Ways to Wander: Walk No. 9 - Walk With Me

I recently contacted Dr. Blake Morris of the Walking Artist Network (WAN) who is investigating the walks featured in the wonderful book 'Ways to Wander' by Clare Qualmann and Claire Hind as part of his practice-based research (Blake also contributed one of the walks in the book - No.28). He plans to walk all of the 54 various walks in the book, one each week and I expressed my interest in participating in one of them.

 

The book can be purchased here:  https://www.triarchypress.net/waystowander.html

Blake invited me to join him for walk No. 9 - 'Walk with me' by Helen Frosi (soundfjord) on March 3, 2018. The plan was for Blake and Marina White Raven to walk in London while simultaneous walks were taking place in Spain (by Elia Cervera Bravo and Amery Kessler) and Hong Kong (which is where I come in). 

As we walked, we would be able to write comments and poetic reflections that follow the theme of the original walk, and post them onto twitter, tagging the others so that there would be an exchange of comments during the walk.. 

The time difference between London and Hong Kong is 8 hours so in order for this to work I conducted my walk earlier in the day and scheduled my posts using the hootsuite app. Each of my posts were scheduled to be online later in the day, during the period when the others were walking.

The event lasted around 90 minutes and as I walked, besides posting photographs with accompanying comments, I also made sound recordings and collected colours using the citypalette app.

Once all data from the day had been collected by Blake, he consolidated much of it into the next episode of his overall project. Walk No. 9 had been written in the form of a poem and in response Blake managed to combine several of the exchanged comments into another poem. 

The two poems are seen here, the pink background (named by Blake 'Sickly Sky') was one of the colours collected by him during the walk.

  

   Blake's walk poem

                                        Walk with me by                                   

    Helen Frosi (SoundFjord)

(text distorted due to the photograph)

 As Blake investigates each walk, he completes a card reference for each one and posts it on his blog (links here and here)

Blake's reference card for the walk

Here are the photographs I posted onto Twitter along with the accompanying comments:

1/11 'A good beginning, the delayed Chinese New year peach blossom blooms today'

2/11 'Gateway leads to a desolate house, I move on...'

3/11 'These days even the trees are restless, some of them uproot themselves and leave...'

4/11 'Passing the little Temple, from now on I will try to stay within sight of the sea, the sound of the waves is comforting.'

5/11 'The line between the sea and the land, why do I feel so comfortable being close to the edge of something?...'

6/11 'The raised pathway makes me feel as though I am on a catwalk, but the only audience I see are birds...'

7/11 'An entrance to a seminary. Inside, nature is groomed into formal rows while outside lies chaos, and beauty.'

8/11 'A fallen tree but this is not an end. For nature this is another beginning.'

9/11 'A gentle slope, not a climb...an inclination!'

10/11 'Returning now to the streets where I began my walk I find a painting created by nature - the finest, most honest artist.'

I also made four sound recordings during the walk:

1. Cantonese radio playing outside the Temple, birds singing in the background. 

2. Birds singing, radio faintly heard in the background.

3. Soloist bird along with bird chorus accompaniment.

4. Young boy playing basketball alone in a playground at the end of my walk.

Sound files here:






Sounds edited together with accompanying images here:

...and the colour palette I compiled during the 90 minutes:

11/11 'Colours collected during my walk.' 3 March 2018.

Collecting Colours

While working on the planning of a performative walk in collaboration with the UK-based artist Blake Morris, he introduced an interesting and useful app to me that had been developed by friends of his: Taylor and Bob Snead and Chloe Bass - City Palette.

City Palette

As my work often involves aspects of recording experiences in outdoor locations, this app was attractive and so I tried it out at two locations: Tung Wan and Nam Tam Wan on Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong. For these tests I restricted myself to 8 colours.

It quickly became apparent that it is important to set rules for its usage if colours captured in different locations are to be compared. The palette can be manipulated somewhat if the user focuses in too much on selected colours rather than recording the 'ambient' colours encountered at each place visited. However, several different ways of using it have become clear to me and I'm sure that this app will prove useful in some of my on-going projects.

The palettes recorded at the two locations are as follows:

Nam Tam Wan palette - February 2018

Tung Wan palette - February 2018

International Drawing Dialogue Phase 2, second stage - 2018

To begin the second stage of this collaborative drawing project (see here), 4 drawings by UK artist Jane Kennington arrived in the post.

