jonnybaker

the project - if you're in scotland...

the project is on 20 june in edinburgh, a day of

arts – faith – theology – ecology – politics –philosophy - spirituality - justice
…or basically celebration, inspiration, irreverence, profundity, laughter, tears, questions, argument, friendship, shivers up the spine - add your own noun to the list.

there's a listing of the programme here (scroll down) which it includes the likes of beki bateson, doug gay, steve butler, julie wilson, john bell, iain archer. looks wonderful!

wise blindness and icons of the present

cms publishes a series of small booklets, a similar kind of size to grove booklets which are monographs reflecting on contemporary issues in mission.

the latest one is called telling it slant and is in two parts. the first is by john pritchard asking questions around the arts and how they represent an alternative spirituality and doorway to faith, and how they connect with mission. the second is a response which i have written called wise blindness and icons of the present - i'm quite pleased with what i wrote!

you can either sign up for the series or buy individual ones from the cms shop.

worship curation [5]: creating a public

worship curation [1]: opening up a series of reflections
worship curation [2]: the making of a world
worship curation [3]: negotiating newness
worship curation [4]: curating beyond the canon

a museum director's first task is to create a public - not just to do great shows, but to create an audience that trusts the institution

so says pontus hultén in a brief history of curating. this struck me quite forcibly for the simple reason that most of the people i know involved in curating worship at least in the alternative worship tradition (?!) are most interested in the creative process. i include myself in that. the processes of articulation, imagination and continuity are energising. dreaming up ideas and working out how to make them happen out of few resources, both alone and in a group of artists is like breathing air - easy and we don't have to think about it too hard. but there are a lot of events and installations and so on that are wonderfully creative and take my breath away but there is only a very small group who is fortunate enough to find this gold mine.

it's true you've got to do more work to engage in this kind of worship - it requires more than sitting in a pew and singing some songs and listening to a sermon. and i think there's something about taste - [good taste obviously!] - it's a marginal pursuit for arty types who like the leftfield rather than the mainstream. these are probably scripts we play in our minds as to why events are small. but i think it's probably that the kinds of people creating this worship simply don't get round to or think about creating a public.

i had a meal with someone new to ealing recently who was involved years back in abundant, a huge christian network and club in london 15 years or so back run by my younger brother steve and others. for that they used to have reps in every church they could think of, send out fliers and campaign like crazy. so the first question this person asked about grace was how people in other churches might know about it, did we have promoters, how did we advertise locally... i mumbled somewhat embarrassed that we didn't really do a lot of that. we had a web site, an e-mail list, an annual flier (but even that doesn't get used properly), blogs (and some of those are not bad). but it was clear to me that we haven't prioritised creating a public (or a tribe if you have read seth godin's tribes). don't get me wrong we do have a public, but it's smallish...

that's it for this post - it's one thought, one blind spot i think in many people who are curators of worship or artist-curators. maybe it's time to apply the same creative energy and process to this as to the construction of a wonderful worship experience/event?!

reel and congrats!

congrats joel on getting a distinction in your art foundation! yay!!!! and here's his reel if you want to get a flavour of the movie stuff. the end piece should be worked up on proost for july we hope!

Reel from cntrst on Vimeo.

worship curation [4]: curating beyond the canon

worship curation [1]: opening up a series of reflections
worship curation [2]: the making of a world
worship curation [3]: negotiating newness

curating beyond the canon is the title of one of the chapters in curating subjects. sadly i can take no credit for the term. in it okwui enwezor says this

I have always tried to work outside the canon and do it within culture. This is not to say that the canon is bad but that the canon already has a highly circumscribed notion of what artistic practice could be. I think is already embedded within a very large historical determination that is in many ways very much set. It is un-giving. I am really interested in curating within culture, even when I am drawing from the canon in order to unsettle the kind of methodological issues that have become so situated in one place. To curate within culture is to take a space of culture in the present as an open place of working and that means that you have a greater mobility in terms of bringing in procedures of making art that may not have a place in the broader context of contemporary art. I suppose this is the realm within which most curators work except when their ambitions change and they want to make an exhibition of Andy Warhol. What could be more generic? When their ambitions change, when they want to become more institutionalised, they want to prove their commitment to the canon. This is what usually happens, it is more strategic. You can see immediately the intellectual poverty of some of those gestures and I completely understand what you see when the move happens. The curators have already reached a threshold when they want to have a permanent job... it doesn't mean giving up the canon but findng a way to re-jig the canon.

