Co-Artistic Director Janet reflects on the 5G Explorer programme (2/2).
When Coventry University approached Talking Birds about taking part in the 5G Explorer project, we decided to open the opportunity out to some of our ‘freelance family’ to take part with us. We knew that both Steph Ridings (who has worked with us in both a writing and producing capacity) and film maker Rachel Bunce had been developing projects that might benefit from the use of this kind of technology and so the three of us worked together as ‘Team TBs’ for the duration of the project.
Co-Artistic Director Janet reflects on the 5G Explorer programme.
In 2005, I gave one of the ‘Hothaus Papers’ talks at Vivid. My talk was entitled ‘Are theatre-makers natural net artists?’ and explored some of the crossover techniques that Talking Birds and others were adapting from our experimental theatre practice to the – then relatively new – practice of making natively digital artworks that existed purely on the internet, arguing (spoiler alert) that it was a pretty good fit.
Sinéad Brady reflects on her recent Nest Residency
When I saw Talking Birds’ call out for Nest residents as studio space had recently become available, it felt like the perfect time to grab the books I’d wanted to read for a while, but not had the time or space, gather my old notes on the topic I wanted to explore and delve deeper into the texts I’d recently written. I was ready to jump back into an idea I’d been thinking about for a while, and I was excited about getting to work around other creative people.
My residency took place in Helloland, a super comfortable and compact studio space with a calming view of the canal.
It was a dream come true to have space to spread out and hang my research, thoughts and questions on the wall. I brought with me old research and ideas for plays I hadn’t been able to return to for a while and I spread out them out on the tables and walls. Suddenly they were tangible and seemed possible again.
For a few years I’ve been interested in exploring how healthy I can be as an individual in an unhealthy world. How much is my health and self-care my own responsibility? This interest has only grown since the start of the pandemic, as we’ve been called to practice, and reflect on the meaning of, collective care and since even more responsibility has fallen on us as individuals to make decisions regarding our health.
After several stimulating chats with the Talking Birds team and a really helpful, constructive call with Caroline Galvis, a Berlin based theatre maker and fellow co-founder of international Rule of Three Collective, where I talked through my ideas and the reasons why I wanted to explore the topic, I was getting closer to narrowing down my research to one urgent question: How much can we care for ourselves in an uncaring world?
When I applied to the Nest Residency, I had an idea of the scripts I wanted to develop, and potentially combine, but I ended up not only working on those scripts, but also digging out a poem I wrote in lockdown about how difficult I find processing the news. I started bringing things together I didn’t expect to, like combining this poem with movement exploring self-care.
After a week of delving into scripts, I felt it would be beneficial l to invite another theatre maker into the space as an outside eye on my ideas and my writing. Angela Mhlanga, a Coventry based actor, writer and director kindly came into the Nest and read my scripts out loud with me. It was invaluable to hear Angela read the plays out loud and the chats we had about them afterwards really helped me develop each idea – thank you Angela!
By the end of the week, I was able to start thinking about what mediums would work for each script and how they could all work together in a multimedia installation with live performance, audio and film.
The Nest Residency gave me the chance to revisit an idea without feeling like I was restarting. It gave me the space to realise how far I’d come with my research and script writing. By the end of my residency, I also felt so proud of how far I’ve come as an artist through such a politically and financially difficult time. I’m extremely grateful to Talking Birds for this opportunity and for all the interesting and supportive chats we had during my Nest Residency.
I applied for a NEST residency to revisit my personal archive of sound recordings, distributed across a number of drives in my studio. I was interested in collating and catalogue recordings which connected to the subject of the wind: some of these would be recordings made incidentally during the production of moving-image projects, others captured with the specific intention of recording the ambiental sounds of wind. In reality, this time spent cataloguing and editing during the residency formed part of a wider process of listening, reading and thinking about the connections between the medium of sound, and that of the wind.
The NEST residencies offer artists time and space to research and experiment without the pressure of producing an outcome. My last five years have been mainly dedicated to two experimental film projects produced collaboratively with composer Abul Mogard, Kimberlin (2019) and Phoenix City 2021 (2021). For me the residency was, first and foremost, an opportunity to step away from ‘projects’, and to instead return to thinking widely about the medium and nature of sound – my primary medium before transitioning to the field of artists’ moving-image. So, whilst researching future work around the subject of the wind, this residency was also an opportunity to think deeply about the medium which has driven my creative thinking in the visual arts.
