Forma Arts Blog

As the end of 2016 year approaches, Forma has a new vision and a new team. We embark on a new journey that begins in January with a production trip to Tel Megiddo (Armageddon) in Israel to shoot the new video art installation by the artists Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson.

Armageddon is an epic location, a challenging production environment, and a monumental story about to unfold in the hands of these two extraordinary visual artists who have been inspired to create a Song for Armageddon.

I couldn’t think of a better, more timely, and relevant concept to begin the new phase of Forma that is about to begin. The radical changes brought about in the advent of globalisation and technology mean that the artist today must respond to a wider public concerned with, or unaware of, a great transition that is underway in our culture, economy, environment and society. This is an occasion to face important questions about the future and the human condition.  

Our programme going forward is an existential inquiry into the future of the human condition at the nexus of remarkable art, social awareness, and intelligent consciousness. Many of our productions over the next five years demand our action or attention. Humanist themes and approaches will be woven into visual art, music and film with which we will engage audiences in the development of contemporary sublime, spiritual, and transcendent experiences.

Forma wants to rethink what it is contemporary art. What can contemporary art do and what it is for. As part of that rethinking, we will foreground and promote live experience and aesthetics as the centre of the work we do with artists and audiences.

In 2017, among other projects, we will present the world premiere of Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson’s Song for Armageddon at the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art on 21st September 2017. Heirloom, by Gina Czarnecki and Professor John Hunt, will be exhibited for most of the year – for example in Birmingham, Taiwan and Denmark. The first monograph published by the artist Mark Boulos will be celebrated at a launch event in the Whitechapel Gallery.

In the context of troubled times, when we see the trend toward artificiality growing and transforming beliefs, values, ways of looking at and acting in the world, our body of work will define the new space of politics that we believe artists must work within today.  

As I reflect on the past three months as the Artistic Director & CEO, I am thrilled by the considerable progress that has taken place within the organisation to bring us to the threshold of a next phase. Our strategy for the next five years will be built on Forma’s 15 year legacy as an international talent development platform and will culminate in our 20th anniversary in 2022.

Forma’s way of working with artists sets it apart. Our love for generating larger-scale impact across public platforms will see Forma deliver new significant works of art ranging from the spectacular and provocative to the subtle and intimate. We will build a new network to optimise the skills and resources that can be shared from different disciplines.  We will launch new programme initiatives with an eye on sector and talent development.

Finally, I would like to thank the team, trustees, artists, funders and the amazing partners Forma has. They are the fuel that ignites our mission - to make remarkable art happen.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

The Imperial College London presents Palaces, by Gina Czarnecki and Professor Sara Rankin, in the main entrance of the Imperial College as part of the Creative Quarter from 18 November to 30 November 2016.

Palaces is a spectacular crystal resin sculpture embedded with milk teeth donated by hundreds of children across the UK. The Palace is three meters high and two metres wide by a meter deep, and glows like an elaborate ice sculpture. This translucent quality is familiar to scientists who create scaffolds for tissue engineering by de-cellularising organs. Only on closer inspection do we see the detail of the hundreds of tiny teeth embedded into its structure. The Palace has gradually grown as the milk teeth contributions are received.

The work is fundamentally about belief. It’s an interweaving of science and magic, possibilities and potentials, fact and fictions, and the rituals we enact. Milk teeth and their symbolic association with growth and progress, loss of innocence and maturation, are also a symbol of the body's ability to regenerate in this context - stem cells can be extracted from milk teeth.

Palaces has been formed - like many of Gina’s works - from numerous inputs that are a melting of present and past experiences, of knowledge and memory. The idea for the Palace really started with her daughter, Saskia, returning from school at 7 years old and saying to her: “Just tell me the truth: is the Tooth Fairy real?" 

The donated teeth are symbolic of altruistic donation of body parts for future health care possibilities, including organs for organ transplants, umbilical cords for bone marrow transplants, and donation of adult stem cells found in fat from liposuction and baby teeth.

On 24 November Imperial College hosts a free discussion event with Professor Sara Rankin and Gina Czarnecki about art & science collaborations, for which you can register here: 

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/eventssummary/event_4-10-2016-15-42-58

 Palaces is created by Gina Czarnecki with Professor Sara Rankin in 2011-2016. Commissioned by the Bluecoat Arts Centre, Imperial College London and The Wellcome Trust. Supported by the Science Museum London and all the donors of milk teeth.

Gina Czarnecki’s work crosses multiple genres and platforms ranging from small gallery based projection works to large theatrical and sculptural public artworks. She generally works in collaboration with scientists, computer programmers, dancers and sound artists and the public. Her art works are influenced by biomedical science and informed by her interest in belief systems, deep histories, complexity and forgetfullness. Her works raise real and relevant questions about developments in the ‘life’ sciences and changes in culture, society and language.

In the third part of our Heirloom blog series we discuss the piece in more depth with Professor John Hunt and have a look at ‘No Such Thing As Gravity’, the exhibition where Heirloom is presented next. You can read the previous parts of the series below this post.

The next presentation of Heirloom will be held in FACT Liverpool from 10 November 2016 to 5 February 2017. Heirloom will be presented as a part of the ‘No Such Thing As Gravity’ exhibition, which explores the limits of science where the absence of established facts may leave room for new theories, alternative science, and conspiracy theories. Creating a safe space for people to meet and discuss, no matter if they’re believers of conventional or alternative science, the exhibition will feature a wide range of works merging art with scientific experiments, new and future technologies, and exploring the borders between life and death.