nice eh? try replacing art with worship in that paragraph. i think there are a lot of resonances with alternative worship . alternative worship has sought to curate beyond the canon in a number of ways -

1. i like the recent tendency to move things into public spaces within culture - art installations such as the advent beach hut calendar and stations of the cross, in cafes and bars and proximity spaces. johannes cladders being interviewed by hans obrist talks about the attempt by sanders and others to bring art and life completely together and either give up the institution of the museum or totally rethink it. i like the telling of a debate about museums where there is a discussion of whether it would be ok to play ping pong in a museum and cladders says yes as long as the art is taken off the walls first as it would be a distraction! cheeky playful and subversive. cladders goes on to say

i still wanted the museum but i said that just because you put another label on a bottle doesn't mean that the wine inside changes; it is the wine that needs to be altered. it is the inner attitude that we have to alter. we finally have to stop defining art as only those objects that have been accepted as art by society. we have to concentrate on on allowing art to evelove through how it is received.

2. theology - depends a bit on where you start from but curators within worship are often discovering texts that are beyond the canon at least of where they started. the initial wave of thinking around alt worship had a discussion forum called postmodern christian i seem to remember and feminist, liberation, black theologies all came to influence thinking. the discovery that were a whole swathe of texts beyond what had been the canon. this is also about where the canon is read from or through whose eyes and it came to be read with postmodern eyes. i can also think of a friend who tried to introduce contemplative practices into a charismatic church and this caused a lot of heartache - it was beyond the canon of that particular church culture/theology. the use of a lava lamp caused consternation because it was a distraction or peripheral!

3. the content of particular experiences being curated. this might be something simple such as the articulation of liturgy - i can think of a eucharist at grace on hospitality that drove hard for a radical inclusion at the table, certainly confronting the assumed theology of who can come to the table for bread and wine.  the liturgy suggested that if jesus was able to share bread with judas knowing he would be betrayed by him that pretty much blew open the ring fencing that goes on. i think of the use of technology and culture in worship - mac classics on the holy table or discmans in st pauls cathedral, playful, messing with things, matter out of place. i think of themes explored - dirt by vaux which included throwing the bread and wine dramatically and the use of language that shocked projecting the words god is found in the shit on the back wall, or queer by ikon, or being greeted by the welcoming group dressed in contamination suits at grace.

4. some groups have not had denominational ties - so they have done what they like which is clearly beyond the canon

there's a mistaken notion of liturgy at play in lots of places in the anglican church for example - that there are prescribed liturgies that need to be recited by rote. identity is tied up with perpetuating this. but this is a very stagnant view. ironically curating beyond the canion is precisely the kind of tactic that will lead to renewal of the canon. so somehow a new set of permissions needs to be created that frees up worship practice within denominations. in practice this has happened in several places. the way we have negotiated this in grace is to get permission from the bishop to do liturgies that are more experimental and canon law is covered because there is a service available as prescribed by canon law. but not everyone has been that fortunate in negotiating space. there was a small booklet/paper produced off the back of a lambeth conference (down to earth statement). i think it was in 1998. anyway this tried to address the issue in the anglican communion globally. the motivation is that the canon had obviously been written from a western perspective so this document sought to encourage and give permission for contextual liturgies - or to use the language of the document - inculturated. here's a couple of quotes that get to the heart of it...

Our lack of inculturation has fostered both the alienation of some Christians and an over ready willingness of others to live in two different cultures, one of their religion and and the other of their everyday life. Other Christians again have left our churches because of this cultural insensitivity. Similarly non Christians have found the foreignness of the church a great barrier to faith...

