Jeremy Bailey's 'Master/Slave Invigilator System'

When you hang around with artists, life often becomes very weird, very fast. This week has been one of those times.

For the past week, I was lucky enough to be involved in the execution of Jeremy Bailey's 'Master. Slave Invigilator System' as part of AND Festival. You'd be forgiven for thinking it all sounds very kinky. The concept of the installation is simple; Jeremy sits in a pod at Cornerhouse and sends out 'slaves' - who all have iPads for faces - to communicate with the outside world and invigilate the festival. It was a fascinating project to be involved in, in many different ways.

First; the actual thought behind it. The piece is a statement against the over-involvement of technology in the future, the crushing of feminity and social hierarchy. Jeremy's persona is too rich to know what to do with the money but lacks self-esteem, so he puts on an a mask of egotism and hires two 'slaves' to serve him. They're over-complicated and ultimately doomed to failure; the iPad mask obscures their own vision so another person needs to be present to guide them, the arm attachments with their laserlights are ultimately an accessory which stops/ limits movement and free will. The iPad's FaceTime connection is unreliable and requires a fair amount of fussing over to fix it. The 'slave' is the image of inefficiency, and that's part of the piece - it's entirely intentional.

Given the subject matter, it's not surprising that the project seems to bring out the misogynist in a lot of men. Wearing a skin-tight morphsuit, it's quite easy to predict where the eyes will wander, and we've had some very sinister comments including:

"I wish I had a girlfriend like that"

"Can I borrow her for half an hour?"

"So she can't see?"
"No."
"So I could do anything right now?"

and perhaps the most implicitly explicit:

"Can I put a battery in her?"

Avoiding the sinister, public reactions to the 'slave' are generally hilarious. Old women particularly, stop, pull the most entertaining faces you've ever seen. Children point. We occasionally got people who were interested following our progress around Manchester. I can't imagine how it would be to be going around your business and see this. 

With the final product wandering around Greater Manchester, it's easy to forget the process that was involved with the making of it. The outfit was made by the 'Volkov Commanders', a twosome of fashion designers from Manchester I'd never previously met. The two are extremely skilled - it is a joy watching them make last minute ammendments. The helmet which contains the iPad is a highly complex structure of woven triangles of perspex and when I say highly complex, I mean I have no idea how they planned for it. It's a work of art in itself. No detail is forgotten in the slave's outfit, right down to a bladder of water attached to the back, which feeds through a tube. There is a spine attached to the back to relieve some of the weight of the helmet.

Talking of which... wearing the outfit itself was a feat of physical endurance, hardly possible for more than a time period of one hour, so credit where credit's due. The people beneath the outfit are supposed to be anonymized, but working with them, I got to know Hannah, a physical theatre artist, and D, an avant-garde musician. Both are lovely people and respect for being able to stand the weight of the helmet, and the physical incapacitation involved in the project. The slave's blindness and inability to use their hands meant two helpers needed employing - Jeremy's girlfriend Kristen, who is an artist herself, and myself. Kristen both guided the slaves around town and seemed to be in charge of any part of the project which didn't involve technical stuff. So hats off to her.

Overall, the project was an enlightening, if not a bit tiring, one to be a part of and I hope to keep in touch with the people I met as a part of it.

I wrote a villanelle!

Today I wrote my first villanelle. Considering the restrictions of the form, I have no idea whether this is any good or not. Oh well. Que sera sera (phrase of the day).

---

Not to brag, but I’ve got your Nth term all figured out;
it was so simple it was a work of art.
In concaves of letters, we join the dots to shade our doubt.

Between xs and ys, you gave a shout.
Coefficients jaded, I left it at that and anyway,
not to brag, but I’ve got your Nth term all figured out.

Sufficiently degraded, you return to art without. 
We are mathematicians, artists and more.
In concaves of letters we join the dots to shade our doubt.

Without a word, you tell me what you’re all about
when we weave lines, letters and numbers to a solution.
Not to brag, but I’ve got your Nth term all figured out.

You think it’s unfair – that I outwit you throughout-
demand answers to my expressions while I reply in tongues.
In concaves of letters we join the dots to shade our doubt.

Even in deserts, I am your drought
and I drop your answers to the kitchen floor.
Not to brag, but I’ve got your Nth term all figured out;
In concaves of letters, we join the dots to shade our doubt.

Day 16 - John Bosnia

JOHN BOSNIA
John Hartley Williams

We have the biggest mushrooms in the world.
If you are lucky enough to collect a basketful,
take them home & cook them.
Wait a year or so. If you're still alive
buy some more and try again. Either way
the process is definitive.
Here we have Hercegovina, which means (roughly),
The Prince Who Drank (And Keeps Drinking) (And Is In A
Perpetual State of Drinking)
The wine. We call this the continual case
which does not exist in yr language. Yet.
Climb our many mountains, you will see a shepherd descending.
For djivie banke he will sell you the body
of his goat. We are had people. We take our pleasure fiercely.
Someone told me to ask an Englishman
to write this down on paper for me. Is the word 'fiercely'
correct?
It sounds funny.
I have been ejected from more restaurants in yr country than
any other.
Our waiters are not like yours. They are very male. They are not
embarrassed to embrace you,
press their moustaches against yr ear and tell you to leave,
whilst holding yr waist in a tight grip.
It feels very unusual, but Englishmen think it more direct &
honest
and grow to like it. And if you can
wrestle the bloomers off the swarthy women of my country
you've had it, my friend, you're done for. When a Bosnian
woman
presses you to eat, you may not rise from the table
until you are dead with exhaustion. You must experience
what it means to go beyond gratification.
Then you will understand. Ah, we are too patriotic, I know,
and when we kiss
often it is kinder to put a knife in someone's ribs. But we are
very gentle people.
We have the biggest mosquitoes.
Strangely, the nights here are vacant of whine. How do you
sleep?
I was caught in a storm
driving my melons to market. The old horse skipped a little
and then fell into the Drina, turning it red. All
the opened faces of the melons began to talk in prophecies.
They said:
Stand up & go to London. Ask an Englishman to write this
down:
'My name's John Bosnia. I have lost my cart & my crop,
and before you throw me out of the restaurant,
I am going to read you this poem.'