Curated by Rob La Frenais, the exhibition features work by Tania Candiani, Gina Czarnecki and Professor John Hunt, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand, Nick Laessing, Nahum Mantra, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Helen Pynor and Sarah Sparkes.

Click here for more details on ‘No Such Thing As Gravity’.

Professor John Hunt,  what are the consequences of your experimentation in Heirloom for your own research?

J.H. Let us see where we can go with this in terms of pulling down funding. Each commission is a living experiment as well as the art. It provides for multiple outcomes - some of them scientific, some of them social and ethical, and then it’s simply a beautiful piece of work to view and watch develop.

What are the implications of 3D printing, and innovative cellular technologies, on human bodies? For instance, with something as inevitable as ageing?  Does your work with Gina function as a sort of commentary on these scientific advancements?

The Board of Trustees of Forma Arts is pleased to announce the appointment of a new Artistic Director and CEO, Debbi Lander, with an agenda to build on its international success as a leading cross art form producer.

Debbi has over 30 years’ experience in the development and delivery of boundary crossing artistic programmes and new cross sector business models for venues, festivals and major events at the forefront of the UK creative and cultural sectors. She has been working as an Executive Producer for Forma Arts for the last year, developing and producing works by Umbrellium, Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, So Percussion, Gayle Chong Kwan and Mark Boulos.

Debbi’s career includes Creative Programmer for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and Programme Director of WE PLAY, the Northwest’s cultural legacy programme for London 2012, which founded the acclaimed Abandon Normal Devices Festival and Lakes Alive programme of large scale and outdoor arts. She was Festival Director of the 20th Encounters Short Film and Animation festival in Bristol, and Programme Director of FACT’s Human Futures programme for Liverpool 08 European Capital of Culture. Before that, Debbi was the Co-Director of shinkansen, a performance/media research and production company in London, for fifteen years.

Debbi Lander, Artistic Director and CEO, Forma Arts says: “I am thrilled by the opportunity to work with leading artists and producers to make remarkable art happen in communities and on the world stage. The name of Forma Arts is synonymous with Art as Experience and Forma is acclaimed worldwide for its imaginative practice and its artistic innovation. My ambition is to build an artistic organisation crossing boundaries of arts and media and pushing artists into new areas of contemporary art production, interaction, exhibition, distribution at the nexus of art, science, music and film.”

Ferry Van-Dijk, Chair of Forma Arts & Media, says: “We have a strong new artistic leader in place for the start of a new and exciting chapter in the history of Forma. With its 15th year coming up in 2017 we look forward to working with existing and new partners around the world, which not only help make our new commissions possible but also extend the audiences and lifespan of Forma Arts works.”  

Forma is one of Europe’s leading creative producers, working with British and international artists to develop and deliver new cross art form productions across the world.

With a distinct emphasis on creative enquiry and high production values, Forma exists to imagine, enable and deliver remarkable art by exceptional artists, working with themes which transcend the human condition, locally, regionally, nationally and globally.

In the second part of our Heirloom blog series we concentrate on the artist and discuss the piece in more depth with Gina Czarnecki. You can read the first part of the series below this post. 

The next presentation of Heirloom will be held in FACT Liverpool from 10 November 2016 to 5 February 2017. 

How has your background in painting and animation informed the radical medium used in Heirloom, itself a kind of living portraiture?

G.C. Painting is a media, and animation a process or technique dealing with time. Its realizing the media of time into my paintings that led them away from traditional notion of painting and drawing into film animation, video and computer generated imagery - paintings in time almost.

I'm interested in developmental research in science/technology and culture and try to express this interest in a visual way, or increasingly by process led outcomes. When we think of time and portraiture then Heirloom not only looks at the time frame of our lives but to the future. Still time-based art?

Watching John mixing the serum and making the media and nurturing the cells also reminds me of being made to make oil paint in ancient ways at Wimbledon School of Art. Just knowing the source of the pigment, the process of extracting it, the media to suspend it in and the fineness of the powder ground down in the media over hours to produce a desired result has similarities.

The potency of human living cells as media is both its strength and its problem.

You have previously acknowledged your fears about the scientific drive toward genetic perfectibility. What drove you to make a piece that is technically at the forefront of this innovation?  

G.C. Firstly I don’t believe that genetically perfect exists – its all dependent on context and this is forever changing. If we are to go by the least susceptible genetically to extinction, then Africa has the biggest gene pool. The scientific drive is, I believe, to enhance quality of life. This may have got confused with longevity, and I question if it is ethical to keep people alive at all costs.

If Heirloom result scientifically in the ability to help kids with burns, people with disfigurements from Leishmaniosis or similar then this is something. If it speeds up the culture of cosmetic enhancement or augmentation or even replacement, then hopefully the public discussion around this can have happened in advance. We all too often faced with technical possibilities advancing before the ethical implications have been addressed publicly.

The piece itself is called Heirloom. In what ways was this piece also a commentary on the intangible connection of family and what we hand down? And was the creative process different being so personally (and genetically) involved?

