Give Me Something To Listen To (Hackney) Part I and II

Last week I planned a small, in-house version of Give Me Something To Listen To at ]performance space[ to try out a brand new, red booth i'm rocking at the Hackney Wick festival this weekend.

As I climbed into the booth at the entrance of the space, i spied a gate in the canal wall that surrounds the industrial estate and fantasised about doing a version there. It was a perfect spot and would have passing traffic as people walked and rode along the canal.

As I thought about it, one of the performance space studio artists - Marco Beradi - suggested we take the booth down there. Yes!

So we installed the new shiny red booth, balancing on a ledge, facing the canal path and a whole new performance took off.

It was fabulous!

"Hello!" I said about a thousand times.
Loads of people smiled or laughed.

Sometimes I scared a few peeps, or had to say a bit of an Alice In Wonderland-style "up here!" as people looked confoundedly around to an empty canal (because i was up slightly higher than regular eye height). They were happily relieved that it was just a slightly odd woman in a bright red booth.

It was a bit like fishing - casting out my headphone cable, hoping to grab a listening device on the way past. Perhaps I just thought of that analogy because I was overlooking the waterway.

There was so much smiling, so much good will. I could count on just one hand the grumpy, grouchy, hunchy types. Everyone else was a bit in love with the idea.

Even when people didn't stop and give me something to listen to, they wanted to: "oh, I'm sorry, but i would if i did", and some great chats about what I was doing and why.

And then there were the 20-odd people who stopped and did give me something to listen to. A really great mix of music - nothing shit and always an interesting, or enlightening conversation afterwards.

I'll post the playlist on site in the next few days, but here's a pic of the notes i made on the inside of the booth.

I'm taking the booth into a festival environment this weekend - the Hackney Wicked Weekend at Shoreditch.
If you're in the hood, come on down!

Give Me Something To Listen To (Drawings)

For those who have been following from home, you'll know that I've been working on a new series of works: Give Me Something To Listen To.

I had the real joy of performing the work in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney before I left.
Now that I'm in Europe and the UK, I'm working on a small 'tour' of the work for the UK in the second half of this year: a few different types of places in London, Brighton, Manchester*.



Partly to raise funds (but also for something fun to do), I'm making a stack of Give Me Something To Listen To drawings. They'll all look mostly like the sign from the original booth, but each one is different, because i'm doing them all by hand!

50 of them! By hand!

OK, so maybe it's just me that gets excited by that.


So, here's the deal:

If you want to see the show in the UK, you should buy one.
If you came to the shows in Melbourne, Sydney or Perth, you should buy one.
If you didn't come to the shows in Melbourne, Sydney or Perth (but wanted to), you should buy one.
If you didn't even want to come to the shows, but know me and want a drawing, you should buy one.

If you love me, you should buy one.


The deets:

Two sizes: A3 and wide-angle (52 x 20cm)
Acrylic and marker on 200gsm watercolour paper
Hand-drawn peeps.

Postage is a little extra, although if you're in London or Berlin I can hand deliver it.
If you're in Australia, I'm sorry but I can't hand deliver them any more.

Buy them either here via paypal:

 

Or on Etsy





*and if you're somewhere other than these places and would like to host the work for an evening/afternoon, get in touch! I'll travel.

Give Me Something To Listen To: Alaska (Sydney)

Wow! What a year this has been for this little work of mine.

On my way to Berlin, (via Sydney, via Melbourne) I'll be doing a Sydney iteration of this work at the ever-fabulous Alaska Projects. If you're in Sydney, or close enough, do come on down and join us for a Sunday afternoon performance of the work.

deets

Sunday 20 May, 2012

3pm - 5pm

Alaska Projects

Level 2, Kings Cross Car Park
9A Elizabeth Bay Rd, E.Sydney

And, as usual, if you can't make it, send a proxy.

Alaska projects

Facebook event

she sees red

And while you're there, you can check out the end of the current (amazing) exhibition, Empty Gesture by Sarah Rodigari.

Give Me Something To Listen To (OK)

This is a gif of me and Gonzalo rocking out to Punjabi MC feat Jay-Z at the last performance of Give Me Something To Listen To at Kings ARI.

On Wednesday, I'll be doing another iteration of the work in Perth at OK Gallery. If you're west side, you should come on down.

deets
Wednesday 21st March
6pm - 9pm

OK Gallery
5.1 Forbes St Northbridge

And, as usual, if you can't make it, send a proxy.

OK Gallery
Facebook event
she sees red

something to listen to

i just wanted to quickly back up on last week's performance Give Me Something To Listen To.

it was an amazing experience.
sometimes i bit terrifying, right?

i didn't actually know what would happen. i could have sat in an empty chair for three hours, trying to convince myself that 'better luck next time' is adequate consolation.

thankfully that wasn't the case - there was a pretty steady stream of people who liked the idea and had things to bring me. some people knew me and brought things that were incredibly meaningful (or just mean - ahem). others heard about the work, liked the idea and brought things they thought i might like, or that they wanted me to like. others brought their favourite song or even their own work.

performance



my 'performance' in this instance is quite subtle. another artist described it as 'not performing performing'. but with an ever-changing audience, those that stayed and watched me listening noticed a few interesting things about the action of listening in this way.

as each person sat down and i handed over my headphone jack to them (the first person i plugged it into their ipod myself and it just felt a little bit violatory), it was almost ceremonial. as was the end, when they handed back my headphone jack.

each track was quite different and i tried to be as true as i could to whatever i was listening to.

i really listened and the world changed a little bit each time. sometimes my world became a movie, or a film clip. sometimes i was completely taken over by joy and movement - like when heidi gave me 'i want you back', by the jackson 5 - my favourite song of all time. or when gonzalo put jay-z and mc punjabi's remix of blame the boys. we just rolled together.

accompaniment.



each person sitting next to me had a different level of comfort. some were completely comfortable - especially those who almost listened along with me - they could see where i was up to in the track. others were quite uncomfortable, or bored. most started fidgeting at about the 1'30 mark. 3'30 is quite a long time when you're just sitting there.

looking through the early documentation, it's interesting to look at the shape of the space between me and the other 'performer'.



sometimes it really felt like i had a partner in crime. other times that other person became a character in a music narrative, depending on the song/track.

significance



i asked everyone afterwards about the significance of the track they chose and we had some great discussions. after the hypnosis for pubic hair loss, we discussed the idea of gender as a psychological construct (and thus able to be changed through hypnosis).

sarah gave me a song that she knew was one of the first songs she ever gave me. sarah and her brother's collection was incredibly influential on my love of music.

lynda's choice of alvin lucier's i am sitting in a room was an obvious one for her. we were able to discuss the significance of distortion, and of the next level of listening to that work in a room, different to the one i was in.

it was also amazing to see how relevant the tracks became. even by people who had never met me before and knew nothing about my practice. For instance, someone gave me Dreams by Fleetwood Mac and i had never heard the line 'play the way you feel it, but listen to the sound..' before. Wow.






it was the first time i performed that work as a whole and i have to say that i'm pretty happy with how it worked.

thanks to those who came. and for those in other cities, or if you missed out in melbourne, i have a feeling this is just the beginning.

Give Me Something To Listen To