Category: Formats + themes
What is a Creative Project Consultant?
A long term residency in a management consultancy.
“By experiencing your complex and profound works we have ended up with a shared language to deal with the unsayable.”
What is a creative project consultant? was a long term residency and artistic intervention experiment at a “specialist provider of business services” whose expertise lies in human motivation.
As stated in the public biography, Rhiannon was at SHM to:
- think about things differently
- bring fresh perspectives to the business’s work
- adapt her creative methodologies to their work
Some of the things that happened as part of this include:
- metaphoric takes on client work, deployed in diagrammatic form
- weekly team sessions defined by a lack of productivity, where the main activity was the use of consensus decision-making techniques to choose how to use the time
Outcomes of this period include:
- a methodology for a 6-month schedule of artistic interventions in the workplace, ART | WORK, that enhances wellbeing in the workplace and shares innovative creative practice
The rest of Rhiannon’s work at SHM is subject to non-disclosure agreements that are commonplace at the cutting edge of global capitalism.
Dates: April 2013-2014, Holborn, London.
“Since you’ve been here people have been ‘bringing themselves to work’ a lot more, and that is invaluable for creativity and innovation.”
“Oh my god she just brings life, she brings a sense of possibility because even when she says something that’s kind of left of field and we all tell her she’s wrong, she just picks herself up and says something else that’s amazing.”
related projects (created whilst in residence)
All About Sam
Shred
How to write Poems from Words Found in the Bin
Hutong Watch
Hutong Watch
Hutong Watch is a guided walk promoting critical reflection on our immediate environment, accessed using a mobile phone, and undertaken simultaneously by two colleagues in different locations.
Instructions are received via text from Hutong, and participants undertake a series of challenges whilst keeping in touch using smartphone messaging apps.
Hutong Watch takes participants on an identical rectangular walk traced onto different maps. It finishes with a short meditation delivered as a phone call to participants as they sit in a quiet public place of their own choosing.
Colleagues in three continents took part in Hutong Watch in April 2015: in Mexico City, New York, and London.
It devised and delivered as part of a pilot of artistic interventions in the workplace at SHM Productions, and delivered using a custom-made programmable telephonic interface on loan from Coney.
+ listen to the Hutong Watch meditation
Hutong Watch was inspired by and adapted from another test piece called Hutong, created by Mel Cook with Hey Fan, Tassos Stevens and Annette Mees for Coney in 2010.
related projects
The Slow GIF Movement
Public Selfcare System
Silent Cacophony
INK
“it was a great privilege to be involved” – Nicola Jennings, caricaturist with The Guardian
INK was an eclectic collection of 120 museum artefacts, artworks, texts, films and other items all relating to the history and substance of ink. It drew extensively from the remarkable teaching collections, personal archives and the work of staff at University College London (UCL), and contemporary artworks sat alongside priceless museum artefacts and everyday objects.
Every day a ‘live respondent’ inhabited the space and created an exhibit to add to the collection. These included political cartoonists Nicola Jennings and Martin Rowson, renowned tattooist Lal Hardy, artist and poet Ansuman Biswas, and calligrapher Paul Antonio.
related projects
Poems made from words found in the bin
BONE
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid
BONE
“a riot of postmodern museum methodology” – John O’Connell, The Times.
“time and space open up” – Ruth Richardson, The Lancet
BONE at the Florence Nightingale Museum was created to explore a rich and vital material from an inter-disciplinary perspective. It was designed to present its contents evenly and accessibly with no one object – be it museum object, artwork, every day item or scientific imagery – prized above another.
Deliberately installed without labels, the exhibition design by Mobile Studio architects and field guide by MOTHandRUST were constructed to provide information as a departure point for the curious rather than as definitive answers, and to encourage audiences to make their own connections and relationships between objects.
A number of “live respondents” who work with bone were in residence throughout the exhibition, adding to the exhibition. They included sculptor George Nuku, taxidermist Amanda’s Autopsies, and artist Sue Palmer.
+ listen to a podcast interview with the curators
related projects
INK
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid
Silent Cacophony
Anchored
a performance lecture about class, witnessing, and who gets left out of “history”
“I think you are astutely funny on stage, but what I really enjoy is how you make it ok for us to go deeply into something serious, long enough to be thoughtful and reflecting and thankful, actually.” – Dr. Simon Bowes, commissioner.
Anchored was initially made for the conference ‘Hold Everything Dear: John Berger and performance’ at the University of Greenwich in April 2018.