Thinking through some analogies…
The wind is usually considered problematic for sound recordists, who look for ways to avoid its buffeting since it doesn’t play nicely with the delicate diaphragm of the microphone. The aggressive rumble of wind on the diaphragm tends to break with the transparency of the recording, and distracts from its intended subject. And yet to the naked ear, the sound of the wind can be beautiful, meditative, and even musical. Of course, the wind becomes sonorous only as it comes into contact with the surfaces of the earth, shaped by the contours of the landscape. The soughing of the wind give voice to the world, and bring its contours into relief, much like the rain in this famous passage from John Hull’s Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness:
“Rain has a way of bringing out the contours of everything; it throws a coloured blanket over previously invisible things; instead of an intermittent and thus fragmented world, the steadily falling rain creates continuity of acoustic experience… I feel as if the world, which is veiled until I touch it, has suddenly disclosed itself to me.”
Sound, like the wind, is shaped by the contours of the landscape, flowing through and around, colliding and reflecting off its relatively immovable surfaces. Land, vegetation and buildings shape airflow, and inside our buildings the walls and furniture likewise sculpt our experience of sound, and with it our perception of space.
Sound is also tactile in a way which directly corresponds to the materiality of the wind: the thudding bass of the sound system pounds the chest and the gut, and is felt through the sensitive soles of the feet. In the world external to us, the forms we perceive as sound (once interpreted through our nervous systems) are, like the wind, movements of air molecules provoked by changes of pressure. I have a particular memory, an epiphany with some parallels to that described in John Hull’s passage on the rain, in which I recall my attention being brought to the susurration of the wind through a group of trees in front of me, in an apparent ‘bringing to life’ of the world around me. Seconds later I felt the same air which I had just observed animating leaves of the trees a few yards away, now brushing against my cheek – a moment of synaesthesia through which a particular understanding of the physical world came into focus. An entire set of relations momentarily became ‘visible’ for me through this ‘medium-in-between’, which connects us to the world.
Thinking through this analogy, it is an unexpected outcome of this residency to find myself returned to one of my first sound works: my degree show piece Gunshot Corridor (1999). Installed in a 30-metre long corridor in the sculpture department at Kingston University, this early work has proved foundational to my understanding of sound as medium. It was an ephemeral work in which the negative space of the corridor was animated by the intermittent sound of gunshots, which rifled down the passageway, fleetingly breaking the inert quiet of the space. The movement of air of the gunshot, and that produced by the movement of the physical cones of the loudspeaker enter into an analogous relation, as the acoustic pressure wave is briefly made ‘visible’ in the negative space of the corridor. I pursued the expression of this set of relations through a number of installation works at the time, including a series of site-specific pieces which employed the sound of pigeon wings as metaphor for the movement of sound.
Bullet Shock Wave (1970), Harold E. Edgerton, courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum
The respiration of the world
Amongst the sound recordings in my personal archive which I returned to during my NEST residency, I ended up spending a lot of time listening to recordings from a particular project The Creature in Between (2016). The Creature in Between was a pilot project initiated by Claudia Fontes, an experimental colaboratorio taking place in a Wichí community in the north of Argentina (with sculptor Elba Bairron, photographer Guadalupe Miles and hacker Mateo Carabajal). The project was conceived as an intermedia and intercultural exploration of what it means to be a person living in the world with other creatures, in which “artists, hackers, potters, writers and musicians will come together to collaborate in creative processes, finding novel ways of translating their perceptions across cultures, generations, languages and species”.
During the 10-day residence I worked closely with Mawó Mendoza, a member of the Wichí community who took me daily to sites in the savannah where he would attempt to share with me his deep understanding of the acoustic language of his natural environment – and where we would produce a series of over 25 collaborative field recordings. These recordings culminated – at least it felt like a culmination, I’m not sure this was merely my perception or whether Mawó had intended it this way – in two recordings of the sounding of a sacred object, which I now know to known in the English language as a bull-roarer, but which Mawó described to me as “the caller of the winds”. This delicately carved wooden object, shaped like a slightly twisted leaf attached to a long string, was traditionally used by the Wichí shaman to “call the four winds into conference” in times of drought. In Mawó’s understanding of the world, without the wind we cannot breathe and the plants shrivel (and of course, this is entirely true: it is the wind that moves clouds and brings moisture across great distances).
When I listen to these recordings now, they seem to synthesise a set of relations which trace a line from the analogy of sound to wind (the object which Mawó called “the caller of the winds”, known in the wichí language as Lhayialh, is effectively a sounding instrument which displaces air as it is swung in a circular motion), to interactions between Mawó and the birds around us via this instrument. Listening across other of our recordings, I hear other moments in which birds of varied species appear to be reacting – somehow animated but I can’t speculate as to what is really going on – to the changing intensities of the wind, in the exact same ways that they appear to react to Mawó’s bull-roarer.
Sounding clay vessels produced collaboratively during The Creature in Between (2016). The making of the vessels was undertaken at a communal table once the direction and speed of the wind was considered favourable for this act of creation. Image by Guadalupe Miles, courtesy of The Appreciation Society.
