life, like a rechargeable battery. Duracell, preferably. 

Digitally printed silk length with discharge screen print

Now though I have arrived more at questions than answers…

Q: How to capture ‘a moment in time’?

A: Photography being the most obvious, and I have plenty of photos…so kind of disregarding (for the moment) all the artwork, drawing etc. that I have done, which will never be useless as by doing that I have refined and defined my colour story, compositionally testing out figurative, textured and abstract responses which will no doubt, have subconsciously informed my future outcomes (OR I could actually use some of those images, marks and shapes for a layer of print). An aside: I feel I am still putting too much into/onto a design –you decide?

Q: How to choose the most evocative moment in time?

Q: What if I combine a number of photographic images to create a moment in time?

Q: Do I manipulate the images?

A: So far in some cases I have merged and layered them and decreased the opacity but little else. I do like them and mostly they do, I feel, create a mood, an impression.

Q: Should they tell a story? Can you expect every photographic image to tell a whole story, is that feasible?

A: The one piece that does say what I want to say is this one;

Cyanotype print - Pripyat Interior

Mmm what to do with it now.

Part 2

Shaft

Today I had an appointment for a tutorial with Alex. Not Nigel. But neither came anyway.
It was for my feedback (but I did get emailed my mark) for my first unit (apart from the Contested Territories option, which played an important and incredibly influential part).
I am wondering what everyone else in my pathway/group has got. I have no idea.

I got 69.
69 per cent.  I'm fine with that.  I think I know why.

I do know 3 other people's marks, they all got 78+.
They all do photography.

I now have until December to work forward from my initial idea's,  it's kind of the development part, I've done the research and visual studies, drawing and photography/recording and now its time to play with it. And obviously, CONTINUALLY researching more. From January I expect I may be starting to produce a final collection of work. I have started to write this (new) proposal which I need to present to the group next week...

Practice 2:

Does an aesthetically beautiful piece have an innate inability to convey the magnitude of horrific and disturbing events such as the holocaust? (Bathrick et al., 2008), is it unacceptable even to use aesthetic means to draw attention to such issues? I need to further question the ‘intentionality’ of my work and imagery.

Aims: 

-Focus on ONE main area and produce some solid work from initial ideas generated in P1.
-Extend and develop these through materials and techniques (in depth investigation)  
-Concentrate on the Chernobyl disaster (Democide: many deaths arising through various neglects and abuses by a government, as opposed to Omnicide: the destruction of all life especially by nuclear war) ? And the Holocaust (Genocide: the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group) and related issues. 

-Produce work that will be noticed, possibly by using shocking imagery but more likely thought provoking text

-Understand what I want to achieve and convey it to the critic.

-Research 'Aesthetic Theory' including moral issues and how other artists have conveyed and dealt with sensitive issues

-Leave final outcome ‘area’ open.

-The fundamentals and essentiality of my research is condensed into the acceptance or rejection of the possibility of beauty in disturbing imagery, content, background or suggestion of such – ‘external beauty, internal ugly’.

I recently put some images of my initial Practice 2 sketchbook pages on Facebook. Here I will explain my thought process whilst producing them.

   A great quote from a poem by Ivan Drach, a Ukrainian poet that I found after my concept development came to exactly this point...

Just to get going and get rid of the blank page 'look' I had going on I cut up a test screen print, tore up some black sugar paper I had been using to spray paint things on, 'found' a photograph and Maria and stuck it all down. (That's probably not actually a thought process).

Leftover bits of work on Ivan

The caption explains EVERYTHING about this piece. I do have a printed sample of him on silk that I am going to start stitching on, just to do something while Big Brother's on.

Some Chernobyl forest drawing with non Chernobyl imagery that seems to fit anyway

Maybe I need to paint on this with gouache. I will come back to it, all in good time. I had the laser cut offcuts from an experiment which didn't quite work, but left a 'trace'.

Using negative space and block shapes to indicate what isn't there anymore, many small villages thought to be too radioactive were completely buried after the explosion

I just fancied getting the Quink out here. The result is that the sketchbook is started and now I need to get serious - I will NOT put in anything without an excellent reason and conscious thought. From tomorrow.

Oh, AND I've made a zine about Chernobyl, which is a small taster.
Come and buy one from me at The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead on July 10/11th.
Only £1.00.
If you don't want to pay that much you can download it here for free… (click on 'share') - you just don't get the hand finished effect.

N.B. I am halfway through 2 more: 'BOX' & "Found!' so you could have a collection 

Discovery of the week: The reason that I really like coming to MMU.

