A weekend of performance, talks, video and activity over distance.
A collaboration between Third Party & Stoke Newington International Airport
19 June – 20 June 2010
Stoke Newington International Airport
Unit E, 1-15 Leswin Place
London N16 7NJ
Sat 13:00 – 00:00
Sun 14:00 – 22:00
Tickets:
£8 each day
£14 weekend ticket
PERFORMANCE / DISCUSSION ACTIVITY / WALK FILM / INSTALLATION
HAKAN AKÇURA
Clearing the thistles at Sazak is a symbolic cleansing meant to open the way for rescuing the village from the lonely, derelict, unprotected state in which it has been left for 87 years and to transform it to one of the symbols of Greek-Turkish friendship, which I believe will develop ever more with each passing day. I asked for permission, in a way, from the earlier owners of each house, who are no longer there, before clearing the thistles.
ANN BEAN
The Ballad of PAVES
Reflecting on how intense, wider political context inevitably sculpts work, Anne Bean, who grew up in Zambia, invited artists from Ireland, Israel, Croatia and Kurdistan-Iraq, to collaborate on a year-long project. Her work with Sinead O’Donnell, Efi Ben-David, Vlasta Delimar and Poshya Kakl over the year included Crossing Zones, in which each artist spent 5 hours simultaneously working in their given countries with the awareness of a shared conscious space. Frontiers, borders, demarcations, boundaries, barriers, bureaucracy, officialdom, laws, regulations and rules all became irrelevant to the fact that they were making a collaborative piece.
ANSUMAN BISWAS
Vane
An established artist who's practice encompasses music, video, live art, installation, writing and theatre, presents a new score/sculpture to make the breath visible and to measure one's comparative influence on the world.
LAURA BRADSHAW & MURRAY WASON
Terra Incognita: from here to there
From sunrise to sunset on the Isle of Arran, we will begin our journey walking together- side by side, two explorers setting out into the daylight, we move together for the first part of the journey, separate for some time and eventually meet again at sunset. We will perform a presentation of our journey with text video and choreography
DAVID BRAZIER & KELDA FREE
Virtual Employee
David Brazier and Kelda Free outsourced their residency in Delhi to an Indian outsourcing company called Virtual Employee. Ashish Sharma took on the role of International Artist and worked to fulfil the residency’s objectives: “challenging negative perceptions of different cultures and faiths” and “encouraging empowerment within communities and across borders”. During a Skype conversation Ashish describes working as an international artist in residence in his home town.
BABA BRINKMAN
Evolutionary distance
The journey of my song “Off That”, which I wrote on the plane to Australia, a remix of a Jay-Z song recorded in New York, in Oz I recorded my vocals to a beat made in Brighton, sent to Tommy Nagle in London, who animated the video and sent it back to me. I uploaded it to youtube from Vancouver when I got home from Oz, then flew straight to the Middle East, and was in Egypt when it started to blow up and tipped over 20,000 views in one week. I'll play the video and perform the track and talk a bit about the process.
DENIS BUCKLEY
I Am Coming N16
Kerry born artist Denis Buckley travels from his studio in Bethnal Green to Stoke Newington via Ireland. Whilst travelling he emails the set of his performance. On arrival for a screening at DISTANCE, he mixes live three films about displacement and its harmful effects amongst the Irish community in Britain. This displacement also had a cruel dénouement. After a lifetime supporting the country through monies sent back from roads, factories and buildings, many found they had to turn to their country of residence to support their final years.
CALCAGNO CULLEN
Show & Tell
Volunteers, found through social-networking sites and through friends of friends, connected with me via Skype to share their belongings, to “show and tell” This project harks back to times of simpler communication practices. It is nostalgic but also acknowledges the future and the increasing rarity of being able to truly interact.
WIRACHA DAOCAHI
The Finish Line
Life is like a big racing, the most important and longest distance we have to strive for. In our life, we have to fight for the greatest of all—the greatness in life itself. When will we stop to strive for it? Why haven’t we been satisfied the long distance that we have passed?
ANDREW DAWSON
Space Panorama
A sparkling recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Standing behind a large black clothed table, using only hands, he dextrously takes us from Houston to the moon and back down to Earth again, conveying the colossal distances and risks involved simply through the arrangement of one hand in relation to the other, with the odd facial expression thrown in for good measure.
ROBIN DINGEMANS
Live, with the certain tendencies of Robin Dingemans & Mihaela Dancs
This show is about performing without any rehearsal at all. Not improvised performance, but completely written and devised work. It discards the distraction of rehearsal to focus purely on performance and ideas. The audience at Distance Festival will receive a work that only they will ever see, it will never be recreated. Mihaela and Robin live 2500 km apart, they thought the only way they could make work together was to devise it all online and meet on stage.
