TS Eliot 13.11.10

Time, Narrative and T.S. Eliot

by Vanda Playford

Vanda Playford decided to take us to two different venues, on the trace of T. S. Eliot. After meeting at the tube station in Kensington, we walked to the church that Eliot was a warden for 12 years of his late life. Vanda has informed us on Eliot and the peculiarities of his life that has taken her interest. After walking in the church we have sat on a corner where Vanda read us through her Shamanic journey she has taken to prepare for today's meeting. her journey was so resonant with strong points on Eliot's practice. Following, we started reading from Eliot's poetry (Four Quartets, mainly). After spending a good amount of time, and arriving at the limits of the patience of the priest, we have left the premises to go and have a drink at Eliot's local pub. There waited another task. Vanda asked us to write a story (in automated writing) on time on the cash machine rolls. After the session of writing, everyone switched their story which were read aloud. We have rolled our stories back and placed in a box to be thrown to the lake in the neighborhood. (For many reasons, neither the information of the lake nor the time will be announced.)

Freud Museum, 30.10.10

at Freud Museum

by Jean Matthee

After walking though the museum and relating to the objects that surrounds us within pauses, Jean invited us to make our own mobius strip. Referring to Lygia Clark's performance of cutting continuously the Mobius strip from the middle, she asked us to think of a limit of ours - a limit that we want to exceed and after a determinate feel about that limit we started cutting our own mobius strips where exceeding was metaphorically and physically in-situ. Following, we were invited one-by-one into Freud's study and play again with an elasticated mobius strip and associate with the patients that have been temporarily residing on the infamous coach. The whole encounter is filmed by Sara, as Jean wanted to position an investigation on thought and image.

Sir John Soane's Museum, 16.10.10

Soane the second and the problem of Now
a series of playful meditations on time and presence

by Ole Hagen

JOHN SOANE 2^ND AND THE PROBLEM OF NOW

The group meet first in the front room, where O gives the following introduction:

Sir John Soane was a quite successful neoclassical architect and an initiate (1813) in the fraternal organisation of the Masonic Lodge. But despite being a member of an organisation with an idea of a Supreme Being called G.A.O.T.U, the Great Architect of the Universe and constructing and preserving some monumental architecture himself, John Soane was not immune to the problem of entropy and the passage of time. His remains are buried at a tomb he designed for himself and his wife at St.Pancras Old Church graveyard, a site with an ancient pagan history. But that is not the main point here.

White Hart, 23.9.10

The first meeting of the group took place at White Hart Pub in Stoke Newington on the night of 23rd September. The group after picking a button with a letter marked on it, grouped accordingly to start the table soccer tournament. Among all Kaz displayed his skills on table soccer. In the aftermath, Fatos distributed the individually signed letters to all participants, including Soledad in Chile.

Project Outline

Vision Forum London
Working Title: Time Capsules and Conditions of Now
‘Time capsules’ and ‘conditions of now’ are two notions that continuously oscillate on the phenomenological reception of the spatial and the relational. The former adheres to a withdrawal from continuity of events whilst falling in another realm of continuum with differing parameters, whereas the latter delves around the reception of the continuum through its defining elements such as the present moment and investigation of ‘now’ in its potentiality. In that sense the project is structured upon at first sight conflicting and gradually as eventually relevant concepts. The theoretical framework is under the influence of theories of time from quantum mechanics to meditation, from psychoanalysis to social science aiming to rearticulate the phenomenon of knowledge and its methods of presence, production, and reclaimed social and imaginary space.

The project brings together participants with diverse backgrounds and practice, who produce in the domain of visual arts, and focuses on time capsules and conditions of now, thematically evolving around the idea of allowance of creative and prolific individuals to encounter non-ordinary realities, which aim to influence their work on a relevant and discreet sense. The Vision Forum London project is composed of encounters varying in their nature and vicinity. In other words, the encounters will span the social and the personal through involvements in differing conditions of one’s relating him/herself to the selected sites. The sites vary in their nature and presuppose a certain sense of disconnection with their outside realm. That is to say, visits to houses of currently-living or have-long-passed-away significant individuals with a cross disciplinary practice are scheduled and positioned as the time capsules; whereas the conditions of now will be provoked on the sites of encounter. These visits will be preceded by a retreat to a town outside of London where participants will be part of a non-ordinary activity of silent togetherness whilst the personal space will be the site of encounter within the presence and the togetherness of the group. The accumulation of these activities are in the domain of the discreet and invisible influence in the sense in which the participants will not be asked to produce anything out of or directly relating to the former encounters in the means of translation. These unconventional encounters deal with the domain of creative and influential while looking away from the conventional context of artistic and creative production. In that sense the project is an irregularity with its unutilized nature and focuses on, as well as supports the expansion of borders in thinking, doing and making. Nonetheless, the project means to deliver a variety of outcomes as new works in artistic, curatorial and authorial terms depending on the practice of the participants.

The first phase, September – December 2010, will start of with a meeting of a group for a table soccer tournament and is composed of visiting houses of significant personas who have brought together a wide-research on knowledge through relating to science, psychology and arts. The houses that are to be visited belong to Freud, T.S. Eliott, Julian Barbour, among others. The houses for visit are positioned as sites with the aspect of time capsules in the way in which another reality is being encountered through delving into the objecthood of things as well as conceptual articulations of practices and perspectives.

The second phase, January – May 2011, is composed of working among the group for the outcomes such as making a publication, a series of exhibitions, a series of events and talks and any other artistic interventions in London. The second phase is where the experience of the first phase flourishes, not in the sense of implementation of what the first phase consisted but reflecting individually and collectively on the experience and involving in various modes of production.

Initiated by Fatos Ustek, curator & art critic

Participants:
Lisa Skuret artist & writer
Kaz, artist
Jean Matthee, artist & theoretician
Ole Hagen, artist & lecturer
Vanda Playford, artist & practicing GP
Soledad Garcia, curator & writer

Vision Forum - London Houses

Project start: September 2010
Project finish: 2012