Warren & Mosley

Dimensions: Variable.

Materials: Hardwood, acrylic paint, cotton, emulsion paint, vinyl, overhead camera, live feed to monitor.

Commissioned by Edge Arts for Parallel (of Life and) Architecture group exhibition with Assemble & Simon Terrill, The Decorators & Goig in response to the work of Alison & Peter Smithson.

Exhibited: Edge Arts, Bath. For reviews see Journal of Architecture and Thisistomorrow

The Smithsons were fascinated in the form of and occupation of city streets, developing designs for ‘cluster’ housing blocks with streets in the air. A Nodding Acquaintance responds to the Smithson’s interest in ‘cluster’ as a new system of relationships. In this setting visitors are invited to become active protagonists in a shifting choreography of objects, bodies and architecture. A timber structure for talking or idling while sitting, leaning or standing, is inspired by the designs for cluster housing and furniture of post-war street parties. Its form, seen in the monitor in ‘plan view’ is reminiscent of the architect’s gaze and the omnipresent gaze of surveillance cameras. From the present day, the work nods to the Smithson’s oeuvre, the changing values in social relations and notions of nationhood.

Images in order: Peter Blakemore, Warren & Mosley, Peter Brandt, Warren & Mosley.

Collaborators: Can Altay.

Dimensions: Variable.

Moving Imagery: 1 minute loops.

Materials: TV monitors, DVD players, assorted leads, coloured tape.

Supported by: University of the West of England.

Exhibited: firstsite, Colchester, 2015.

Rogue Game Replay was exhibited as part of the programme Playing with Space curated by Lawrence Bradby. The installation, a configuration of sports markings and monitors with moving image loops, is articulated in relation to the architecture of the gallery space. The footage presents the simultaneous playing of three sports in a multi-use sports hall with markings overlaid.

Playing with Space celebrates artists’ interventions into urban space, showing ways by which the presence of the human body can critique architecture. The event presented fifteen performance works through short films, two live performances and one spatial installation by artists from Europe, USA, Central America and Africa. The event tour included Norwich Art Centre, The Live Art Development Agency and firstsite, Colchester.

For further info visit https://playingwithspace.wordpress.com

Collaborators: Axel Wieder. Research: Anthony Elliott, Libita Clayton. Graphics: William Richardson, Jake Gunn. Map layers by groups and individuals – see list here.

Dimensions: 10 maps of 130.48cm x 101.48cm.

Materials: Digital prints on dibond.

Exhibited: The Promise, Arnolfini, Bristol.

Commissioned by the Arnolfini to work in collaboration with the curators as a central thematic cluster to The Promise, we devised a conceptual framework that aimed to explore the layered reality of the city as a shared and contested territory where both the past and the present co-exist. Thirty map layers were created in dialogue with specialists and groups within Bristol, relating to the way given systems, structures and spaces within the city are both occupied and transformed by its inhabitants. Subjects range from the presence and locations of CCTV and surveillance, the geological landscape underpinning but often hidden from city life, to sites of social and political unrest. Each map brings together three separate layers of information, normally disassociated, to mobilize their associative and contingent relations and offer up alternative re-presentations of the city. The maps, both anecdotal and statistical, seek to reveal the ways in which we simultaneously identify, claim, circumscribe and imagine the space of the city over time.

Collaborating organisations: Eastside Projects, Birmingham / ICIA, Bath  / Bilgi University, Istanbul / ResArc, Sweden / Malmo University / Moderna Museet, Malmo 

Event: A talk-show line-up of invited protagonists choose and read passages from science fiction to critical texts according to the rules of an MC. Read in rapid-fire format the spoken texts imagine and attend to the ‘architecture’ of utopia. A line-up table is transformed by a graphic framework, a page from the book Beyond Utopia rescaled and now occupied by readers and objects staging the table as a discursive territory. Each event will be hosted by a partner organization tying into and developing networks of utopian thinkers in the organisation’s locality. Selected video clips of the readings from each event are uploaded onto an online site forming an anthology of the Utopian talk-show line-up series. The anthology will evolve, acting as a testimony to the collective desire to imagine difference. The structure of the event is inspired by the Wooster Group’s L.S.D. (…Just the High Points…) 1984-5.