In Wichí tradition and thinking, the wind is understood as synonymous with breath – and I think it is principally this lesson from the Creature in Between which led me to be sat at the NEST revisiting these recordings, ideas and memories. The Wichí people and other of the ‘pueblos originarios’ (‘original communities’) do not deal with trivia, their folk tales tend to deal with the essential knowledge which is central not only to their own survival, but moreover to the harmony of the entire natural order.
Lhayiahl (2016), by Duncan Whitley and Mawó Mendoza. Audio track selected for The Slow Bird, curated by Claudia Fontes for Affective Affinities the 33rd São Paulo Biennial 2018.
I don’t yet feel able to draw together everything which I began to unpack during the two-week residency into a neat form (and I am a long way from these strands becoming reconfigured into the form of an artwork), but what the residency has enabled for me is to identify a number of threads from which I could plan out future research.. The residency went beyond a realisable process of identifying and collating recordings in my personal archive, to a far messier process of throwing onto the table a set of sounds, memories and concepts which have haunted me since my first visit to Argentina in 2016 (and perhaps since I first began to study contemporary art in the late 1990’s). The next phase of this work will be to take these strands of this residency research into a practice-based exploration through sound, perhaps piece by piece through further small residencies or commissions.
Sym Mendez reflects on their recent Nest Residency
STEP 1: You have absolutely nothing to prove to anyone. Here is your formal written permission to just exist within your lived experience.
These were the words I wrote to myself on the very first day of my Hatching residency at The Nest. Choosing to explore something so intimate as chronic pain as a performer and movement artist is relatively new to me. So used to over or under explaining myself – I could never unpack this layered experience in a way that best suited me until having a studio, space, time and freedom to do so here at The Nest, within my Space Odyssey. Being at The Nest – a place with access rooted within its infrastructure – was the first time I didn’t have to think about doing anything other than simply exploring. When I removed the imposter syndrome, fear and guards around my artistry, pain and practise- there was suddenly enough space to stretch into the fullness of my creative potential.
My first step within this journey was to ask where my pain lies – what does it say? I worked my way through and down – slowly – acquainting myself with deep knots and aches, conversing with dormant corners of myself. I held my body with a level of compassion that I didn’t have the space to do previously.
I was accompanied by two books throughout my 10 days of residency: The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel A. van der Kolk and Sacred Pain by Ariel Glucklich. I used these texts to unearth a deeper understanding of my own pain, where it comes from and how I also use pain for transcendence. Do these things contradict one another – and have I internalised beliefs around my pain that exacerbate suffering? Once I could gauge for myself the different avenues of pain that make up my embodied existence – I was curious to speak with other artists and movers about their chronic pain too (which Talking Birds happily financed so that the conversations wouldn’t become extractive or exploitative).
Knowing where to start with questions, thoughts and prompts to present to other artists proved more difficult than expected – does speaking about my own spiritual beliefs and thoughts on transgenerational pain undermine the experiences of others? How do we speak honestly without re-traumatising each other? How do I speak without assuming our experiences are universal? – and it wasn’t until the end of my first week that I finally had some semblance of a structure.
Conversations with other artists really enabled me to formulate my own thoughts, and from thoughts into potential performance. Topics such as crip time, grief, shame, internalised belief systems and movement/ motion beyond the physical body helped me to simplify all of the questions buzzing around my mind and begin to create something that speaks to the depth of my experience.
Having the safety and support of Talking Birds and The Nest gave me the ‘permission’ to create without rigid expectations, to dive in whilst knowing I won’t drown, to hold a gentle and nurturing space where it is impossible to do anything other than play and create without restriction. Who knows when this piece will fully come to fruition. What I do know is that I can leave my residency with the understanding that I have the capacity to create something enriching. I have ideas I can persevere with when I’m afforded the privilege of resource.
Emily Tyler reflects on her Nest Residency earlier this year
Since I heard that Coventry was to hold the accolade of UK city of culture for 2022 I’ve been excited. I’ve found that other creatives have felt that it hasn’t been as positive as it could be. With the main events heavily weighted towards artists from the rest of the country, creatives have been feeling ignored. They have spoken loudly about this being a missed opportunity. I’m inclined to disagree on this subject, mainly because I haven’t stopped all year, and have not directly been employed by the official channels.
I have been a photographer longer then I’ve been a painter. And my dreadful film photographs did little to document my life or even be in focus. But with the invention of the digital camera, and later the camera phone, like many people I take photos of everything from food, to my child to times out with friends. But mostly I have found that it is a brilliant tool in which to share a unique view through your eyes that is easy to understand.
I created a map of Coventry to root this project to its geological routes. I used colour and texture to transport this image from a tool into a feeling and mood enhancer which reflects the cultural tapestry which I feel represents our city.
