This article examines ways in which ‘fame’ has been sustained and rewarded in societies from ancient civilizations to the present. It uses Rooted in Earth by Joshua Sofaer as an example of how honours can be bestowed democratically, untainted by any association with authority.

Mit der Lecture Performance ist in jüngster Zeit ein neues Format zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft entstanden. Doch die Kunst des Vortragens hat eine lange Geschichte. Seit Jahrhunderten greifen Wissenspräsentation und Wissensproduktion in der Performance des Vortrags ineinander: Wann wird aus »Show and Tell« Evidenz? Welche Öffentlichkeiten braucht Forschung? Wie verbinden sich Geistesblitze und Medien im Theater des Wissens?

Mit Analysen zum freien Vortrag, zum Experimental- und Lichtbildvortrag, zur PowerPoint-Präsentation, zur Online-Lecture und zur künstlerischen Vortragsperformance bietet dieser Band erstmals einen Überblick über einflussreiche Vortragsszenarien und ihre Geschichte.

Sarah Rodigari with guest artists

Brian Fuata
Paul Gazzola
Agatha Gothe-Snape
Madeleine Hodge
Joshua Sofaer
Malcolm Whittaker

Empty Gesture is a presentation of findings derived from a two week residency at Alaska Projects during which each artist was invited to collaborate with Sarah Rodigari over a period of 48 hours.

Together they have investigated the interplay between artists as well as publics in the ever increasing call to participate in current trends of contemporary art practice.

Image: Mitch Cairns

Well ‘summer’ is not far off and it is snowing in Tromsø. Already now, in early May, the sun is not really setting. It pops below the horizon just after midnight only to emerge less than an hour later. By the end of May, it won’t set at all and there will be 2 months of unbroken daylight.

This was the view outside my hotel window at midnight on the day I arrived:

Situated at 69 degrees north, Tromsø is 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle at the tippy top of Norway. Sometimes described (perhaps exaggeratedly) as the Paris of the North, Tromsø boasts the northernmost University, brewery, and cathedral, amongst other things. There really isn’t all that much further north to go. The population is about 70,000.

I am here as part of the performance festival Vårscenefest, to give a presentation and workshop. The hotel that I am staying in is a converted hospital, initially founded by the ‘Grey Sisters of the holy Elizabeth in Breslau’. It is modest but comfortable in the heated-bathroom-floor Norwegian way. One big advantage is a remnant of its relatively recent hospital days: the hospital bed.

I have spent a bit too much of the light evenings fiddling with the buttons, trying to ascertain the perfect leg lift to raised head ratio. To be honest, I am a bit concerned about going back to flat when I get home.

My room also has what must be the only ever piece of hotel art that I have ever, even remotely, coveted. In fact, I don’t want it, but I am quite, erm, charmed by it. This is a first. Stitched figures do their thing across its broad canvas.

Tromsø is an island. On my Sunday off, I walked across the long bridge to the mainland and took the cable car to the top of mount Storsteinen, 421 metres up.

On the viewing platform at the top there are spectacular views of Tromsø and the surrounding mountains.

All of a sudden there was a snowstorm. It was as if some giant hand was painting out the scene from left to right. Here it is moving in.

And then everything was just a grey-blue-white. You could barely see a few metres in front of you.

On the top of the mountain there was a strange white-on-white-on-white going on with some kid’s snow sculpture.

So I decided to go to the cafe (follow the stuffed snow cat thing) and wait for the storm to clear. Which it did, almost as quickly as it appeared.

Walking back into Tromsø town, I passed the Ishavskatedralen, the Arctic Cathedral. Built in 1965 it is a architectural landmark for the area, visible from all over.

It sits in contrast to the Tromsø Domkirke, the world’s northernmost Protestant cathedral and Norway’s only wooden cathedral, built in 1861. The wood carving is lovely and refreshingly crucifix-free. The building overwhelmingly reminds me of the church in every wooden toy town I had as a child.

Another extremely pleasing wooden structure, is this tiny shop selling bric-a-brac. It’s possibly the cutest shop in the world.

As I walked back over from the mainland, the Hurtigruten was slowly making its way into dock, sounding its deep horn. The Hurtigruten makes its passage along the miles of Norwegian coast from Bergen in the south west, to Kirknes at the north east. I had taken this ship on the short voyage from Bodo to the Lofoten Islands where I was working on a project in 2008, and was absolutely amazed by the beauty of the Arctic islands. It’s a luxury tourist trip but also vital daily transportation for people and things in these remote areas.

