black & white & read all over

Mary Paterson's blog.

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NEW WEBSITE

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Book: Imagination and Potential

“It’s lunch time on a sunny September afternoon, and the place is packed. We sit, shoulder to shoulder, lining the pews, our eyes fixed on a small body in the aisle. I can’t see her head – only her feet, tilted slightly upwards, cradled in a delicate, wooden structure. Above her, dozens of brightly coloured balloons stretch out from a web of tight, white strings.

It feels like everyone is holding their breath.

And then, it happens.

An inch, two inches, three inches … she is floating.

This tiny, bound figure – the artist, Noëmi Lakmaier – is floating, impossibly, beneath a cloud of balloons. The balloons rise up and up, straining at the vaulted ceiling of Shoreditch Church, lifting this body up and up, until she sways, gently, impossibly, back and forth, suspended, suspenseful, in the centre of the hall.”

Imagination and Potential is a response to Cherophobia by Noemi Lakmaier, a 48-hour, durational performance in which the artist attempts to suspend herself in mid air with the use of helium balloons.

The publication was produced in collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency, and is available to buy through Unbound. 

Imagination and Potential: Cherophobia by Noemi Lakmaier

by Mary Paterson

Live Art Development Agency, 2017. 12.5 x 20 cm, 23 pages, paperback, colour images throughout.

ISBN: 978-0-9935611-4-6

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Cherophobia is a 48­-hour durational living installation by Noëmi Lakmaier. It is an attempt to lift the artist’s bound and immobilised body off the ground using 20,000 helium party balloons. It is a performance and a gathering, intertwining people in their shared suspense and anticipation. 

My text in response to this extraordinary artwork will be presented alongside a film of Cherophobia edited by Sophie Mallett, and shown as part of LADA screens. The film will be online from 17th October to 29th November, and will launch on Tuesday 17th November at The Garrett Centre.

More information here

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Join me for a walking talk with the artists of this show about collaboration and drawing, at the private view on Thursday 19th October, 5pm, at Wimbledon College of Art. 

More information here. 

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Photos from ‘A Walk of View (Whereupon she began to dissolve)’ Spike Island Arts Space, Bristol, September 2017

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Upcoming performance: A walk of view (she began to disolve)

Join writer Mary Paterson and choreographer and anthropologist Genevieve Maxwell on a guided, performative walk starting at Spike Island and roaming the streets beyond. Drawing on historical and contemporary narratives about walking, movement and visibility in the city, these walks explore different perspectives in and of Bristol.

Saturday 2nd September 2017

Booking essential. 

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Review: The Gathering Cloud, by JR Carpenter

The Gathering Cloud, JR Carpenter http://luckysoap.com/thegatheringcloud/ Uniform Books, 2017

“ ... a lucid dream space for people not entirely in charge of their dreams.”

Read the full review at Furtherfield

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Review: Apples & Other Languages, by Camilla Nelson

Camilla Nelson, Apples & Other Languages is published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2017. 

“Nelson burnishes the edges of most words, spacing them across the page with their corners gleaming.”

Read the full review at The Learned Pig

Image credit: Camilla Nelson, The Same Apple, 2014.

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Review: Awkward Bastards conference 2017

“... Is ‘diversity’ about access to our cultural heritage, or about designing a different future? Is it ‘awkward’ to insist on visibility, or on variation? Are we the bastards who are going to smash down the doors to the mainstream art world, or the ones that will sail on by, whispering words that mainstream ears can’t hear?” 

The first Awkward Bastards symposium in 2015 brought together artists, activists, thinkers and producers to reflect on ‘the spectrum of diversity from disability, ethnicity, and sexuality, to gender and class.’ This year’s conference, AB2 (organised by DASH, mac birmingham and the Live Art Development Agency (LADA), continued in the same vein, introducing the theme of ‘absence.’

Read the full review on Disability Arts Online

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PUBLISHING ART WRITING NOW

Thursday 22 June 2017, 13:30 to 17:30

£10/£5 concessions. → Book

An exploration of art writing as a collaborative, creative process.

An afternoon of propositions, interventions and conversations with writers and editors who distribute their ideas through a range of formats, from blogs to magazines and artists' books.