After 2 minutes of long, hard thinking I realise it could be because it's taking just one day a week out of ordinary day to day usuality and doing something completely different. It's like a holiday, split up and spread out to try and make it last longer. It's my parallel universe.

Disclaimer: this is not professed to be a good example of evaluative, in-depth or analytical writing, I'm just too tired.

Early doors but not there yet...

Early start... up at 6am killing me. A day return. This is only a possibility when I don't have to start at 10am.

Today I need to pick up my (assessed!!!) work, and be introduced to Practice 2: our new module. I am VERY excited...now is the time that I EXPLORE my idea's practically and creatively.

I have been advised that I need to SHOCK to get 'my' message across, in order to draw attention to the Chernobyl issue and/or other major issues and horrific atrocities, and NOT to (necessarily) produce something aesthetically pleasing (which was always my intention), so the upshot being that as soon as I think I know what my intention is, there comes the proverbial 'spanner in the works'. I was also advised that it would be VERY difficult (argh).

So although I have my concept, which although now much more focused, continues to need much more research and another trip to the Ukraine (Chernobyl again but I have also just found about Babi Yar - how/why did I not know about this already?!), I still don't know what I am doing. ALSO after intense thinking and sweating about WHAT I am designing for, I have been advised that I now don't need to know this - which is very free-ing in a way and very scary in another. Hopefully I'll know by the time Practice 3 comes around.

Babi Yar

And in other news: I am all booked up to spend 5 days in Poland in September, again for research purposes, incredibly luckily I have funding to do this. I am not excited, I am afraid. I will be visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau. I need to allow myself to be emotionally immersed in the experience in order for it to inform my practice and influence my work but as a rather closed person (I think??!) it will absolutely destroy my composure (and I feel selfish for even worrying about this).  

Book I'm finishing on the train

 

List of immediate jobs:

• Finish reading 8 books (interesting)
• Start a new sketchbook (delicious) 
• List the main (shocking & relevant/appropriate) points I need to raise (thought provoking)
• Think about how to do this (impossible)
• Research 'memorial art' and 'shocking work on big issues' (time consuming)



Holocaust Monument, Berlin

 

The End (of something) is Nigh?

Ivan of Chernobyl - Hand Embroidery

I am handing in my main project work for assessment today/tomorrow... I have a suitcase full AND an A2 portfolio. I have already submitted the written part which took me much longer than it should have, due to nitpicking and formatting troubles, the words only took half of the total time, the rest was spent stressfully getting text to line up and images to stay in the correct position. I ended up having to do the whole thing in 'InDesign' as 'Word' is so awful. 

My main concern at the moment is getting it all off the train quickly enough, once that is done my next concern will be 'curating' my sketchbook, notebooks and file on a table (?!) then the presentation of it tomorrow, and filling 25 minutes up with talking.

To help me I will get some preparation done now:

Introduction:

The summing up of my timeline; where I started, where I am now and how I got there.

I'm assuming the tutors will have already read my in depth, reflective essay about that and my process, so hopefully it will be more about the artwork than the theory this time although I'm not so sure!

Show/flick through examples; A2 paintings, my sketchbook, best (mounted) photographs, and fabrics. I must say it IS professionally presented.

My strengths during this project- Practice 1:

• primary research
• visual interpretation/communication of idea's
• testing of initial thoughts
• relevance of materials and techniques to concept/subject
• presentation

Ivan - Detail/Reverse

What didn't work technically?

• digital stitch programming - so far I haven't been able to get it to do what I want, BUT I just need more time.
• laser cutting matching/combined with print (as above), need to sample 'printing' WITH the laser (which I used to be able to do. cf rastering)

What I intend to develop (further) in Practice 2:

• it all feels a little 'bitty' i.e. not logical, due to my ideas jumping about - I hope to focus on ONE main area, at least for a while and actually produce some solid work... I am starting to worry that I have only 18 months left and it doesn't seem long enough to produce an embroidery collection at couture level based on whatever... it could take me that long just to do ONE sample (from past experience).
• confidence - I am confident with the practical aspects regarding the quality, skills, aesthetics and initiative evident within my work, but I need to better articulate my thought process and intellect with regards to the not yet, completed project. My confidence will come from believing that I understand what I want to achieve, and have the knowledge and imagination to convey it to the critic and feeling that it is personal to me but shared and appreciated by others.

I am happy with what I have done, even though it never seems enough and there are too many idea's to try and then to progress and to develop further until they are beautiful... AND I STILL have to research the theory of Aesthetics.