We are performance makers: we are looking ever closer at the detail of where we are now so that we may lose our bearings.
“Surrounded by so many abstractions, they have to invent and share their own transient landmarks.”
We hope to come back, to find ourselves elsewhere.
This performance meditates on achorlessness across three threads:
- performative writing gathered around autobiographical reflections on place and silence
- field recordings and lullabies from Alan Lomax’s archive
- footage of everyday materials magnified by a factor of 400
Text, song and image weave together exploring what remains when we lose our anchors of place and time.
related projects
Actions from the Afterlife
The Lullaby Directory
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin
an attempt to make something beautiful and true from shreds of discarded paper
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin is an ongoing writing practice and a creative writing workshop.
This project began as a creative writing workshop using shredded business documents as source material. It was first held in 2014 as part of a year-long residency as Creative Project Consultant at SHM Productions.
Workers used portions of shredded documents from the business’s own recycling bin as the stimulus for a love poem. The poems were recited as an anonymous collection at the end of the working day.
In summer 2018 Rhiannon incorporated this writing process into her work on The Slow GIF Movement.
In 2019 Rhiannon will be turning this work into an ongoing writing process linked to healing from trauma, and to an exploration of projection, song, touch and rhythm in intimate performance.
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin
related projects
Atonement
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid
The Lullaby Directory
The Slow GIF Movement
The Slow GIF Movement takes the ubiquitous, flashing, momentary image of a GIF and reimagines it as slow, durational artworks and a public health intervention for the online world.
This wide-ranging project explores our agency and responsibility over public space, both in real life and online. Rhiannon brings hers and others’ lived experience of neurodiversity to an understanding of how GIF culture is currently increasing the hostility of online space, and seeks to rectify that with the creation of calming, gently looping GIFs of her own and others’ creation.
The Slow GIF Movement is offered as a public health intervention in the online world: the act of making and sharing them becomes an intervention in the environment, an act of solidarity, and a way to disseminate a collection of art works.
Research and development for The Slow GIF Movement was supported by The Space Arts and Unlimited, and through Rhiannon’s position as the Brighton Digital Festival/Blast Theory Artist in Residence (2018).
The Slow GIF Movement is in development, with a number of planned or existing public sharings:
- public intervention in a conference environment for Light Up the North and Nesta (October 2018)
- a day-long workshop and evening virtual tresspass event (planned for Brighton Digital Festival 2019)
- a research project with St George’s Hospital exploring clinical uses of the Kaleidoscope Landscapes for Better Breathing series for patients with heart failure (2019).
Hearts-R-Us (mirror neuron)
Hearts-R-Us (mirror neuron)
Hearts-R-Us (mirror neuron)
Kaleidoscope Landscapes for Better Breathing (Portslade)
Kaleidoscope Landscapes for Better Breathing (Newham)
Kaleidoscope Landscapes for Better Breathing (Hackney)
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin
Reflections (nature)
Reflections (nature)
Reflections (nature)
Virtual Tresspass at Travis Perkins, Brighton Digital Festival
Virtual Tresspass at Travis Perkins, Brighton Digital Festival
Virtual Tresspass at Travis Perkins, Brighton Digital Festival
related projects
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid
Public Selfcare System
Bite Me
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid collects unspoken words of love and pain from members of the public, and arranges for them to be listened to.
“creates a different kind of approach to most confessional material emphasising empathy rather than sensationalism” – Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid is an evolving collection of anonymous testimonies donated by members of the public responding to the question “think of a time when you wanted to say something to someone, but didn’t”.
It is a treasure trove of real life intimate testimonies, delivered with special care to honour the emotions expressed and preserve the anonymity of the people involved.
“a dichotomy of personal encounter and observational distance […] beautifully achieved” Caroline Darke, Artvehicle
“a simplicity and focus of care that is absolutely astounding” – Griffin Gilligan, blogger
“small moments of defiance that are also celebrations” – Jane Frances Dunlop, Exeunt Magazine
The Archive was established in 2006 in response to a provocation by curator Ali MacGilp to create a performance for an exhibition entitled ‘There’s Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You’, at Space Station Sixty-Five in London. This one-to-one performance grew and now exists in multiple forms:
-
- an installation and one-to-one performance that has toured nationally and internationally
- a web-based work at www.unsaidarchive.com (The Space’s inaugural commission for a web-based performance)
- an interactive textile
This project is regularly remade for different contexts including at HMP Feltham Young Offender’s Institute, East Bergholt High School, for Haringey Advisory Group on Alcohol, and at various galleries including W139 in Amsterdam, Barbican Gallery, ALMA Enterprises, Propeller Island, Space Station Sixty-Five, Battersea Arts Centre, Pulse Ipswich, SLAP Yorkshire.
