One month residency at STRYX. March/April 2018
During this time Dan Auluk will be re-working his closing 2017 residency at The WIG (now re- launched as FAIL BETTER).
'We don’t talk anymore 2' will be a further exploration in making work with other artists and audiences to produce collaborative live performances. Communicating without talking to each other, blurring the lines between artist and audience, performance, authorship and spectatorship, activating audiences, space and disrupting the rules of exhibition-making and presentation.
There will be an opening launch on March 31st 6pm – 9pm and a closing live art performance at Digbeth First Friday on Friday 6th April 6pm – 9pm.
Participating artists are:
Ian Andrews | Dan Auluk | Sally Bailey | Alex Billingham | Ofelia Carmen | Jamie Cox | Oscar Cass-Darweish | Jen Der Fenda | Daniel Hopkins (Landcrash) | Sarah Fortes Mayer | Vicky Roden | Ana Rutter | Sarah Walden | The Hoo-Hah Initiative | Collective Unconscious
This was the only space where audiences could gather to talk, drink etc.
Outside this zone everyone was instructed not to talk.
Typed text of instructions and observations made during the live art performance.
Sally Bailey 5 small paintings
Experimental sounds in response to the live art performances and a collection of sounds resampled by Landcrash
The piece that I will encourage the public ( artist or layperson) to engage with,( and potentially add to) is the continually ongoing piece on the table which attempts to find visual equivalents to the sounds I hear in the gallery.
“ A discrete camera that records a minute of video then plays it backwards on a website (link to be provided for the evening). Once the next minute is recorded it is uploaded and replaces the previous one.. The camera will initially be pointing out of the window, and the raspberry pi computer that it is attached to should not be touched, but I don't mind people moving or changing the angle of the camera (as far as cables permit, which might not be that far to be fair..) Should make sense when you see it. “
A box of exhibition information and artist statements as paper aeroplanes handed out to visitors to throw during the live art performance.
'Gender Fender – Version 1'. A boxing-ring come art-exhibition gender-fuck character. Created by Dan Auluk. Interpreted by Jon Wright, also known as his drag alter-ego Cosmic Crum.
Wright, injects comedy and quirky drag personas with participatory performances. Interact with Jen Der Fender. They're very friendly.
Participants were invited to stick images, from various types of magazines supplied by the artists, on to a previous existing work of artist and PhD researcher Sally Bailey.
Sally Bailey painting / Vicky Roden poppet and Alex Billingham in foil.
For the duration of the live art performance exhibition Billingham will walk around the space blindfolded - discovering space through touch, accident and sound.
Photo from Sarah Walden’s view.
Photo: Sarah Walden
A set of instructions and objects in an intimate space to use as you wish and to respond with performer as you wish.
An exchange of intimacy and conflict, power and control - you choose.
Adults only.
Photo from Sarah Walden’s view.
Photo: Sarah Walden
Photo from Sarah Walden’s view.
Photo: Sarah Walden
Photo from Sarah Walden’s view.
Photo: Sarah Walden
Photo from Sarah Walden’s view.
Photo: Sarah Walden
Photo from Sarah Walden’s view.
Photo: Sarah Walden
Photo from Sarah Walden’s view.
Photo: Sarah Walden
Photo from Sarah Walden’s view.
Photo: Sarah Walden
Photo from Sarah Walden’s view.
Photo: Sarah Walden
Live performance by Sarah - whispering into the ears of strangers.
Intimate polaroid portraits.
Post-it notes - inviting audiences to stick up live responses.
As part of Alex Billingham's curatorial programme titled GESTALT at The WIG (now known as FAIL BETTER). Dan Auluk was offered a 6 week residency to test out ways of collaborating, largely through non-verbal communication.
At the closing event the audience were invited to take part in the performance by Dan Auluk, Daniel Hopkins and Oscar Cass Darweish through non-verbal communication culminating in a 3 hour live art performance collaboration where the only rule was no talking.
Participating artists: Dan Auluk | Alex Billingham | Oscar Cass-Darweish | Jamie Cox | Daniel Hopkins (Landcrash) | Vicky Roden | Ana Rutter
FEATURE Project was an online collaborative platform showcasing experimental artists videos. Established in 2016 by Dan Auluk.
FEATURE 1
The opening launch is Feature 2016, an appropriated video work made by Dan Auluk in response to 16 submitted artists' videos. There was no selection criteria and all videos submitted were selected.
The video works submitted are diverse in nature, from performance videos, re-workings of found footage, documenting of the every day, and experimental pieces that use the medium of video itself to capture and present various audio/visual outcomes.