LOWRI EVANS
Pass the Salt
The course of true love never did run smooth. But for one night, can we overcome the time difference, the language, and the technical hitches for a romantic dinner? The dinner table is set, the webcam is on, the invite has been sent, the food is ready, the candles are lit. The show will be the wait and the date. It could get very late. We might witness the miracle of communication across a dinner table, across the world, between two people.
FREESHIT-SALTGRIT
Morris vs Rave
Two very different dance traditions celebrate an anniversary. On Saturday 30 May 2009 the Thaxted Morris men (founded in 1911) hosted the Morris Ring 75th anniversary meeting. On Saturday 30 May 2009, Raindance, entering its historic twentieth year, hosted a party at the Coronet in London. Morris men converge and ravers descend. From tradition to evolution and revolution, Freeshit-Saltgrit investigates… Commissioned by the ICA as part of the Dance School event.
GUERILLA SCIENCE
Sonic tour of the universe
Astrobiologist Dr Lewis Dartnell leads a sonic tour of the universe, guiding you on a walk through the streets of Hackney. After take-off from STK, journey with Lewis through space, stopping at increasing distances from Earth to listen to the sounds of Saturn's rings, the Sun, black holes, and other alien worlds.
As a finale to DISTANCE, Guerilla Science will beam your thoughts out to possible E.T intelligence with the aid of a radio telescope. Tweet your requests to twitter.com/STK_int
YOKO ISHIGURO (Japan)
Narita
Yoko will be in Narita airport, Tokyo. Her work examines intimacy through the screen and the fluctuation of absence and presence.
CLAIRE BLUNDELL JONES
Spooning
You are invited to spoon or be spooned by the artist. Explore the contact and distance between two bodies and the delicate boundaries between control and giving; vulnerability; innocence and sexuality. A secondary audience can view this piece through the window.
MARIE-CHRISTINE KATZ
Let's take a walk
Using the phenomenon of Twitter participants from all over the world can join in a “group walk.” On scheduled times, they receive “tweet” messages, providing a series of walkin directions following my path through a specific site. We film our journeys, the various footage are later assembled into a video installation featuring our group walking in different places but moving synchronized through the same footprints. So far the project has included journeys I’ve guided in Strawberry Field, the New York City Marathon, Union Sq market during the holidays’ season and on Martin Luther King weekend the route of the 1967 Peace march from Central Park to the United Nation and to mark the opening of the exhibition of Marina Abramović. Let's take a walk #6 took place around and in MOMA.
LEO KAYE, BABETTE & LOTTE VOETS
Hammerhead
Two sisters. In two cities, in two countries. A personal tale told through live performance and skype projected communication. Two performance spaces and two audiences. Two people developed themselves in relation to each other.
“Its like we are running separate races. Parallel races. Different paths that cross. It’s like we have collided whilst we are apart at such a distance. We have found a deeper connection.”
“Bald and alone. bald and alone,
will you be bald and alone
or will ya ver a vig?”
SIMONE KENYON
180 miles/18 days
Film/Documentation of a 180 mile solo walk and prostrated journey along the coastal path of south Wales alongside an imagined journey of Lake Namtso, Tibet.
CARL LAVERY
The Paradox of the Writer
The piece takes its name from Denis Diderot's famous eighteenth century essay the Paradox of the Actor. Simone will speak my words to an audience. She will do this through a microphone. The audience hear her breath and catch the punctuation. Everything magic is rooted in distance of some sort. I hope to show that every writer is a writer of distance.
SILVIA LEAL / G.E.M.A
Stand still
“Somebody has told me, it’s summer solstice.”
“Yes, I’m investigating whether the sun is really standing still.”
“Continue…”
“ I need you to stand still For just one minute. Film the landscape to frame the sun’s position in the sky against the horizon. The card you pick will reveal the hour you are entrusted to observe.”
“How?”
“With a digital camera. Prompt action is called for, you have until midnight to upload the film. I will have 4 hours from UK midnight / 9PM BR, to edit the films into a sequence to be projected on Monday 21st at 17:17 (BR) here in Rio.”
MANIFESTO CLUB
The politics of free movement
What is free movement today? How do visa restrictions, technologies of control and surveillance, acts of resistance and creative acts highlight distance/absence/non-presence? Is SKYPE and other communication technologies a force for good, or bad, in these times of Fortress UK? A discussion chaired by Manick Govinda, from Manifesto Club, with contributing speakers, Dolan Cummings– Culture Wars, Sonya Dyer - Chelsea Programme Borderline Project, Valerie Hartwich - Manifesto Club, Mark McGowan – Artist"
MARK MCGOWAN
Please Fergive Me
In an extraordinary art performance artist Mark McGowan is to crawl on his hands and knees from the Salvation Army Mothers Hospital in Clapton Pond to Buckingham Palace an incredible 7.1 miles. McGowan will have a sign on his back saying,"Please Fergive Me", and a picture of Sarah Ferguson when she was a princess. The art event is an attempt to say sorry for Fergie's recent indiscrestion taking on issues of shame and the scapegoat. ergie said on Oprah Winfrey show, "you look at the devil in the face. Then you fogive." " McGowan says, "I see this performance as a penance for Fergie."
