LODE & LODE Artliner 1992
Philip Courtenay with The Yellow House, Frontier Film, Sound on Video by Keith Stutter
Bluecoat & Hull Time Based Arts performance commission with support from the Hull Festival, International Initiatives (ACGB), Gateway Europe (Humberside)
Philip Courtenay with The Yellow House, Frontier Film, Sound on Video by Keith Stutter
Bluecoat & Hull Time Based Arts performance commission with support from the Hull Festival, International Initiatives (ACGB), Gateway Europe (Humberside)
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LODE
5 mins of silent Super 8
Buenaventura, Colombia
Hartley Quay, Albert Dock, Liverpool
Bluecoat, Liverpool
Loading the "Audrey" at Goole
LODE Artliner
5 mins video with sound and commentary by In House Video, Hull
On the "Audrey" sailing down the Humber
The Marina, Hull
Artliner Container
The Ferens Art Gallery, Hull
The idea of an art project attempting to create a space for the withdrawal of the psychological projections that are associated with the constructs of stereotyping, of exoticism, and orientalism, was also the starting point for exploring the world along a line that links the quayside in Liverpool with the quayside in Hull.
"travel not books"
says Michel Foucault in a lecture, part of his lecture series of 1976 at the College de France.
The LODE Artliner project involved a lot of travel governed by a pretty random system of navigation but along this line that was plotted using the great circle that connected these two quaysides. The geographical journeys began in Hull following the line EAST across the North Sea, across northern Germany and across the border into Poland. The line was then joined in India, Indonesia, Australia, Colombia and Eire, and then arriving in Liverpool.
Lode comes from Old English 'lad' meaning way, journey, or leading, guidance, or the lodestone, literally 'waystone' from the use of the magnetic stone in guiding mariners, and something that attracts. The word 'load' also is from the Old English 'lad', including the act of loading as well as that which is to be carried.
At 22 locations along this invisible line 22 cargoes were prepared. Each of these locations related to an historical, political and/or geographical way of seeing and understanding each place. Each cargo was prepared and assembled from household bowls, some floating matter and a magnetic strip of metal, forming a simple and primitive compass. This compass was used to orientate the filming (Super 8) of the direction of the line as it curved over the horizon back to Hull and on to Liverpool. The material involved in each assembling activity were then wrapped in the sheets of a newspaper published on that day.
This cargo, boxed in 22 crates, was unloaded on Harley Quay by The Yellow House, Liverpool, and then installed, opened, unwrapped, and re-constructed, de-constructed, used by participants and audience in the Bluecoat Gallery. The cargo wrapping provided an information context that was alarmingly coherent, given the randomized approach, following a line, finding out more about the world, and maybe withdrawing projections concerning the way we form a view of the world, thinking that we know and so neglecting to ask the really important, and sometimes obvious, questions.
So, the LODE leaflet was full of questions.
The idea for a cargo of questions, that was also a cargo of potential compasses, comes in its inspiration from Edward Said in the text he uses to set out his methodolgy in Orientalism. Having mentioned how he finds Foucault's concept of discourses highly functional, he goes on to set up an analogy for the process of building knowledge as a dynamic rather than additive process. Imagine a table with a number of magnetic compasses arranged side by side. Where do the needles point? One may indeed point northwards, but in this configuration the needles are actually all lined up along the curves in the shape of the complex magnetic field they signify and constitute. So the needles point along the lines of the magnetic flow, which is not a flow but a pattern of relationships. Bring another compass to the table and set it down in the field. All the needles tremble, and as they do so reveal a new pattern corresponding to the invisible magnetic field. The bringing of another element of knowledge into the field means that;
what we have already known will not be the same when we know more! the entire field of knowledge is configured into a new pattern!
