Listen to Anna’s reading of Undone in the face, a new work produced for Whitstable Biennale’s Journal from material she generated during a residency at St John’s College Oxford in Spring 2019. The recording is followed by a conversation with Whitstable Biennale performance curator Keira Greene, in which Anna describes her work with reading groups and voice recognition software, as well as the ideas and texts informing her work.
All entries
The Flying Roll – A memetic history of Jezreel’s Tower
by John Walter
John Walter writes about his research towards the forthcoming 360° film, Jezreel’s Tower, which takes inspiration from the story of The New and Latter House of Isreal, a religious movement which was based in Gillingham, Kent, until 1922. John discusses the history of the cult, the huge tower they built, and what their history can tell us about memes and how they are transmitted.
Jezreel’s Tower will be shown at Estuary 2020.
A Work-In-Conversation by Florence Peake, a Studio Visit with Keira Greene
Whitstable Biennale Performance Curator Keira Greene met with artist Florence Peake to discuss Florence’s practice in situ at her studio. The conversation moved fluidly between Florence’s collaboration with dance artists and her relationship to scoring and improvisation. View a transcript of parts of the conversation, written by Keira, with the text annotated and drawn into by Florence.
Prose Brut: Jude Crilly in conversation with Keira Greene
Commissioned for Whitstable Biennale 2018, Prose Brut was a performance work by artist Jude Crilly made for Whitstable Harbour. It was composed of interwoven choreographies, a seagull swarm, and a site-specific sculpture in collaboration with artist Morgan Courtois.
Jude is joined in conversation by artist and Whitstable Biennale 2018 performance curator Keira Greene to discuss scores, choreography, the texts that inspired the piece and its title; and the joining of performers and audiences in public space. The interview includes extracts from the quadrophonic soundtrack made for the performance.
Creaking Breeze Trio in conversation with Keira Greene
As a part of Whitstable Biennale 2018, on 10 June, between 4:17pm and 5:17pm The Creaking Breeze Trio performed their new composition Slack Fulcrum Twelfths (Green Vitriol) on The Street, a spit of shingle projecting into the sea at Whitstable. Here the trio are joined in conversation by Whitstable Biennale 2018 performance curator Keira Greene to discuss the composition, which was guided by a series of letters about an imaginary band described in Nathaniel Mackey’s ongoing experimental fiction project From A Broken Bottle Traces Of Perfume Still Emanate.
Dipesh Pandya: Residency Feed, Volume 2.
While artist in residence with us in North Kent and India, Dipesh Pandya used a set of Instagram aliases to collect thoughts and ideas. The second set of posts are collected here, following an earlier collection.
Ania Bas: A New Career In A New Town
A New Career In A New Town (2019) is a creative writing manual, a diary and a selection of experimental texts that respond to the context of a new town being built on the banks of the Thames in North Kent.
Dave Kane, Alex Neilson, Chris Sharkey & Alex Ward: Live at Contrapop 2018
On the afternoon of 4 August 2018, as part of a partnership between Whitstable Biennale and Contra Pop Festival, Dave Kane (double bass, Leeds), Alex Neilson (drums, Glasgow), Chris Sharkey (electric guitar, Leeds) and Alex Ward (clarinet/electric guitar, London) performed as an improvisational quartet for the first time. Their 45-minute set took place in a marquee on Ramsgate beach in front of a captivated audience of around 250 people.
Listen to the set here, and read a transcript of the group interview conducted immediately after the performance by Adam Coney, an improvisational guitarist and music scholar based in Ramsgate.
Lou Lou Sainsbury: Whitstable Biennale 2018
A short film made at and in response to Whitstable Biennale 2018 by artist Lou Lou Sainsbury. (17m15s)
Dipesh Pandya: Residency Feed, Volume 1.
While artist in residence with us in North Kent and India, Dipesh Pandya used a set of Instagram aliases to collect thoughts and ideas. The first set of posts are collected here. A second volume of posts follow.
Katie Paterson: First There is a Mountain (short film)
Find out about First There Is A Mountain, a nationally touring project which launches with Whitstable Biennale on Leysdown beach on 31 March 2019. (1m19s)
Caroline Bergvall: Conference (After Attar)
This video documents Conference (After Attar), a multi-channel performance which premiered at Whitstable Biennale 2018. Drawing from Attar’s medieval poem The Conference Of The Birds, Caroline Bergvall leads a conversation between six conversants, who each share their thoughts on journeys they’ve engineered with their work, and the ways they each experience how languages and species move across places and through time. As the conversation progresses, voice frequencies and other elements start to affect it asking other forms of listening from the audience. (7m 48s)
Daniella Valz Gen: Sentient Value Systems
On 3 June 2018, artist and writer Daniella Valz Gen led Sentient Value Systems, a workshop which explored ways creative writing might be used to reflect on notions of value. This journal entry collects words by Valz Gen about the workshop, with her poem, Breaking Even, audio from the workshop, and photographs of the poems created by the workshop participants.