G.C. This piece is very much a commentary on the intangible connection of family and what we hand down. Initially the work was developed under another title with another persons face used as the model. It was being diagnosed with womb cancer that altered so very much. Saskia and Lola were in John's lab giving their cells again when I was having my womb removed.

Of course its got so many more layers when the subjects and participants are your children and how their attitude to participation and continuation with the project may change with age. But fundamentally it was all wrapped up with my fear of the worst, of what I leave for them that may be of value. This is tied into how society values and affords art outside of the commercial art market. We have yet to see what that value may be, hopefully it wont be two adults who blame their fucked-up-ness on their mum.

What draws you to overlap art and science, or treat them as more relational rather than separate, in your work? What is positive about collaboration between these two spheres?

G.C. I have no idea what draws me to this- It has always been the case. From being about 7 I knew I could really draw and escape through this ‘one talent’. At about 14 I realized that I was deeply interested in biology and the social sciences. The two have gone together ever since but its taken longer to feel; confident in this hybrid land.

You mention a biologists aphorism in your blog: "without mutation, there would be no evolution". How does this inform your work as an artist, as well as your understanding of identity that is at work in Heirloom?

G.C. This is really an expression of how particular words become negative and their more complex meaning lost. Evolution is generally understood to signify progress, mutation suggests cancer.  

My work, I hope, suggests the complex codependences.

Professor John Hunt and artist Gina Czarnecki come from different professional worlds. But in coming together to create the currently touring Heirloom, they have invented a radical piece of living portraiture that is evolving and in multiple, expansive ways, pushing the horizons of science and art, and making discoveries in the process.

Living portraits of Gina's two daughters – Lola and Saskia – are grown from cell samples taken back in 2014.  Over time the cells reach the thickness of tissue paper. They are then preserved, ‘lifted’ and presented as a personalised three-dimensional extra cellular matrix structure.

Here, they discuss the nature of an unconventional collaboration, how this 'living experiment' came to be and the unknown nature of how it will evolve:

How has this collaboration changed your attitude's on the other's discipline?

G.C. Before my collaboration with John, scientific cooperation was not part of my creative decision making. Working with John this has very much been an equal co-authored collaboration, with the focus being on progressing not only the artistic concerns which helped scientists with public engagement and educational agendas, but also the scientific possibilities which - working in the context of art - could facilitate new hybrid discoveries at a different pace.

J.H. It hasn’t changed my attitude’s for other disciplines; I don’t categorise or define disciplines, these create real or virtual boundaries that become barriers.  The collaboration supports the idea of accelerating our level of knowledge by being more open and open minded.

After artist Marc Quinn collaborated with geneticist Sir John Sulston, he said the distinction between the disciplines was that "science is looking for answers and art is looking for questions". How far do you agree?

G.C. I agree to some extent but this very much depends on the persons involved. I generally say that artists can work with the unknows or grey areas whereas science has to work with knowns to explore the yet to be known.

Art is about the space between what it is and what it does and this is not always directly obvious, or clear in the short term, and may be only clear with hindsight.

J.H. As a social-communal beast we do seem to like - and need to some extent - our labels and categories; this kind of work hopefully helps to maintain the identification of specific areas of knowledge, but by example demonstrates how freely we can move between spaces and use each other’s knowledge and expertise to create the new.

Is there something specific about the body, the cellular and the genetic that is asking for a simultaneously artist/scientific approach?

G.C. Only in that we all have first-hand knowledge of it

J.H. It’s amazing; it’s asking to be looked at in every which way we can, it’s fair to say the more we know, they more we realise how little we know.

In what ways are you developing the piece after Ars Electronica? And will the live/living piece evolve of its own accord?

G.C. The evolution of Heirloom is key. It is a living experiment. Of course there are general facelifts to the kit and exhibition form but the biggest challenge now is to develop the solution to a full lift of the 3d formed skin. We have succeeded in lifting about 2 inch squared sections, but not the entire face. This is the challenge. When this is possible then we can foresee a possibility of applying this directly to facial reconstruction. So patients with scans of their own face shape and with their own cells can be repaired in a way not yet possible. Skin stretches and breaks and ripples and folds. If it is formed in the correct shape in the first instance this will not happen.

The other development is to take what we have learnt through this project into creating a accessible wet-lab in Liverpool and linking this to the work in ethics I explored in The Wasted Works.  In the Ars Electronca and Jijki Golden Seed shows further casts were made of Saskia and Lola. The originals were made when they were 11 and 13 years old. The new ones made two years later and the girls are now 13 and 15. Perhaps by 2018 we will be able to print directly onto bioglass (that dissolves over time) with 3D printing using cells. Same outcome, different methods. It is also hoped that the maxillofacial reconstruction possibilities being developed in Heirloom will one day be widely used. The project moves with the multiple developments it encapsulates as well as creates.

J.H. I’m with Gina, that’s the plan.

How has working with Forma Arts helped you develop the project further?

G.C. I have worked with Forma since 2002. Forma helped me to produce and continue large scale productions and exhibitions when I moved to Australia and had two young children. Without Forma this would not have been possible. With Heirloom, I had exhibitions simultaneously in Korea and Austria. Having Forma on board meant that this became possible, working in a team rather than alone is really fantastic and discussing the potential and way forward rather than just the logistics is critical to conceptual development and sustainability as an artist working with this kind of work.

