Folkestone Triennial 2014 Audio Guide

Introduction

The lookout is integral to Folkestone's history as a port. A lookout is a structure from which to keep watch - for invasion, for weather, for fish, fortune or friends coming home. A lookout is also the person keeping watch, who can tell us what's coming over the horizon.

Either way, a lookout is focused on the future. And in this exhibition, the figure of the lookout stands for the artist because the artist's act of imagination always involves change, and proposes change.

The dynamo of Folkestone's economy in the past has always been the movement of people, whether travellers, or armies going to war or tourists seeking pleasure. Boats, trains and hovercraft have been replaced by the Channel Tunnel (a kind of Folkestone bypass 2014 will be its 20th anniversary). What comes next?

LOOKOUT is an exhibition (outdoors - in the urban environment) that invites you to visit some key points in high places, mainly around the old town of Folkestone, to join artists in questioning what is going on, and see whether you can share a long view on the future.

The word 'LOOKOUT' is functional but it's also symbolic. It has a certain psychic weight - it's about expectation: hope and fear. Its warning edge is the point of balance between what we hope we might get, and what we fear might be landed on us. It engages the future of economics, demography and migration, environmentalism and climate change, technology and communication, urban design for social engineering, food security etc

Kurt Vonnegut said, I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center. Folkestones position at the edge of Britain closest to Eurasia offers unique viewpoints on what's going on in the world today. It's an ideal place to present global issues in a local context. LOOKOUT makes the town the perfect host to these concepts, debates and explorations.

Folkestone Triennial 2014 is an invitation to join artists in imagining futures whileexperiencing the present head in the clouds (or the Cloud), feet on the ground. I would like to encourage all our visitors to immerse themselves in the urban fabric and 'read' it through the eyes of the artists. In a globalised world, these readings will inevitably conjure up all our futures. I hope you find lots to enjoy in the experience.

Yoko Ono SKYLADDER and Earth Peace

Yoko Onos thought-provoking work challenges peoples understanding of art and the world around them. From the beginning of her career, she was a 'conceptualist' whose work encompassed performance, instructions, film, music, and writing.

Born in Tokyo in 1933, Ono then moved to New York in 1953, following her studies in philosophy in Japan. By the late 1950s, she was contributing to the citys vibrant contemporary art activities. In 1960 she opened her Chambers Street loft, where she hosted a series of radical performances and exhibited realizations of some of her early conceptual works.

By the mid 1960s, her work had become associated with the artistic movement called Fluxus, and in the summer of 1966 she was invited to take part in the Destruction in Art Symposium in London. During this period, she also performed a number of concerts throughout England, which included one at the Metropole Art Centre in Folkestone. In 1969, together with John Lennon, she realized Bed-In, and the worldwide campaign for peace called War Is Over! (if you want it).

For Folkestone Triennial 2014, she has contributed two specially composed artworks, SKYLADDER and Earth Peace.

SKYLADDER 2014 is an 'instruction' an invitation to viewers to complete an artwork initiated by the artist. (Her first exhibition of 'instruction paintings' took place in New York in 1961). Sometimes these works are written like a musical score, with the artist taking the place of the composer and the viewer interpreting the score in the way that a musician plays a composition.

SKYLADDER 2014 has been written on the wall for everyone to read and enjoy in two of Folkestone's buildings that are generally accessible to the public, the Public Library on Grace Hill and the Quarterhouse in Tontine Street. It doesn't matter who writes it on the wall like a poem, it's the thought that counts, not the writing.

Step ladders have appeared frequently in Ono's work since the mid 1960s as an image of aspiration (climbing higher) and of imagination (taking us nearer the sky, a wonderful open space onto which we can project our desires and dreams). The image of the ladder or stepladder is particularly appropriate for the present exhibition, Lookout, which invites the public to take up different positions around the town in order to imagine the future in different perspectives.

