SLAP are hosting a creative lab for 7 artists to create, work and sleep in a space for 48hours to experiment collaboratively and create new work.
SLAPover will be held on the 30th and 31st of October with a public sharing on the 1st of November to coincide with the Illuminating York festival.
The time spent in the space will be live streamed allowing the public to interact with the process.
The aim of SLAPover is to create a safe space for artists and performers to experiment and share skills in a collaborative atmosphere.
The Artists:
Andreas Louca
AJ Garrett
Aymee Smith
Joley Fielding
Kallum Corke
Vijay Patel
Robert Foster
Now that the flurry of creativity and artistic experimentation that was SLAPover is behind us, the SLAPover artists have taken the time to comment on their experience throughout the process.
AJ Garret
The work we created was called ‘The Last Days of the Office’ and it grew out of a) being in an office and b) mucking about and playing. It took the form of a combined performance, installation, exhibition (including a film that we shot in the middle of the night where I could not look more rough and I have mixed feelings about ever seeing again, although it is quite good I think). The performance element involved creating a pseudo-serious officious environment mixed with extremely silliness and the just playing about. There were some aspects that there was no way in hell I would take part in e.g. dancing to Boyzone, which I left that to the others, but overall it was a very collaborative and fun event with superb support from SLAP in York. It may sound intense to live and work with total strangers and create work, but it was more like a refreshing retreat from the ‘real world’ of ongoing projects, day jobs, etc. We spent most of the time just playing, and it is worth remembering to play sometimes, especially if you want to create.
Andreas Louca
59 hours before. I enter the white space. I see 11 chairs, 3 tables and 7 lamps. I’m about to spend two and a half days with 6 or 7 other people in this room. After we finish, the space is going to turn into a restaurant. He is not here. “You’re just too short for me” he said. I wonder around, struggling to be an artist among artists. “Ebola”.
45 hours before. I like orange. It makes me feel confident. For no purpose. Just like a “Boyzone” hit: 1 song, 222 clicks. We dance. We have our own dance, our own song, our own pact. I feel like I’m stuck in the elevator with these people. “Ebola” again.
21 hours before. I’m red. My face is red. Look at me. With all this lipstick on my face. I resemble a tomato. I sit on a chair, look at the girl in this painting and fall in love with her. She has a glass in front of her face to protect her redness. “Ebola”.
The light is purple, the sky looks like a big yellow balloon dog and the sun looks like an inflatable green banana. “Didn’t you kill my brother?” she said. That’s not what I heard.
We celebrated misery, claustrophobia, institutionalization, bureaucracy and administrational-ism: the last days of the office. We were 8 blue pictures for the last 3 hours. Office-ism and “Ebola” again.
The noise is black. 1 buzzer. Any outcome.
Aymee Smith
A Final Report from the Office by Ms Susan File
When myself and my colleagues were informed of the imminent closure of our office and its future renovation as a restaurant, we felt that we could not let the fact go unnoticed.
Through a series of misadventures: divorce, separation and conflicts with landlords among others, seven of us had come to call our office not only our place of work, but also of sleep - home. We were not simply being turfed out of an office space but also our place of habitation and refuge, with only Percy Prittstick having a new job (and place of residence) definitely lined up.
And so during the last days of the office we decided to hold a party - inviting the outside world into our inside world - both to celebrate and commiserate a job well done.
The two days between the closure of the office and the proposed party were days of play, of freedom from our office serfdom, yet the continuation of confinement within the space. Without our personal desks and administrative duties we felt lost, we hadn’t a clue what to do with ourselves. The office phone had even stopped ringing (although every so often one of us would head downstairs and press the buzzer to enter the building, meaning that the intercom phone would ring, filling us all with a fuzzy sense of warmth and normality).
We whiled away the time, drawing imaginary pictures of Ricardo - the employee who sadly never was, his new job having been dissolved with the closure of the business - we also danced, badly; we listened to our favourite tunes on the radio and thought of a Picture of You, the world outside: what would you expect from our party? How would we manage to interact with normality, with representatives of the outside world from which we had retreated during our collective time of residency within our working space?
Well, we went out with a Bang. Sadly though we had only a stack of bananas with which to realise this onomatopoetic term - other fruits being too expensive, and not nearly as useful when conducting a shoot-out. We sincerely hope that all who came along to our humble party had a jolly time, and that they took a moment to imagine the office in all its glory, the office that is sadly, no more.