SINEAD O'DONNELL & POSHYA KAKL
Disobedient Spirits
Poshya (Kurdistan) and Sinead (Belfast) have never met. Not for real anyway. Poshyas political and geographical identity prevents her from traveling internationally like any other artist. It is possible that she will eternally be denied a visa. Ignoring these barriers and with the assistence of other artists Poshya can cross borders by transmitting actions live to camera to places beyond her reach. They will both transmit actions towards each other and at the same time. You are their only witness.
CHRIS OKERBERG & CARA BROSTROM
Freedom Trail
A battery powered radio and a red line snaking on the ground re-creates a popular tourist destination in Boston, Massachusetts. Through a recounting of the Revolutionary War narrative familiar to all US Citizens, Freedom Trail traces the cultural line in the sand that indicates the distance between the US and the UK. These warring accounts of Boston place in high relief the distances separating individual and nation.
OR-BITS.COM LANDS DAVID RULE
Street View
The landing of David Rule's work 'Street View'* into the festival marks the beginning of or-bits.com 's exploration into presenting works in translations, moving between and across the online and offline.
The piece approaches the logistical rigour and helpless stasis of Google's Street View photography with a series of texts, recollections accounting for Google's voids, written with the imagined wisdom of both fore and hindsight. The reader's efforts to activate each text is accompanied by the unlikely task of entering the full web address by hand, so including the real possibility of getting lost and the real reward of a journeyed destination.
* Rule's work is part of the 'on-looking' programme online from the 14th June.
STEVEN OUNANIAN
Me Dummy
In 2008, I developed a robot to be with my mother in America so that we could be connected. The robot has never worked properly. I will give a demonstration of the prototype along with a lecture and discussion dealing with the the future of family-life, in an age where science-fact mimics science-fiction, and where technology and religion combine to make us better. "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K Dick
Ritual Ride (Film)
Documents a 1,000 mile journey from London to Findhorn Spiritual Community and Eco-Viliage in Scotland. Steven Ounanian rode his tandem bicycle on this trip in the hopes of picking people up along the way to join him on his quest for spiritual enlightenment through nature. This awkward (but strangely cathartic) documentary promises partial nudity, a dead badger, and a spiritual created for a McDonalds in Doncaster (among other manic tricks).
PAUL PESCADOR
Yawns, 2010
I collected my yawns in small ziplock bags, labelled them with the date, time, and location and mailed them to the Distance festival. Throughout the duration of this event, visitors will be invited to open the packages and the zip lock bags. Despite the distance these yawns have travelled, from Los Angeles to London, the gesture becomes a proposition for the viewer to reactivate the action. I use these gestures as a means to evoke emotional reactions and social engagement.
PLAN B
You, me and everywhere we go
Since April 2003, Daniel Belasco Rogers has recorded every journey he has taken with a GPS, out of a desire to see how he was learning about a new city as well as a greater desire to see a drawing of his life. In 2007 Sophia New also began to record all of her journeys in order to compare the subtleties of our different journeys around the same city and those times we are on other sides of the world.
'You, me and everywhere we go' is the bringing together of this data in visual form both in the as large archive quality inkjet prints (giclée prints)and a computer animation (using Processing) of two GPS data streams represented as lines drawing themselves on a split screen. The two halves of the screen look the same when we are together but follow one individual to, for instance, Tokyo, while the other stays in Berlin. In the prints one sees that daily repeated journeys become main arteries that define how and where we are living: a thick, reiterated street, due to GPS imprecision, bleeds out of the width of the actual streets that it traces. The thin, one-line marks attest to unique and memorable journeys to new territory in a familiar city.
PLATFORM
Proximity: The Gulf of Mexico is happening here
PLATFORM, Art Not Oil, and Liberate Tate come together to discuss art,
ethics and funding, and why there's a gusher of activism against oil
company sponsorship of the arts and culture which won't be plugged.
Discuss the arguments, join Art Not Oil's 6 year campaign, and get
seriously active with Liberate Tate.
SEARCH PARTY
Save Me
Using lights instead of language, Search Party attempt to test the boundaries of intimacy. Stationed at either end of a busy street Search Party send Morse Code messages to one another using high powered nautical torches. The conversation is recorded, the miscommunications documented and passers by are encouraged to help decipher the messages and draft responses. Save Me explores ideas of separation, belonging, and S.O.S messages. Save Me is part of Search Party’s ongoing research into duality, geography and dialogue in live art.
