Community

transformation content at The Holy Biscuit

Dr Tim Hutchings (Durham University) reflects on the themes of memory and community in Louise Mackenzie's show transformation content and what community might mean within contemporary society.

In transformation content, Louise Mackenzie defines “community” as “a social group built around common beliefs, shared memories, songs and stories”, and asks how this kind of social group has been transformed over 100 years. Has a once-solid community decayed and dissipated in Gateshead? If so, what has emerged to replace it?

The fear that “community” is being lost is common, and often blamed on new media technologies. Sherry Turkle, for example, has argued that social media, mobile phones, robots and machines are encouraging us to expect “more from technology and less from each other”. Turkle claims we are learning to be “alone together” (the title of her book), staring at our little screens and ignoring the real friends and families around us. Instead of speaking face-to-face, we prefer to send carefully-written text messages and status updates to create an illusion of wit and style, while blocking anyone we would rather ignore. In the process, we give up our privacy and allow companies to record, analyse and sell the details of our lives. We also begin thinking of the people around us not as a community we belong to but as an audience for our online performances. Similar ideas have been made popular by Nicholas Carr, who argues in “The Shallows” that the internet is destroying culture, society and our ability to think by changing our brains.

This kind of concern is nothing new. In the 1990s, Robert Putnam diagnosed a collapse of community in the USA in his best-selling book “Bowling Alone”. Writing before the new digital technologies that worry Turkle and Carr, Putnam argued that enthusiasm for joining anything – bowling leagues, sports clubs, political organisations, churches, and pretty much anything else that involves attending meetings – had collapsed in America since the 1950s. Putnam identifies many factors behind this decline, including the rise of a new, more individualistic generation, the growth of sprawling suburbs and the limited free time available to families when both adults have full-time jobs, but above all he blames television. Television encourages families to stay at home and be passively entertained, encouraging laziness and stealing time that could be invested in a local community.

Former member of Robert Young Memorial Church explore the themes in the exhibition through workshops with the artist.

These ideas weren’t new in the 1990s, either. In the late 19^th century, German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies argued that there were two kinds of social group: Gemeinschaft (which can be translated as “community”) and Gesellschaft (which can be translated as “society”). Gemeinschaft is based on common beliefs and stories, supported by family, tradition and religion, and can be found in the rural countryside. Gesellschaft is the form of society found in cities, where individuals with quite different beliefs and customs try to benefit themselves and must be forced by the laws of the state to obey rules governing their behaviour.

Tönnies, Putnam and Turkle are all arguing something rather similar, more than 100 years apart. We once lived in close-knit communities based on shared beliefs and loyalties, but now that has disintegrated, replaced by a world of self-interest, competition and commerce. Community has been transformed, and not in a good way. But there’s a problem here: if community was destroyed by cities in the 19^th century (Tönnies), how can it have been destroyed all over again by television in the 20^th century (Putnam) and digital media in the 21^st (Turkle)?

Perhaps “community” only ever exists in the past. The memory of “community” works as a contrast to our everyday experience, an imaginary ideal that allows us to use the past to criticise the present – like the classical mythology of the Golden Age, or the Christian story of the Garden of Eden, but located just a generation or two before our own time. The imagined idea of “community” functions as a secular version of the “Kingdom of God”, a Christian belief that locates social perfection in the future rather than the past. Whenever our world threatens us with change, critics can use the “community” of the past and the “Kingdom” of the future as two perfect, imagined worlds that demonstrate the distance between reality and our ideals.

Look again at Louise’s definition of “community”. There are four parts: a community is a group of people, built through human activity, sharing beliefs and sharing memories of their history together – or, as Louise puts it, sharing stories. Community takes work, and it means spending time sharing experiences with other people. We could add a sense of belonging, as another key part of what it means to be in community. But this definition is very broad and flexible, and it isn’t restricted to the past or to the imagination. Communities that meet these five markers have not disappeared or lost their value, even though they have been transformed over time. 

Visitors to the exhibition try out the social media element to the work.

For example, the rise of cities, cars, televisions and now digital media really have changed our relationships. As it becomes easier to travel and communicate over long distances, it also becomes easier to work, shop and find entertainment without relying on our local neighbourhoods. We still build relationships, share stories and feel a sense of belonging, but we aren’t as closely tied to family or geography when we choose who to connect with – and we have gained and lost much through that change. Instead of retreating into isolation and living “alone together”, as Turkle claims, we are now learning to adapt, thrive and intelligently critique this new form of society. Sociologists like Heidi Campbell and Nancy Baym have shown that we can use digital media to build close-knit online communities, or to network with people who share our interests around the world. According to Barry Wellman, Lee Rainie and Manuel Castells, we now live in a “network society” in which powerful new kinds of collaboration are bringing great benefits to politics, business, education and human relationships, while leaving some groups isolated. Bex Lewis and danah boyd (who doesn’t approve of capital letters) have both published great new books that help us to challenge the never-ending stream of panic-inducing newspaper headlines about the terrible dangers of the internet for young people, while identifying issues that deserve our genuine concern. “Community” has not been lost or destroyed, but transformed – a process that Louise Mackenzie’s art helps us to visualise and understand.