If you get the chance to visit the islands in the north of Norway, then do. It is absurdly expensive here (I’ve never paid so much for a bread roll in my life) but the pay-off is spectacular scenery.

Members of the public applied for a ticket with a problem. Opera singers then went to audience members’ homes for a private interaction. The singer listened to the problem, selected an aria they felt appropriate and gave a private recital that addressed the issue raised.

Operahjälpen acknowledged that the experience and interpretation of art is created in the space between any individual audience member and the work of art.

Do you have a love or relationship problem?

Are you love sick, or facing divorce? Has your partner stopped listening to you? Do your children disrespect you? Do you have a poor relationship with your parents? Are you grieving someone’s death? Are you sick of being single? Do you have a crush on your boss at work?

We believe in opera and we think that opera might have a solution for you.

If you book a private session with one of our singers or musicians, they will come to your home, try to better understand your problem, and proscribe an operatic repertoire with the aim of addressing your particular concern. As well as introducing you to music that you can listen to in your own time, they will perform live for you, as you sit in your most comfortable chair, or even as you rest in bed.
This may seem like a gimmick to you, but we are entirely serious.

Why not give Operahjälpen a try?

To apply for one of the available slots, please indicate your problem, your address and your preferred performance date, and one of our representatives will contact you to confirm whether or not we can accommodate your request.

Operahjälpen is for residents of Stockholm. Performances in your home last for about 30 minutes.

Operahjälpen was devised, created and directed by Joshua Sofaer

Singers:
Henriette Indahl Backman (soprano)
Henriikka Gröndahl (soprano) Featured in video.
Margaretha Westerlind (mezzo soprano)
Mattias Nilsson (baritone)

Folkoperan:
Pia Kronqvist, Managing Director
Mellika Melouani Melani, Artistic Director
Joakim Unander, Musical Director

Operahjälpen was produced by Jonas Palerius, Linda Beijer and the Folkoperan team.

Journalist Igor Gedilaghine from APF news agency asks Joshua Sofaer some questions about Operahjälpen

1 – How did this idea come about?
I met Mellika Melouani Melani, the Artistic Director of Folkoperan, at a seminar in Oslo where we were both presenting our work. I was very interested when she described what Folkoperan were trying to do and I loved the idea of a ‘People’s Opera’. When Mellika invited me to propose an idea for Opera Showroom, I thought about what opera could ‘do’ in the world. For a long time, I have been a passionate audience of opera but I have never worked with opera singers professionally. I wanted to think about what it was that opera did to me. Why did it make me so emotional? For the right people, opera is a bit like a drug. It gives you a ‘fix’. I passionately believe in the power of art to change lives and to offer people the opportunity to see things differently, or to be given permission to behave in a new way. Operahjälpen comes out of those sets of concerns. For the last years I have been making work that considers what happens in the space of art meeting an audience. Operahjälpen is part of that body of work.

2 – What kind of music, what composers, in your opinion are the best to heal one’s soul? What about you personally?
I don’t think that any single composer is ‘best’. It depends on the context and individual mood. We had to use well-known repertoire for Operahjälpen because we were reliant on the backing orchestrations that have already been recorded. This meant we were limited to the classic 18th and 19th Century opera works. Those classics of Italian and German opera are, though, the ones that I suppose most people immediately have an emotional response to. They ‘cut through’ you somehow and get straight to your emotional core.

It is important to stress that Operahjälpen is not Music Therapy. I have been training as a Relational Dynamics Coach because, as an artist, I am interested in thinking about new ways of communicating with audiences. I have shared some of my own learning with the singers, so that they can actively listen to the problems that people present. But we are not offering therapy of any kind. We are simply offering opera. Some problems may be too big for Operahjälpen but probably no problem is too small. (If we are presented with problems that are too big for us, we will redirect people to conventional counseling services in the city.)