J.H. Forma Arts are taking us forwards by increasing our exposure to the arts world and then providing fantastic touring support to enable us to take the work to all the places that would like to see it.

“The mythological constructions of Chong Kwan are sensorial in nature because they are saturated in mythical thought….We could therefore say that Chong Kwan does not structure her photos, she cooks them”   - Sergio Giusti, 2010

Gayle Chong Kwan explores the fluidity of life and lived experience in all its sensoria in her work, and The Pan Hag is no exception. Using her art practice as a space to explore the economic, affective, remembered experiences of the people of East Durham, she explores meaning and identity in a playful, open way.  Here, she discusses the themes and spirit of practice that intrigues her, and what the project has taught her about her own role as an artist.

What is it about food that intrigues you as a focal point to explore collective memory, mythmaking and sensorial realities?

G.C.K. I did not start this project with a clear idea that food would be its focus, instead that emerged through the conversations, research, events, and activities that I started to instigate nearly two years ago. What struck me were people’s intense relationship with place, growing cultures, work, self-initiated activities, food, memory, history, and a frustration and hope in relation to the future. The panackulty or panhaggerty emerged as a dish whose ingredients were tied up with local traditions of growing, work, allotments, and using leftover ingredients in innovative and creative ways.   In my wider art practice, food culture has been a way of exploring different aspects of separation and coming together of diverse cultural and economic realities, which I have done through the prism of medieval myths of a land made out of food, ‘Cockaigne’ (2004), through the Scottish culture of stovies for my residency with Deveron Arts, as part of a Royal Scottish Academy award (2013), and through my experience of the post-colonial legacy in Mauritius, where the residue of the colonial policy of ‘divide and rule’ remains in many aspects of life, save in the food, where a very rich conversation between the Indian, Chinese, Creole, French, and English cultures exist.

Your approach is reminiscent of participant observation, the anthropologist's methodology, in that you dedicated so much time for local exploration. What is the value of time in understanding space and developing a project for you?   G.C.K. I am interested in ‘The Pan Hag’ as being a way to uncover and recover suppressed, forgotten, or overlooked histories, skills, and techniques that are being lost between generations in East Durham. I do not have an ethnographic authority, but instead by working on the project over a long period means, it has developed in response to the people and place. In the anthropological field, many discussions of culture have centered on investigating and presenting people’s culture in an original setting, but I was struck by the sense of change, development, and the variety of positions, perspectives, and concerns throughout the area.  

  Much of my practice is gallery-based exhibitions, or large-scale photographic work or installations in the public realm, and I will only take on and develop participatory projects, such as ‘The Pan Hag’ once every two or three years, as it demands a certain kind and amount of energy and engagement with people and place. I feel very fortunate that I was able to spend two years developing my ideas for ‘The Pan Hag’ through research, conversations, activities, and events, and I think that is a credit to Forma as a commissioner and producer, whose confidence in the artistic process and commitment to concept and context is exemplar.   Through my initial research I began to think about my role as an artist as a kind of receptacle of research and experience, which people in the area will experience and understand aspects of, like the ingredients of a dish, and how I could bring together or communicate the different aspects of the project as a whole, as a final tasting.  

My role has been as artist, instigator, and explorer, in which the project has brought together many of the people in the area who are already running and organising fantastic cultural activities, which should be highlighted and celebrated and given more support to continue and flourish in what they are doing. I hope that ‘The Pan Hag’ can, in a small way, help to do this.

Much of your previous work is about the fluidity of realities and cultural multiplicity. How does 'The Pan Hag' and your alternative local guide feed into this?   G.C.K. Rather than stressing the uniformity of culture, I am interested in cultural multiplicity, and for me, the non-visual, or sensorial, is an important way in which we can explore this, as well as re-thinking the term ‘community’ more as ‘communities’, which can be temporary, sensory, partial, over-lapping, and fluid, all at the same time.   One of the legacies of the project will be ‘The Pan Hag Map’, which will be a guide in both a specific and loose sense – in that different, and competing voices, about the area will coexist. It will also be a guide to the artistic process of the project, and map how my project developed in the hope that it could inform others to do similar or different projects in different areas. Perhaps around other specific dishes, recipes, or other particularities and communalities.

For more information about The Pan Hag Field Kitchen, visit www.eastdurhamcreates.co.uk/panhag

For more from the artist visit: www.gaylechongkwan.com

Gayle Chong Kwan is a London-based artist whose large-scale photographic, installation, video work has been exhibited and published nationally and internationally. She makes immersive environments, often in the public realm, which explore simulacra and the sublime, through myth, ritual and common structures. www.gaylechongkwan.com

Since 2014, she has been working across East Durham, collecting stories, memories, pictures and recipes from local people which will become part of The Pan Hag Map - a new alternative guide to the area (available from early 2017).

On Saturday 1st October 2016, from 12 pm to 5pm, she will host The Pan Hag Field Kitchen on the former Easlington Colliery pit site. This free outdoor event invites the public to explore and record the lost and overlooked traditional skills and customs related to crafts, growing, food and nature.

Workshops and activities include peg looming, bunting making, craft activities and wood-turning demos. There'll also be some gentle creative walks exploring the landscape and a coastal ramble collecting sea glass. 