This project has been about how the general public are the important audience this year, those people who might not attend a gallery, events or a performance normally. For those that think arts are elitist and unrelated to their life. During these times where our current government is cutting arts funding left, right and centre, it shows that not only is it an important part of everyday life, but a way to build communities, bring money into the city, but something that can enhance your life.
As an artist I always start out taking my own photos, and editing them into the image that I want before I start to draw it paint. With this in mind, I decided I wanted to do a project which showed the peoples view of the City of Culture 2021 by collecting other peoples photos of events.
We are living in an age where language is becoming more visual then ever. People abbreviate words, use a sentence or two to describe a picture, and although I’m a bibliophile, I am first and foremost a visual learner and sharer.
Photo courtesy of Talking Birds
What I thought I needed to support the project when I began at my Talking Birds Nest Residency was space to work, and advice on how to reach the general population within the city.
But I quickly found that although a studio space is useful for creating a large canvas, as a part-time extrovert and general clutterbug, I didn’t actually enjoy being in an empty space on my own. I found that the loneliness was not something that worked well for me. This is possibly because of my dyslexia and my mental health problems.
As part of the residency deal, a mentor was found for me to help me with my social media coverage. Tara Rutledge is an artist and social media guru who currently works for Imagineers within the same building as Talking Birds (Daimler) and is currently working on a “up my street “ project with ArtSpace and embarking on her own art residency with Talking Birds.
The two issues are complicated. Firstly, I need to share more of my work in progress posts, and make it more personal so that people relate to me better. Next I need to post stories more often, to keep my work in peoples’ awareness. Also I need to make my posts more chatty so that they are more understandable and people get what I’m trying to do, and how easy it is to take part!
As part of the career progression part of my social media, the above will generally help, but using the right tags and hashtags will also pull in people who are looking for the type of work I offer. Simple planning of posts and posting at the right times also can help.
All this said, social media is not the only thing I needed to do to be able to promote myself and my project. Media coverage, including digital newsletters was recommended, as well as focusing on certain publications and media outlets locally.
Fingers crossed that all this will help me to complete this project and increase the positive view of the City of Culture. And I hope to get this project displayed in the City Centre in the next few months!
With my mental health problems, I find that I lack physical and mental energy most days, and that being around people and bouncing ideas often helps to lift my mood and productivity.
Once I had my large canvas painted, I decided the best use of my residency time was to pick the brains of the team at Talking Birds on how to get the word out about my project, and how to market myself as an artist.
For my social media, I needed to appeal to two different demographics. The places that might want to commission me and my work, and those people who will share their pictures with me to show the city as a cultural place open to everyone.
Keep an eye on my social media @emilytylerartist for updates and further projects!
Vimal reflects on his recent Remote Nest Residency, creating a walking tour documented via a diary.
BBC interviewing about the walk
Diary
This is my remit Highlighting the culture and diversity of Coventry enabling people to see, taste, smell and hear stories of the people in the area via a walking tour.
Aim To create a walking tour with real stories celebrating the culture and diversity of the area
Day 1 OMG where do I start what do I need to do???!!!! Thoughts of places to explore:
I’ve always liked Fargo village and the diversity around there so maybe a good place to start?
Hindu Temples, gurdwaras, mosques
Information on the internet regarding diversity of Coventry
Yes some historical aspects but if people want to know about buildings, architecture this is not the tour for them!
Collecting stories from family and friends in the Coventry area
Day 2 Cinemas Ritz/Palladium – historically Indian cinemas – lots of information on forums. Lots of history regarding Asian communities buying cinemas via self funding, hindi movies and Sundays became a day out to the cinema for the Asian community. Decades later there were disputes regarding ownership. Possible to investigate further but currently too far from the Foleshill rd
Temples/gurdwaras near Foleshill Road:
First gurdwara built in Coventry is nearer the town centre – could be too far. Need something closer
Mosque being built on the Foleshill rd, the oldest one is on Eagle street built in 1962 Jaima Mosque
Thoughts I need to physically explore Foleshill Road and the main road which serves Fargo Village and see which stores could possibly be up for interviews and use their locations to tell the stories
Day 3 Found a video on the internet about Foleshill which is a good reference point. Foleshill the people’s hill
Thoughts what do people want to know about Foleshill road or roads near Fargo village? what would people like to experience? visiting several places of worship – could it be boring? Maybe I should just go into one place of worship and highlight the others?
It’s stories people enjoy Need to celebrate diversity
Day 4 It’s raining – cancelled visit to Foleshill Rd Thought – do I still want to do Foleshill Road or the road near Fargo village?
Day 5 It’s Foleshill Rd General Wolfe has played a big role in Foleshill rd, Irish communities, Afro Caribbean Music – Specials, Selecta
Interesting fact First ‘coloured’ Licencee 1962 Mr Frances – The Wheatsheaf pub. A fact to share and terminology used at that time.