...True inculturation implies a willingness in worship to listen to culture.... it has to make contact with the deep feelings of people. It can only be achieved through an openness to innovation and experimentation, an encouragement of local creativity, and a readiness to reflect critically at every stage of the process, a process which in principle is never ending.

as in many mission issues the church has had to think about the canon in relation to global contexts but hasn't applied the same sense on her own doorstep. but the problem is exactly the same on our own doorstep. in the book trickster makes the world lewis hyde talks about the trickster character in mythology and suggests that although trickster is an uncomfortable character, with his ruses (such as messing with dirt, crossing boundaries, or disturbing notions of truth and property) he is key to renewal, so cultures need to make space for trickster rather then silence or kick him out. totalitarian regimes silence artists.

lastly i found it fascinating that the desire for a permanent job is seen to be a threshold in the art world by some. i guess there are the same set of tensions around where to locate yourself in relation to the institution and powers that be and the edge. i touched on this in the last post...

worship curation [3]: negotiating newness

worship curation [1]: opening up a series of reflections
worship curation [2}: the making of a world

i have just finished reading A Brief History of Curating by Hans Ulrich Obrist (thanks nic). his concern is that curation may be forgotten and so has conducted eleven extensive interviews with well known curators to help the memory live on. i say well known but part of the curator's role is often to disappear behind their work so i didn't really know the names very well at all.

it's fascinating seeing the themes that surface again and again in different ways in the interviews and with the lens i bring to reading i am looking to scrape off the surface themes that resonate with curation in worship. one of the strongest is negotiating newness in art in the midst of the public, artists, museums, galleries, benefactors and patrons, and the range of institutions and powers at play in the art world. in short the curator is most definitely a negotiator, a middleman or middlewoman even if that wasn't what they signed up for! (sound familiar?)

some curators locate themselves at the independent freelance end of things so they have the creative space to fulfil their vision. they problematise the institutions and the art world and haven't got time for them. so seth siegelaub calls the museum 'a cemetery for art' with its focus on historicisation. and sees no point in working with a museum because of its vested social and structural interests. art institutions can be very detached from artists which ends up being a real problem so why bother with them? in an article i want to come back to in curating subjects it made me smile when okwui enwezor says that the day curators want a permanent job they have reached a threshold! it so sounds like the debates around mission and sustainability and ordination/full time paid or not...

on the other hand there are plenty who managed to take roles inside the museums and used that to negotiate permissions for artists to do amazing things in and around those huge spaces. obrist suggest in questions to curators that a couple of keys to the curators who have managed to create the most impact in and around museums have been their own closeness to artists and their ability to create trust in the interplay between the institution, the public and the artists. without that trust you won't be able to do much but once it's there who knows what can happen? sandberg talked about the courage to run a museum in a non academic experimental way - but you're not going to do that without a lot of graft in building trust.

there have been a couple of significant changes in museums in particular. one was that museums stopped just seeing themselves as showing permanent collections. but warehoused the artworks to create different kinds of themed shows bringing the good stuff out from time to time and showing it in different ways, making different articulations and connections with it. and the second was a shift in some museums seeing themselves as sites for experimentation. at art historians day in 1970 michael diers says that it became clear that museums had to say goodbye to their isolation, to their function as an aesthetic church (!). out of this emerged the idea of the museum as a workshop or laboratory. johannes cladders talked about the museum as a space of risk (which I love). i remember going to an amazing evening at the victoria and albert museum in london with DJs and projections, and an evening of installations in traditional spaces by onedotzero – that definitely had this laboratory feel. i suspect that if you rewound, things used to be a lot more stuffy!

my response to this debate is pretty similar to how i feel about the wonderfully creative mission leaders, improvisers and worship curators who have been part of the emerging church/alternative worship movement that has subverted, shaken, deconstructed and brought newness to the christian faith in the soil of postmodern cultures at the edges and in the heart of the institutions. let's have both and everything inbetween! i love it that there are curators who want to sail off the edge and do things that the institution cannot imagine or permit. and i also love it that there are those who patiently earn trust and negotiate space within the heart of the church. the beauty of the new environment is that it's so easy for those people to connect and share their learning and stories and journey together. can you imagine a cathedral employing a curator to play in their cathedral which they see as a laboratory and a space of risk with a wealth of artworks (theological capital?) that's been warehoused but that the curator can bring out of the cupboard to create new articulations with imagination holding up and subverting the continuity of the tradition? renewal that comes from the centre and the edge

studies in crowd behaviour 2: the blind leading the blind

studies in crowd behaviour 2: the blind leading the blind, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

i realise i never got round to posting this photo up before now. this was one of three that i exhibited as a station for the stations of the cross exhibition in oxford. the station i had was barrabus, the criminal who the crowd choose to release and in so doing condemn christ to be crucified. it was one of three that i called studies in crowd behaviour 1, 2 and 3. the first studies in crowd behaviour 1: wishful thinking is here.