AMY SHARROCKS
Lost and Found
Like an air traffic controller with no GPS, Amy Sharrocks will guide walkers back to base through their mobile phone which they may also use to photograph their route. A kind of urban drift, each walk will be orchestrated ‘by chance’, offering a derive and detournement, before bringing people safely home. Come for a walk with me this Saturday. Meet me at STK, give me your mobile number, and I’ll tell you where to go. Each walk will last approximately 40 minutes, and I will attempt to guide you home, like an air traffic controller with no GPS. i will stay on the line at all times. I will try to keep track of you. Come for a walk, and take me with you, remotely. Taking the TV remote and the air traffic controller’s child coming on air as its starting point, LOST & FOUND questions how much effort we make for our own experiences, what kind of choices and control we accept, and what is our remote experience in an increasingly televised world, always at one remove. How can we stay ‘in touch’ with someone when they go away and what kind of impoverishment or enrichment does this entail: the intimacy of a voice in your ear versus a continued absence. These ideas of remoteness, and ‘putting some space between us’ can of course risk estrangement and loss. How do we set about travelling, and how do we explore a city or a neighbourhood, now we can have google maps direct us from our phone? Is there any chance to get lost any more? A kind of urban drift, where you may not get to follow your chosen path.
I will try not to lose anyone.
I will try not to lose anyone.
JEN SOUTHERN
From Reservoir to Tap
The aritst carries a small bottle of water 10 miles from King Georges reservoir to STK. Her walk will be broadcast to the Distance exhibition. Download the iphone app ‘comob net’ and join her at a distance to share the journey that your drinking water takes from reservoir to tap. This walk is part of an ongoing exploration of comobility, the social and spatial relationships between people in motion.
Download the free iphone app comob net from the app store. To participate on the day open 'comob net', go to settings, enter a username and the group name R2T. Turn show names ON, proximity sensor OFF, select satellite and all. Return to map view. You should now see everyone who is viewing the walk from a distance and Jen the walker with her name displayed as JenWalking.
JOHN DI STEFANO
Hub
A 24 minute single-channel video about airports. It consists of footage shot over many years and chronicles my own migrating trajectory as I moved across the globe during a period of my life. It is also a reflection on the idea of home and posits that movement itself might be a new site of belonging, and thus the airport a new type of “home”.
STOKE NEWINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Challenge Amitesh
A game somewhere between Fun House, Super Mario Kart, Challenge Anneka and Monopoly. Via Skype, teams attempt to place Delhi landmarks onto a corresponding map on the floor of STK. London players are guided by Delhi teams via laptops they carry on their bellies. Both locations and teams exist as previously unknown 'others', they must attempt collaborative spacial awareness in order to succeed.
VIVI TELLAS (Argentina)
Mi Padre vive en una estrella
My Father Lives on a Star
The renowned artist and theatre director will skype in from Buenos Aires into a seance with a Voodoo medium. Vivi will try to contact her dead, spanish speaking father through the spiritualist, and through the strange ghostly medium of video conferencing.
THEY ARE HERE
"You need to call Southern with your hearing aids in”
In this 5 minute one-on-one performance you partake in a re-enactment of a conversation between Helen Walker and her grandmother, Mary Jenkins.Mary Jenkins is profoundly deaf and due to have a cataract operation on July 7th. You are Mary Jenkins.
A message in semaphore
“Hi Helen. Shame you couldn’t be here, all is well so far, how’s Berlin?” Helen, is in Berlin this weekend. Harun, the other half, will provide an update on events via semaphore flags to Helen. "
CAROLINA VASQUEZ & BETHAN MARLOW
Play on Sound
Video footage filmed in Malawi is projected onto a welsh mountainside. At the same time Malawian and Welsh songs of happiness are sang. The images and songs are beamed into STK using Skype.
VERY SMALL KITCHEN / DAVID BERRIDGE & MIRJA KOPENEN
The Shadow of a train
A resting space for distance. Between script and exhibition, word and writer, writer and reader, word and word, London and Edinburgh, David Berridge and Mirja Kopenen.
CECILIA WEE
Getting Intimate - On/Off-Line.
Curator and writer Cecilia Wee leads a discussion exploring temporal, geographical and bodily notions of intimacy. Reflecting on their individual practices as well as the festival as a whole, visual cultures writer Dr. Stephanie Polsky, together with festival artists including Steven Ounanian and Jen Southern (who will present her COMOB project on Sunday), Marialaura Ghidini, curator of Or-bits online art production and display platform, examine the value of intimacy today.