3 – What difference does it make to have a singer coming to your home instead of going yourself to a concert or listening to a CD?
Well there are a lot of differences and I suppose it is these reasons that are the point of Operahjälpen. The first point is that when a singer comes to your home and listens to your problem first, when they later sing to you, you feel that it is you who are being uniquely addressed. This forces you to listen in a different way. There is an exchange at play. The singer listens to your problem and you listen to the singer. The second point is that the force and power of the voice in a small space (certainly smaller than an opera house) is incredible. I don’t think people are prepared for the impact of that sound, even when they know it is coming. The quality of the sound reverberating around the room ‘hits’ you in the chest. There is a kind of vibration (a physical vibration) that happens in your body. The third point is that the sound changes the room. At best, there is a kind of ‘haunting’ that happens in the room after the singer leaves. The sound somehow lingers. If you go out of the room and return, you remember the sound of the singer in that space. The space has changed. The fourth point is that it is your space. It is true that when you go to a concert, you necessarily bring all your own problems and issues too, and that going to a concert can be cathartic and life enriching, fulfilling a personal need. In a way, all we are doing with Operahjälpen is to highlight that by reversing the priority. In a concert it is ostensibly the music that has the priority, and it may or may not address your personal need. In Operahjälpen the individual problem has the priority and it is this that enlists the music. But paradoxically, I believe that in Operahjälpen people listen to the music more attentively than they would otherwise do, and therefore, the music assumes ultimate significance, and hopefully, the problem slips away. There are probably more reasons but maybe that is enough for now.

4 – Would it be as effective if it were instrumentalists instead of singers coming to people’s homes?
Maybe. I haven’t tested that yet. But then it wouldn’t be Operahjälpen, it would be Musikhjälpen. Actually, I think that there is something very particular about singing, and that it comes from a human voice. Opera is both at once elemental and highly trained. It has been a great privilege for me to work with these singers who have spent years and years training their diaphragm and larynx to produce this amazing sound. There is something about the opera voice that we can identify with, but untrained, cannot produce, and that is magical.

5 – Is this a project that has already been organised somewhere before or is it the first time?
This is the first time the project has been made. I have worked on projects in people’s homes before but not with opera.

6 – Why in Stockholm?
Part of what I love about my job is that I get to travel all over the world making different projects. When Mellika asked me to propose a piece for Folkoperan, I jumped at the chance. I’ve really enjoyed being in the beautiful city of Stockholm.

I workshopen utfordrer han kursdeltagerne til å utforske nye måter å forholde seg til publikum på, og utvide sine muligheter til å integrere publikum i kunstnerisk praksis. Få med deg dette unike kurset med en av feltets mest anerkjente workshoparrangører.

[in English]
Across a range of artistic disciplines, artists are dealing with audiences in innovative and creative ways, placing the audience at the heart of their work. Contemporary culture is marked by the emancipation of the spectator and the transformation of the audience from passive recipient to active participant.

This workshop is a critical and practical investigation of what is at stake for audiences today when they attend a live event. Participants will be encouraged to explore, examine and create innovative ways of working with audiences.

The aim of the workshop is to give artists engaging in performance (involving any medium, including visual art, live art, dance and theatre) expanded possibilities of how they integrate audiences into their practice.

The Sessions

1. Wednesday 22nd February: Introduction: Performance in the context of Fine Art with Joshua Sofaer
Artists who use performance in their work are not necessarily Performance Artists. Many cultural productions, from fashion shows to films, use performance as an element of the work rather than as the principal form. In this opening session we will consider examples of the use of performance in fine art, ranging from single screen video works, to live performances; from works that happen in theatres, to works made on the street.

2. Wednesday 29th February: Autobiography and Performance with Dee Heddon
In this session we will consider a broad overview of the key concepts pertaining to ‘autobiography’ in the field of performance, exploring notions of ‘truth’, ‘identity’, personal history and political agency, confession, voyeurism and ethics. What is the relationship between past and present in performance, given that the performing body is tangibly present in the here and now? What is the relationship between performance and authenticity?

3. Wednesday 7th March: Performance and Popular Culture with David Gale
Performance and Popular Culture with David Gale
Where does the performance end and real life begin? Are we living in an epoch where life imitates art? Reality television, 24 hour news, internet chatrooms, immersive computer games: everyday behaviour is being contaminated by theatrical values. New realities are formed through the practice of performance and new performances are generated in everyday life. In this session we will consider examples in both high art and popular culture where these boundaries have blurred.

4. Wednesday 14th March: Activism and Performance with the vacuum cleaner
As artists seek to engage urgently with social and environmental issues and to affect change through their practice, performance becomes a critical tool for direct action. Activist artists are employing various creative legal and illegal tactics with the mission to mock, disrupt and challenge concentrations of power. In this session we will look at recent work of artists and artist collectives, and explore the efficacy of performance in contesting the status quo.

