News & Notices

Lockdown Experiences, Case Study, Fedora

My Lockdown Story
By Glyn Edwards, Director of Fedora

At the point lockdown was imposed our touring exhibitions on Punch & Judy were fortunately just back from their jaunts, leaving only one item still stranded at Aberdeen Maritime Museum. We were, however, in the final stage of a two-year HLF-supported project about seafront entertainment in the 1920s and ‘30s and had an ACE application in the pipeline to work with a number of coastal museums holding seaside collections. We’d never heard of Zoom.

Being, however, a small arts and heritage charity comprising a loose collective of practitioners (the name Fedora is a convenient contraction of Federation of Regional Artists) the ethos of ‘the show must go on’ is very present in our DNA. If there’s a challenge, then there’ll be a creative solution to be found.

Retrieving the final piece of the exhibition could wait until lockdown was over and HLF proved very supportive of our ideas on how best to amend the final phase of our heritage retro roadshow project. So what next? Out of the blue we were approached to do some skyped sessions on heritage skills to a class of university students on a puppetry course in the USA. This was very new to us but proved good fun.

After this we found ourselves involved with the transformation into a 24-hour online event of the annual Covent Garden May Fayre held in the churchyard of St. Paul’s (the Actors’ Church) and celebrating traditional entertainments. Our team members contributed some of the content and ran the May Fayre Online YouTube channel. A global relay of May Fayre Online page administrators ensured the event stayed live in all time zones. It clocked up 10,000 ‘engagements’ and opened our eyes to new possibilities.

Meanwhile ACE had announced that all applications were suspended while funds were diverted to a rescue plan, so we applied for a modest sum to cover loss of income from pre-booked schools visits; from activities linked to VE Day celebrations; and to keep our contacts alive with museums during lockdown. We were delighted to receive an award and set to work.

We soon discovered that with most museums closed and their staff furloughed this would not be a simple task. Zoom or no Zoom it was a fragmented landscape. So it occurred to us that creating a Lockdown-On-Sea website would be a way of retaining our profile and – hopefully – finding additional venues who might wish to engage now or in the future.

Not all our usual partner venues had any relevant online content, but we quickly realised that this didn’t really matter online. We could browse wherever we chose and ensure that Lockdown-On-Sea linked across to any external websites with material of interest. We could also create a dedicated YouTube channel and post our own short linked videos.

We wanted it to reflect a hint of the typical range of seaside attractions from piers and bandstands to museums and galleries. It wasn’t so much a meticulously thought-out project as an improvised response to being locked down. Something that found work for our suddenly idle hands. There was only so much time to be spent enjoying the glorious weather or binge watching Netflix.

We think of all this as creating a lockdown legacy. We’ve had some vertical learning curves whilst acquiring it but when we emerge into a ‘new normal’ we’ll still have our touring exhibitions, our project applications and a whole lot of new digital expertise to play with. And if anyone out there wants to join the fun we are always open to new initiatives.

Lockdown Experiences, Case Study, Lumen Art Projects

My Lockdown Story – Bright Lights in Norway
By Carla Rapoport, Executive Director & Founder, Lumen Art Projects

Refik Anadol – Melting Memories

As the world started to shut down and every exhibition, festival and commission we’d been working on was postponed, shuttered or cancelled, there was one bright light shining. It was the green ‘active now’ dot on our Skype link with Torill Haugen, digital curator of Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway. My colleague Jack Addis kept his Skype on too and throughout the days and weeks of uncertainty in March, Torill and Jack kept a conversation going.

Maybe the exhibition we were planning in late May, featuring two of our US-based artists, Sougwen Chung and Refik Anadol, could go ahead without any travel involved? Norway’s experience with COVID-19 was going reasonably well. A big Skype call in mid-April confirmed that a re-opening of Norway – and its museums – was likely by the end of the month – hooray! But would – or indeed, could – the artists adapt to the changing parameters? Happily, Lumen Art Projects specialises in art created with technology and neither work chosen for this exhibition was going to be physically sent to Norway. But both artists were scheduled to be at the opening and Sougwen Chung, was planning to perform with her robots live on the first night.

Happily, Sougwen had already been developing a telepresence version of her performance that could interact with a live audience as a way to cut down on her air miles before even COVID existed. Now, she had the perfect opportunity to develop this aspect of her practice. And Jack became adept at the remote management of the design and an installation of which involved a 5m x 5m LED screen for artist Refik Anadol’s work, Melting Memories.

The opening was scheduled for 18 June and as I chewed my nails at my home in Wales, Jack was on Zoom from his home in Trowbridge, UK, chatting live with Refik to the VIP attendees in Norway. The emails started to flow soon after – Torill was thrilled as was the audience. I poured myself a drink! Since then Sougwen has given two of her 5 scheduled telepresence performances, also live, beaming herself from her studio in NYC.

Having staged, installed and attended openings of our shows around the globe, it feels very odd not to have been able to attend this one. But Jack and I are thrilled that the show went on – and continues to attract visitors daily. Re.Memory remains on until early October and I really hope to visit it. But mainly, I’m just really proud of Sougwen, Jack and Torill for the flexibility, patience and ingenuity for bringing this off.

And looking ahead here in the UK, we’re excited to be talking with a range of new partners who want to know more about art that can arrive in their exhibition space without the need for couriers or on-site installation. Digital art, it seems, has come of age.