The day will also see the world's first Pan Hag Championship using local pan haggerty/panaculty recipes, where attendees will participate in choosing the 'People's Choice' winner.

The Pan Hag Field Kitchen was commissioned as part of East Durham Creates, a cultural programme which aims to get more people involved in arts and creative activity. Produced by Forma Arts with Artistic Direction by Gayle Chong Kwan.

East Durham Creates is one of 21 Creative People and Places projects nationally, funded by Arts Council England. It is managed by Beamish, Forma Arts, and East Durham Trust working in partnership and supported by Durham County Council via East Durham Area Action Partnership and Culture and Sport Services. www.eastdurhamcreates.co.uk

Here, she talks us through the project and how people, food and place came together as sources of inspiration:

 How did making a piece of work for the East Durham Creates programme happen? 

Forma had known about my large-scale art projects in the public realm, which I often develop by working in a particular context or with a community. I had recently spent two years developing a project in Berlin, where I worked with allotment holders throughout the city. One of the curators came to an art event that I did at Tate Modern, ‘Gardens of Adonis’, which explored food, rituals, myths, and the senses, and they got in touch with me about developing a piece of work in East Durham.

Forma Arts are an incredible organisation to work with, as they really put high quality art at the centre of everything they do. They allow artists to really immerse themselves in a place or get to know people so that the artwork that develops becomes something unexpected, exciting, and yet integral to the people and place for which it is commissioned.

What are your fondest memories from previous trips to the area?

It is really interesting for me now as places that I first visited two years ago, when I was being introduced to the area, and when I was trying to make sense of the special qualities and challenges of the area, now feel much clearer and richer. It is almost like when you start to learn a language – the mist clears and you start to understand how things relate to each other and their meanings.  

One of the early parts of the project was a series of Sensory Walks through different parts of the area, which involved people often walking blindfolded, or tasting local produce at different points along the way. Those will always stick in my mind, as they were great fun, pretty bonkers, but also really informative, as I worked with a local historian or specialist to develop each walk.

Was there a story that you heard or something in particular that influenced you and inspired your work?

I started visiting the area and talking to people in the area, then hosting small scale events, walks, and larger events during which I collected stories, memories, recipes, and local dialect words. From these, the idea of The Pan Hag started to develop.

Everyone kept talking about one dish - panackerty or pan haggerty – for which each person had a different recipe, different ingredients, and even different spellings of its name. It became clear what an interesting, and controversial, dish it is, and one that is integral to the area. People have such fond memories of it, as a dish that was cooked by their mothers and grandmothers, and also one which featured many local ingredients particular to each place, and often grown in the local allotments.

Are you planning to use local produce or objects as part of the project? 

Local produce and objects are at the centre of the artwork. In the work I take the role of ‘The Pan Hag’, a character who, like panackerty or panhaggerty, collects, records and shares East Durham’s cultures, customs, myths, growing, and cooking in its diverse landscapes over the seasons. The project, like the dish, focuses on a place or object in which different elements, often local, everyday, or leftover, are brought together and shared.

The Company Manager is a new position at Forma and provides a foundation for the company’s smooth running and business development as a creative producer and network service, working across the arts, public and commercial sectors. 

Reporting to the Director, the Company Manager will manage the company from the day-to-day operations to commercial development. Working closely with the Director and the Board to drive the company forward in view of financial stability and management excellence, the role is key to ensuring the long-term stability, sustainability and impact of the company and its programmes. The Company Manager will manage the Development and Communications Manager.

Main Purpose: Robust operations management of the Company and its programmes, including all HR, financial, legal and administrative requirements.

Application Deadline: 26th August Interview Dates: 2nd September Application Process: Please submit your CV and a covering letter to [email protected]

From Out a Darker Sea Sō Percussion Thursday 18 August, 7 - 9 pm 

So Percussion recently visited East Durham to collect stories and create a music performance that will premiere on Thursday 18 August 2016 as part of the East Durham Creates programme, one of 21 Creative People and Places projects nationally, funded by Arts Council England, working across the East Durham area with the aim to get more people involved in arts and creative activity. 

The New York based ensemble has visited East Durham several times in the past 2 years. During their visits they had the opportunity to interact with people from the local community, learn more about the history of the place and find inspiration to develop their new musical performance, From Out a Darker Sea.

Adam Sliwinski and Eric Cha-Beach, two So Percussion members share their experiences after visiting East Durham.

How did making a piece of work for the East Durham Creates programme happen?

 AS: Forma first approached us about collaborating on a new commission. 

ECB: The project got kicked off when Forma and East Durham Creates invited So to come visit the area and learn more about the history and people in the region.  None of us had visited Northeast England before, so it was really amazing to learn about everything from scratch!

 Is it difficult for a New York based music group to create a music performance for East Durham's local community?

ECB:  Yes, this is definitely something we’ve thought a lot about.  We’ve tried to approach the fact that we’re outside this community with honesty and humility.  There are things we just can’t know about what it’s like to live in the East Durham area.  But one thing we’ve seen through our visits is that there are also things that connect us. 

AS: Yes! We work hard to strike a balance of getting to know the local community and also presenting an authentic work that represents our own interests and influences. We search for elements that speak to universal experience, filtering the specific things we see and learn in the community through our own perspective. In that sense, we are creating this work both for the community and also for ourselves, as we have found that making work that moves us usually gets the best results. Too much time spent trying to figure out what other people would want you to do gets you running in circles! 