Ono's campaign for peace is very important to her as an artist and activist. In 2007, she created a permanent monument to peace, the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on Viey Island, Iceland. And In 2011 she was honoured with the prestigious 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her dedication to peace activism.

Her second contribution to Folkestone Triennial 2014 is Earth Peace. This appears on billboards in prominent locations: on a stone slab on the Leas near the Metropole (where she performed in 1966), and is transmitted in Morse Code in a light beam over the Channel towards France. The text is also available as a poster for people to put in their windows to show their support for peace. If you allow your mind to engage with the phrase, it's hard to imagine two tiny words brought together in this way having a greater impact.

At the time of the 2008 financial crisis (18 October), Yoko Ono wrote: "If you want to know what your thought processes were like in the past, just examine your body now. And if you want to know what your body will look like in the future,examine your thought processes now. Your body is the scar of your mind." The urban environment of every town is a description of how the people of that town thought and imagined in the past.

Strange Cargo The Luckiest Place on Earth

Strange Cargo was established in Folkestone in 1995 and operates as a company limited by guarantee and registered charity. Initially focusing on celebratory outdoor arts projects and carnivals, Strange Cargo has developed a reputation for its portfolio of imaginative public and visual arts projects, special celebratory events and programmes with large groups of people.

Glance up as you walk under Folkestone Central Railway Bridge and you might be intrigued to see four colourful figures looking down at you. These watchful lookouts are Strange Cargos idea for Folkestones icons of good fortune.

Positioned vigilantly on the imposing edifice of the bridge, high above passing pedestrians, each figure is a digitally scanned likeness of a lucky Folkestonian, their luckiness captured in a 3D printed sculpture. Each figure is representative of their age group, stood atop their stone plinth, a fundamental part of The Luckiest Place on Earth.

Swathed in symbolic lucky colours; the icons present to onlookers their golden objects of good fortune. Everyone has their own idea of what luck is, it is a universal concept. Strange Cargo invites visitors to pass through this special place and consider what luck means to them. Is it possible that through our own thoughts and actions we can unlock our own luck reserves? Just think what life would be like if we all believed ourselves to be the master of our own good fortune.

The symbols held by the statues were suggested hundreds of times over by local people as the most recognisable lucky objects, and they are there to remind us that luck is a universal language. It is these symbols of the horseshoe, wishbone, cat, crossed fingers, four leaf clover, touch wood and lucky mascot that have emerged here as the most identifiable ways to signify good luck. Even the flying seagull, whose random lucky deposits are known to shower down on many a blessed walker, is understood to be a popular seaside bringer of good fortune.

By visiting The Luckiest Place on Earth, Strange Cargo suggests it is possible to learn to be lucky. Folkestone is in the throes of being regenerated, but it is its people that have the capacity to make the greatest impact. If we all take the time to spot new opportunities, meet new people and seek out the silver lining, these simple actions can make a big difference to how lucky life appears to be, affecting not just how lucky we feel, but the luck of our town.

Take a moment to contemplate what luck means to you, and carry that lucky thought with you throughout your day. Before you leave The Luckiest Place on Earth, dont miss the opportunity to place a penny in the worlds first Recycling Point for luck and wishes found on the bridge wall. Your wish will mix with the thousands of others, adding to the lucky aura of this place. But the best bit is, that as well as making a wish, you can remove and recycle someone elses lucky penny. This means you can carry a bit of shared good fortune with you as you go on your way; a reminder that you have visited Folkestone and spent some time at The Luckiest Place on Earth.

Diane Dever & Jonathan Wright Pent Houses

Dever was born in 1974 in County Mayo, Ireland. Wright was born in 1961 in London, UK. Both live and work in Folkestone.

For Folkestone Triennial 2014 they use 5 sculptural installations to invite reflection on the global and growing importance of water in the future. Their work rediscovers the hidden waterways of the Pent Stream, an untapped and unseen resource that flows from the hills to the harbour that was a foundation of Folkestone's past prosperity.

Folkestones geology is of rift