DIY: 2004 – Richard Layzell – THE NETWORK network – awareness – process – document – feedback – network

Richard Layzell

THE NETWORK
[- network – awareness – process – document – feedback – network -]

Thursday March 25, Friday March 26 and Saturday March 27
with an evening event on Saturday March 27.

Toynbee Studios, Live Art Development Agency and other locations t.b.c.

The Project

A three day workshop with Richard Layzell.

Day One:   The Network
– Networking
The relationship between networking and collaboration. The complexities of surviving as an artist in London, the pressures on the individual.   How we can nurture and establish a new network between this group of artists.

After establishing The Network, offering the chance of linking it up with other networks of artists, nationally and internationally.

People may even go on to make work together, long distance.

What’s the network for? To develop support, opportunities, information and collaboration for artists, ultimately raising the profile of Live Art.

Day Two:   Awareness and Process
– Awareness
Exploring the logging and mapping of a shared group experience, possibly through a silent walk.

– Process
I’ve been actively exploring process for about three years and have developed a series of questions [What Goes On] designed to track process.   Out of this has also come a fictional artist, Tania Koswycz, with her own set of questions.   We can all develop our own set of process questions.

The more I pursue the investigation of process, the more interesting it seems to become.   I look forward to sharing this.

Day Three:   Documentation, the network and an evening event
– Documentation
Documentation as performance.   Performance as documentation.

A one-day activity based on discussing shared practice, demonstrating many models of documentation, relating it to process-tracking and practical work.   With one invited guest for the morning.

We’d work individually and collectively on pushing documentation to a far extreme to see what comes out of it. e.g. street/studio actions are performed and closely documented. We look back at the documentation on video and computer, then work with it as a new starting/reference point.

Another exercise involves objective and subjective written/drawn observations as a form of documentation and feedback. So the many uses of the notebook/sketchbook is another discussion point.

– Event
On the final evening of the workshop, we, as an established group, invite all the participants and leaders from the other DIY 2 workshops to an evening event at the Live Art Development Agency, as an extension of network building.

Application procedure
Places are limited to 15 people and participants will be selected by application.

Applicants are invited to submit the following information to richard.layzell@virgin.net by Monday 23 February:

• A recent CV.
• A brief description of the nature of your practice and in particular its relationship to Live Art and time based work.
• A short statement about why you feel this project would be useful to you.

All applicants should live in London and have access to some documentation equipment e.g. video camera, still camera, audio equipment (one or more of these)

Costs
Participants will need to meet the costs of their daily lunches and will contribute £5 towards the final evening event.

Participants will also need to meet the cost of raw material for documentation such as film, videotapes, minidiscs etc.

The Organiser
Richard Layzell has run workshops in all aspects of Live Art. He has also worked extensively in industry as a ‘visionaire’ and formerly led the ‘media’ area at Wimbledon School of Art.

He is currently working on:

• Leading a Deprivation and Overload workshop (based on DIY 2002) and presenting a new performance commission (The Perfect Day) for the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow (February/March).
• Ongoing – Deep Down – a permanent site-specific installation for London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Resident Artist for ACE Didcot, developing a new arts centre with architect Dominic Williams
• A ‘Wonders’ project for The Public in West Bromwich

Recent work (2003):

• As facilitator for Time Place Space2 digital/performance workshop in Wagga Wagga, Australia
• In October as facilitator and performer at NRLA in Perth, Australia
• Lecture/performance at the Substation Singapore
• Art Work/Work Art – durational performance for Steder/Places international site specific project in Lillehammer Norway
• The Architecture of Belief – keynote lecture/performance for Steder/Places conference
• Manner Mauser – performance (with Jens Johannsen) – Stadtmauer, Herbstein, Germany.
• The Leaning Post – installation – 20/21 Scunthorpe