I would like to end with a poem, a few lines from our favourite song:
You will be there, when I needed somebody
You will be there, the only one to help me
I had a picture of you in my mind
Never knew it could be so wrong
Why’d it take me so long just to find
The friend that was there all along.
Joley Fielding
With risk of speaking for you…
I remember when we first met. We were sat on those chairs in a circle, asking questions of one another, trying to find out who we were and who we wanted to be, here. I remember telling you all that I would have liked to suggest swapping who we were, or who we had told each other we were. I think you agreed when I said that, being that it was only one person that we were waiting for, I would worry that they would feel isolated by this game, or lied to even. I didn’t think this would be a good place to start.
It’s funny, on reflection, because (I think) without intention, that we might have played that game anyway.
Our home, officey as it was, lent to our play. It made it feel almost like there was a job to be done, 11 Little Stonegate was ready for some life. Different, to working in a place usually reserved for creative activity - the work there almost, has already been done; it lines the walls and forms the dust.
Ready to shake off its office smells for something human, ready to hear laughter and shouting and Boyzone and snoring and balloons popping. I’d like to think that the job there was done - what lucky restaurant owners, with all that life in their walls and in their dust?
We spoke about ‘seriously ridiculous’ as what we were doing. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I like it. Working with you has certainly taught me to embrace the absurd.
Writing this makes me a bit angry, because it means that our experience is carrying on, except, not carrying on in quite the way I would want it to. I feel a bit angry that you’re not here to ask questions, it’s a bit difficult writing about collaboration alone. In writing this I feel always on the verge of getting it wrong, of speaking for you. This of course, wouldn’t be a risk was I to write about my own experience. But the thing is, it feels impossible to write about it from a singular perspective, I’m finding it hard to separate your experiences from mine, my memories and my thoughts from yours.
Thinking of our hours together I remember the moments of being between things, we seemed to always be between things. Between dinner and performance, between shopping and writing, between laughing and drawing, between biscuits and games, between drinking and Polaroid’s, between sleep and filmmaking.
In our difference was where we found connections – accidents mostly.
During our sharing I found the most pleasure from watching you, from watching you work out what we were sharing, as we were sharing it. I remember the moments of playing when we didn’t need to, when nobody was really looking or listening. Sometimes I was unsure if I was shooting Kallum or Norris Notepad, chatting to Aymee or Susan File, and, when talking to an audience member on the phone via the buzzer downstairs, I was unsure if I was answering and asking questions as Joely, or Suzy Swivelchair. These lies or untruths were my favourites, never quite sure of the proximity between our world, and theirs.
You have knocked my shoulders so that now I’m looking square in the eye at possibility – at new forms, at collaboration, at things that scare me.
Kallum Corke
When I applied to be a part of SLAPover, I never imagined that seven artists who had never met could come together so effectively in the space of forty-eight hours. Especially seven artists with as varied interests as ours. Amongst us there were performance artists, storytellers and visual artists, with many of us existing somewhere between many disciplines. And though my own practice is chiefly concerned with ‘error’ – with the aestheticisation of mistakes or damage, there were no issues during the time we worked together.
Of course, when we arrived bleary-eyed at the space on Thursday morning, there was some awkwardness. Each of us was surrounded by people that we’d never met and as quickly as we’d been introduced to one another, we were left to our own devices. We made the obligatory introductions, but getting to know another human being takes time, it’s a process – unfortunately for us, we had very little time to get to know one another. In the end, this wasn’t an issue. It’s surprising how quickly you get to know someone when you’re living in the same space and by the end of our time together, I think we had grown surprisingly close. The hands-off approach that SLAP took to the event helped contribute to this, as in the absence of their mediation we had no real choice but to get to know each other.
Over the course of the project, a supportive atmosphere emerged organically and we shared ideas and explored concepts, learning about each other’s practice along the way. In the absence of any external stimulus, our first point of reference in creating our show was the space itself – then, ourselves. Each of us contributed a great deal of our own experience and expertise, with the resulting show reflecting the disparate nature of our practice as individuals and the harmonious nature of our collaboration.
Having previously studied performance, before focusing my practice on visual art firmly rooted in the digital, the experience represented a return to performance art. For me, the process of creating new work is often intensely myopic, with little to no external input. Working with the other SLAPover participants afforded me an opportunity to engage with wildly different artistic practices and consider the ways in which those practices related to my own. Just having the other artists around, sharing their thoughts on my work, while collaborating on our show was beneficial and there was a genuine willingness to teach – and to be taught, which amazed and humbled me.
