AUTUMN 2012

Practice in Place: ArTisTs + AUdieNce + eNviroNMeNT

Gesture rebeccA birch & sTeve reich

Crafting the Landscape owl ProjecT & johN lord

ProjecT overview Owl Project, a collaborative group of artists consisting of Simon Blackmore, Antony Hall and Steve Symons, work with wood and electronics to fuse sculpture and sound art; creating music making machines and objects which combine pre-steam and digital technologies. Drawing on influences such as 1970’s synthesiser culture, DIY woodworking and digital crafts, the resulting artwork is a quirky and intriguing critique of human interaction with computer interfaces, the allure and production of, often disposable, new technologies.

Their most recent project, ~Flow, was a floating self-powered structure based on a traditional ‘Shipmill’. A waterwheel harnessed the power of the river Tyne, which was used to power electro-acoustic musical instruments that combined mechanical automation and digital technology to produce sounds that directly responded to the river.

Owl Project will begin their residency with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art this November, engaging with local schools and community groups, before launching a

new installation and perform-ance from Brigstock Sawmill at the end of January 2013.

The installation and work-shops will investigate the sonic potential of woodworking and saw blades, as signal carriers and sound generators, by transforming saw blades into sound waves using an arrange-ment of lasers and sensors.

dATe & locATioN November 2012 to January 2013. Sudborough Green Lodge and Brigstock Sawmill.

Crafting the Landscape: Owl Project ArTisTs iN resideNce

owl Project and ed carter, ~Flow (internal detail), photograph jill Tate

ProjecT overview Join professional flint knapper John Lord for an introduction to the prehistoric craft of flint knapping, in the remote location of Fermyn Woods.

During the Neolithic period, flint tools were produced by highly skilled craftspeople, known as flintknappers. Flints were first split into rough shapes, before the edges were manipulated to form the shape of a tool. Final adjustments were made using a technique called pressure flaking, to produce scrapers, axes, knives and arrowheads. Although an interest in stone is inherent

to human nature, the skill required to manipulate this material was largely lost in Britain about 2,500 years ago. The workshop led by John Lord, will introduce you to these ancient techniques and, after an inspiring demonstra-tion, will enable you to create your own flint tools.

Val and John Lord have been researching prehistoric technology since 1975. Former custodians of Neolithic flint mining site Grimes Graves, John is now the flint knapping instructor on Ray Mears’ Primitive Technology and Ancient Skills course.

bookiNg deTAils Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 November, 10am – 4pm.Sudborough Green Lodge, Fermyn Woods, off Harley Way, near Brigstock.

£50 per day: includes lunch, all equipment and materials.

Limited places available. Booking is essential. Please call, email or book through our website.

If you wish to attend both days, accommodation at Sudborough Green Lodge on Saturday evening is available for an additional £30.

Crafting the Landscape: John Lord FliNT kNAPPiNg workshoP

john lord, photograph ruth Nolan

we hAve Moved Fermynwoods contemporary Art’s Office is now based in a shop on Thrapston’s high Street, which has been made possible through the generous support of vincent, sykes & higham llP solicitors.

later this year, look out for The Free Exchange, a series of events based on the themes underlying a discussion between artist Hans haake and sociologist Pierre bourdieu, who aimed to create: ‘an open realm where art and scholarship, free from any symbolic dominations, resists the intrusions of market, media and politics during its produc-tion, distribution and reception’.

iNTrodUcTioN Gesture is a six month project that will explore the ways in which relationships and social interaction can be signified, controlled and communicated through the conduit of the hand, through video work, artists in residence and live art performances.

Gesture is being curated by artist Caroline Wright in collaboration with Fermyn-woods Contemporary Art, in partnership with Corby Borough Council and The Core at Corby Cube.

