GOVAN
Artists Lee Ivett and Ben Parry explore masculinity in Govan as part of Riverside Solidarity project.
“Our method for commencing the residency was to not immediately engage with any one particular group or seek to act in support of a particular agenda or organisation. Our aim was to metaphorically and literally cut out the ‘noise’ in Govan and seek a way of understanding the territory on our own terms. We wanted to use an intervention to create a scenario that would further our understanding of both Govan and the Graving Docks site by engaging with informal behaviours and unstructured groups that participate within the landscape and the community of Govan. This intervention on the historic and derelict Govan graving docks would act as a device for exploring its current condition and in particular the manner in which it is informally occupied.
Our future aim for the residency is to deliver a large participatory exercise in making that explores the role of men within post-industrial communities. For this intervention we will be looking to utilise the granite stone setts that are also abundant on the graving docks site. We will seek to deliver an event that returns and explores the idea of mass physical endeavour to the graving docks site as a means of reclaiming its intangible heritage. The future role of men, the integration of new men and the opportunities for young males within post-industrial communities will form the basis for our future investigations.” Ivett/Parry
GDANSK
The opportunity to make a parallel project in Gdansk allowed us to test this methodology of architecture as a tool for registering a place and researching its condition. Over the course of four days in Gdansk, we recreated the form and methodology of the intervention delivered in Govan; identifying old shipping rope in the possession of an artist’s collective that has occupied a former bakery within the shipyards. We then worked collaboratively to create a place of shelter and enclosure that referenced the three current modes of re-occupation of post-industrial space in Gdansk; artists occupation of vacant property, the state sponsored construction of large cultural institutions and the development of new private housing for profit.
This work utilises very simple methodologies of construction, timber frames constructed in-situ and then then wrapped with found rope attached and secured with cable ties
IPSS Gdansk
“The strategic and administered city lays down its thesis, and everywhere the clues and traces of its antitheses.”
Sunday 27th August, 10.30 am – 4.00 pm
‘walking and making’ ensemble workshop led by artist Ben Parry
start location: Plac Solidarnosci near the Monument of the Fallen Shipyard Workers.
Open invitation for up to 15 participants.
The International Peripatetic Sculptors Society (IPSS) makes improvised public sculpture and spontaneous interventions in the back alleys and forgotten spaces of cities across the world. Combining the tradition of the Situationist dérive with the art of everyday life the IPSS encourages transformation of the urban environment through small gestures of creativity, play and performance. The ensemble workshop combines walking and making with use of the body as a participatory methods of observation, investigation and action upon the city space. As peripateurs you will spontaneously intervene using the residues, objects, holes, gaps, spaces and architectures as your raw material.
Rules of engagement
1 We take no tools with us.
2 We walk a route together.
3 We walk the route a second time and make work.
4 We walk the route a third time to enjoy what has been made
5 The work is photographed and a booklet produced.
6 These rules are guidelines and might be broken by us at any time.
http://www.culturalhijack.org/index.php/participating-artists/74-ben-parry
Regeneration and Waterfront Heritage Research Network 