Day 6 Research internet – Coventry facts – historical forums Lady Godiva – reenacted down Foleshill rd Watch manufacturers Blue Ribbon Cashs lane – the building and significance – known as Topshops
I don’t want to go into too much historical facts
Day 7 Went to Foleshill Road to interview a few retailers Interview with Tahims – Clothing retailor Interview with Shan Paan – Indian fancy goods Interview with Standard Indian sweets Interview with Iranian fish Mongers
Retail store Shaan Paan
Day 8 Spoke to Mehru Fitter who worked at Coventry library – for some possible leads
Day 9 Spoke to Anita P whose grandfather arrived from India and settled in Coventry in the 1950s He was a cotton farmer in India with a thriving business but had to leave everything after the partition – he ended up working in Courtaulds in Coventry. Story collated.
Thought Joshi’s Story needs to be told outside Courtaulds
Day 10 I do the walk on the Foleshill Road and find there is a big gap from Courtaulds to Shaan Paan.
Thoughts Need to find out what most of the businesses were before they became hairdressers Currently 8 hairdressers all next to one another Maybe interview a hairdresser?
Day 11 I listen to the recorded interviews and turn them into script
Day 12 I Go through the Coventry history archives and find some interesting facts Prince Charles visited Foleshill Road and also opened the Bangladeshi community centre on George Eliot Rd. Clint Eastwood had a role in the film Lady Godiva Phillip Larkin was born in Coventry
Thought Little snippets of info that can be shared during walk without going into too much information
Day 13 Visit Talking Birds Nest (Phillippa, Dez, Janet) and share ideas/stories about the walk. They give their views as to what stories they’ve enjoyed
I go onto Foleshill Road and note through chatting with owners of businesses in the hairdressing area that most of the retail stores are operated by Kurds
Thought This is Little Kurdistan I will refer this area as Little Kurdistan during the walk and talk about how vital the Kurd community has been in the development of this area of the Foleshill Rd
I Interview Lookman who owns a hairdresser – he was sent to Coventry!
Day 14 I transcribe Lookman’s interview
At Lookman’s Hairdressers
Day 15 I do research on temples, some are too far away from Foleshill Road, however I find there is one on George Eliot Road. A Hindu temple that serves mainly the Tamil community, with people originating from South India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia. I speak to the president about the idea of a walking tour, and he would be delighted if we brought people from other communities to pay the temple a visit. President of temple explains any rules that need to be observed. Photography and filming is fine.
Thought The temple has a wow factor I have knowledge of Hinduism so can share stories about gods and goddesses Significance of Ganesh This will be the starting point of the tour
Shri Sidhi Vinayagar Temple
I visit the Gurdwara on Foleshill Road, speak to one of the trustees who gives us permission to bring guests into Gurdwara as long as people respect the rules No cigarettes, no alcohol at any time. Filming and photography is fine Thoughts Share tenets of Sikhism 5 ks
Nanaksar Gurdwara Gursikh Temple
Day 16 Speak to Haroon from Active Inclusion regarding floating library on canal
Thoughts To include walk along canal side and share anecdote of Cash’s weavers
NP Aerospace is also on Foleshill Road Bespoke bomb disposal suits made – predominately by Asian community
Next to NP is a Gurdwara – different section of Sikh community – previously George Wilson gas meters
Interesting fact 4 air raid shelters on the Challenge cycles building on Foleshill Road
I visit Gem jewellers who have a wow factor with the Indian jewellery they sell. I explain walking tour and they will allow a visit.
Thoughts Stories regarding importance of gold in Asian community – dowry Mangle sutra – Given to wife by husband and significance of black beads in the gold chain
A short interview with Shanaz who has a material and clothing shop. Selling lengha, Salwar Kameez, dothis etc
Cash’s Weavers along canal side
Day 17 The walking tour is taking shape.
I decide on a route Hindu Temple George Eliot rd, Gurdwara Canal side Joshi’s story outside Courthaulds Walk to Little Kurdistan Lookmans story hairdressers – settlement Fishmongers – Aras story – Masgouf cooking NP Aeronautical – hand made bomb disposal Gem jewellers Shaan Paan – leaving Uganda Standard sweet centre – food stories with potato chapatti and mango lassi
Day 18 I take Dez to test walk
A success!!!!!! Market walk on social media
Day 19 I write a blurb and decide on a name for the Foleshill walking tour
Vimal’s Walks: Join Vimal for a multi-sensory walk celebrating the diverse and vibrant heritage of the Foleshill Road. Visiting temples and hearing the sacred stories of gods and goddesses, with a stroll along the canal side, a stop at an Indian fabric shop, a Kurdistani hairdresser, an Iraqi Fishmonger, A Ugandan fancy goods shop with anecdotes of settlement, food and success, finishing with a glass of cold mango lassi and a hot aloo porata. All experienced in a fun and relaxed way.