Introduction to Whitstable Biennale 2018
Read about the 2018 Whitstable Biennale, Swimming Home.
Interview with Kino Paxton
by Emma Leach
Kino Paxton is an emerging and significant new voice in Richard Layzell’s new international work The Naming. Their relationship is embedded in the process and supported by the legacies of philosophers Heraclitus and Arne Naess.
Interview with Richard Layzell
by Emma Leach
WB2016 artist Richard Layzell discusses Softly Softly, his performance for the festival, catapulting soft toys, and the artist use of alter egos.
Interview with Webb-Ellis
by Ben Hawkins
Caitlin and Andrew Webb-Ellis on the development of their WB2016 video installation Parlour Walls, the relationship of water to memory and future directions.
Leslie Deere: Modern Conjuring for Amateurs
This video, shot by Reynir Hutber, documents Leslie Deere’s performance Modern Conjuring for Amateurs, which takes its title from the book by J.C. Cannell, a popular guide to learning tricks, conjuring and ventriloquism. Deere’s performance combined her performing arts dance background with her sonic arts training, as she created a shared experience, conjuring up sound and visuals with gesture.
Matthew Herbert: Hear What You Eat
This video documents Hear What You Eat, a very special kind of symposium/dinner party held for Whitstable Biennale 2016 by musician Matthew Herbert and chef Rosie Sykes. (50m23s)
Philip Hoare & Jessica Sarah Rinland in discussion
The acclaimed writer Philip Hoare is joined by collaborator and Whitstable Biennale 2016 artist Jessica Sarah Rinland to discuss the whales, marine life and ecology. (1h20m)
All This Can Happen: Siobhan Davies in conversation with Gareth Evans
Created by Siobhan Davies and filmmaker David Hinton in 2012, All This Can Happen is a film constructed entirely from archive photographs and footage from the earliest days of cinema. Whitstable Biennale screened All This Can Happen on 8 June 2016) 2016. This was followed by this conversation between Davies and Whitstable Biennale 2016 Cinema curator Gareth Evans. (19m27s)
Rose Wylie & Ben Rivers interviewed by Skye Sherwin
Celebrated painter Rose Wylie takes a keen interest in cinema, and references from film spill into her work.
On 5 June 2016, in a discussion hosted by art writer Skye Sherwin, Wylie talked to artist filmmaker Ben Rivers, about painting, film, and being the subject of Rivers’ film portrait, What Means Something, which was screened after the discussion. (57m)
Richard Layzell: Softly Softly
This video, filmed by Reynir Hutber, documents Richard Layzell’s performance Softly Softly, an elemental journey exploring suspension, elasticity, anthropomorphism and flight.Taking place in a then undisclosed location in Whitstable, it invited participants to uncover the universal in the everyday, the endangered in the familiar, function and form, expectation and humility, success and failure, tension and release, pathos and play. (23m31s)
Marcia Farquhar: The iScreamers
This video documents The iScreamers, the performance which opened Whitstable Biennale 2016: a consideration of ‘the cool confection’ in song and dance. Artist Marcia Farquhar draws on the dark side of ice cream’s history in a semi-autobiographical, psycho-geographical, socio-economical lecture accompanied by action painting and live music. (45m18s)
Andrew Kotting: Salon – Atmosphere
A recording of the first of the two salons Kötting presented at Whitstable Biennale 2016. Kötting explores the notion of ‘atmosphere’, and how it might be experienced in a sonic, visual or textual way. (1h33m)
Ethics, Art and Moving Images Symposium
This symposium, organised by Silke Panse and Connal Parsley, invited academics and artists to explore the relationship of ethics to contemporary art making. Watch a selection of presentations, originally live-streamed on 3 June 2016 by thisistomorrow.com.
Introduction to Whitstable Biennale 2016
Read about the 2016 Whitstable Biennale: The Faraway Nearby.
Trish Scott: Option B – Trish Scott interviews Ian Hocking
The third in a series of posts by WB2016 artist Trish Scott discussing the development of Medium: her new work for the festival, and her collaboration with psychologist Dr Ian Hocking.
Trish Scott: Ahead of Time
The second in a series of posts by WB2016 artist Trish Scott discussing the development of Medium: her new work for the festival, and her collaboration with psychologist Dr Ian Hocking.
Interview with Mikhail Karikis
by Kiira Laurikka
Mikhail Karikis talks to Kiira Laurikka about his WB2016 work ‘Ain’t Got No Fear’, made over the course of eighteen months with a group of teenagers on the Isle of Grain.