The artists will investigate the connections between inten-tional and subconscious gestures, and how these relate to written, oral, aural, sign, musical and visual languages. Rebecca Birch, the first Artist in Residence, is concerned with social encounters and the subconscious acts that can occur as a result. She will be based in the Cube for two days a week, on Mondays and Tuesdays, observing and engaging with staff and visitors to explore the mean-ings behind subconscious gestures. There will also be a performance of Steve Reich’s Clapping Music,

which conveys the significance of process and repetition of gestures in relation to music. See below for full details.

The project aims to highlight some of the diverse activities taking place within The Cube, a unique physical and social environment, which houses Corby Borough Council Offices and Chamber and the Registry Office alongside the Library and The Core’s theatre and performance spaces.

locATioN The Cube: George Street, Corby nn17 1qg

Gesture: 01.10.12 — 30.04.13 iNTrodUcTioN & gesTUre oNliNe

Rebecca Birch, stills from selected work

Gesture: 01.10.12 — 30.04.13 ArTisT iN resideNce & live PerForMANce

ArTisT iN resideNce 1: rebeccA birch Rebecca Birch works in video and performance. Her projects are developed through spending time with other people, in conversation and sharing stories: whilst working together, or in specially choreographed journeys, on foot or by car. Her work focuses on the relationships between people and the landscape and the rhythm of their daily lives. For example, she recently spent a year filming a young clockmaker in his workshop for the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and has also carried out projects in

a small town on a Canadian mountainside, with the people who live amongst the oldest trees in the world in Califor-nia, and inside the Arctic Circle during the period of 24-hour darkness. Throughout the projects, the gesture is a recurring motif, from the hand gesture made by a woman trying to describe the mountain she climbs every- day, to the repetitive and intricate movements made by a clockmaker working on the lathe. Rebecca will be spending three months working in and around the Corby Cube,

engaging with the people who work in, and regularly visit the building. Rebecca aims to create a new film whose narrative will be written through the shapes, spaces and patterns created within the gestures that she encounters in Corby, a chorus of tapping feet, twitching hands, concentrated eyes. The film will be made in consultation with, and given back to, all those whose gestures wrote the plot.

dATe & locATioN Rebecca Birch will be in the Cube on Mondays and Tuesdays, from 9am – 5pm.

gesTUre oNliNe Artist Caroline Wright is curating a video exhibition that will be presented online as part of Gesture. The exhibition will include live art films and documentation of live art performances including artist’s dvds published by the Live Art Development Agency (lada) and sold through their online

shop Unbound. lada offers resources, professional development initiatives, and projects for the support and development of Live Art practices and critical discours-es. The themes Wright will be examining include the social, political, physical and philosophical gesture, repeti-tion and ritual, and different cultural facets of gesture.

dATe & locATioN From 15 November 2012 to 14 November 2013.

Visit Open Online Three at our website.

Artist caroline wright, photographer kirstin lavers

live PerForMANce: clAPPiNg MUsic Steve Reich’s Clapping Music is based on a single rhythm related to a 12 beat African bell pattern, which is repeatedly clapped by two performers. One clapper rotates the pattern one beat at a time, thereby disrupting the rhythm, until the performers eventually converge in time again. The rotational process, which Reich called ‘phasing’, is simultaneously the form

and the content of the work. The slight delay in the movement of the hands that causes the changing rhythm is too subtle to observe and can only be heard.

During the summer of 1970, Steve Reich studied drumming at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra, with drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. Reich wrote the 90 minute

work Drumming shortly after his return, followed by Clapping Music in 1972. The piece will be performed as a prelude to the performance by the Wadzanai African Dancers.

dATe & locATioN 24 November, 1.30pm in The Core Bar. Admission is free.

steve reich, Clapping Music score, 1972

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age: Flint knapping, photograph susannah relf

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33 high sTreeT, ThrAPsToN

NorThAMPToNshire NN14 4j j

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Fermynwoods Contemporary Art www.FerMYNwoods.co.Uk

FCA acknowledges the support of St Crispin Lodge, through a donation from Douglas Compton James Charitable Trust