The idea for a cargo of questions, that was also a cargo of potential compasses, comes in its inspiration from Edward Said in the text he uses to set out his methodolgy in Orientalism. Having mentioned how he finds Foucault's concept of discourses highly functional, he goes on to set up an analogy for the process of building knowledge as a dynamic rather than additive process. Imagine a table with a number of magnetic compasses arranged side by side. Where do the needles point? One may indeed point northwards, but in this configuration the needles are actually all lined up along the curves in the shape of the complex magnetic field they signify and constitute. So the needles point along the lines of the magnetic flow, which is not a flow but a pattern of relationships. Bring another compass to the table and set it down in the field. All the needles tremble, and as they do so reveal a new pattern corresponding to the invisible magnetic field. The bringing of another element of knowledge into the field means that;
what we have already known will not be the same when we know more! the entire field of knowledge is configured into a new pattern!
The planned and sustained consequences for those involved in the project included 10 years of working together to experience more than the knowledge changing results of getting out more in the world and seeing what is actually going on that we don't have a clue that it is happening.
Under the banner art creating society the model for practice shifted to the notion that making something together with strangers, either at home or away, was a brilliant way of really finding out what we did not know. A version of Socrates' technique of questioning and finding out what you know and what you don't know.
A modern Socrates in the Pentagon
A definition of modern knowledge perhaps?
The point is we have all got get out of our bubbles a lot more than we do to get any inkling of the things we do not know we don’t know.
In 2002 Loop-pool was devised to create some kind of public connection to the activities The Yellow House and art creating society had been engaged in over the previous 10 years. What was missing was something already imagined 10 years before, live video connections, rather than the video loops that, nevertheless, engaged our audience at the Pier Head in Liverpool.
e-space lab and ITRDU
In 2003 one of the great moments for the start of this project at the University of the Arts London, was meeting the team at ITRDU, in particular David Rowsell and Sam Kennedy. Philip Courtenay and Peter Hatton, instigators of the e-space lab research environment whilst colleagues in the Design and Public Art BA programme at Chelsea College of Art & Design, were exploring ways and means of establishing an international video-streaming link between The Yellow House on Merseyside and the Nikolas Copernicus High School opposite the gates of the old Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. Using flash Sam Kennedy designed a brilliant AV tool screen environment with a small video image and mutually editable text box.
The twin hubs of the project were The Solidarity Museum in Gdansk, where this project was seen as a new way to transform the museum environment, and ICDC, based then just below the Anglican Cathedral in the conference room looking out across the Mersey. Internet connections were relatively straightforward in Liverpool, but getting a connection from The Solidarity Museum required setting up a radio transmitter pointing at a mast on top of what we call the "green tower".
This was a steam version of skype, but brilliant, maybe better?
Under the banner art creating society the model for practice shifted to the notion that making something together with strangers, either at home or away, was a brilliant way of really finding out what we did not know. A version of Socrates' technique of questioning and finding out what you know and what you don't know.
A modern Socrates in the Pentagon
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know."He is definitely onto something!
Donald Rumsfeld
A definition of modern knowledge perhaps?
The point is we have all got get out of our bubbles a lot more than we do to get any inkling of the things we do not know we don’t know.
In 2002 Loop-pool was devised to create some kind of public connection to the activities The Yellow House and art creating society had been engaged in over the previous 10 years. What was missing was something already imagined 10 years before, live video connections, rather than the video loops that, nevertheless, engaged our audience at the Pier Head in Liverpool.
e-space lab and ITRDU
In 2003 one of the great moments for the start of this project at the University of the Arts London, was meeting the team at ITRDU, in particular David Rowsell and Sam Kennedy. Philip Courtenay and Peter Hatton, instigators of the e-space lab research environment whilst colleagues in the Design and Public Art BA programme at Chelsea College of Art & Design, were exploring ways and means of establishing an international video-streaming link between The Yellow House on Merseyside and the Nikolas Copernicus High School opposite the gates of the old Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. Using flash Sam Kennedy designed a brilliant AV tool screen environment with a small video image and mutually editable text box.
The twin hubs of the project were The Solidarity Museum in Gdansk, where this project was seen as a new way to transform the museum environment, and ICDC, based then just below the Anglican Cathedral in the conference room looking out across the Mersey. Internet connections were relatively straightforward in Liverpool, but getting a connection from The Solidarity Museum required setting up a radio transmitter pointing at a mast on top of what we call the "green tower".
View from the Green Tower
This was a steam version of skype, but brilliant, maybe better?
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