I unwrapped her drawings and left them out so I could get to know them and, hopefully, strike up a conversation with them.

After a while the drawings began to suggest a way forward and following that I started to construct a response. The drawings evolved as a conversation might, initial introductions, politeness at first, becoming more relaxed as the conversation developed and familiar topics were touched upon.

Jane's opening drawings were generous and left me at least half the page to work with, sometimes more and so the dialogue within the drawings remained polite and respectful.

The resulting drawings were sent on to Georgia Boukla in the UK. I am now awaiting the third stage of the project in which I will be the third artist to work on the set of drawings.

My responses are as follows, in the order I made them:

New project - Work in progress

While rearranging old notebooks I found an outline for idea that I hadn't previously found time to initiate, so this being the holiday period I spent a morning to kick-start the project and move it along a little bit.

The final incarnation of the piece depends entirely upon what I find on the beach and so this process of selection may take a while. For this particular piece I am in no hurry so I can take my time and ensure that the selection of the elements is appropriate.

The underlying aim is an attempt to push my landscape drawing into a more physical, sculptural manifestation.

Below I have attached two photos of the selection process on the beach:

31.12.2017 - Tai Kwan Wan, Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong

31.12.2017 - Tai Kwan Wan, Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong

International Drawing Dialogue Phase 2 - 2017

Following the previous drawing dialogue project that culminated in an exhibition and conference in Craiova, Romania (See here), some of the participants favoured a second phase. Last time two artists were partnered and initiated drawings that were passed to the partner before completion. This time the idea is for three artists to be partnered together and the work is passed from A - B - C etc. and are considered resolved when all 3 artists have worked on them.

I used an approach that arose from a current project that features 'frottage' plus additional mark-making that sometimes resembles a type of unknown calligraphy. As the drawings are the result of physical interaction with the landscape, the images could be seen as a record of the interaction in the form of a personal, indecipherable written language

This time I am partnered with Georgia Boukla and Jane Kennington. The deadline for the completion of the first part is the end of December 2017 but I found an equilibrium within my drawings and will post them on to Georgia on Monday 27th November 2017. I expect to receive Jane's initiated drawings in the new year.

Eventually all the work will be brought together for an exhibition, location still to be confirmed. I will post news and images of the drawings as they evolve.

           

'No holiday' - Film Reel 1

After completing the editing of the recorded version of the performance 'No holiday', which was enacted in Venice during the summer, I decided to edit together the four recorded versions into one 'film-reel'.
This would enable me to present the four recordings at one time and it also gives any interested viewers the opportunity to see the four versions one after the other. In this way, the differences in atmosphere, landscape and ambient sounds could be better illustrated.
These differences are very interesting and are one of the motivations for me to allow the project to develop further.

Three postcards have been printed, using images from the Cheung Chau, Sewerby and Venice performances to define each of the locations using the postcard motif to tie-in with the theme of the performance.

The 4 performances were recorded as follows:
1) Chi Ma Wan, Hong Kong - 5 January 2017
2) Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - 21 January 2017
3) Sewerby Cliffs, Bridlington, UK - 4 August 2017
4) Dorosuro, Venice, Italy - 16 August 2017

'No holiday' - Film Reel 1

The recording can also be viewed on my youtube.com channel here: https://youtu.be/E72zI-SsI7s

'One's Origin' - Group exhibition by the Hong Kong International Youth Arts Association (HKIYAA)

I was invited by artist and good friend Manling Cheung, to participate in the exhibition 'One's origin' at the Jao Tsung-I Academy, near to Mei Foo, and decided to present the current status of my ongoing performance work 'No holiday'.

The group show featured a large variety of work: paintings, including work by Manling Cheung - https://www.facebook.com/manling.cheung, drawings, sculpture and photography, including some amazing images by Kent Foran - http://www.kentforan.com. It was great for me to have the opportunity to show photographs taken during my performances along with the red suitcase which is my constant companion in the 'No holiday' performance.

I also placed 3 postcards representing 3 of the locations at which the performance has been conducted. These were available for the audience to take away with them.

The opening of the exhibition took place on the afternoon of Thursday 5th October and it will run until Friday 13th October.