Recently I took part in NTERЯOGATION: WALSALL. I have decided to continue with this project independently and re visit an earlier project based on the Fourth Plinth.
http://www.thefourthplinth.blogspot.com
This is my account;
DOUBLE AGENT:
Memoirs of an interventionist.
New Art Gallery Walsall
I first made brush contact with agent Francis (A.K.A Anna Francis) some time ago in a dusty pub on a Liverpool dockside, she told me about her work as an interventionist in Stoke and the work she does there with Stoke Airspace Gallery.
At the time I thought how much I would like to work with her in collaboration. This month she started a residency project at Uncle; INTERЯOGATION: WALSALL.
This exciting operation is a series of events that bring artists and the public together to explore the role of arts and culture in the post-industrial world. Examining how it feels for artists to work in a fast paced, site-responsive way within the public realm. This project is delivered by the arts organisation Longhouse, initiated by, acorn & access agent, Chloe Brown with Anna as the lead artist.
This investigation involved four weekly missions, where each Wednesday a group of artists arrived at the New Art Gallery Walsall in order to interrogate the public spaces around the gallery. All the artists’ identities are classified.
Here is where I go pig, break cover, I was one of the artist secret agents, I have now defected and have decided to compile this intel about my day at New Art Gallery Walsall
Several artist-assets or agents were asked to apply, I applied as Agent PITT and was press-ganged into the ring, and I waited patiently for my dead-drop to arrive.
The night before my mission I received an encoded text message; I was assigned Intervention, my tradecraft, and if Anna is M then agents Greenwood, Brown and Stoker were a collective Q.
The day started with a 20 minutes de-programming and mission briefing, we were instructed to go out and intervene, we were given a tour of uncle and set to work planning and collating resources. We all set forth into the streets of Walsall. I went to the pick n mix in Wilko’s. I bought all of their chocolate mice, sixteen pounds worth of pic n mix, the lady behind the till couldn’t help but look in the paper bag.. “Oh” she said, surprised “these my favorite too.” OK, I’m dressed as a spy and buying over a kg of mice sweets, I like to think that this conversation was intervention enough; sadly I didn’t document that particular exchange. Valuable lost HUMINT. That problem is at the cusp of my love, hate relationship with intervention, documentation becomes important, and yet documentation can spoil the spontaneity of many happenings or interventional acts.
The mice were one of my interventions taking place in the gallery square out in front of the gallery building. Artists Catherine Yass and Richard Wentworth designed the space. It is a large public meeting space and thoroughfare at the apex of the town. I chose this area and laid out a square formation of chocolate mice. I was proposing it as a piece of public art, all be it unofficially. The title was MICE, a spy acronym for Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego. Spy jargon for interrogation and turning a spy over to either defection or co-optation as a double agent. What appealed to me is the acronym MICE may as well describe a methodology, production and the politics of Public Art today.
The second intervention I made was called Innocent Postcards. I bought 20 postcards from the gallery shop and addressed them to 20 different secret services around the globe, I then set up a stall outside in the square where I collected innocuous sound bites and bit-parts of conversations about the public space from passersby and I even got Bob & Roberta Smith to fill in a card – I then posted them of Into the Wilderness, out across the espionage world; CIA, MI6, SIS, ASOS etc.
The third intervention was called ESS & Executive Action where I found the offices of the director Steven Snoddy, and other points of advantage, and left Dope books looking down on the surrounding perimeter. I then performed three pseudo executions, one Raven (soft toy) was left in the car park at the rear as if some seedy clandestine meeting went wrong behind the parked cars, one mysterious blood patch, an “Urban Splash” or Wet Job on the new Urban Splash ® development at the side of the gallery and a Ricin Umbrella assassination out front where I performed, lying still for the remaining duration of our project time. I wanted to locate the building in the surrounding area by fixing these acts and lines of sight from vantage points around the gallery roughly 71 yards from each drop off of the Dope book.
The part title ‘ESS’ refers to strategic-game-theory whereby ESS is a notion that the spy community know what goes on goes on and as long as it continues the status quo remains unchanged, if all the players play the same then things tick over. An example of this is the so called nuclear stalemate, A concept that postulates a situation wherein the relative strength of opposing nuclear forces results in mutual deterrence against employment of nuclear weapons. I considered this again looking at the art world and how art institutions and organisations play by a sort of ESS role in repeating urban regenerative models.
An excellent experience I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again New Art Gallery Walsall should be applauded for it’s excellent residency programme and it’s commitment to engage with the public with interesting exhibitions and off-site works. I need de-programming now, although I have admit I am enjoying this WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS.
POSSE COMITATAS – over and out.