So my conclusion is:

• that I will produce (by the end of practice 3 - the final module) 'a collection of pieces on a theme/addressing an issue, for exhibition' (probably) about Chernobyl and the related issues surrounding the world's worst nuclear disaster, and on it's 30th anniversary. 
• to forget about the fashion fabric design collection, I have decided I am NOT a commercial designer AND I can produce that anyway later if I so choose, from the experimental samples I produce whilst doing the above...can't I?

And, the FINAL conclusion is:

... there is never an end. Is there?

Chernobyl and Pripyat in the Ukraine, next to Russia. 29 Years after the nuclear disaster…

Hotel in Pripyat Plaza

Some said 'brave', some couldn't understand why we would even wish to go there, some were envious…we (me, my partner, my 2 x 21 year old daughters and one boyfriend - I was very impressed they all desperately wanted to come) were excited and really had no idea what to expect.

Personally and ostensibly it was for my MA research (though no excuse needed) and I was looking forward to meeting the re-settlers and to discover their reasons for choosing to go back and live on the edge of the exclusion zone which is still a very dangerous place to live due to the invisible enemy  'radiation poisoning'. It has been said that the longevity of the re-settlers lives is due to their quality of life and happiness in being 'home' which negates the effects of the radiation. The danger of which is more  preferable to them than living in a city's high-rise away from their farms and the countryside. 

Ivan (Mikhail) Ivanovitch, Security (!) and Ivan's house

Me and a happy Ivan

However, after my visit, I realised there were so many other aspects regarding the 'Chernobyl issue' that I couldn't confine my interest to just the re-settlers and I have reverted to my original thoughts about dark tourism, collective trauma and collective memory, then overarching or underpinning this, the 'correctness' of interpreting such unspeakable, atrocities and heinous issues via an aesthetic means. (N.B. I may be visiting Auschwitz later this year).

The trip itself was mesmerising (for want of a better word) from start to finish. There were days either side spent in Kiev and an airbnb apartment which were fantastic, although kind of 70's, and unbelievably cheap.

Back to the 2 days spent in Chernobyl. Radiation dose expected equivalent = one hospital x-ray.

We were with Chernobylwel.com (fantastic!) - a tour, only/easiest way to get in, and of a very mixed group, 17 persons and a guide. There were other families and some couples, some groups of friends and a few people travelling alone which was a very nice mix. People from USA, Finland, Germany, Austria, Spain, Sweden, UK and Switzerland at least, which I loved and people of all ages 18 -70.

On the minibus on the way to the power plant + Laura

We weren't quite sure exactly where we were going and in what order but this was where we went, in order (I think!) This was after we checked in at the hotel, in CHERNOBYL, within the 30km exclusion zone, which extends on the north side into Belarus, Russia.  We have stayed in much worse Travelodges in the UK. The food was, shall we say, interesting - plain and typical Ukrainian food,  and the blob of tomato sauce on the side of plain pasta or rice we found quite amusing. Every meal was a set menu (all inclusive :-) and we were all served at the same time, it reminded me of school trips abroad years ago.

Itinerary:
DAY 1: 

Abandoned house in Chernobyl town

• Chernobyl Town: 
The Angel of Death monument/memorial 

• Rusting boats - docks (quickly & from a distance)

• Robots (used in the clean up operation)

• (small) Kindergarten 

• Cooling towers of unfinished reactor 5 & 6, due for opening in 1988 for Reactors 5 and 6 

• Chernobyl nuclear power plant

• Reactor number 4 - viewing platform and VERY close
• 
Fireman memorial
• 
Bridge & giant catfish

• Reactor number 4 & Memorial

• New sarcophagus ('safe' distance)

• Pripyat ''Ghost City'': (inhabitants were given two hours notice to evacuate, almost two days after the explosion - already too late)
• 
Cafe 
• 
Prometheus cinema

• Local Council Admin Building
• 
Pripyat Plaza-

• Polesie Hotel

• Palace of Culture: "Energetik" 

• Amusement park

• Soccer stadium - Stadium Avangard
• 
Middle/Grammar school 

• Swimming pool 
(in use by the liquidators and other people working in the Zone up until 1996)
• Tower block 

(roof of)

We got back to the hotel sometime before 8pm (there's a curfew), had dinner and sampled the bar.
Oh, there are no toilets in Chernobyl/Pripyat that you can actually use, only bushes (!) so be prepared to wait up to 6 hours if you're like me, then also be prepared for the most awful toilet ever which is located at the checkpoint... not sure it was better than a bush to be honest.