5. Wednesday 21 March: The Audience of Performance with Joshua Sofaer
Across a range of artistic disciplines, artists are dealing with audiences in innovative and creative ways, placing the audience at the heart of their work. Contemporary culture is marked by the emancipation of the spectator and the transformation of the audience from passive recipient to active participant. In this session we will consider what is at stake for audiences today when they attend a live event.

6. Thursday 29 March: Performance Documentation and the Artwork (includes visit to Gillian Wearing exhibition) with Joshua Sofaer
Live and Performance art works are by their very nature temporal. They struggle to enter into the world of exchange capital in the art market. They do not accrue value. They cannot be sold on. There are exceptions to this general rule. Increasingly artists are documenting performance and that documentation becomes the work anew. Taking the works by Gillian Wearing exhibited at Whitechapel as a starting point, we will consider documentation as performance.

Guest Lecturers

Dee Heddon is Dean of Graduate Studies and Reader in Theatre, Film & Television at the University of Glasgow.
David Gale is a playwright, theatre director, journalist and university lecturer.
The vacuum cleaner is an art and activism collective of one fashioning radical social and ecological change.

Morland Court wants to be a safe, pleasant place to live, and to reach out to its neighbours across Werrington. The Residents Association invite you to enter a creative competition, with the theme of HOW MORLAND COURT GOT ITS NAME.

Your entry can be factual or fantastical, so feel free to look in history books or to stretch your imagination to the limit.

You can enter with:

· a written story or account
· a recorded story (for example a short video)
· a drawn or painted picture
· a photograph

Elements of the winning entry will be included in a new sign for Morland Court to be unveiled in the summer of 2012 and the overall winner will receive an iPad.

There are two categories of entry: 16 and over, and under 16 (on the closing date). The competition will close on 31st May 2012. All entries must be received by the end of May to qualify.

Terms and conditions apply. Visit the competition website for more details.

A series of events will be happening at Morland Court over the next months. Follow us to find out more: www.facebook.com/morlandcourt

Please write your name, telephone, postcode and email address on your entry and which category you are entering: over 16 or under 16 on the 31st May 2012. Entries can be either hard copy or burnt to a DVD. They should be dropped off to Werrington Library during normal opening hours or sent to: How Morland Court Got Its Name, Werrington Library, Staniland Way, Werrington PE4 6JT

How Morland Court Got Its Name is a project by Joshua Sofaer for Morland Court Residents Association and is part of Citizen Power Peterborough.

Competition Judges:

Charlotte Wildermoth, Community Engagement Officer, Hyde Minster
Donna Lynas, Artist Director, Wysing Arts Centre
Georgina Chatfield, Citizen Power, RSA
John Abbott, Chair, Morland Court Residents Association
Paul Spencer, Morland Court Residents Association
Stuart Payn, Artist

Chair of Judging Panel: Joshua Sofaer, Artist

Flier illustration and design by Hannah Robinson.

The artists were, Joshua Sofaer, Oreet Ashery, Jordan McKenzie, Florence Peake, Hester Reeve, Daniel Lehan, hosted by curators Helen Pheby, Clare Lilley, and Damon Waldock at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

The site visit included artist presentations to curatorial staff and an introduction from YSP about its history, scope and remit. Artists developed proposals specifically for YSP individually, and at a later date discussed their ideas with the group. The proposals were collated and submitted to YSP for their consideration. The YSP curatorial team then gave feedback to individual artists.

YSP is a landscape laden with possibilities for the kind of live, interactive, and ephemeral interventions that have come to be understood in the UK as Live Art. This project – Indecent Proposal – explored that potential with a group of experienced artists, who developed bespoke ideas for the Bretton Park Estate.

The proposals were submitted and it is hoped and imagined that they will lead to productive new working relationships between YSP and the artists in the future.