worship curation [2] : the making of a world

this post is the second in a series on worship curation
[1] opening up a series of reflections

what is it that a curator thinks about in relation to curating worship? in the first post i laid out a very practical list that i drew up for people taking the curation role in grace - thanks to the people who have commented btw. if you follow in a newsreader you're missing that part of the conversation. i'm beginning to think this is going to be a really interesting conversation as it plays out. i have started to and fro-ing with a few people via e-mail and plan to publish a series of interviews over the next few months.

in retrospect i'm not sure if such a practical post was the best way to start. maybe it was too functional? so let me come at the question of what it is that a curator might think about by suggesting it is three things: articulation, imagination and continuity. this is not my original thought! it's from an essay in curating subjects by simon sheikh on the techniques of the curator where he suggests that as curating looks to the future it should centre round these three notions.

worship imagines a world, nothing less. sheikh suggests in relation to exhibition making that if the curator is happy with the way the world is now they should continue to make exhibitions as always and repeat the formats and circulations. but if they are not content with the world they are in in a broad sense, and in the art world, then they will have to produce other exhibitions. i find this such a resonant idea. i'm not content with the world - globally, politically, or indeed the church world or the way worship is played out and imagines the world. so if you are curating worship what kind of a world do you imagine, do you make? maybe that is the most important question any of us can ask and it will probably take a lifetime to answer? if you are restless perhaps it is because you don't like the world being made for you by other imaginaries? i was talking with someone yesterday who had been at a christian exhibition for their organisation running a stand talking to the punters at a conference. but they were next to a stand that was selling worship cds for your church - if you didn't have a worship band, you could simply plug in their cds and sing along. the music played non stop for three days and nearly drove my friend insane. but the point is what kind of world is being imagined?! i want to create a totally different one. reflecting on alternative worship, which is where the notion of worship curation has come from, i think it has been about imagining new worlds, new relationships, new strategies and tactics, and counter-publics, about saying that other worlds are indeed possible, that business as usual simply will not do.

so these three themes...
articulation. this is how sheikh puts it (substitute worship for art or exhibition as you read any of these quotes):

a work of art is at best an articulation of something as much as it is a representation of someone: it is a proposal for how things could be seen, an offering but not a handout. articulation is the formulation of your position and politics, where you are and where you want to go, as well as a concept of companionship: you can come along or not.

worship is an articulation of something, of how things could be seen. i think this is really helpful. as a community or a curator you have a vision, a take. it might not be fully worked out but it is definitely not a neutrality. i think we sometimes want to pretend about this. if i reflect on this in grace, taking something like communion, we have articulated a radical vision of hospitality and welcome around the table in most of our liturgies - this is deliberately in the face and counter to the imagination of a world where only the insiders are welcomed. in the song table of christ one of the lines is 'come if the church stops you at the door'. this is articulation. articulation is also around more subtle things like deconstructing the front, or the role of the expert or priest, around posture and layout, and around the use of culture and popular culture in worship - making a world out of the stuff of everyday life rather than articulating a world which runs in parallel to the rest of life. i love the phrase 'an offering but not a handout'. art rarely works when it shouts - maybe punk is the exception?! and worship is the same. it's good to have clarity about what you want to articulate but it needs to be offered and explored rather than shouted and dictated. the tone and posture are really important. i also like it when art is multi-valent - functions at many levels and meanings so people can find a number of pathways through. but let's not pretend that this doesn't then have an articulation...

