Honest and True tales

Honest and True was an audio installation in the Jury Room at Oxford Town Hall on Christmas Night Light, 2 December 2011.

We talk of ‘courtroom dramas’ and the ‘enactment of laws’, recognising that what goes on in a court room – the attempt to realise justice through legal processes – is performance. This performance is acted out by individuals, each one acting from their own set of beliefs, assumptions, prejudices, desires, privileges, and fears. These internal discourses are rarely openly acknowledged, much less expressed, but they form the core materials from which the scripts of each courtroom drama are written.

This is especially true for jurors – the amateur actors in the courtroom drama, prized for their ordinariness, non-professional, but hopefully never unprofessional. Any one of us can be a juror. For after all, what is justice but just us?

This piece is a collection of reflections on jury service by ordinary people, knitted together into one reflection, forcing us to face the universal nature of the issues we each grapple with as we pass judgement on each other in our communities, as we attempt to live in justice and harmony with one another. Played through 12 headsets arranged around the table in the Jury Room, the piece invited audiences to re-enact the process of reflecting as though serving on a jury.

Christmas Night Light is a project of OVADA Oxfordshire Visual Arts Agency.

This work was inspired in part by the paper ‘What Assumptions about Human Behaviour Underlie Asylum Judgements’, Gleeson, Herlihy & Turner 2010, an investigation into the assumptions that inform the judgements made by judges in the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal.

For kit, many thanks to the lovely Duncan at Silentnoizevents.com

Grantham House, Cranham Street, Jericho

The largest single creative project I’ve undertaken. It was all about community. Which has the same root (‘communis’) as the word ‘communicate’. And after all, what is community but the ever-renewing creation of our local world through the relationships we build and maintain with each other? Through undertaking this project I found I had established and put down roots more deeply than I thought I could, and I felt the itching in my nomad’s feet subside somewhat. Perhaps because the project was not in my own community, and as artist and facilitator I found myself in the role I feel most comfortable in: sort-of-outsider, enabler, facilitator, happily sitting with my own ambivalence.

The project is archived here: http://openingtheheartofjericho.wordpress.com/

A downloadable booklet is on its way…

origami for peace

Today is International Conscientious Objectors Day.

This year, Lockheed Martin, the second biggest arms manufacturer in the world, and one of the contractors at my local atomic weapons establishment, Aldermaston AWE, has the contract to deliver the 2011 UK Census. As a long-time peace and anti-nuclear campaigner, my conscience will not permit me to collude with Lockheed Martins’ public relations department in trying to make this manufacturer of weapons of war look like a nice corporate citizen with a friendly civic face. So this is my response.

made by Travis Reeves, music by Helen Reeves, 1995

How do you relate to the world around you?

How often do you take time to contemplate this relationship?

Tell me…

(Confidentiality guaranteed.)

come in...

...contemplate...

...confess

(May 2010 at Magdalen Road Studios)

How do we create a collective vision of an alternative society?

How do we start the conversations that are the foundation for building that collective vision?

The How to Create A Shared Vision Kit offers three sets of cards that a group can use to begin the process of dialogue out of which their collective vision can emerge. One set asks questions, such as ‘What makes you feel joyous?’, one set suggests instructions for actions, such as ‘Speak with a stranger and consider your differences and your similarities’, and one set of cards is blank, to encourage you to devise your own questions and actions as a starting point for dialogue.

look inside...

...look deep inside

Created in Ania Bas’ Alternative Society workshop at If Not, Then What?, with Nor and others.

(how) do I integrate social change work and activism into my daily life?

(how) do I make space to breathe?

make your activism a daily practice

an ongoing piece of work inspired by the Diggers (or New Levellers) and the Seeds of Hope action

with thanks to Seize the Day and Billy Bragg

DemO!

Democracy Outside is a demonstration and a dialogue performance piece for anyone who wants to take part. It’s about creating a non-judgemental space where people can come together and really hear each other and really hear their own thoughts and share in a conversation about democracy. It consists of the DemO kit (only one currently in existence) and an artist/facilitator. And it could come to a public place near you! Just get in touch: uninvisible71 [at] gmail.com

“It made politics fun!” – Katie, artist

“I always thought I didn’t have political opinions, but I found I really had a lot to say!” – Alex, artist

“I came along feeling tired and wondering why I always have to give up my Saturdays to worthy political things, but now I feel full of joy, renewed!” – Jim, activist

Bonn Square, Oxford, Jan 2011, Alex Allmont

Lets take democracy out of the institutions

Bonn Square, Oxford, Jan 2011, Jo Kernon

sitting, looking

Every week I travel 50 miles to work as the sun rises.

I gaze out of the window and look back over the week that’s passed.

All the journeys are different, but they all seem to roll into one.

you don't need GPS to know where you are

in what ways am I an artist?

in what ways am I an activist?

how can I bring my creativity and my political activism together in a way that makes me feel alive, connected?

how can creative activism go beyond didactic badgering?

how can we all awaken each other and get excited about being human and alive and able to make change happen?

how do I make this blog look more interesting?