Radiation detectors going in and out of the exclusion zone

DAY 2: 


• Chernobyl Zoo (I would say small farm or pets corner)

• Bridge of Death; where people flocked to watch the flames of the explosion and consequently received lethal doses of radiation. I think if it had happened at Hartlepool, the people of Billingham would have probably done the same. Also, there were people travelling on a train going under the bridge on their way to Moscow at the time of the explosion who also received very high dosage of radiation, an extreme case of wrong place, wrong time.

• Pripyat:
 Hospital, one of my favourite places, very emotional and evocative.

• Combined School (collapsed in April 2013- the snow that falls in the winter has caused most of the damage to the city, I think soon it will all possibly be too destructed to visit)
• 
Greenhouse

• Telephone exchange?
• 
Jupiter Factory (could have stayed here all day)
• 
Police station and cells with exercise yard
• 
Old Fire Station (with garage), all the men who worked here died.

• Kindergarten 2 ( a bigger one)

• Open air military museum (possibly, it was somewhere with trucks)

• Meeting local inhabitants in the Resettlement zone (unbelievable and great for my research) I have recorded an interview but can't get it off my phone as yet.

• Late lunch at power station (an experience, I wouldn't like to eat there every day - rumour has it it's always exactly the same) - there are still workers building the new (overdue) sarcophagus which will protect the world from the radiation that is still being emitted and possibly escaping as we speak through the holes in the old one.

• Vehicle graveyard - Chernobyl (possibly through the red forest - I wasn't even sure where we were at the time)

Swimming Pool, Pripyat

Gymnasium, Pripyat

Pripyat, can't remember which building it was

I am now desperate to return and hopefully this time next year I will. I found out so much information, one thing I hadn't realised was that a second, more powerful explosion was only very narrowly avoided, one which would have wiped out the whole of Europe -completely. We were so unaware. And 'Tens of thousands of Soviet citizens filed into Chernobyl to help, considering it their patriotic duty; all were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation with no warning from the government.'
 And did you also realise that the Chernobyl disaster was instigation for Glasnost and the fall of the USSR. It truly did change the world in many ways. 'According to Gorbachev, the Chernobyl explosion was a turning point that “opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression, to the point that the system as we knew it could no longer continue.”

Reactor No.4, the bad part is behind the concrete blocks

Inside the unfinished cooling tower

An overview of the disaster and situation is here.

The whole experience was like NOTHING I have ever experienced before. The pictures you see on the internet give NO indication of the feeling you get by being there. It is truly amazing, I have never seen anything/anywhere like it in my life… it is the most unbelievable, disconcerting, silent, strangely beautiful place I believe I will ever see.

I still haven't managed to work my way through all my photographs so these are just a very small selection of the first lot- it is SO difficult to give a good indication of the whole trip. I will publish a couple of albums on my Facebook page as soon as possible.

Men working on the new sarcophagus

Housing block in Pripyat

Changing rooms - football stadium

Ferris wheel built for Mayday 1986

Children's coat hooks in the Kindergarten

Kindergarten

Inside the cooling tower

Poster inside the school

Nothing Doing...

The realisation just hit me. Seven weeks and I've done nothing 'creative' (it feels). Not even mixed a colour. What I have done though is (beat myself up and) some thinking- i.e. tried to conceptualise by osmosis. 
Actually I take that back. I now realise I have not 'done nothing', I have been unconsciously imbibed with new vocabulary, been sucked/enticed into the new way of speaking and thinking (a little), I still can't do it (at all well) but more positively and in response to this realisation, I have come up with these questions I need to ask myself... 

• Can my work translate to large scale installations? 
• Do I want it to? 
• What other applications may my work have?
• Why do I want to do what I want to do with it?
• Does my work need a use (other than to look gorgeous !!!)?

And in relation to my theoretical research on my initial inspiration:

'the finding/uncovering of objects left behind in a derelict, desolate landscape, that which gives a sense of ‘place’ and an emotive response to the viewer' (new!)

• Why are these objects left? Accident or design?
• What do these objects mean? What did they mean to someone once? What do they mean to the other?
• Why do some people (me) search them out? How does it make them (me) feel?
• Why do I want to go to Chernobyl?

So...I have changed the emphasis of the direction of my research (slightly), not sure whether things are becoming clearer; if I am changing things to make more sense or if I am just further muddying the waters? Time will tell, I look forward to seeing if I feel I can keep it next week! But I definitely should stop loitering and take some action.