For Architecture Week 2006 VIVID presented Habitat- week of activity exploring the different ways in which to make sense of our environment.
Traditionally habitat infers a permanent and physical environment where an organism normally lives or occurs. However, the rapid progression of technology together with the temporal nature of creative opportunity demands that notions of our habitat be reconsidered.
The programme schedule follows, please use the links under each event summary for more images and detailed project information.
Habitat - an exploration of creative space
19-23 June 2006
Part of Architecture Week 2006
Pod Practice 20, 21 and 23 June, 12 –5.30pm
VIVID has commissioned the development of two mobile, flexible studios which propose a radical change to the production and presentation of new work.
Further pod information
Poduction – artists working in the pods
T-House, 19 June, 3-7pm Artist Colin Pearce and architect Ranbir Lal invite you to bring an object or memory you associate with tea drinking.
T-House full details
Sketchy Realities, 21 June, 12-5.30pm Step through the computer screen, pass through the interface, and engage directly with virtual space via Ian Upton's interactive anaglyph sketches.
Sketchy Realities full details
Draw a cowboy, 23 June, 12 – 5.30pm Meet artists Sean O’Keeffe and Steve Bulcock as they attempt to define the quintessential Cowboy.
Draw a Cowboy full details
Podium – Talks exploring creative production
20 June, 12pm Join the architect Ranbir Lal and VIVID’s Production Facilitator Matthew Higginbottom to discuss the creative development of the pods, whilst they demonstrate the pod’s flexibility.
21 June, 12pm Nigel Edmondson, Eastside Arts Ambassador and former urban designer for Birmingham City Council will discuss the impact of the pods on the creative development of Digbeth.
Studios and nomadic practice
23 June, 12pm
Rapid developments within new technologies, urban regeneration and affordability mean that ‘space’ and ‘time’ are often an area of concern for artists, particularly within the field of media arts.
Helen Cadwallader (national officer for Visual and Media Art, Arts Council England) will provide an overview of studio provision in the UK. Helen will be joined by Marcel Schwierin (EMARE - European Media Artists in Residence Exchange) who will open the discussion out to an international context. Their conversation will incorporate the phenomenon of nomadic practice within current residency models.
Habitat symposium
22 June, 10-3pm
The Habitat symposium is an exciting opportunity for you to see new work in progress by artists Richard Billingham and Layla Curtis. Both of these VIVID commissions explore notions of habitat but in very different ways.
Sky Drawings (Night, Day), by Layla Curtis, is a dual video projection which continues Curtis' examination of location, motion and geography whilst extending her research into the use of technologies as a mechanism for 'drawing'.
In contrast to Curtis' moving image of the open skies, Billingham has been filming the imposed physical environment of zoos. Billingham has spent considerable time closely monitoring the behaviours of captive animals in different, though always contained, settings. The resulting works are emotionally and psychologically compelling and pose a number of questions pertinent to notions of "habitat".
These public presentations provide a rare opportunity for an audience to engage with the artists at a working stage of production.
Guest speakers have been invited to contextualise the broader concerns raised by this newly commissioned work, including curator Jeni Walwin, architect and writer Ben Flatman, and Anthony Hoete and Falk Schneemann of WHAT Architecture. These presentations will explore the innovative mapping devices used by artists within their practice to explore their own personal and physical space; the capacity of architecture to oppress and contain its inhabitant; and the effects of increased mobility on national identities.
Sky Drawings (Night, Day) full details
Zoo full details