imagination. i go on and on about imagination and creativity. it's what it means to image god - such a gift. and the curating is a process about imagination. it's the fun part. at a macro level it's about ways of seeing, imagining another world, but it's also about imagining at the level of the process of coming up with ideas and dreaming things that have not been done before or have a different take. i will come back to the process of how people come up with ideas in interviews with people i hope. but it's so exciting to be involved in the making and producing in this way. i like to think sometimes that the angels sit in the rafters or on the balcony thinking what on earth are these crazy people going to do to worship today?! and we keep surprising them and bringing smiles to their faces. beach hut advent calendars, stations of the cross in public art galleries, embedding prayers in slabs of concrete, slapping containers of installations in city centres, sending surprises through the post, welcoming people dressed in contamination suits, guerilla worship... - i love what you guys dream and have dreamt and is yet to be dreamed. imagination - it's a muscle that can be developed and needs to be flexed and there's nothing better for it than being around other people flexing imagination, maybe it's a habit that can be caught.

continuity. i'll pick up on this more in interviews. but art/worship has a history a narrative or histories depending on who does the telling no doubt. there is a tradition, a line of ancestory, a communion of artists/saints worldwide and down the ages. to curate is to locate in this line sometimes straight, other times kicking off from, subverting, giving a new spin to, and opening up the traditions. it's how traditions get remade and taken forward. and the beauty of the art world and church world is that there is so much to play with. but it is a continuity whatever way you look at it even if sometimes a rupture is brought to that continuity. if you are located in a particular denominational setting (as we are in grace) this affords certain rules/logic/grammar. if you are outside of that, continuity will play out slightly differently. but the point is as a curator or team how are you locating in relation to continuity of the worlds before and the world to come? alternative worship in this respect was much keener to stress continuity and location in tradition in contrast with the modernising moves of worship in the 70s and 80s that broke with continuity going for the new.

this was going to be a quick post over breakfast and has extended a bit!... but a final quote from sheikh

producing a public is making a world. it is also making other ones possible.

worship curation [1] : opening up a series of reflections

curation is a term usually used in the art world for the role of imagining and overseeing an exhibition space or spaces either working with one or a group of artists. it's a term that has been adopted by quite a few people in alternative/creative worship. in my memory it's mark pierson who came up with this as a helpful way of thinking about worship leading both in the prodigal project and in the cd rom fractals. we have adopted this as a term to describe the person who leads a creative team putting together worship in grace and found it a helpful way to think about it. mark pierson describes a worship curator as

A maker of a context for worship rather than a presenter of content.
(The content would be prepared by others.)
A provider of a frame inside which the elements are arranged and rearranged
to convey a particular message for a particular purpose.

however... i realised the other week that whilst i go to quite a few exhibitions i actually don't really know a lot about curation in the art world other than experiencing the fruit of the work. what is the discipline? what is the process? what are the skills? what makes for good curation? so when i was in a gallery bookshop i bought a book called curating subjects - a pretty obscure text in some ways - that is a series of pieces on curation and what it's role is and where it's headed. i have been so struck by the richness of the ideas that as a result

a) i think if i'd taken another set of turns in life i would love to be an art curator!
b) i'm going to try and blog a few pieces in relation to ideas in this book that might connect if you are involved in worship creation/curation.
c) i think this could be an ongoing series where i want to reflect on particular curators of alternative worship and interview them about how they go about things (i haven't asked anyone yet but it's an idea!)

so first up a pragmatic post. i wrote some notes for people taking a lead role in planning a grace service a few years back when we were first shifting to working in smaller creative teams rather than everybody planning everything (why did we ever think that was a good idea?!) and they might be of interest. they don't really get under the skin of curation. but it's how things get done!

At Grace we have been experimenting with giving one or two persons this lead responsibility role as a way of sharing the load a bit. Maybe after 6 months or so we are better placed to reflect on how that's going and what it involves. When we first discussed it we came up with this list of tasks below. It's pretty good. I have now tried to embellish it a bit. What I am thinking is that we should come up with something as a document so that anyone curating has it as a reference point.

• facilitation of planning meetings
We usually have two planning meetings set aside for planning a service. Sometimes it is less if it is a simple structure such as 'nine'. The first meeting is usually a free flowing brainstorm, drawing out ideas and inspiration for the theme. The second one is the time when the ideas are knocked into shape for a service and reponsibilities delegated for the various components. The role of curator is to chair both of these meetings and keep them focused and on track. It is also worth doing some thinking for both ahead of time to have things to throw in to the mix for the first meeting and maybe some notions or ideas of how this might take shape before the second. Part of the meeting role is either taking notes on the discussion and order of service or asking someone else to and then e-mailing them round the group.