---


Today's poem is 'John Bosnia' by John Hartley Williams. The colloquial and chatty tone of the speaker helps to draw us in, makes us feel like we are talking to him personally. However, there are parts of the poem reserved for the cultural - there are names specific to the Bosnian culture, descriptions of practices perhaps alien to us, and there are tomes when the wording is purposely awkward to give the impression of a speaker to whom English is not the mother tongue.

Your prompt today is this. Where do you come from? Really? Trace back your roots and think of where your ancestors came from. For example, I'm half Irish. Then, use your first name, and then that country as the last name for your title. Now explore the ways of this country, do some research, and speak.

Day 15 - The Hat

THE HAT
Matthew Sweeney


A green hat is blowing through Harvard Square
and no one is trying to catch it.
Whoever has lost it has given up -
perhaps, because his wife was cheating,
he took it off and threw it like a frisbee,
trying to decapitate a statue
of a woman in her middle years
who doesn't look anything like his wife. 
This wind wouldn't lift the hat alone,
and any man would be glad to keep it. 
I can imagine - as it tumbles along,
gusting past cars, people, lampposts-
it sitting above a dark green suit.
The face between them would be bearded
and not unhealthy, yet. The eyes
would be green too - an all green man
thinking of his wife in another bed, 
those thoughts all through the green hat,
like garlic in pores, and no one,
no one pouncing on the hat to put it on. 


---


Today's poem is 'The Hat' by Matthew Sweeney. Though the poem originally starts off as a seemingly simple observation - the man has seen a hat blow past - as the poem goes on, it becomes clear that the hat is in fact a metaphor. The fact that the hat is green should have been a dead giveaway, but we only make the link between green and envy later on in the poem ("an all green man / thinking of his wife in another bed"). The last line of the poem, "no one pouncing on the hat to put it on", makes it clear that envy is an undesirable trait, but who can blame the man?


Your prompt is to look out of your window. The first piece of litter you see, I want you to travel back and imagine who its original owner might have been, how it came to be there, where it is heading. Do not write from the object's point of view, write in third person. Be as "objective" as you can, if you'll pardon the pun. 

Day 14 - Rain

RAIN
Sean O'Brien


At ten pm it starts. We can hear it from the bar
as if somebody humourless fills in the dots,
all the dots on the window, the gaps in between.
It is raining. It rained and has always been raining.
If there were conditionals they too would rain.
The future tense is partly underwater. We must leave.
There's a road where the bus stop is too far away
in the dark between streetlights.The shelter's stove in
and a swill of old tickets awaits us.
Transitional, that's what we're saying,
but we're metaphysical animals:
we know a watery grave when we see it
and how the bald facts of brute nature
are always entailed by mere human opinion,
so this is a metaphor. Someone's to blame
if your coat is dissolving, if rain is all around us
and feels like the threats-cum-advice of your family
who know I am up and have come and will go to no good.
They cannot be tempted to alter their views
in the light of that sizzling bulb. There it goes.
Here we are: a black street without taxis or buses.
An ankle-high wave is advancing
to ruin your shoes and my temper. My darling,
I know you believe for the moment the rain is my doing.
Tonight we will lie in the dark with damp hair.
I too am looking for someone to blame. O send me
a metro inspector, a stony-faced barmaid.
The library is flooding and we have not read it,
the cellar is flooding and we shall be thirsty,
Trevor McDonald has drowned as the studio shorts
and the weather-girl goes floating past
like Esther Williams with her clothes on,
mouthing the obvious: raining.
There's no need to labour the obvious, dearest, you say,
as you wring out your nylons and shoot me.

---

Today's poem is 'Rain' by Sean O'Brien. This poem thrives off mixing genres - phrases like "O send me", which sound quite archaic, are quickly finished with "a metro inspector", a giveaway of modern settings. The poem dashes from very serious - "I know you believe for the moment the rain is my doing" - to lightly humorous - "Trevor McDonald has drowned as the studio shorts and the weather-girl goes floating past". This juxtaposition makes the poem more memorable.

A friend recently told me that he heard nobody has time for heavy metaphor anymore. Your prompt today is to carry one metaphor throughout the whole poem, as Sean O'Brien has done here with the rain, or as in my poem 'Coelacanth' which is the last poem on the 'Poetry' page of this blog.

Day 13 - Explosions in the Sky

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY
Andrea Gibson

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Today's poem is 'Explosions in the Sky' by Andrea Gibson. Things were bound to start going a bit performance-y sooner or later. This was one of the first poems to ever make me cry. Just listen. There's not much more to say.

Your prompt today is to write a performance poem. This can be defined in any way you feel, just write yourself a slam-winning poem!

Day 12 - A Silly Poem

A SILLY POEM
Spike Milligan


Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B? 


---


I told you so. 


Your prompt today is to write...a silly poem.