The Universe Inside Your Mind: April 2010

Tazro Niscino

Converting traditional public monuments, sculptures into hotels where people pay to stay the night.

Mario Navarro

Navarro produced a temporary opaque red room that is a replica of a large room in Chile built in the 1990s to showcase modern technology. He intervened on the narratives of unquestioned technological progress by inviting nine people suffering from brain injuries to hand-customize a series of chairs that reflect their own individual biographies. Although Two Rooms refers to the Operations Room at the heart of "Project Cybersyn" -a short-lived attempt in the early 1970s, involving Liverpool University researcher Stafford Beer, to use cybernetics to create a hyper-efficient society in Chile, Navarro did not attempt to describe or represent Liverpool to us. Rather by engaging a group of co-participants in a joint exploration of modern technological progress, he draws out subtle points of relationality between the context that is familiar to him: Chile, and the context in which he is temporarily working.

priscilla monge

Priscilla Monge is interested in power: who has it, who doesn’t have it, how it is expressed in the most ordinary aspects of our daily lives. She delights in upsetting our expectations, making us think about what is and is not acceptable in our society (and about who makes those unspoken rules). We expect walls to be made of bricks, but how do we react if, in place of bricks, we find sanitary towels? What if beautiful embroidery spells out not a blessing, but a violent curse? Yet although Monge takes a close look at the often harsh realities hidden beneath the surface of everyday life, she does so with wit and humour. For International 06, she will take the most familiar of settings – a football pitch – and ask: what do we do when the rules are broken and the ground shifts beneath our feet?

Jeppe Hein

Loop Bench is an artwork derived from the basic form of a usual park bench: It has feet, offers space to sit and a back to lean at. But opposite to the traditional form, the work enlarges the bench form to an absurd degree, forming a long bench loop with crossings and bending, thus creating a kind of mazy structure. The visitor can use it as a bench and sit on it. At the same time, the bench has its own sculptural quality, thus inviting the viewer to look at it and to walk around and through its structure.

A-APE

The A-APE Visible Virals went up around Liverpool as part of the 2008 Liverpool Biennial. Taking place across public transport, parks and urban spaces, they engaged thousands of people as they spread across the city. Transient in nature, and light touch, the artworks infiltrated public spaces and infrastructures in the city, building in magnitude and inviting participation.

Ron Haselden

For the first commission in 2006 Ron Haseldon invited pupils from schools in each of the Biennial Big Table neighbourhood areas to make a drawing on the subject of Animal on an A6 piece of paper. Three of these Animal drawings were transformed into large scale, freestanding line drawings in neon light to be installed in their respective neighbourhoods. The Kensington light was the exact replica of a Polar Bear drawn by a year one pupil, Maaz Binsaud, from Phoenix Primary School.

Michael Pinsky - Rotunda

The final neon installation in 2008 was Michael Pinsky’s Title Author Genre. Taking the form of three animated neon sculptures each constructed from specially designed signatures from each area the sculptures mixed existing graffiti tags with symbols specifically created by members of each community in response to each light’s location. Children from Kensington Field’s Community Centre came up with words and phrases that they felt specifically related to their neighbourhood. Can you see what common nickname for Kensington appears in the tag?

Michael Garston

'Garston Embassy’ is an installation by artist Michael Trainor which sees a disused Edwardian school (formerly Tocky Tech) transformed into the headquarters of a mini independent state including its own flag and passports. The project has been undertaken in collaboration with Liverpool and Garston based artists and designers as well as the good people of Garston.

Kerry Morrison

The Wild and Productive project
documented the wildlife, habitat and
environs of the Leeds and Liverpool canal
from Seaforth in South Sefton through to
Bank Hall in North Liverpool over a nine
month period from January to September
2009. It included investigations,
happenings, action installations,
interventions and journals, all
underpinned by community engagement.
Kerry worked with botanist Dr Alicia
Prowse, physical geographer Emily
Fallows and artist Emma Kemp on this
project. Key activities and outputs
included:
• the installation of ten community
bee-hives
• the training of 20 community
bee-keepers from the neighbourhood
• 10 new litter bins being installed along
the canal
• the establishment of the Seaforth
Environmental Group