• reflection on emerging direction and content between meetings
After the brainstorm sometimes there is a clear idea for a service that is going to be easy to pull together. But other times the discussion may not have produced too many concrete ideas. In the latter case the curator should take the initiative to think what might help nudge the process on a bit before the second meeting. This could be e-mailing round some thoughts for discussion before the second meeting. Or it might be finding a few new ideas to throw into the mix, or suggesting a litugical framework or an idea of using stations or whatever to help give it shape.

• ensuring distillation of service order
It is crucial that by the end of the second meeting there is an order of service with names allocated for tasks. This must be circulated soon after the meeting as this second meeting is usually the Monday before Grace. As curator it is your role to fill the gaps - the order is sometimes less than complete!

• ensuring allocation of tasks
There are several areas of tasks. Each of these needs to be checked.
1. Tasks for the service order - hopefully most tasks for producing stations/prayers/liturgy/video etc will have been agreed at the second planning meeting. But it may be that there were gaps and you need to ensure that those gaps are filled. This may include asking people who were not present at the meeting.
2. Audio - somebody needs to be at Grace who knows how to run the sound. Usually we now plug into St Mary's PA system. But we can easily use the Grace PA instead. Your role as curator is to check that someone is there who can set this up (assuming there is audio required). You will also need to check that the music or songs required are able to be played via double CD player, ipods or whatever means.
3. Visual stuff - somebody needs to be at Grace who knows how to set up and run the visual side of things. This might involve drapes, slide proctors, TVs, data projectors, video mixer, laptops, and mac classics. These aren't all necessary but your role as curator is to help decide which of these are required and how they will be used in the space.
4. Cafe - ensure that some one has agreed to get food for the cafe and set it up and run it.
5. Welcoming people - this is soething that sometimes gets overlooked especially is setting up gets behind and there is a general sense of panic. But it is important that you ask someone to welcome people at the door. And if setting up is behind so that the service is going to start late, let people know over the microphone so that they know what is happening. At the end of the service someone should give a notice to invite people to stay for the cafe.

• mailing round of service order
Once the order of service is planned e-mail it round. You should ideally e-mail round the brainstorm notes and then the service order after meetings one and two

• checking that people are doing their tasks, have necessary help/support to deliver
usually everyone does their tasks (albeit on the day of Grace!) but if there are tasks that are more complex (e.g. making a new video piece that needs to run on a dvd loop such as we had to do for the Creation installation) these are the things to check are happening ok.

• arranging cover or alternatives if someone can't deliver
If it transpires that someone is ill, unable to be at Grace, or just too busy to do what was planned, you need to rework the order of service - this might mean finding someone else to do the task or it might be finding or getting someone else to find something to replace whatever it was.

• ensure forthcoming service is advertised
There are four usual ways we advertise services: a) e-mail the grace mailing list. It is helpful if you can write one or two sentences to send Mike that describe or intrigue people about the service. b)put the next service on the front page of the web site. Again a few sentences or something intriguing or a visual image if you have one can help in this. c) if appropriate e-mail St Mary's asking them to include it in the news letter. There is only any point in doing this if you can do it after the first planning meeting. It's too late after the second. d) enourage members of Grace to plug it to friends and in any of their avenues of communication

• oversight of setting up
On the day it is your role to have thought about how the space will be and oversee the setting up process. If there are particular items that are not always there (e.g. bread and wine and cup and plate if there is communion) you need to ensure that someone is bringing those. It is also worth checking who is around to help set up and clear up. There have been occasions when very few people are there to set up. It is always easier if you check in advance.

• collecting service material afterwards for publication on grace website and grace noticeboard
Please collect any bits and pieces from the service for the web site.