I think it would be foolish of us to try to sum up a complicated local culture or community after just a few visits. But you can be influenced by what you see and hear. We picked sea glass, toured the mines, met former miners, worked with young students, walked along the sea as the tide moved in...

 What are your fondest memories from this trip or a previous trip?

AS: We each would have different ones. I had a blast going out to Beamish with Ashley, who knows the place inside and out. You know that the place is a kind of theme park, but after spending a solid day there, you do get into the spirit of it. 

ECB: I really enjoyed working with the students from East Durham College on the video portraits that we are including in the show.  The students have each picked a friend or family member, and they are shooting a ‘portrait’ of that person, but as a video instead of a picture.

 Was there a story that you heard or something in particular that influenced you and inspired you to create this upcoming performance?

ECB:  There are several things that have really stuck with us as we’ve worked on creating the piece.  There is a story from a former miner named Freddie that has become an important part of the show (he was filmed by some of the members of Amber and that footage and his story are included in the performance).  And also there was a couple named Harold and Sylvia that we met on the visit - Harold was fighting ALS, and the story of their struggles became an inspiration for us.  We also were struck by the sights and sounds of the area - the sea, the coast line, and the rape-seed fields.

AS: We actually use footage from an interview that the folks at Amber conducted with an older former miner. It is a heartbreaking story of a young man named Billy who died in the mines. Our show doesn’t dwell extensively on the struggles and tragedies of mining, but the incredible lilt and pattern of his accent makes the last chapter of our piece come to life. We tie his voice in with one of our other main themes, the sea. Every chapter in the work is inspired by something we encountered during our residency visits. Our first trip was in May 2015, when the brilliant yellow rapeseed flowers bloomed across vast fields just up from the coast. We started to think of the contrast between the black of the coal soot and this incredible yellow of the flowers. 

Are you planning to use local instruments or objects as part of your performance?

AS: Our instrumentation for this particular show is pretty spare by Sō Percussion standards. It seemed to fit the way the music was coming together. The most vivid local elements will be found in the video. In addition to the wonderful videos from the Amber collective of the sea and the miner’s story, we have been working with students at East Durham college to create video portraits of ordinary scenes in their lives. We wanted the folks in the community to know that we do not just view their community through the lens of the mining history, as rich as that history is.

ECB:  As of right now, most of the music is performed on traditional percussion instruments… but all of the video footage used in the performance will come from the local community.

 What do you think about your collaboration with Forma Arts so far?

 ECB:  I would say that this project would have been completely impossible without Forma Arts.  Every single person from Forma who has worked with us on the project really tried to understand what we were thinking and provide the resources to help us make the abstract ideas we had turn into real end results.  For us, a project like this simply wouldn’t be possible without that kind of support. 

AS: We love Forma! Local residencies can be tricky, and Forma strikes a perfect balance of connecting us with a community and also encouraging us to follow our own artistic path. 

Tickets are now ON SALE!

You can book your tickets online

You can also buy tickets from the East Durham Trust reception desk. To book your ticket, contact them on 0191 569 3511 or visit in person at Community House, Yoden Road, Peterlee, SR8 5DP.

From Out a Darker Sea Sō Percussion Thursday 18 August, 7 - 9 pm 

 So Percussion a NY based ensemble, described as an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam,” (The New Yorker), will perform in East Durham this summer as part of the East Durham Creates programme, one of 21 Creative People and Places projects nationally, funded by Arts Council England, working across the East Durham area with the aim to get more people involved in arts and creative activity.

So Percussion will compose and perform their own work combining a distinctively 21st century synthesis of original music with visual art, to explore the history and impact of the Industrial Revolution’s rise and fall for the local community.

Here is a description of their project, From Out a Darker Sea, inspired by Joseph Skipsey’s poem Music and written by So Percussion. 

From Out a Darker Sea

By Sō Percussion

 Not mine to under-go what under-went Arion, yet, From out a darker sea, the waters of affliction caught, And on a brighter than a Tenarian shore I'm set To marvel at the miracle a melody has wrought.

 -          Joseph Skipsey

 For two centuries the coal industry formed the backbone of the Northeast of England.  Entire communities sprang into existence as fervent mining activity fueled the industrial revolution. Economic opportunity existed, but was always accompanied by the looming threat of danger or death. Those who can recall that time manifest a peculiar combination of exceeding pride in their hard-working heritage and unflinching acceptance of the horrors that mining visited upon them.

But an industry is not a place. The Northeast, with its winding, rugged coastline and breathtaking fields of yellow rapeseed, has existed for human and geologic eons. It has seen transformation after transformation. The beaches that were once black with soot are now clean; the glass that was unceremoniously dumped into the sea from bottle factories returns to shore as perfectly smooth ovular gems; the people, descended from Vikings, Celts, Romans, Normans, Angles and Saxons, remain, even as industry shrugs its shoulders, moving unsteadily away and back again.

Sō Percussion made several memorable visits to the villages, collieries, and towns of the Northeast. We learned a few things, such as that you’d better strap yourself in if you name-check Madame Thatcher to anybody over 50, or that a person’s identity as part of a colliery could mean more to them even than being English. We met the first female master welder at the gleaming Caterpillar factory, and were treated to an art project at East Durham college based on our favorite composer John Cage.