Guest presenters will include: Gilda Williams, writer, art critic and lecturer at Goldsmiths, whose most recent book is On and By Andy Warhol (MIT/Whitechapel, 2016); Simon Grant, editor of the newly re-launched Tate etc magazine; Sam Playford-Greenwell, co-editor of Doggerland Journal; and Art Writer’s Group residency holders Mary Paterson, Lizzie Lloyd, Tom Jeffreys and Patrick Langley.

Books and texts will also be on display from a range of organisations including the Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE.

Organised by the Art Writers Group, in collaboration with Arnolfini, funded by Arts Council England.

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ANATHEMA // Experimental Writing & Reading // 6.30pm The Light Room, Arnolfini, Bristol // 19th May 2017

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Step by Step 5

An interdisciplinary seminar with a focus on walking, hosted by Clare Qualman at the University of East London

Monday 24th April 2017, 6 to 8pm. Book here

Step by Step 5 is co-hosted by UEL’s Centre for Performing Arts Research (CPAD), the Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB), and the Walking Artists Network, this seminar will focus on themes of migration, cities, public space and performance, bringing together the Afghan artist Kubra Khademi, with writer and journalist Anna Minton, and writer, artist and producer Mary Paterson. The seminar builds on themes that have emerged from the WALKING WOMEN project, started in 2016 by Clare Qualmann and Amy Sharrocks.

Kubra Khademi is an Afghan artist and feminist. She studied at Kabul University and Beaconhouse National University, Pakistan where she began to create public performance. Returning to Kabul her work actively responded to a society dominated by extreme patriarchal politics. After performing her piece Armor in 2015, Khademi was forced to flee Afghanistan. She currently lives and works in Paris, France. In 2016 she was awarded an MFA Scholarship at Pantheon Sorbonne University and was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the Ministry of French Culture.

Anna Minton is a writer, journalist and Reader in Architecture. She is programme leader of UEL's MRes Architecture: Reading the Neoliberal City. Her research interests include cities, democracy and public space. As well as contributing regularly to The Guardian, Minton’s publications include Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the 21st Century City, (Penguin 2009, 2012) and the forthcoming Big Capital: Who’s London For?(Penguin, 2017).

Mary Paterson is a writer, artist and producer working between critical writing, poetry and live art. She is currently Bristol Writer in Residence for the Art Writer's Programme, hosted by the Art Writers Group, Spike Island and Arnolfini, funded by Arts Council England. Here, she is continuing her research into the politics of movement and the etiquettes of public space, through a series of interviews, critical texts and public walking workshops.

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Reading and Writing the Performance Magazine Archive

Join the editors of Something Other (Mary Paterson, Maddy Costa & Diana Damian Martin) for a collaborative workshop inspired by the newly digitised archive of Performance Magazine. Using Performance Magazine as our starting point we ask: how can we read and write the archive for all of our futures?

Tuesday 25th April 2017, LADA, The White Building, Unit 7, Queen's Yard, White Post Lane, London, E9 5EN

Book here

About the project

LADA is launching a new online archive of Performance Magazine. Published between 1979 and 1992 the magazine documents an extraordinary period in the development of art in the UK. Significantly, in a pre-internet era, the magazine was instrumental in shaping the field of practice now widely referred to as Live Art. By creating a critical context and discourse the magazine provided a vital platform for wider awareness of new approaches to the making and experience of art. LADA is very pleased to be working with the original editor, Rob La Frenais, to develop the project which will reflect on this important archive and look at the contribution it has made. LADA's Study Room houses the complete collection of Performance Magazine.

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“Affords well-maintained communal areas” second poem installation at Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol

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Soon after, she was moved to tears

Installation at Arnolfini Arts Centre, Bristol

March 2016

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Artist’s talk: On Movement

Tuesday 21st February, 6pm

Arnolfini, Bristol

Together, writing and walking play a fundamental role in the creation of the modern subject. How do contemporary relationships between movement and language develop these modes of being, and seeing the world? Mary Paterson will give a performative talk about her own practice, followed by an audience Q&A.

Booking information here

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Cultural island: how to survive Brexit?

Panel discussion, as part of In Between Time Festival

http://www.inbetweentime.co.uk/whats-on/in-conversation/

Chair: David Micklem, IBT Associate Panelists: Mary Paterson, Writer Roger Griffith, Social Entrepreneur and Strategic Director & Chair of Ujima Radio Kris Nelson, Dublin Fringe Festival

Fri 10 February 12,30 -1.30pm

Arnolfini, Bristol

More information here