Participating artists were:
Ana Rutter | Daniel Ward | David Poole | Duncan Poulton | Fred Hubble | Haider Akbar | Ian Andrews | Jack Marder | Jamie Cox | Jason Jones | Mark Ellis | Nita Newman | Oscar Cass-Darweish | Sandra Bouguerch | Sarah Fortes Mayer | Stuart Layton
FEATURE 2
Invited all the artists who submitted a video work for initiative 1, to submit a re-edited 5 minute video from #1: FEATURE 16.
Participating artists were:
Ana Rutter | Ian Andrews | Jack Marder | Jamie Cox | Jason Jones | Mark Ellis | Nita Newman | Oscar Cass-Darweish | Sarah Fortes Mayer | Stuart Layton
Audio files for Feature 2
FEATURE 3
Artists' who contributed to #2: FEATURE were invited to submit video and/or sound files.
9 artist submitted either video or sound.
Jack Marder and Ana Rutter will be editing a video each in response to the submitted files. Nita Newman will be producing a film poster in response to the final videos from Jack and Ana. Participating artists were:
Ana Rutter | Ian Andrews | Jack Marder | Jamie Cox | Mark Ellis | Nita Newman | Oscar Cass- Darweish | Stuart Layton
by Dan Auluk
Interview with New Art West Midlands
GRASSLANDS Residency Programme
Grasslands Manifesto
G Group activity, occupation and collaboration.
R Reactivation of space and to leave a residue of activity behind.
A Activity; no audiences unless audience becomes part of the activity but not as spectator.
S Space and time to think through and test initial ideas by means of critical discussion and reflection.
S Sharing of ideas, skills and approaches to making and testing.
L Learning and listening to each other and not working in isolation.
A Approaches; trying out new approaches to making and testing.
N New discoveries about your creative practice and that of others through collaborative intersections. D Dan Auluk; the Architect of Grasslands who will be there to offer practical and critical support.
S Selecting creative people who will benefit from this exchange and help Grasslands grow and develop.
Residency 1 - documentation
Sarah Fortes Mayer & Sonya Russell-Saunders (with Vicky Roden & Martin Prosser) (2015)
Residency 2 - documentation
Dale Hipkiss & Jonathan Graney (2015)
Residency 3 - documentation
Matt Gale & Wendy Palmer (2015)
Residency 4 - documentation
Ian Andrews (2016)
Residency 5 - documentation
Ana Rutter & Ian Andrews (2016)
Residency 6 - documentation
Ben Harding, Matt Gale & Oscar Cass-Darweish (2016)
Residency 7 - documentation
Ben Harding, Ian Andrews, Matt Gale & Patrick Goodhall (2016)
Residency 8 - documentation
Alex Billingham, Patrick Goodhall & Vicky Roden (2016)
Residency 9 - documentation
Damien Massey, Ian Andrews & Sarah Fortes Mayer (2017)
Elizabeth McAlpine | Michael Robinson | Oscar Cass-Darweish | Meghan Allbright | Mathew Parkin | Mark Ellis | Stuart Layton | Laurence Price | Ofelia Carmen | Sally Bailey | Sarah Fortes Mayer
Curated by Dan Auluk Review by Sally Bailey
Act 1: Zombie Poverty is a two part exhibition that begins with a group show opening that dissolves into an experimental, de/evolving artist residency programme influenced by the idea of disruptive film narrative presented in a non-linear structure. The show is interested in dismantling authorial demarcation by inviting artists to leave a trace of their residency behind and in making a decision as to where this trace lives they populate ARTicle Gallery in an unpredictable outcome rupturing curatorial intervention. The invited artists are asked to produce a group show for the launch which is then prematurely de-installed, metaphorically returning ARTicle Gallery to a desolate landscape, for the space to then be reactivated by a series of two or three day residencies. Act 1: Zombie Poverty brings together a group of visual artists/performers whose practice is responsive, in flux, temporal and transient in nature.
Meghan Allbright is interested in the starting point, the idea and method of creating. The ‘openness’ of a white page, white space and its connotations of expectancy and the desire to overcome this is something that intrigues and drives her practice.
Mathew Parkin works with graphic design, sculpture and video. Parkin looks at how mass production, the Internet and his chosen role as an artist, produce and complicate his identity and desires.
Mark Ellis creates interactive performance encounters which are used to explore social and political relationships specifically often with a focus upon power, choice, intimacy and the notion of freedom in relation to personal exploration and expression.
Stuart Layton arts practice is theoretically rooted within simulation and the hyper real and explores the passing down of history, folklore & childhood recollections and analysis of to what extent history is actually fabricated to suit the political agenda of the day. Layton’s practice oscillates between video and painting. One acting as a counterbalance to the other, whilst – simultaneously feeding off each other.