More bookings via Waterways weekend for the walking tour, interest from BBC Sounds
The walking tour over the two days is SOLD OUT!!
Big thanks to Talking Birds, Derek Nisbet, Janet Vaughan, Philippa Cross, Dom Watson, Frances Yeung
Developed during a Nest Residency with Talking Birds. Performances supported by Coventry 2021 Green Futures programme.
Paul Daly and Adele M Reed reflect on their recent Nest Residency.
For me, the sense of liberty that TB’s residency offers is the foundation to why it deserves most of its plaudits. It’s been so refreshing to focus on practice without expectations and time pressure, I gained so much from exploring without any sense of anxiety or stress.
Sharing the space with Adele elevated the experience tenfold, allowing for a constant dialogue and reflection on both our practices. We staggered our days at the space, on reflection this actually benefitted us with further mental prep and insight before fully sharing our thoughts and aspirations to one another. Adele brought a playful impulsive energy to proceedings, something I have lost to a degree with my own work, this is likely one of the main things I wish to reintroduce to my practice in some form. Just revelling in a fully rewarding experience with our Adele, especially considering how each of our compulsions and obsessions are delicately interwoven into our work. So pleased we had this opportunity to dive in together.
Other main takeaways are a refreshed confidence with my main creative focuses, a plan of action following the completion of a 7 year project, more undying love for analogue, and some of that bountiful optimism which is to be cultivated and injected into the next career phase.
To top it all off, we were seen off with an in-kind chippy tea. This should speak volumes of the generosity and earthly nature of the Talking Birds team, a constant calm presence that made the experience that much more enjoyable. This is a golden opportunity for local artists.
By Paul Daly
Dear readers, apply for a Talking Birds residency! Rare is this kind of supported opportunity, a deep level of trust is gifted to you with respect for the artist, at its core. This treasured period of time affirmed many things – the cruciality of open space and time, the importance of dialogue with like minded souls, the joy of art in its myriad forms, the necessity to rest between heartening, powerful moments of revelation.
I went into the residency with Paul with one particular commitment in mind – to chronicle our eclectic shared interests and fast-moving insightful conversations. We play off each other in a very organic, uncontrived and playful way, and therefore decided to name our documentary blog ‘Rapide 40 Slideout’ – the title of a drain we walked over on the way to Daimler Powerhouse on our first day. Rapide 40 Slideout evolved into a collaborative, thriving breathing beast (in other words it became an obsessive tendency for me) of 122 posts in 10 days. Please explore it, if you’d like to delve inside the flying sparks of our minds, via emailing us to request link – adelemreed@yahoo.co.uk or pdalyphoto@gmail.com
Polaroid making and manipulating became a notable focus, each day of the residency creating one new image each to either tamper with or keep as is. Audio play featured heavily also and Derek lent us Janet’s father’s condenser pencil microphone which taught me that my cheap cassette player is capable of far more satisfying analogue recording than I knew possible. I read gothic art literature and local historical crime and watched a plethora of international films on Mubi. And we spoke about the key themes within our work. I found these sessions particularly fascinating, unearthing parts of our motives that perhaps go far too often unexplored, unprobed. Many motives lie in politics, religion, upbringing, and so forth. The question was: why do we do this? What are the roots of our respective compulsions?
I was surprised by the residency, for just how much it supported me, and as I first proclaimed: will be shouting about it and Talking Birds ongoing!
Daz and Martha from calico reflect on their recent Nest Residency.
We recently completed our first ever residency with Talking Birds. On our Hatching Residency, the Talking Birds team granted us time, space, advice and support, to try out a completely new idea. We had a week to play and explore, to create without any time pressure or expectation to produce. It was joyful, transformative, scary, and at times, a complete nightmare.
This was the most time we have had to explore an idea in, well, forever. We are so used to time-sensitive making, to cramming rehearsal time into commission opportunities and giving ourselves impossibly small amounts of time to create entire shows. And we are good at it, we have found a rhythm to working to the tick of the clock, built up stamina for the create-perform-create-perform way of working.
We expected to keep up our pace; that we’d finish our week at the Nest with a whole new show, maybe two, with reams of polished content and new ideas to deep dive into. But, in reality, when Talking Birds told us to take our time, and expected nothing from us, we stopped in our tracks. The clock stopped ticking.
Sometimes, we were our own time-keepers, keeping our pace and continually pushing from idea to idea, medium to medium, trying out as many things as we possibly could in one day. We had this space, these people, this time, and we had to use every second of it creatively. We danced, we jumped, we played with shadows, with clothes, we drew, we wrote, we explored video, improvised, choreographed, imagined. On these days, the possibilities felt endless, that we could generate so much, interrogate our idea so deeply, all in one day.