Dr Tim Hutchings works at CODEC, a research institute based at St John's College, Durham University. He is currently the full-time Leech Research Fellow and is working with CODEC and local church congregations to create a new “digital pilgrimage” route between Durham and Lindisfarne. Tim is a sociologist of digital religion. His PhD (Durham University, 2010) was an ethnographic study of five online churches, exploring new forms of worship, authority and community emerging on the internet. 

transformation content is on show at The Holy Biscuit until 10th April. The gallery is open Tuesday-Saturday 11.00 - 16.00.  Free guided tours of the exhibition by the artist are available for groups. Please contact the HB office on 0191 447 6811 for more information.

transformation content is generously supported by Arts Council England, Durham University, Newcastle University, The Jerusalem Trust and The Methodist Church of Great Britain.

Read interviews with Louise about her work at Corridor 8 and Peel Magazine.

Louise Mackenzie: transformation content

Louise Mackenzie, Lament, Dust, cotton bed sheet (2m x 2.35m)

7^th March – 11^th April 2014

Preview: 6^th March 2014, 18.00 - 20.00

Live performance of sound work: 4th March, 19.00, Ryton Methodist Church, Gateshead

Radio Broadcast: Daily at 12.30 on basic.fm and within the gallery space

Artist’s Talk and Discussion Evening: 13^th March, 19.00 - 21.00

The Holy Biscuit is proud to present transformation content, a project and exhibition by contemporary interdisciplinary artist, Louise Mackenzie. In her first solo exhibition since graduating from Newcastle University in 2013, Mackenzie takes fragments of a 104 year old organ, once the beating heart of a former Methodist church in Gateshead and through sound, social media and sculpture redefines the  energy of a community within a contemporary context.

Mackenzie explores the relationship between human social behaviour and the scientific construct of entropy (the term coined by German physicist Rudolf Clausius, as a way to define the define the transformation content of a body).  Taking the concept of community as a social group built around common beliefs, shared memories, songs and stories, Mackenzie considers how is this manifested in contemporary society.

The composition, Entropy is a collaboration with musicians from Newcastle University, involving the creation of a score based on a system devised by the artist.  The composition will be recorded in Gateshead, broadcast on basic.fm and played live into the gallery throughout the exhibition. The gallery will also be hosting a series of workshops with  the former church congregation and local schools in East Newcastle and Gateshead, where adults and children will contribute to a social media site as an ongoing element of the work.

Louise Mackenzie, Virtue and Faith, Still from social media website project (dimensions variable)

There will be an artist’s talk and discussion evening. This will take place on Thursday 13^th March, 19.00-21.00 and will feature contributions from Durham and Newcastle Universities including Professor Robert Song (Durham University – Theology and Ethics), Dr John Lazarus (Newcastle University – Evolutionary Biology), Dr Tim Hutchings (St John’s College, Durham – Sociology of Religion) and Alexia Mellor, MFA (Tufts University, USA - Fine Art).

Exploring what it means to be human, Louise Mackenzie's work crosses disciplinary boundaries in an attempt to understand why it is that we are compelled to make, discover and progress, rather than simply to exist. Often working collaboratively, Mackenzie generates opportunities for dialogue between art and science. With an experimental, research-based practice, she explores human evolution, past, present and future: from the origin of the species, through social and cultural evolution in the present, to genetic manipulation, the post-human and the future unknown.

Winner of the New Graduate Award at Synthesis, Manchester Science Festival (October, 2013), Mackenzie’s recent exhibitions include Arthouses, Whitley Bay Film Festival; Symbiosis, The Late Shows, Newcastle and Embassy Tea Gallery, London.

transformation content is generously supported by Arts Council England, Durham University, Newcastle University, The Methodist Church of Great Britain and basic.fm.

ALL THINGS NEW! Christmas Album Launch

Save the Date!: 15th December 2013

We are very proud to announce our plans for Advent and Christmas 2013 and our forthcoming alternative Christmas album ALL THINGS NEW! in collaboration with A Deer For Your Lamb and Alex Ross.

Inspired by the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Slow Club and Bright Eyes, ALL THINGS NEW! is a collaborative project between A Deer For Your Lamb, Alex Ross and the Holy Biscuit. It brings together North East artists to create an alternative Christmas album - celebrating, deconstructing and reinterpreting Christmas music. 