“I found it very liberating to work within an open forum and explore the realms of possibility without being constrained by formal commitments to budget, programme etc., a process which has actually generated some very plausible proposals. I will be in touch with all the artists directly but can confirm that if we had the time and money we would do all of them! It was fascinating to see the vastly different, but all thoughtful and appropriate, responses to YSP. It’s prompted us to consider adapting the process to provide some kind of annual info day for interesting artists.”
Helen Pheby, Curator, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

“This process could have been extremely daunting – given the history of the sculpture park, the presence of the curators and peers, however the entire process was highly enjoyable, taking place in an atmosphere of informality, curiosity, good humour, and even-handedness.”
Daniel Lehan, Artist

“Indecent Proposal has given me a real boost in confidence as an artist. To be with a group of intelligent, prolific artists and present my ideas in a potentially intimidating scenario was tremendously rewarding. The model of presenting our work and then presenting our ideas was a new experience for me, different from the usual written cold proposal as a way of introducing myself and work.”
Florence Peake, Artist

“In short this was just wonderful through and through. Well organised, the perfect premise laid out from which to become engaged and have new ideas, non-stressful expectations, playful atmosphere, lovely group of fellow artists and the YSP staff were incredibly open and generous hosts. I even enjoyed getting my final proposal together.”
Hester Reeve, Artist

“Indecent Proposal has given me the confidence to think about taking the initiative and actually approaching organisations without waiting to be invited. The experience of meeting curators face to face was invaluable and I have also had an opportunity to meet artists who I will definitely keep in touch with in the future.”
Jordan McKenzie, Artist

“Whether it will materialise or not, is really of no importance to me; the experience so far as been rewarding enough. I learnt that live artists are the most innovative bunch of people and have really interesting ways to respond to challenges and solve problems. I also learnt that if I want to get a commission in a particular space I will not hesitate to contact them and propose to meet them and pitch my ideas in person, something I have not done in the past.”
Oreet Ashery, Artist

Florence Peake’s performance MAKE, was performed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in April 2012.

It’s a bit childish, I know, but there’s something really nice about being met at the airport by a driver with your name scrawled on a board. I do nothing. I say nothing. I give myself over to your expertise and let you transport me to my destination.

This last week I have been in Stockholm for the rehearsals of a new work, Operahjälpen (Opera Helps) with the Swedish opera company Folkoperan. The idea of the piece is straightforward. You apply for a place with a problem and we send an opera singer to your home. The singer will listen to your problem, suggest an aria, and then sing to you. It is a pleasure and a privilege to work with these musicians who have spent hours upon hours, year after year, training their diaphragm and larynx to produce this magical sound. The power and intensity of their voices, especially in the close proximity of domestic space is overwhelming and I have trouble keeping my emotions in check. Perhaps more than any other piece I have made, I really feel that I am the ideal audience member of this work.

I have a small apartment in Södermalm, the south island (of the 14 islands that make up this incredible capital, which is equal parts city, park and water). Södermalm, formerly where the ‘workers’ lived, is now the trendy ‘Shoreditch’ of Stockholm. Every second shop is a Swedish design or interiors shop. In Götgatan (which I pronounce as ‘yogurt garden’) a neon sign puns the command STOCK HOME, an instruction which panics the mind into considering the inadequacy of one’s own décor. The reflection of the electric blue crucifix in the window of this shop provokes the consideration that design really is a second religion here.

On my morning off there was one shop that I wanted to go to: Svenskt Tenn. Founded in 1924, Svenskt Tenn employed the architect, designer and artist Josef Frank, who made a series of incredibly beautiful textile designs that still feel fresh, vibrant and seductive, decades on from their initial creation. The shop, which has just been refitted, is half museum, half showroom. Many of Frank’s designs are mounted on the wall.

The fabric is wildly expensive. Smartly dressed women place orders in hushed voices. Assistants unroll bolts of cloth, taking heavy shears to section of material.

When pressed with what I might do with half a meter my imagination failed me, so I gave up. Not far from Svenskt Tenn is the Nordiska Museet (Nordic Museum), which houses the Swedish collection of design, textile and folk craft.

I wanted to see an exhibition of ‘Skolslöjd’ (school handicrafts). Sweden was the first country in the world to make ‘craft’ a school subject in the 19th Century. Hundreds answered a public call for examples of ‘slöjd’ and the resulting exhibition showcases everything from hammered metal spoons to embroidered napkins.

More interesting than the items themselves were the giggling middle and late aged museum visitors who chuckled to each other, pointing out a slightly lopsided pair of wooden bookends or a knitted tea-cosy, and recalling their own ‘slöjd’ successes and failures.

A nice touch on the giant iron door handle of the museum was a ‘slöjd handle warmer’ so that you didn’t have to feel the cold metal against your skin.

Wandering back to Folkoperan for the afternoon rehearsal, I popped into an eclectic boutique and found this lovely trompe l’oeil mask by the Swedish student designer and illustrator Ebba Forslind.