On other days, we had no idea what to do. There was too much time. We couldn’t keep up the pace. So we slowed down. We took more breaks, and longer breaks, basking in the sun by the canal. We abandoned The Nest and treated ourselves to a long lunch out. At first, we felt guilty for running out of steam, for killing time. But then we had new ideas, we reflected on what we had made and saw our ideas from new perspectives. We also reflect on the way we work, and on the landscape and reality that has made us feel like taking your time is time-wasting. But at the Nest, there is quite literally no waste. Everything is composted, recycled and reused, and this, like any good thing, takes time.
Our Nest residency gave us the time to learn how to slow down. The reality of the fast-paced, product-focussed environment that we are now re-entering means that the clock will, inevitably, start ticking again. But we are so grateful for the Talking Birds, sharing their space, their ways of working, and their time, with us.
I am taking two weeks, one either side of chocolate-gorging at Easter, to spend time immersed in fairy stories, folk tales, legends, and fables and work out how I might write something in response, along those lines that reach so far back into our collective past and persists into our messy and fragmented present. Maybe I can even jump into the future and look back at where we are now? Maybe that’s a little ambitious for a two-week period but it’s good to aim high, even if I just read some great stories and get a few ideas.
There are certain characters, ideas, formulas, and progressions of events that repeat themselves, in different contexts and wearing different clothes, in the stories that we share and enjoy that have been present from the beginning of storytelling and are still with us today. There are a whole set of ideas, circumstances and narratives that come to mind when someone says the name ‘Cinderella’, ‘Snow White’ or the phrases Let There Be Light! or The Chosen One. Stories are how we make sense of the world and inform how we navigate and interact with it. I’ve found thinkers and writers like Johnathan Pageua and Jordan Peterson fascinating in their unpacking of biblical stories in that regard – well what portion of it I can keep up with, anyway!
It’s a real privilege to have a room, a quiet space with wi-fi and books, with none of the distractions and obligations that come with trying to do this at home. I love being at home (which is a good thing, considering that last two years) but there are other people and animals that come in and out of rooms, people that knock the front door, guitars to be picked up, paint and pens, records, incomplete DIY jobs, things to tidy, laundry and washing up to distract and interrupt me. Here I have the luxury of time to dedicate thought and energy to something I hope I can form into a bigger project in the future.
At the moment I’m still trying to absorb stories and ideas, but I’ve written a little piece about a dragon that attacks Coventry and something about a metal detectorist finding a Golden Key…
The Nest is a fantastic place to be, amongst other creative people working in all kinds of disciplines. I’ve already bumped into a photographer and a dancer I know, passing between my room and the communal area downstairs. Now, I just need to find someone who might want to do some illustrations….
It’s now the end of the second week in my little office. I’ve met some more interesting folks working here and shared some of my writing with some, and as my time here comes to an end, I know I’m going to miss what such an environment has given me.
I’ve read more but nowhere near everything I’d want to (so many books, so little time!) and I’ve written a few more pieces. I worried I might not be able to get back into the rhythm of it after a break, but ideas have obviously been percolating and then insisting on being put on the page just as I’m trying to read another story.
The stories of Kurt Schwitter are bizarre, funny and brilliant, Katherine M Briggs’ British Folk Tales and Legends – A Sampler has been really useful, as have Lisa Schneidau’s Botanical Folk Tales along with Chainey & Winsham’s Treasury of Folklore.
It doesn’t help that Talking Birds’ small library downstairs is full of incredibly interesting and distracting titles too (I borrowed Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild and Other Stories over Easter and didn’t regret it, although I’m not sure it tied into my practice here other than highlighting some useful stuff about the practice of writing with a short contextual essay after each piece.)
There’s been some positive responses to whatever I’ve shared which has been encouraging. I wrote a retelling of an old French tale where a young lord marries a water sprite and I’ve started a retelling of the early life of Lady Godiva, when she was just called Evie.
I’ve struggled to get a foothold on something truly from the future perspective. After finding a map of the predicted flooding and redrawn coastline of the UK in 100 years’ time I really wanted to respond to that, setting a story on the Isle of Rasen where the market town of Middle Rasen now lies in Lincolnshire but that’ll have to wait to solidify a bit more.
I’ve been drawn to Fairies, or as I now know to call them The Gentry or The Good People and have a couple of pieces concerning encountering them in a more modern context.
As an over-arching theme I’ve been mulling over the idea of the ‘other’ or the ‘magical’ that features in so many stories and drawn to considering it all in a revised way; I think there is a lot to be gained from understanding and appreciating the symbolic reality of things and what they represent and manifest for us in the stories we tell and enjoy. We live in an age so dominated by scientific practice that to even deal with things like spirits and spells is at once dismissed as childish. Fantasy as a genre isn’t considered as worthy or important as say historical fiction because it involves things that have no basis in physical, manifest reality. If something can’t be observed, recorded, and quantified does it even exist?! Well, what does that say about your very own consciousness, eh…?