Produced by North East musician and producer Alex Ross, the album brings together a variety of North East musicians. The album will be recorded at The Holy Biscuit in November and feature work by artists such as Meghann Clancy, AURORA, Cath and Phil Tyler, Sacred Harp singers, Rington, The Sons of Encouragement and others who are to be confirmed.

The album will be available to download just in time for Christmas and will be launched at a celebratory mini festival at the Holy Biscuit on Sunday 15th December. The album will be available to buy in the form of a download code, accompanied by original screen printed artwork by local printmaker Sarah Ingledew.

As part of the run up to the event, we are running a Kickstarter campaign.The money raised by this campaign will contribute to recording and production costs of the music and the production of the original screen-printed artwork to accompany the album download code. It will also enable all of the money raised from the sale of the album to go directly to the artists involved helping them to continue their creative practice contributing to the variety of awesome projects going on in the North East. BE PART OF IT!

We've created a blog inspired by the project to gather up different thoughts on the process and have different people contribute reflections and ideas. ALL THINGS NEW! will be available to listen to and purchase online, giving even more people the chance to engage with alternative takes on traditional songs. Be part of it!

The launch party, held at the Holy Biscuit on 15th December, will be a massive Christmas celebration where we welcome people into the gallery for an evening of music, art, food and drink. Each artist/band will perform their song from the EP along with a short set. There will be food available and it will be BYOB. SAVE THE DATE!

Writing out and out speaking ageing

Rachel Magdeburg, Clamgram, 2013

By Kay Steven, Curator of OUTING AGEING

Inside the gallery

What do you remember about learning to write? I remember a project notebook - and concentrating hard on the movement of the pencil. Creating little tails. Lifting the pencil at the right moment. There was a focus on the shape - repetition - getting it right.

To create her piece, Rachel Magdeburg has taken the time to try to relearn writing skills. To write with evenness and consistency  requires a discipline of mind and action. Rachel told me that she had to almost trick her mind to adapt itself to producing something with different tools. Not that she can't write - but her stye of writing has changed considerably since school. No longer as regimented. No longer consistent.

Writing is something we have stopped practising. We are too busy with our keyboards, our thumbs on twitter. Marks made on the page are hurried. Yet tiny details reveal something about us - our state of mind.  

In practising her writing Rachel has reconnected with an earlier part of herself and simultaneously engaged with her present self and its habits and practices. The younger pliable mind is a shadow of its former self. Puzzled perhaps that it cannot just write at will. It has to fight to connect hand with mind, mind with hand. Practising handwriting encounters already well practised rituals. There is an unseen collision of past, present and future. There is no backspace, no crossing out. It is tiring to use fingers and thumbs. There is a lack of a familiar rhythm. 

Rachel uses the process to create a memo to her future self. She dares to use handwriting from the past to explore future notions of herself - which she will at some point read in her future present and look back!

When she revisits the memo, will she be surrounded by old school jotters in attics. Will the handwritten notebooks of today become the artist's notebook of the future - not paint and brush but quill and ink? Does today's text becomes the future's sketch?  

I like the physicality of the work and the humour of if. The thoughts we all play around with in our head but are too scared to reveal are pinned down on the page. The uniformity of the well considered words seem to give the serious and monotonous nature of ageing, room to breath. You have to stay with the material for a while - word on word, line on line.


Outside the gallery 

I sat with some older people. We sat round a textile covered table. First introductions. Second words. Words that preyed on our minds forced their way out.

What am I going to do?

How can I live?

My identity - where will it come from - it is so wrapped up in my work and now I have to stop,

70 years old - why that's awesome.

70 years old. It means something but it doesn't relate to what is going on inside me, in my life.

MORTALITY

MOBILITY

Caged animal at 70?

UNspeakable

Come and contribute to the Outing Ageing discussion this Friday 18th October, 19.00-21.00. The event is free and will be chaired by Marika Rose from Durham University. It will feature contributions by Dr Cathy Bailey, Research Fellow in International Ageing at Northumbria University, Moyra Riseborough, a researcher currently working with the Centre for Ageing and Vitality at Newcastle University and Fr Colin Carr, local intellectual and Catholic priest. This will be an opportunity for both the artists and the public to reflect on how the work in the show engages with broader notions of ageing, wisdom, maturity and death.

Outing Ageing

4 - 24 October 2013
Private View: Thurs 3 October, 2013 18.00 - 20.00
Outing Ageing, A Discussion: Fri 18th October 19.00 - 21.00

The Holy Biscuit is pleased to present ‘Outing Ageing’, a group exhibition curated by artist Kay Steven, tackling the topic of ageing, from 4-24 October 2013. The exhibitions features new work by a variety of artists and creative voices including, Wayne Medford, Rachel Magdeburg, Cath Walshaw, L.A Powell, Marcia Ley, Ron Moule, David Foggo, Jeff Lee, Sarah Crisp and Kay Steven.