I’ve learned a lot from this experience, and if there’s one thing I want to share – it’s that if you get the opportunity to collaborate with strangers; if you get the opportunity to share you work with others, take it. We stand to learn so much from one another, as artists and as human beings – and it’s important that we make the most of the knowledge and experience others have to offer.
We lived together, we ate together and we made art together. And I was fortunate enough to get to know six interesting and talented people whom I now count as friends.
Robert Foster
Precarious Play – Thoughts On SLAPover
“You’re the Simon to my Garfunkel”
“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately, and I don’t like it”
Last week I was one of seven participating artists in SLAPover, a 48-hour collaborative experiment designed to investigate the process of working collectively.
The event, organised by SLAP, a York based artist-led initiative focused on performance and live-art, brought together artists working in different disciplines to reside and work in an ex-office over the course of two days, with a public showing of the results at the end of the process.
Prior to the start of the event I was intrigued by whether the group would establish a truly collaborative methodology, and whether the work produced would achieve a sense of coherency. Collaboration is a particular kind of beast, more often than not building on mutually held interests between participants. How would we operate as a group with no former ties to one another, with such a short timescale with which to create work? The potential for risk alone was enough to pique my interest.
Upon arrival to the space, the organisers Lydia Cottrell and Sophie Unwin, gave a brief introduction explaining the practicalities; when food would be delivered, we were free to leave the space when we wished, and a budget of £200 was available. After which we were left to our own devices, free to develop ideas however we deemed best, working collectively, within smaller fragmentary groups, or as a number of individuals under the umbrella of the project.
After the following awkward introductory phase sat on chairs in a circle, the group adjourned to the kitchen for the stage of upmost importance in the formulation of ideas, a cup of tea and a chat. The group consensus was one of a laissez-faire approach to the process, with openness to potential results. Even with hindsight, I am still surprised by how quickly we slipped into a collaborative, playful approach to interacting with the context of the situation, staging games together, with little regard to whether the time spent would yield “work”.
Perhaps the context of the project, and the diverse range of interests of the participants, led to play as the most holistic method in finding common ground with one another, with a meandering process the best course for developing a kind of logic with which to frame our results.
Over time it became less and less relevant, to attach a particular outcome to a specific person, with the whole becoming a sum of its parts, very much reliant on our collective working method and the collaborative working process as we participated together.
The mood over the course of the event was compared to the last day of school, with the group adopting an intuitive response to the time given. These changing, responsive, sometimes task based, activities gradually began to shape the space, with remnants of this play forming a site for performative actions that would involve the audience when open to the public.
‘Last Days Of The Office’ became the title and theme for the work, with a series of actions devised to make use of this detritus as props or objects to be responded to. The residue of our collective work began to act as visual triggers, akin to the jumbled pieces of a puzzle, with each of us shifting from performing individually, performing collaboratively, involving the audience, as well as informally interacting with the visitors.
Most striking was the extent to which improvisation became integral to the experience of the space; the audience becoming key participants in games or activities devised in reaction to new actions, in an unfolding series of minor events, that possibly alluded to an over-arching rationale, or narrative, but asked the audience to fill in the gaps and involve themselves. These unplanned responses led to some dynamic moments, which through the sense of spontaneity, seemed to epitomise the very process we had engaged in over the prior two days of working together.
One criticism that could be raised with the results is that our logic became internalised, with the different elements perhaps too disparate or disjointed, without the knowledge that came with being one of the participants involved in there making. However, this nebulous, puzzling quality, teetering between reason and nonsense, seemed to be indicative of the response of the group to the context of the event, on one hand intensive and involved, and on the other intuitive and unbridled.
With the world of contemporary art seeming increasingly focused on promoting the notion that artists develop a particular recognisable product by which to market themselves, SLAPover offered a generous alternative that stood opposed to these fixed expectations. By working as a group with no preconceived agenda (other than to create something) in a context that promoted risk, and in embracing the playful, intuitive and absurd, we seemed able to be able to gain some respite from these restraints, hopefully bringing the audience with us, if only for a short while.
Vijay Patel
After spending 48 hours of working, eating and sleeping in the same space, I can honestly say that SLAPover was equally very fun and intense. Within the first 12 hours of the process, we were having conversations about our devising plan in tin foil hats and having sleeping bag races. The next 24 hours consisted of Ebowling (Ebola-themed bowling), Halloween masks, Bananas and Boyzone’s greatest hits on repeat. It’s a great project for anyone looking to try something different