“From Out a Darker Sea” is not about coal, but like everything in this area, there are always traces of its presence. The sea never ceases as it rusts discarded mining machines into autumnal colors, doing its work day and night as it will for ages. The Northeast is not frozen in time - it churns forward with the same ambivalent relationship to a new globalized culture as the rest of us, while at the same time laboring not to forget a proud history.

This work exists in four chapters. The final chapter combines our music with footage and film by the wonderful Amber artist collective.

 1 – Coal and Flower

2 – Four Portraits

3 – Harold and Sylvia

4 – Song for Billy/For the Durham Sea  

Tickets are now ON SALE!

You can book your tickets online

You can also buy tickets from the East Durham Trust reception desk. To book your ticket, contact them on 0191 569 3511 or visit in person at Community House, Yoden Road, Peterlee, SR8 5DP.

VoiceOver

Photo: Richard Kenworthy

Debbi Lander, explains how a micro project like VoiceOver can have an impact on the local community in her article published in Arts Professional. VoiceOver a project created by Umbrellium and produced by Forma as part of the East Durham Creates programme took place in Horden. Debbi Lander describes how technology was used to encourage locals to actively participate in this interactive project and how creative projects like VoiceOver can address social and economic challenges.

Umbrellium’s Usman Haque recently gave a TED talk “Making decisions about technologies that make decisions about us” and mentioned VoiceOver as an example to invite everyone to think about technologies that affect our everyday life.

Michael Dean

Michael Dean is one of the four artists that have been nominated for the Turner Prize 2016. The 38-year-old artist is the only male among the four and was nominated for two solo shows, Sic Glyphs and Qualities of violence.

Michael Dean who is a sculptor, writer and typographer, prefers to use building materials and DIY hardware to create installations that focus on the physical manifestation of language. 

In 2005, Mountains and Triangles a book created by Michael Dean was published by Forma Arts. Michael Dean used typography to create an almost physical linguistic space that becomes charged with an unexpected emotional impact. 

Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryuichi Sakamoto will be the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a film composer in October 2016. As part of the 16th World Soundtrack Awards Gala, a selection of his work will be performed by Brussels Philharmonic.

The Japanese composer who collaborated with Alva Noto to compose the soundtrack for Alejandro G.Inarritu’s latest film, The Revenant, has won numerous awards including Best Original Score- Oscar (The Last Emperor) and Best Original Score-Golden Globe (The Sheltering Sky). In the past the two composers have created insen, a project produced by Forma.

VoiceOver is a project produced by Forma and created by Umbrellium as part of the East Durham Creates programme.

Umbrellium’s Usman Haque who has a background in architecture and tends to avoid describing himself as an artist, was the one to initiate the project. Usman is interested in exploring the way people relate to each other and to their surrounding space. He has created responsive environments, interactive installations as well as software and digital interfaces to realise mass-participation initiatives in cities around the world.

The idea behind this project came from another participatory project that took place in the US in 1986, Hands across America, inviting people to hold hands for 15 minutes and form a human chain across the country.

East Durham’s economy was heavily relying on coal mining and when coal mines were closed in 1970 that often had destructive consequences for small mining communities in this area. As Usman describes lack of connectivity, transportation problems as well as questions of community identity are some of the issues of local public concern.

After inviting local residents to take part in many workshops and actively develop the project alongside Usman and the rest of the team by contributing ideas and local knowledge, VoiceOver launched on Friday 25 March 2016.

Unlike other mass participation Umbrellium projects, VoiceOver was focused on the local community and in particular a neighbourhood in Horden. Residents were encouraged to take part in the project by becoming hosts and installing an antenna outside their homes. They were also able to visit one of the two booths to share a story, sing a song or even perform.

The concept behind this modern string telephone was that when someone was talking inside the two booths, the special piece of equipment installed outside each house was designed to receive and transmit sounds and transform voices into colours. That means that anyone walking the street could hear the messages shared by the speakers.

Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson recently visited Tel Megiddo for development work on their forthcoming Forma Arts production, Song for Armageddon. The trip included a special before-hours visit to the site with cinematographer Martin Testar and Forma Production Team (executive producer, Debbi Lander;  line producer Israel, Eyal Vexler and documentary film maker, Adam Tallon) to discuss plans for a work they want to shoot at Megiddo next February.

If our reality depends on personal observations, then vision shapes our selective perception of the world. ‘I’ is a project created by Gina Czarnecki that invites the public to reflect on the correlation between vision and cognition and understand the eye from the perspectives of a physicist, biologist and psychologist. Being a result of collaboration between the artist and a team of scientists for the Lumiere festival, Durham, it combines footage by the artist as well as scanned images of visitors’ irises. Members of the audience that visited this multi-part installation in 2013, had the opportunity to experience a participatory role as they interacted with a state of the art scanning booth that captured images of their irises and projected them on the opposite building’s façade. This proved highly successful in engaging participants as 2,500 unique scans were collected over four nights, an average of one scan every 15 seconds. 

Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966) at the Whitechapel Gallery

Electronic Superhighway is a new exhibition featuring over 100 works created by artists from all over the world. This exhibition that will open on 29th January, focuses on the way that artists have been influenced by new technologies and the internet from 1966 to the present day.