View video anthology

Utopian talk-show line-up at Santral Istanbul, 2014 with artist and academic Can Altay as MC, designer Avsar Gurpinar as audience cue card operator, and readers: Selçuk Artut, artist, academic, musician; Elif Kendir, architect, academic; Burcu Kütükçüoğlu, academic; Ronnie Close, Cairo-based artist; Burcu Yançatarol, New Delhi-based designer and design researcher (Skype reader). The setting for the show was the control room of the converted power station, SantralIstanbul cultural facilities, Bilgi University, Istanbul. Thanks to the MC and readers, Avsar Gurpinar, Cansu Curgen, students of international Vernal workshops.

View video anthology

Utopian talk-show line-up at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, 2013 with MC Gavin Wade, artist, curator and director of Eastside Projects and readers:  Kathrin Bohm, artist; Gene George Earle, artist/urbanist; Richard Hawley, Director of Artistic Programming and Projects at Performances Birmingham; Marie-Anne McQuay, curator (Skype reader); Apexa Patel, writer. The setting for the talk show was within Gunilla Klingberg’s installation Parallelareal Variable 2013. Thanks to the MC and readers, Elinor Morgan, curator at Eastside Projects, video operators Yegor Isayev and Maya Darrell Hewins, photographer Katya Riabusheva (Katya and Yegor from Creative Aid), and for lighting Laurence Price and sound Samuel Rodgers.

View video anthology

Utopian talk-show line-up at Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts, Bath, 2012 was run as a pilot to the series with MC Liam Devlin, photographer/writer/lecturer Goldsmiths/University of Wales and readers: Harry Charrington, Director of Postgraduate Architectural Studies, University of Bath; Peter Dickinson, artist/arts writer/curator, founder of Artolo; Lindsay Hughes, creative producer Visual Arts, ICIA, University of Bath; Ed Whittaker, senior lecturer in Fine Art, Bath School of Art and Design; Gillian Wylde, artist, senior lecturer in Fine Art, University College Falmouth (Skype reader). Thanks to the MC and readers, Lindsay, Owen and Victoria at ICIA and video operator Matt Hynam.

View video anthology

Collaborators: Can Altay

Works: Navigating the Game, 2012, Spectator or Player, 2012, Hazard Gallery, 2012, Rogue Game, First Play, 2012, Rogue Game Replay, 2012, The Fastest Getaway, 2012, Genius Cheat Hero, 2012, Split Second Still, 2012, Split Second Still in Blue, 2012

Solo Exhibition: Spike Island, Bristol

Dimensions: 500 x 200 x 270cm; light box 161 x 13 x 13cm.

Materials: Black MDF, hinges, vinyl, opal acrylic, fluorescent tube.

Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.

Entry to the game is via Spectator or Player. One door hinged at the centre of two door openings asks the viewer at the threshold of the show what role they would like to play. This absurdist gesture establishes a game where different modes of spectatorship and participation between the physical and imaginary unfold.

The work makes reference to Duchamp’s Door 11, Rue Larrey where one door serves two entrances defying the French proverb – ‘a door must be either open or shut’.

Dimensions: 500 x 200 x 430cm.

Materials: Black MDF, Real Tennis netting.

Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012

Collaborators: Can Altay.

Dimensions: Variable according to location; here 1800 x 770 x 900cm.

Materials: Coloured tape, steel, basketball nets, volleyball net, basketball, football, touch rugby ball, volleyball, HDV cameras, players.

Event: Rogue Game First Play was the realisation of our Proposition No.17, developed for the architecture of the Spike Island galleries for a series of events set within a solo show. The proposition states:

‘Seek out an indoor sports hall with markings of at least three different game courts or pitches overlaid. Enlist teams of players for each game. On court assemble the players dressed to indicate team and game. On the whistle, simultaneously all games begin. Each game is played for its official duration.

Characteristics of Rogue Game – playing amongst obstacles / advance and advantage / negotiation / collision / fracturing of order / stalling / stops / starts / feinting / indecision / clashes between balls / swapping of games by players / interruption / rhythm and counter-rhythm / synchronization / syncopation / redundancy / non-accidentals / contra-action / contingent moves – liable but not certain to happen.’