I think it’s probably important to remember the following, and it’s something that has been known eons before and is being slowly remembered and reconfirmed in physics labs today; what you observe to be real is very dependent on what and who is observing. Therefore, what is true might well depend a lot on you. So, just bear that in mind next time you turn the corner into your street and come face to face with a fox in the moonlight.
Leanne Moden reflects on her recent Nest Residency
At the end of April 2022, I spent a beautiful, sunny week in Coventry with Talking Birds, as part of their Hatching Residency.
I was really excited to work on a completely new idea – a one-person show based on my recent experiences of chronic illness – and the residency gave me the headspace to finally start the process of thinking about the project, rather than just thinking about thinking about it.
In 2021, I had a sudden and frightening period of ill-health, and the experience really showed me how invisible and chronic illnesses are often treated in the UK. I wanted to explore the highs and lows that come from navigating the world with a chronic condition, with a view to turning this into a piece of autobiographical theatre.
One of the things that struck me most about getting sick was how worried I became about ‘not being useful”. When I was incapacitated by my condition, all I thought about was how much time I was taking off work, and how inconvenient I was being to those around me. That made me think about the current societal narratives around productivity, usefulness, and community, in relation to illness and disability.
During my first couple of days on the residency, I did a lot of thinking, note-taking, and reading, and I wrote pages and pages of stream of consciousness narrative. At the end of each day, I worried that I hadn’t written enough, or used my time as wisely as I could. This was pretty ironic, given I was meant to be writing about productivity and rest! So, by Wednesday, I vowed to just go with the flow, and not get too het up about “being productive”.
As a result, I spent the final few days writing around the themes of the show, as well as plotting the story arc, thinking about how “Deal Or No Deal” might be the perfect metaphor for the Just World Hypothesis, and generally getting super excited about what I was writing.
I also found time to write a draft for a commissioned piece for an unrelated project, and I spent a day working through my current archive of poetry – finding stuff that I’d started but failed to finish, and earmarking it for editing in the summer.
It was almost as if the fear of not being productive was causing me not to be productive. It all felt a bit meta, truth be told! But actually, it was all grist for the mill, and I wouldn’t have found time to consider my own relationship with “feeling useful” if I hadn’t had the time/space afforded by the residency.
It was also really lovely to meet and chat with other creative people during the lunches, and these serendipitous conversations were super inspiring too. I’d like to extend a huge thanks to everyone at Talking Birds for such a lovely, welcoming, and creative experience. I hope it won’t be too long until my next residency!
I have just completed a two week Nestival residency with the amazing Talking Birds organisation. The residency ran across two separate weeks in March 2022 (due to falling ill in-between the scheduled 10 day period) and took place inside The Nest; Talking Birds’ beautiful base adjacent to the Daimler Powerhouse on Coventry Canal.
The residency allowed me to take a break from work and gave me the space and the freedom to look at my project work with fresh eyes and excitement. I worked my way through my archive to start the lengthy process of curating my work into a photography book. Due to the nature of being freelance and constantly needing to look for work and move forwards towards the next job, whilst I always ensure I am shooting personal work and passion projects, I often struggle to find the time to develop and explore ideas in depth and work on the post production side. This residency gave me the freedom to delve into my hard drives and rediscover old work that has been untouched and unseen for weeks/months/years.
The first week consisted of trawling through hard drives and collating all of my images from a specific documentary project and then re-editing a chosen selection of images to be printed. The work in question was a documentary project shot around the UK over the past 7 years focusing on the bikelife subculture and movement. Revisiting old work with fresh eyes and new perspectives allowed me to view previously ignored work in a completely different light.
I then printed a wide selection of images for my second week at Talking Birds so that I could see the work in its physical form and as a ‘project’ for the first time. Having the space in the studio to lay out my photographs next to each other allowed me to see what worked together and create ‘categories’ and ‘collections’ of images. It also highlighted where the possible gaps are in the work, so that I can see what is missing and now plan what needs to be photographed in order to complete the project.
The Nest is a great creative hub, with clean and spacious studios to work from. I was lucky enough to experience two different studios due to my residency being spread across several weeks; Space Odyssey in my first week and Solid Blue in my second week. Changing my environment often leads to an increase in productivity and I was very lucky to have this unique experience of being able to enjoy two studios at The Nest.
An extra benefit was having interesting and inspiring conversations with staff and other residents. Other Coventry photographers were doing a different residency towards the end of my time at The Nest and I was able to show them my work for critique and exchange ideas / opinions.
Thank you to everyone I met at The Nest, I promise I won’t be a stranger. To any creatives in Coventry reading this, make sure you apply for a residency if you think you could benefit from it, as it’s such a great opportunity within the city.
Words from the Birds 