mad rapture for molluscs

I have spent a couple of days at the third Species of Origin workshop. Much of the workshop focused in on language and the voice, with particularly fascinating presentations by scientist Tecumseh Fitch on the evolution of the voice, author William Fiennes speaking about the writing of his book The Snow Goose, and artist Marcus Coates who spoke about two of his works: his re-construction of birds' song using human voices, Dawn Chorus, and Radio Shaman, in which Coates roams around the town of Stavanger in Norway, communicating with animal spirits in an attempt to address issues around prostitution in the town. Whilst Marcus' work comes across as very accessible, largely because of the humour and wit in the works, there's an obsessive quality and strangeness about them that I find mesmerizing.

Marcus' work has prompted me to do one of those list things that tend to appear in Januarys:
A Few Things I Saw in 2007 That I Wished I'd Commissioned:
Marcus Coates' Radio Shaman, Alexander Ponomarev's Secret Fairway, Artur Zmijewski's Them (though even more his 2005 Repetition), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Room,  Steve McQueen's Queen and Country, Andreas Gursky's Kamiokande, Grace Weir's In My Own Time, Christine Borland's Support Work (Hippocrates 1:075) and also This Being You Must Create (Spy in the Anatomy Museum) (even though it's a 1997 work, I didn't see it until recently – that's my excuse).

As a step towards making our website a more active part of our organisation's work (along with this blog), we now have videos online of a couple of our projects that I'm very glad we did commission:
Aleksandra Mir's Gravity (mentioned below) and Simon Faithfull's Escape Vehicle No. 6.

More videos coming very soon ...

Nicola Triscott, Director

* Title of entry from 'Pig', a poem by Jo Shapcott