Being Bold, Being Resilient - The Spirit on the Rooftop at Bold Tendencies, Summer 2020 by Senah Tuma
Summer on the rooftop started off strong: the Bold Tendencies Team and staff of Frank’s Cafe arrived donned with masks and plenty of cleaning fluid. Every year, Bold Tendencies welcomes a diverse group of art trainees to work on site. With unsure beginnings and uncharted territories, with the majority amount of placements and volunteering opportunities cancelled for the year - the group arrived hopeful that these months would be ones to remember. For many of us, this has been our first time back into the everyday world since lockdown began. Encompassing a very resilient spirit, the rooftop opened. Throwing ourselves into an ever-changing environment of hundreds of people feels like a shock to the system; memories of jumping into an ice-cold pool and hoping for the best. The ‘time before’ now is a seemingly distant and other world.
Readapting to socialisation and simultaneously enforcing social distancing rules on site. The site feels normal, but different. The less amount of people has meant, I think, that the trainees have been able to experience the site in a very special way. We have been passed on stories from a life that feels distant - the rooftop with thousands of visitors? Impossible! We have been told that this year is remarkable in that it is quieter than any before, with the usually thousands of visitors now - due to safety regulations - down to mere hundreds. But somehow, it feels busier than ever before. Months of isolation left the rooftop (like most other car-park rooftops on a good day) feeling silenced. Now, the rooftop is again filled with noise.
The artworks guide people through the space, gently coaxed by social distance signs. On site we are able to engage with the works, explore, and reflect. Many of the works were commissioned not with the Covid-19 world in mind, yet they translate in meaning all the same. An example of meaning translating through time and space is clear in an artwork featured this year: Amber Chamber by Rafał Zajko, which made its exhibition debut as lockdown began. Its original meaning ties into the themes we encounter on site, today. Originally exhibited laying flat down, it touched upon motifs of death and rebirth, past and future. On the rooftop this summer, it now stands upright - a neon orange testament to the summer, revival and rebirth post and mid-Covid. It is inspiring how the meaning of art can apply to personal experiences and such a wide range of experiences and people. It is also inspiring how resilient the site seems to be, I have been struck by it during my time here. In terms of the ways the artworks pull through the weather, or through the limits put up by Covid.
Bold is not only responding to the Covid-19 world, but adapting - during this tumultuous time, Bold has proven itself an outlier - a success. It has proved itself not to just be a place that can survive and respond, but a place that can thrive and overcome difficult circumstances. Covid measures often feel jarring, uncomfortable and simply put: different; on site at the rooftop feels the most normal place that I’ve been to in months. It has successfully managed to integrate ‘Covid cleans’ and social distancing measures in a casual way. Benefited by the towering open-air space, the space feels far removed from the tension of the city below.