For list of participants.

Collaborator: Can Altay.

Dimensions: Dimensions variable according to location, here 1800 x 770 x 430cm.

Materials: Two editing stations (one with Atem mixer), two editors, an occasional commentator, two wall projections, two suspended screens and three tables of Dexion and MDF, chairs, screensaver on editing station and resource table monitors, three TV floor cube monitors, three DVD players, cables, white tape.

Supported by: University of the West of England.

Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.

Rogue Game Replay creates a setting for spectating Rogue Game First Play, live streamed from the adjacent gallery. During programmed matches a sports commentator gives a running commentary of the action from the live and recorded footage, projected onto suspended screens and walls. Out of match times the schematic moves of players are rehearsed and replayed to infinity as editors negotiate the technology and spectacle of the game. The work stages the mediation of live action of Rogue Game First Play as a game in itself, the two editors becoming players. This articulates the boundaries between live and recorded action and the death of the event to its image.

Dimensions: Circuit dimensions variable according to location, here – 93 metres. Printed pad – 38x27cm.

Materials: White tape to create circuit, proposition as printed text on paper as a tearaway pad, sound.

Event: Broken circuit/ playing dead was the realisation of proposition number 25, developed for the architecture of the Spike Island galleries within the solo show Rogue Game. The circuit within the gallery space doubles up for a circuit of the streets where playing dead is proposed for continuous rehearsal. This used-up sense of play comments on the absurdity of our actions both in and outside the confines of the game.

The work invites the gallery viewer to action. The proposition reads: Mark out a single lane circuit with no start or finish line. Begin running or walking around the circuit at your own speed. At the right time fall down like you are dead. Break the circuit – one half of your body is on the circuit, the other half off. Remain motionless for some time. Get up and complete the lap.

The irregular sound of a gun may trigger your actions.

Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.

Collaborators: Can Altay

Works: Rogue Game, First Play, 2011, Rogue Game Replay, 2011

Solo Event: Sportcentrum Olympos in Utrecht

Solo Exhibition: Casco, Utrecht

The event Rogue Game, First Play and show Rogue Game Replay were commissioned by Casco Utrecht in relation to Can Altay’s exhibition COHAB: an assembly of spare parts. Extending the concerns of COHAB the event and show explore concerns of inhabitation and territorial negotiation.

Rogue Game, First Play is an ongoing series of hybrid games. The proposition of Rogue Game is to simultaneously play three or more games marked out on a multi-purpose sports pitch. A struggle between three games and their players ensues; known rules are exchanged for new ever-changing rules and the seed of a new game or gaming instinct is put forward.

Rogue Game Replay stages a meeting ground of hybridized relations and play between the logic and systems of the sports arena, the exhibition space and the office at Casco. Within the exhibition setting the superimposed territories, rules and functions of each layer are negotiated and strategies for co-habitation outside the confines of the sports hall are illuminated.

Collaborator: Can Altay

Collaborating organisation: Casco, Utrecht

Event: Proposition No.17

Seek out an indoor sports hall with markings of at least three different game courts or pitches overlaid. Enlist teams of players for each game. On court assemble the players dressed to indicate team and game. On the whistle, simultaneously all games begin. Each game is played for its official duration.

Characteristics of Rogue Game – playing amongst obstacles / advance and advantage / negotiation / collision / fracturing of order / stalling / stops / starts / feinting / indecision / clashes between balls / swapping of games by players / interruption / rhythm and counter-rhythm / synchronization / syncopation / redundancy / non-accidentals / contra-action / contingent moves – liable but not certain to happen.

Participating teams: Amazone Utrecht – basketball team; Cangeroes – basketball team; Vlerk Homovolleybal Utrecht – volleyball team; Casco – volleyball team; Odysseus 91 – student soccer team; Hercules- student soccer team

Location: Sportcentrum Olympos, Utrecht

Date: 11 September, 2011

Collaborators: Can Altay

Dimensions: Variable

Materials: iMac screensavers, TV monitors, DVD players, coloured tape, text, six occupied office workstations. Waiting (screensaver) from Warren&Mosley on Vimeo.

