1 - Singing
There were probably about 1000 students there, and in the mornings and evenings we all sang together in The Arena, a giant tent. Sometimes at the end of a song the band would stop playing, but the singing would carry on for the last few lines. Listening to all those voices together was like listening to howling wolves. But different to the 60,000 Green Day concert I went to a few years ago. Singing the Christian songs, everyone was singing because they believed every word, not because they liked the music. So you actually felt like you were all together, like a pack or an organism. If I'd stop singing to listen it was like standing inside a giant set of lungs and listening to it breathe.
2 - Dan Curtis
The event had an artist in residence, Dan Curtis. He had been given an open-walled section tent section to make work in, which I thought was a difficult situation to start in. He found discarded building materials, originally from the centre's Victorian manor house, and used these to make the sculpture over a 4 day period. They were returned afterwards. The materials were carefully arranged into small groupings, or miniature constructions, taking visual reference points and lines from the space. Despite its highly formal nature, I was keen to focus on it as a gestural, conceptual piece; Dan spoke of several conceptual themes within the making process. Materials were examined and contrasted; cheap instant materials like tape and the carpet (event carpeting is disposable) against much older architectural fragments. I was interested in the time and care that had been given to the objects. Despite looking at a lot of modern art, this is the first time that I have actually understood something as being genuinely affirmative of the material. Looking back at photographs of the work let me see it more in terms of the composition; I might have a more two dimensional mind.
Another post on Dan Curtis' residency:
i quite like #2 and #3 - quite elegant, really (especially #2).
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