Monday 30 June 2008

American for the Arts

Last week we went to the Americans for the Arts annual convention in Philadelphia to raise awareness, with our project manager, of the projects happening in Calgary and start developing a network of people interested in involving artists in thinking about urban infrastructures.
With more than 1400 attendee it certainly was an experience, Mostly geared towards arts administrators, little was really said about the potential and role of artists in shaping and questioning our environment. although a great debate was sparked in an open paneled discussion, Manifest Destiny: A Meeting of the minds on the state of public art (following the Public Art Year In Review Presentation in the "liberty Ballroom"). Presenters included Jack Becker, Public Art Review, Mel Chin, Artist, Patricia Philips, writer curator and Professor in Art History at Cornell University amongst others.
It was certainly useful to meet up with people excited about what they do and seeing the value in involving artists in the way Calgary is trying to through their UEP Public Art plan

Blurry picture of one of the organised lunch time

We also took a day to check out Olafur Elisasson exhibition at MOMA and PS1 in New York - highly recommended if it tours somewhere near you.

The reversed waterfall in PS1

I only see things when they move, in Moma

Odd sympathies

Now that the last performances have been completed, we are working with John Metcalf on the next stage: a series of miniatures sound bites of the walks, and a map/score to allow anyone to experience one of the walks.
We also got some pictures of the last performances back from the photographer (Stuart Bunce):




the socks in the trousers are for the sound recording -so is the recordist- not part of the uniform

Friday 13 June 2008

When it rains in Oxford Street

Just back last night from London, trying not very successfully to sort out our immigration status for the Calgary projects.
We're taking this slight geographical link to mention the text we wrote for Alex Gross' book of new works, Wood Death Architecture, resulting from his residency at Tramway.

Our short essay, When it rains in Oxford Street, the architecture is no more important than the rain (from an Archigram quote) is alongside essays by John Calcutt and Jim Colquhoun, a nice place to be.

We'll upload the essay on our website in the near future, until then you can buy Alex's text in art bookshops and visual art venues in Scotland.

Tuesday 10 June 2008

Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland

We are pleased to announce that we have been nominated by the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland for our collaboration on Walden with Nick Bone of Magnetic North and actor Ewan Donald, in the category Best Design.

The collaboration developed over many month, and as Nick says in his blog describing the evolution of Walden, "it was that unusual thing a genuine collaboration: the boundaries between our prescribed roles blurred heavily, but with no preciousness on anyone's part". A very exciting project as we wish they would be more.
It all started during Rough Mix, a unique inter-disciplinary creative development programme organised by Nick, where we worked for two weeks with a theatre director, a composer, a choreographer and two playwright on our own embryonic ideas with a continuous discussion and feed back. An amazing process where we realised how close in their thinking processes different creative practice and where Nick started the discussion on Walden.


The CATS ceremony will on June 15th.

Odd sympathies

We finished the last performances of Odd Sympathies last week-end.
An extract from the press release:
"Imagine attending a concert but instead of sitting or standing, you walk. Imagine the music you listen to captured from sounds that already exist around you as you walk through the concert. Imagine the concert is slightly different each time you experience it because there may be unexpected sounds along the way. Sans façon and composer John Metcalf have collaborated to create Odd Sympathies, three new sonic pieces that capture the sounds of the city of Cardiff and together form what we believe is the first sonic map of the city.
Drawing inspiration from the iconic work 4’33’’ Silence by John Cage, Odd Sympathies is a series of carefully composed sound maps of Cardiff that take in some of the fascinating landmarks in the city and open the ears to a sound world that is in many ways as dense and magical as a rainforest."

and a short interview on Radio Wales Arts Show with Nicola Heywood Thomas available until june 12:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/noscript.shtml?/radio/aod/wales_aod.shtml?wales/artsshow

first post

We finally decided to set up a blog type page to post the most recent informations about Sans façon and add pictures, articles or observations that we enjoyed.
It might be fairly sporadic but certainly more regular than the website...
I hope you'll enjoy some of the bits, and please do not hesitate to comment.