+ more about the one-to-one performance
Everything You Ever Wanted to Say But Didn’t – Part 1 is a one-to-one performance lasting up to 10mins and takes the form of a verbatim delivery of some of the testimonies from The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid.
Audience members are told about the Archive and given an allocated ticket number which determines which testimony they will receive.
This performance is usually presented with a site-responsive installation to enable participants to contribute their own testimony to the archive.
+ more about www.unsaidarchive.com
The online version of the work was commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre and The Space CIC in 2015.
Each testimony is performed verbatim, and includes binaural beat technology to induce calming brainwaves in the listener. Visitors may browse the Public Index, choose a testimony to listen to, and are then invited to contribute their own. A text-only version is available for those who do not use headphones, and anonymity is guaranteed.
Created by Rhiannon Armstrong
Designed by MOTHandRUST
Construct by Halo and Rob Grundel
+ more about the work in non-arts settings
The Archive has been presented in a number of community contexts as a catalyst piece to stimulate communication and discussion, in particular amongst teenagers and at risk young people; at HMP Feltham Young Offenders Institute, in schools including Crossways Sixth form and East Bergholt High School, and for Haringey Advisory Group on Alcohol who commissioned a new version Called VIP Room.
In 2016 the online work toured as an interactive textile to shopping centres, cafes and park benches in towns across England.
The Archive has also been presented in workplaces including at SHM Productions in London:
“It created conversations. It created conversations about conversations. It created conversations about things we leave unsaid with our clients. It created conversations about regret.
It created a number of conversations which if we had tried to define them beforehand, we would not have had that result. We got a fantastic result that we couldn’t have predicted.”
Maurice Biriotti, CEO SHM Productions.
+ more about the textile work
In 2016 Rhiannon created a quilt as a physical interface with the web piece, with help from Significant Seams, a Walthamstow-based CIC working with craft as a means of combatting social isolation.
The quilt is made from everyday fabrics such as curtains, jeans, and suit material, and hand embroidered with extracts from the testimonies in the Archive.
In autumn 2016 the quilt toured as part of the Collaborative Touring Network, as a way of bringing unsaidarchive.com to a diverse range of audiences across the UK. Among other places it was installed in a leisure centre in Darlington, an arts centre in Wigan, a cafe in Gillingham, a shopping centre in Gloucester, and a supermarket in Peterborough.
performance at SLAP in York
GIF created for the launch of web work
performance at W139, Amsterdam
quilt on tour in Darlington
performance and installation at W139, Amsterdam
quilt on show at Battersea Arts Centre
performance at Shunt Vaults, London
performance at Shunt Vaults, London
related projects
Poems Made from Words Found in the Bin
The Slow GIF Movement
The Lullaby Directory
Can I Help You?
Can I Help You? offers free help to passers-by and the general public. There are no plans and no boundaries: anything goes, the only requirement is that we figure it out together.
“A beautiful, open intervention that allows people to find their own ways to shape it.” Mel Evans, Liberate Tate.
Stationed in a town centre or prominent shopping street, we are available to anyone and everyone for free help. Offered as one person to another, rather than particular skills or knowledge we come with a tool belt containing things we thought might be helpful:
…chewing gum, change for a tenner, an umbrella, a bin bag, The Little Book of Hope, string, a sewing kit, plasters, super glue, hand cream…
So go on, buy that extra bag of melons, there’s someone here to help you carry them home!
article with Mel Evans for The Scottish Journal of Performance
Can I Help You? came out of an invitation to make a piece of work for a festival that wanted to challenge how we respond to people who exhibit unusual or disturbed behavior in public.
- first presented at Bonkersfest with South London Gallery and Creative Routes (2006)
- toured to Hull, Wigan, Darlington, Rochester, Gloucester, and Paignton (2016)
- presented with multiple “helpers” as part of In Your Way festival in Cambridge (2018)
Rhiannon has presented numerous talks and workshops about this work, sharing her methodologies on relational performance in public space with organisations including Greenwich Docklands International Festival, Take Me Somewhere, Glasgow University, and Battersea Arts Centre.
Images 1-2 by Jerome Whittingham; 3, 7, 10 by Alexander Parsonage; 9 by Rob Irish; others by the artist.