From photo manipulation and digital interactivity to self-surveillance and selfies, this exhibition explores the way technology is used to create artistic projects by artists as well as the public.

 Johann Johannsson nominated for an Oscar

For a second consecutive year, Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson is one of the nominees for this year’s Oscars. Sicario soundtrack composed by Johannsson is nominated for a 2016 Oscar Award. Johann Johannsson was also nominated last year, for his work in The Theory of Everything and he won his first Golden Globe for his soundtrack to James Marsh’s film.

Forma has worked with Johannsson to produce The Miners’ Hymns, a film created by American Filmmaker Bill Morrison and Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. This project is a homage to the coal mining history of North East England. 

 Antony Hegarty is one of the nominees for Best Original Song Oscar

  The nominees for the 88th Academy Awards were announced last week and Antony Hegarty is among them. Nominated for Best Original Song Oscar, Hegarty, the lead vocalist of the band Antony and The Johnsons, was the one to write the lyrics for the song ‘Manta Ray’. Composed by J. Ralph, Manta Ray is the original song for the feature documentary “Racing Extinction” by Oscar winning director Louie Psihoyos.

In 2006 Forma brought together Antony and The Johnsons and artist Charles Atlas to initiate a unique collaboration and produce the first European tour of Turning. Turning is a live performance combining a moving orchestration by an ensemble of eight musicians, alongside Antony, as well as video footage captured, processed and projected by Atlas.

 Gayle Chong Kwan talks about her project Pan Hag on BBC Radio 3

Gayle Chong Kwan: The Pan Hag Walks (2014) from Forma Arts on Vimeo.

The Pan Hag project is one of the three projects produced by Forma Arts and commissioned by East Durham Creates. All three projects are developed by selected artists currently living in the area and actively engaging the local people. These projects are created for the local communities and aim to celebrate the landscape, history and traditions of the area.

Big Bang Data at Somerset House featuring Ryoji Ikeda

Today (December 03, 2015) is the first day of Big Bang Data at Somerset House, an exhibition which features artists, designers and innovators show how data is continuing to transform art, science and culture as a whole. Big Bang Data includes over 50 works by artists, designers and innovators. 

Featured in this exhibition is work from renowned artist Ryoji Ikeda, an artist Forma has worked with on numerous productions including major exhibitions internationally.

Book now for Big Bang Data, a major new exhibition at Somerset House...

ANOHNI (FKA Antony) releases new track 4 Degrees

Forma favourite Antony has released the first new track from his forthcoming Hopelessness. However, this new body of work from the New York based artist is under a new alias, ANOHNI, which signifies the arrival of a new sound. The first track communicates the results of a study that a temperature rise of four degrees, which is guaranteed if emissions continue at their current pace, will have catastrophic effects.

In 2006 Forma produced the European tour of Antony’s Turning, a unique collaboration with artist Charles Atlas. The live performance features a simple yet moving orchestration by an ensemble of eight musicians, alongside Antony, as well as video footage of fourteen NYC Beauties, whose intimate and hypnotic portraits whilst slowly turning onstage are captured, processed and projected by Atlas.

Read more about ANOHNI’s 4 Degrees on Pitchfork...

Jóhann Jóhannsson Announces New Film and Soundtrack, End of Summer

Tomorrow (December 04, 2015) Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson will release End of Summer, a film and score exploring life and landscapes in Antarctica. Forma recently had the experience of delivering Jóhannsson’s first time collaboration with American filmmaker Bill Morrison, The Miners’ Hymns, in the Dutch home of coal mining, Kerkrade.

On End of Summer, Jóhannsson said: "I wanted to make a nature film that does not objectify nature and does not fixate upon its beauty—I tried not to romanticize it. The film tries to capture the austere atmosphere of the Antarctic peninsula, or at least my experience of it—a bleak, alien, but incredibly beautiful and fragile place."

Pre-order Jóhann Jóhannsson’s End of Summer via Boomkat...

Premiere of Chris Watson’s Okeanos at London Contemporary Music Festival

Chris Watson returns to creating powerful immersive environments in London, in 2010 Forma presented Whispering in the Leaves at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew with Sound and Music. The work transforms tropical botanical gardens by the diffusion of the sounds of dawn and dusk choruses recorded in the rainforests of South and Central America.

London Contemporary Music Festival will present the world premiere of Okeanos, a new work by sound artist Chris Watson, at Ambika P3 on December 14, 2015. Okeanos draws on extensive underwater recordings gathered by the artist from oceans around the world, A multi-channel sound installation that will play in complete darkness, celebrates the songs, rhythms and music of the oceanic depths.

Learn more and buy tickets on billetto...  [Advance Tickets have sold out, but festival passes are still available]

Jane and Louise Wilson’s False Positives, False Negatives available on [S]edition

Jane and Louise Wilson’s digital photograph False Positives, False Negatives, (2011) depicts the Wilsons painted in dazzle camouflage, a technique designed to scramble face recognition technology employed by law enforcement and security agencies. The work explores the act of surveillance, considering its form and presence in public spaces.

In 2012 Forma produced one of Jane and Louise Wilson’s most widely known works, The Toxic Camera. The Toxic Camera is a film reflecting on the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, inspired by the film Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks made by Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko in the days immediately following the accident.