Laurence Price works with ideas, motifs and ephemera, with many different modes of presentation using performative research as a way of engaging with the audience, space and processes. Animating objects to convey certain ideas as props or gestural punctuation, so the resulting environment will often be a theatrical or staged situation. Price is currently interested in notions of physical labour and ideas of human consumption, mass production and mass consumption that inform ideas of the future in relation to science fiction, religion & space travel.
Oscar Cass-Darweish develops both site-specific and virtual platforms that allow for artworks to be experienced in a disparate manner, across multiple viewpoints and timeframes. Cass-Darweish will produce an audio/visual exhibit, which will evolve for the whole duration of the show, part informed by a visit to Palestine.
Act 1: Zombie Poverty is excited to invite Ofelia Carmen, a writer who is interested in the affect and relationship of text and gallery exhibitions and Sally Bailey, a painter and a writer interested in repetition, both of image and of process which explores notions of self, of conformity, of the need to ‘fit in’ concerned with the relational integrity between materiality and temporality. The two invited ‘writers in residence’ will produce written works that aim to destabilize the exhibition as a whole.
In addition to the aforementioned invited residency artists, internationally established artists Elizabeth McApline and Michael Robinson will present individual works that will remain a constant throughout the exhibition.
McAlpine, who uses temporality as a central motif in her experimental video, sculptural and performance works, will present a 2d screen-print that alludes to a potential performance and simultaneously acts as a silent soundtrack, for the exhibition, affecting and being informed by the activity that takes place. McAlpine will also show a short video that will attempt to puncture the space sporadically in a chaotic fashion.
Robinson, a film and video artist whose work explores the joys and dangers of mediated experience, riding the fine lines between humor and terror, nostalgia and contempt, ecstasy and hysteria will present three deftly edited films that fuse popular film and television culture, sound and music to create a hyper-real and mesmerizing disruption and dislocation from the original source.
Words and Music (2010) & LIGHT READING 1500 cinematic explosions (2005) Courtesy of Elizabeth McApline & Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, UK.
Line Describing Your Mom (2011) , These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us (2010) & If There Be Thorns (2009), Courtesy of Michael Robinson, New York, US.
In Part 2 invited guest artist Sarah Fortes Mayer explored a performance around being overlooked and discarded challenging audiences to consider their future self.
Elizabeth McAlpine | Michael Robinson | Oscar Cass-Darweish | Meghan Allbright | Mathew Parkin | Mark Ellis | Stuart Layton, Laurence Price | Ofelia Carmen | Sally Bailey | Sarah Fortes Mayer.
Curated by Dan Auluk & Oscar Cass-Darweish
Participating Artists:
Ofelia Carmen | Jamie Cox | Simon Hope | Paul Langford | Nita Newman | Paul Newman
Press Release
Tuesday 6th and Friday 9th November, 2012 (5.30pm – 8.30pm)
The Works Gallery, 3rd Floor, Jubilee Trade Centre, Birmingham, UK
Birmingham emerging artists/curators take a first step forward.
A collaboration between artists Dan Auluk & Oscar Cass-Darweish.
An extension leading on from Proposal 1, a project initiated at mac Birmingham as part of the ALLOTMENT Project. Proposal 1 explored the unseen aspects of the common application process for exhibiting artwork. Starting with a call out for proposals for a potential exhibition, the idea of a proposal becoming an artwork was explored. All proposals submitted were displayed online alongside subsequent creative responses by Dan & Oscar, further blurring the boundaries between artist, curator and audience raising questions on authorship and authenticity. Derivatives of the creative responses were chronologically revealed as works in the space for which the original proposals were intended. Augmented by information linking to the artist’s proposal online, the viewer was invited to interpret the possible work by means of the disparity between two outputs as opposed to considering a single resolved piece.
Proposal 2 as an exhibition revisits this process in two phases. Initially offering the original participating artists a chance to exhibit new works born out of the exchange that took place during Proposal. The second phase is a response to these new works in the same location, by Dan & Oscar as co-curators. The viewer must attend both parts of the show in order to fully experience the work.
“ALLOTMENT at mac birmingham looked at alternative curatorial methods currently being practised and researched in Birmingham (2012). Dan Auluk’s Proposal project was first explored as part of this programme and it is a credit to both artist and ALLOTMENT that this piece is being further developed and continued outside of mac birmingham and the project.” Charlie Levine, Associate Producer, ALLOTMENT
“mac birmingham is delighted to see the Proposal project develop and build upon its initial outing as part of the ALLOTMENT programme. The project represents what ALLOTMENT strived to achieve – reflecting different working practices and an openness to alternative ways of working, outside the institutional systems and procedures familiar in arts industry.” Craig Ashley, Visual Arts Producer, mac birmingham