• collecting feedback about the service [from team or congregation] and reporting to team afterwards
We usually have a brief moment to reflect on the service at a meeting. You can lead that or if you prefer e-mail round for feedback.

and finally...
These notes are meant to be a guideline to ensure the bases are covered. But curation is an art we are all learning so there are probably gaps in the notes and you may have other creative ways of facilitating the process via other communication means etc. So don't let the notes hold you back. There may also be certain services (e.g. Ten) that require much more planning and a different kind of process.

if there are particular worship experiences/events/installations that spring to mind that you think it would be really interesting to know how they were pulled together leave a comment. i want to compile a list of people and events to explore in conversation. if you blog and want to dive in the conversation on curation please do and send me a link if you write something so i can track the dialogue.

shining between dark and dark

last night around 30 people sat on astro turf at the wapping project to listen to jeanette winterson read and talk. she read a section from oranges are not the only fruit and a short story about a dog. it was a truly brilliant evening. jen and i had gone to meet up with shannon and beth for a drink and this is almost shannon's local! the wapping project is a fantastic space - a converted wapping warehouse with lots of the old machinery still in place and a popular restaurant and art space. shame it feels like the other end of the world from ealing...

i wished i had recorded what jeanette had said between readings. it was so profound and needed chewing over. one of the phrases she repeatedly used was about the shining space between the dark and dark - something about the creative process between the struggle of the interior self and the struggle of the exterior world. her life and writing is just such a shining bridge between dark and dark. she also talked about the importance of a writer being a reader. this would be fuel for your own creative writing but not in the sense of being a swot - i.e. turning up the books when needed. more that you were so saturated in the world of writing and ideas that you were able to draw on the residues and memories you were seeped in. i think this applies to all sorts of creative areas - whether a designer, a photographer, an artist, a dj, a liturgist it's when you are soaked and seeped in the treasures of a particular tradition that you can flow with it creatively. perhaps the quote of the evening for me was

if it's not about risk don't f***ing do it!

what risks am i taking creatively?

via luminosa

i forgot to look at this in the run up to easter and today is the last day it is on! but if you are in york have a look at the via lumnosa, an after dark series of projections following the journey of the passion. i am hoping there will be some photos to follow... again it's alt worship getting into the public space rather than church space which is a welcome trend. sue wallace and visions are the team behind it.

i think i mentioned it before but beyond in brighton had a similar public art journey - easter path which needed ongoing attention it semms . they say this about moving into public space...

It is time we stopped huddling away in our churches concentrating on our own little rituals and iconic observances and found ways to engage with those around us who are looking for some hope and inspiration and Easter is a great opportunity for that.

bill viola 2 pieces in london as part of mythologies exhibition

i called in to the new haunch of venison gallery which is amazing - at least i assume it's their new gallery or maybe they've just used the space for this exhibition? it's the old museum of mankind and has a lot of space in rooms throughout. the current exhibition mythologies explores stories we tell about the world in order to understand it. damien hirst has a piece in there along with a stack of other artists but i really went along because i noticed bill viola had a couple of pieces in it. if you've not come across his work he is a video installation artist whose work explores spritual themes. i have seen a load of his work in london over the years - angels of the millenium, messenger, a solo exhibition with haunch of venison, passions...

one of the pieces is called incarnation and has two naked figures - seemingly referencing adam and eve, but maybe just humanity - who are in grey blurred in the distance. they slowly walk towards the scren and reach out a hand to go through a sheet of water. as they do so they turn from grey to colour, look around in wonder before eventually returning. the other piece small saints has 6 small screens, much like icons. on each a figure makes a similar journey from the gloom through a wall of water into the light and colour. the figures stand prayerfully or reflective before turning and returning. the sequences probably take around 10 minutes.

i read up in the catalogue what bill vioa had to say about them and he talks about transfigurations, or awakenings where a person undergoes a total transformation, the world comes alive, is seen in new ways. it's an inner transformation that is being referenced.

i was transfixed by these pieces. they would make perfect imagery for baptism passing from death to life or light to darkness. i don't think for a moment that that is what viola had in mind but it's so striking - in fact a lot of his pieces would fit perfectly with baptism. he is definitely interested in the threshold of change between life and death, this world and the next.

it's on until 25 april - go if you get the chance.

all is lost

ian adams' painting from the oxford stations of the cross - all is lost: christ is lain in the tomb. this is a smply stunning painting - go and tell him if you like it as he doesn't do much painting! i think ian is going to produce some large prints of this at some point. a perfect image for this day - easter saturday.

if you want some words for this day then you'll do no better than visiting cheryl's when hope goes to hell - a vigil she is leading in prison. i am making her stations/service worship trick 62, series 3.

