Beep Generation / Futurevisual / EVNTS / Exhibition / Conference / Participate

Art For Shopping Centres
Curatorial Statement

Transforming the city into a space of experimentation,
freeing urban space, making it strange.

Drew Hemment, Curator
April 2007

The Art For Shopping Centres exhibition at Futuresonic 2007 featured major commissioned artworks responding to the social context of one of the UK's main shopping centres.

A flicker of movement is caught by a static camera. A hooded figure enters, clinging to walls. The CCTV camera pans out, catches a second figure vaulting an obstacle, zooms in again. Running, jumping, a blur of fluid motion. The traceurs (parkour or free-running performers) have the run of the huge shopping mall; their free-running poetics now repeated on 30 or 40 or 50 of the screens that line the avenues of the mall and are scattered among the shops. It is artists not security guards at the controls of the CCTV, and the film is The Duellists by MediaShed.

The Duellists - Directed by David Valentine of MediaShed and featuring Methods of Movement - combines free-running with free-media. Free-running involves fluid uninterrupted movement adapting motion to obstacles in the environment. Like free-running, free-media makes use of and re-energises the infrastructure of the city. The Duellists was created for Futuresonic 2007 using only the in-house CCTV system within the Manchester Arndale Shopping Centre, exhibited on plasma screens usually used to carry advertising. Media and devices of every kind increasingly surround us - finally free-media unleashes its potential.

Harwood in Netmonster sought to uncover truths forgotten in the light reflected from the endless shop windows, in an ever-evolving 'network image' showing how the Arndale and Manchester city centre have risen from the ashes of the 1996 IRA bomb.

In the city we can occupy many different social spaces at once. Katherine Moriwaki explored in Everything Really Is Connected After All relationships of proximity and intimacy in a piece in the same exhibition. People roamed the arcades of the shopping centre listening on a wifi Arduino device to monologs recorded by local people, which when they strayed close to another user were interrupted with words to make you stop and think, subtly making apparent encounters with others in Herzian space.

In the exhibition permissions were obtained by the Futuresonic curator Drew Hemment, and the process of seeking permission became an integral part of the exhibition. Initial meetings with the Chief Exec - an influential figure responsible for pedestrianising a large swathe of Manchester - were followed by an ongoing negotiation over many months, only for the entire exhibition to be cancelled midway by senior management, and later reinstated. The need to negotiate with the people and agencies who run the city centre enabled the outlines of control to be made apparent, and, like a polaroid image appearing, it was possible to discover truths about the city that are not always seen.

Harwood from Mongrel, a member of MediaShed and also presenting a solo project in the exhibition, documented how public space has been privatised in Manchester city centre, with the consequence that protesters have been moved on from a busy square and replaced by polite musicians, and kids are not permitted to walk through the shopping area in groups of more than three. In a small way, the exhibition reversed this. Alternative images and activities occupied the private space of the shopping centre without being co-opted, and commerce was momentarily interrupted when the Muzak - the bland music piped into elevators and shopping malls worldwide - was switched to a soundtrack by Hybernation in what was surely one of the most incongruous 'gallery tours' of all time.

Background

We are increasingly surrounded by media and devices of every kind all of the time. Visual technologies are today all pervasive, and any one time there are thousands of devices and screens of every shape and size inside Manchester Arndale, from digital televisions and PCs in store windows to camera phones carried by shoppers. As a result art can often be found in unexpected places, and the means to create it are all around us.

Art For Shopping Centres is the centrepiece of Urban Play, continuing Futuresonic's focus since 2004 on taking artworks out of the galleries and into urban space. The exhibition is located in Manchester's main city centre shopping arcade. This is rich territory in many ways - Manchester Arndale was made famous by its proximity to the IRA blast that devastated the city centre in 1996, which was also a catalyst for Manchester's subsequent commercial boom.

All of the artists bring something a little different, and each has a distinctive vision of the role of the artist. To be honest, it would seem more incongruous for this lot to be working in a gallery, whereas working in urban space, with real people, surrounded by the informal cultures of the city, is to work on home turf.

Each of the artworks deals, in very different ways, with social context and environment, either online or offline. Harwood's Netmonster software sniffs the internet in real time for links and connections, to revisit the legacy of the 1996 IRA bomb. Katherine Morwaki enables people to experience the shopping centre - a backdrop for desire, projection, and the acquisition of material objects - through the prism of stories which adapt to the proximity of other people around you. And MediaShed with Method of Movement uncover a view of the Arndale as media playground, in a process of freeing media, and freeing the image.

The exhibition developed out of a conversation with the artists over 18 months. One curatorial interest lying behind it is in finding a point of intersection between locative media, net-art and free-media. Free-media is about finding inspiration and resources in our built and natural environment - it is open, unrestricted and outside proprietary controls, so you can freely change it, rewrite it or rebuild it to suit yourself. Locative media looks at how people connect with each other through technology in public places. And net-art is about networks and the play of power and influence in online environments. At a workshop in early 2006, the artists and curator came together to explore their different takes on urban media, under the title 'Free and Everyware'.

In the process an opportunity arose to work with a much broader range of partners. Arts Council England supported a series of events and gatherings across the UK, led by Futuresonic in partnership with MediaShed, Enter, Lovebytes, Access Space and Contact. These events have fed into the creative development of the exhibition, and have also spun off into other gatherings, networks and projects. These include a collaboration of UK media art festivals, and also a number of free-media initiatives. Enter_ has hosted meetings and workshops related to the Gearbox free-media video toolkit. Futuresonic is hosting the Free Studio events. Lovebytes and Access Space host hands-on experiments with free-media and video sniffin'. And Contact present a two day workshop on free-media and freerunning, which will give people who bump into the exhibition at Manchester Arndale an opportunity to free their bodies and free their minds.