In Coming of Age, Simone de Beauvoir referred to old age as society’s secret shame. Ageing affects everyone, yet it is often pushed to the margins of society, like a relative we are embarrassed. People respond to ageing in different ways – from embracing it to trying to manipulate its impact on their physical appearance. Exhibition curator, Kay Steven, says: “I am both fascinated by my own responses to ageing and slightly perturbed by its quiet presence. Changes happen every day - mentally and physically. Some changes are more perceptible than others.” Artists in this exhibition have responded to the call to out ageing through surprising subjects, memories and processes, putting ageing at the centre of conversations and communities.

The Private View is on Thursday, 3rd October 2013, 18.00-20.00 and will feature a performance piece by Sarah Crisp, which will engage us with our fears and questions about ageing. On Friday, 18 October, 19.00-21.00, there will be a public conversation event, with reflections by the artists, as well as academics from Newcastle, Northumbria and Durham Universities, on how the work engages with religious themes of ageing, wisdom, maturity and death, providing new insights and understandings on the subject.

Kay Steven won best in show at The Holy Biscuit’s annual Advent exhibition in 2012. Her practice is rooted in freeform textiles, crocheted/knitted pieces and sculpture, which emerge from a reflective exploration of connected and unconnected moments.

For more information, follow the Outing Ageing blog or go to the facebook event to let us know you are coming!

Julia Tryon: From Carpet to Heaven

28th June - 1st August

Private View: 27th June, 18.00-20.00

Gallery Open Tues - Sat, 11.00 -16.00

‘From Carpet to Heaven,’ is the culminating exhibition for Word on the Street, the Holy Biscuit’s Lindisfarne Gospels Engagement Programme in which the gallery has worked with Newcastle artists to explore urban multicultural responses to the Gospels. This community exhibition showcases work made by artist in residence Julia Tryon as she explored the contemporary relevance of the Lindisfarne Gospels, to the community of Shieldfield.

Through meeting local residents, visiting community groups, initiating workshops, curating an exhibition of work by the Biscuit Family Studio Artists, and exploring the visual architecture and language of the area, Tryon has sought to open new lines of communication with the local residents. The art work created at by local residents has been combined together to make a Shieldfield Art Carpet as a major piece in the show.

While the Gospels reflect a multiplicity of cultural influences, they also represent a specific culture, during a specific time, at a particular place. Mirroring the work of Eadfrith who combined  the artistic styles of different cultural and ethnic groups of the period to communicate a message of unity across the region, Tryon aims to combine the different cultural and religious influences of the area of Shieldfield and Ouseburn, producing an exhibition which reveals some inspiring connections between the Gospels and the locality. She has particularly explored the changing use of religious spaces over the past few years and how it has shaped the ever evolving identity of the area.

Julia Tryon was born in London in 1984 and graduated from Newcastle University in Fine Art in 2008. Working in painting, sculpture and photography, her work explores the feelings evoked by architectural spaces; depicting figures in fantastical settings with atmospheric light and colour. The process of making her work involves sculpture, photography and painting, reflecting her interest in transformations between two and three dimensions. She currently has a studio at the Biscuit Tin Studios, Newcastle.

Call for Proposals: Outing Ageing

Outing Ageing

Exhibition dates: 30 September - 17 October 2013
Proposal Deadline EXTENDED: 13 July 2013

The Holy Biscuit is now accepting proposals for our autumn exhibition, ‘Outing Ageing’, curated by artist Kay Steven.

THEME

In Coming of Age, Simone de Beauvoir referred to old age as society’s secret shame. Ageing affects everyone. Whether you are old, feel old or are appalled at the thought of growing older, we want to hear your ideas and proposal for art works which will out ageing. This is an open call out but we are particularly interested in contributions which have a collaborative element to them and which have a relationship or connection to the area immediately around the Holy Biscuit in Shieldfield and Ouseburn.

Please send proposals to outingageing@gmail.com no later than 21 June 2013.

SELECTION PROCESS

The final selection will be made by a panel led by Kay Steven, in partnership with independent curator, Hannah Marsden, and the Holy Biscuit team.

Kay won best in show at THB’s annual Advent exhibition in 2012. Kay’s practice is rooted in freeform textiles-crocheted and knitted pieces and sculptures emerge from a reflective exploration of connected and unconnected moments. Kay has chosen the title for the exhibition as she is interested in curating a show which puts ageing at the centre of conversations and communities rather than pushing it to the margins or hiding it. She is especially interested in seeing how artists both approach ageing and conceive of it in respect of ‘outing’ in the various media and contexts they work with.

More information about Kay Steven can be found at:
http://changingconversations.wordpress.com/

Note: There is no submission fee and no fee will be paid for selected work. At this stage we have no money to pay artists but we are applying for funding.