We wanted a God who would take away hell and banish it forever
Instead we have a God who enters it.

something old something new - hamilton stations a perfect example

something old something new is an article i wrote for the leadership journal in their current issue. the piece has just been put online. in some ways it's nothing that i haven't said a few times before but i'm quite pleased with it...

it opens up talking about stations of the cross in hamilton run by dave white and friends (which i previously blogged about here taking street art to a new level when i met dave last year) which is a curious case of good timing as this year's stations of the cross is running in hamilton as we speak. you can see photos of them here and the audio for the stations is also online - it looks wonderful as ever.

stations opening - glad and surprised it's not more religious!

the launch of the stations of the cross in oxford last night went really well. jam factory is a great space for it - art gallery meets bar and it means the art isn't just seen by gallery visitors. i expect there will be plenty of visitors. the range of media and types of art is broad and there are some really good pieces. this station of christ's scourging and crowning with thorns is by clay sinclair drawing on imagery now etched in our minds to do with guantanamo bay - simple yet powerful.

ian adams and matt rees are the two drivers behind stillpoint and they are chatting here with the gallery manager who seemed really pleased. she said to me that she was pleased and surprised it wasn't more religious - i'm not exactly sure what people think religious is but that sounded like good feedback anyway!

i took a few photos of the launch and some of the pieces. i'm about to head off for spring harvest (yes i know - first time i've been in years! - am doing some teaching and running an alternative to the big top celebrations each evening - reflective readings) so haven't had time to even add photos of my piece or others to flickr. but i'll blog about that later in the week assuming there is wireless internet and what i was thinking.

ian adams stunned everyone with his painting claiming he doesn't paint much but on this showing he definitely needs to do more. i'll add that nearer easter. the exhibition is on for two weeks so if you're in oxford go and visit - the perfect good friday thing to do...

stations of the cross in oxford

i am taking part in a stations of the cross exhibition in oxford from 2-16 april in the jam factory. the station i have got to interpret is the release of barabbas. i am looking forward to it. the jam factory is a neat arts cafe/bar. the exhibition is organised by stillpoint. as i work in oxford two days a week now i think that qualifies me to take part! this is the invite to the opening night. it's a big bar - there's room for a ton of people so do come along on thurs april 2.

i wish i could have voted for barack obama

i wish i could have voted for barack obama, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

on friday jen and i went to the late opening at the tate (amongst other things i was trying out a new camera in low light - the ISO is unbelievable - so little noise at 1600). soweto kinch was playing in one of the galleries. he has done a project with the gallery to take 6 pieces of art and create interventions and put a ghost in the machine. you can get a set of headphones from the desk and listen to his interventions (music, poetry) which riff off the pieces of art. he did his usual brilliant free styling though his VJ was possibly the most hopeless i have seen in my entire life! this was a temporary installation - a new one is being added each week in response to the altermodernity exhibition.

banksy

we spent a few days over christmas with my brother dave, lou and sam in bristol being wined and dined which was wonderful. it was nice to neglect the digital life for a few days too.

i know i am a little late in the day for this but we walked down frogmore street so i managed to get a photo of the banksy window to add to my collection of banksy pics

we called in today to see the touring version of the wildlife photographer of the year exhibition which was wonder-full as ever. the touring version is free in bristol which was a pleasant surprise, (though not so well presented as the natural history museum)

lumia domestica

lumia domestica, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

 

i finally got to call in to the lumia domestica exhibition by willie willams at wallspace on friday. it really is pretty. rotating domestic glassware objects reflect projected light to create a beautiful effect in the old church space at all hallows. a few pics are on flickr. this is the last week it's on...

who saw who

really enjoyed a visit to the hayward gallery today. the andy warhol exhitibiton is brilliantly curated - wonderful use of space. but it was the other exhibition who saw who by new kid on the block robin rhode that i really liked. he mixes performance, art and photography in creative and very contemporary ways usually on the streets in south africa. go visit if you get the chance...

you can see some of his works here