Exhibited: Casco, Utrecht, 2011

Within the exhibition setting the superimposed territories, rules and functions of the sports arena, the exhibition space and office of Casco are negotiated for inhabitation. A centre section of the multipurpose sports hall, at real scale is folded into the space of Casco, bringing into the space the architecture of the game, creating new thresholds and territories for the office workers to adhere to and play to. Further overlay and inter-play between Rogue Game and the exhibition and office settings occurs through the screening of Rogue Game play/action uploaded as screensavers and relayed to monitors within the abstracted court setting. The mediated and frenetic action of play heard in the sounds of whistles, shouts and squeaky shoes intermittently interrupts office work and defines a new gaming arena.

Collaborator: Can Altay

Commissioning organisation: The Showroom, London

Works: Rogue Game, First Play 2010, Rogue Game Replay 2010 (TV monitor, DVD player, assorted leads, coloured tape)

For the Showroom commission Rogue Game took the form of an offsite event and installation within the gallery in the context of Can Altay’s show, Church Street partners Gazette. A disused sports pitch was transformed by the laying of court lines and reopened for Rogue Game play. Communities of players local to the Borough of Westminster are invited to meet and play a one-off game. The game brings together three different sports staged simultaneously on the same pitch, each game played according to its own rules. Through the simple overlaying of time the event throws the players into unknown territories within established frameworks for play. Known rules are exchanged for new ever-changing rules. Rogue Game proposes another kind of logic for how we might occupy space and how through the informal possibilities of play resist or destabilize accepted boundaries of territory, use and behaviour. Rogue Game Re-play, a 3 channel installation is installed in the gallery. The footage of Rogue Game, First Play interspersed with colour frames stages the court arena as a place for new and renewed partnerships between players extending the show’s concerns for partnership, boundaries, transformation and community.

For info on event and participants.

Collaborator: Can Altay

Collaborating organisation: The Showroom, London

Event: Proposition No.17

Seek out an indoor sports hall with markings of at least three different game courts or pitches overlaid.
Enlist teams of players for each game.
On court assemble the players dressed to indicate team and game.
On the whistle, simultaneously all games begin.
Each game is played for its official duration.

Characteristics of Rogue Game – playing amongst obstacles / advance and advantage / negotiation / collision / fracturing of order / stalling / stops / starts / feinting / indecision / clashes between balls / swapping of games by players / interruption / rhythm and counter-rhythm / synchronization / syncopation / redundancy / non-accidentals / contra-action / contingent moves – liable but not certain to happen.

Participating teams: City of Westminster College – basketball team; My City Too – volleyball team; WhiteKat Football – student soccer team

Commentator: Cory Wharton-Malcolm

Location: Eden House Estate, Penfold Street, London

Date:  27th November 2010

Collaborators: Can Altay.

Dimensions: Variable.

Materials: TV monitors, DVD players, assorted leads, coloured tape.

Moving Imagery: 1 minute loops. View Rogue Game showreel on Vimeo.

The installation replays three continual loops of footage from Rogue Game, First Play which have been interrupted with frames of pure colour. These short edited sequences repeatedly show moments of negotiation, collision and improvisation by the players. The monitors are configured in relation to tape markings positioned in relation to the spaces of their exhibition.

Exhibited:

Firstsite, Colchester, 2015.

Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.

Casco, Utrecht, 2011.

The Showroom, London, 2010.

Smart Project Space, Amsterdam, 2009.

Commissioned by: The Architecture Centre for Architecture Week with funding from Arts Council England and first realised in the city of Bristol.

Dimensions: Models – 7 x 7 x 7cm.

Materials: Models of Jesomite and pigments, plywood case, paper maps, sack trolley, participants.

Instructions for a Game: The game board is the City. A case will contain a kit for a game – 70 Platforms and 70 maps. The moment the Platform is handed over the game begins. Choose your grid intersection point on the city map. Navigate your way to this point. Hold, drop, position or discard the Platform as near to the intersection point as possible. Document the Platform in position by a photograph or description and email or text to the address supplied.

The Object of the Game: Each individual action of positioning a platform within the city is a small but significant rupture in a landscape we know as planned and prescribed in its use. Collectively the action of the participants will create a new and momentary geography of the city and map the diversity and the intrigue of our built environment.