Trish Scott: Becoming data
The first in a series of posts by WB2016 artist Trish Scott discussing the development of Medium: her new work for the festival, and her collaboration with psychologist Dr Ian Hocking.
Interview with Ben Judd
by Sarue Jokonya
Artist Ben Judd interviewed about Stories In The Dark: Contemporary Responses To The Magic Lantern, the exhibition he curated for Whitstable Biennale and The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge.
Interview with S Mark Gubb
by Mira Kuure
S Mark Gubb discusses his WB14 artwork, a coach tour of the East Kent Coast called It All Began With Richard Burton.
Interview with Anna Lucas
by Rebecca Bloomfield
Artist Anna Lucas discusses her relationship with film and film-making following her WB10 work Things that had stories rubbed out
Fay Schopen on hosting an artwork
Fay Schopen is a writer and journalist living in Whitstable. For the 2014 Whitstable Biennale, her house was used as a site for Bronwen Buckeridge’s sound installation, The Sorrowful and Immaculate Fall of One Hundred Grazing Sheep. Here she writes about her experiences hosting a work for the Biennale.
Interview with Tanya Axford
by Emma Leach
Tanya Axford participated in Whitstable Biennale 2012 with the performance installation The Path Made by a Boat in Sound (3 down). Performance curator Emma Leach interviews Axford about her work and her relationship to performance.
Interview with Emma Hart
by Jennifer Thatcher
Interview with Benedict Drew
by Emma Leach
Interview with John Walter
by Kate Phillimore
Rachel Lichtenstein: Estuary
Writer and artist Rachel Lichtenstein gave an illustrated talk, with artist Jeremy Millar and chaired by Whitstable Biennale’s Director Sue Jones, at the Whitstable Biennale 2014. Rachel’s talk focused on research she undertook for a book on the Thames Estuary, titled ‘Estuary: A Deep Exploration of Place’, which was published by Penguin in 2016. This journal entry collects an article about the future of the Thames Estuary that Lichtenstein wrote for Aeon, as well as ‘A Study for the Estuary’, a short and poetic film made collaboratively by Lichtenstein and James Price. (Video 16m43s)
UR-NOW: The Ruins of the Contemporary
by Brian Dillon
Writer and editor Brian Dillon curated the film programme, UR-NOW: The Ruins of the Contemporary, for Whitstable Biennale 2010. This short essay accompanied the programme.
Interview with Neil Henderson
by Emma Leach
Neil Henderson’s work has encompassed multiple projector pieces, experiments with the materiality of film and photography, and films about landscape. His work has been shown at Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Britain, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Anthology Film Archives, New York and Modern Art Oxford. He talks to Whitstable Biennale 2014 performance curator Emma Leach about Tidal Island, his work for the festival.
Welcome to the Association Area
by Mark Aerial Waller
Mark Aerial Waller’s film programme for Whitstable Biennale 2014 was screened at the Horsebridge Arts Centre, and featured works by contemporary artists, interspersed with clips from the 1970s TV sci-fi detective series Sapphire and Steel. This is an essay Mark wrote to accompany the programme.
Richard Wilson & Zatorski + Zatorski, 51° 21’ 45? N, 1° 01’ 13? E Whitstable Sounding: Rockets and blue lights (close at hand) to warn steam boats of shoal water
Ben Judd: Vast as the Dark of Night and as the Light of Day
This video, shot by Bernard G Mills, documents Vast as the Dark of Night and as the Light of Day, a performance for Whitstable Biennale 2014 by Ben Judd. The work was informed by his research into collectivity and ritual in Whitstable, such as the Blessing of the Waters, an annual thanksgiving traditionally associated with St James, patron saint of oystermen. (35m14s)
Louisa Fairclough: Absolute Pitch
This video, shot by Bernard G Mills, documents Absolute Pitch, a 16mm film installation developed out of research with composer Richard Glover and Gloucester Cathedral choristers, exploring the experience of sustained tones in music and the relationship of pitch to colour. (12m57s)
Martin John Callanan: Wars During My Lifetime, 2014
Whitstable Biennale’s first permanent online commission is a film collecting a list of wars that have taken place all over the world during one individual’s lifetime. Read by a newsreader, the film makes no comment, but quietly and forcefully brings the long list to our attention.
Speak Near By
by Jeremy Millar
Artist Jeremy Millar’s essay to accompany Speak Near By, the film programme he curated for Whitstable Biennale 2012
Stages in the Revolution
by The Island
Stages in the Revolution was curated by Andrew Bonacina and Victoria Brooks (The Island), for the Whitstable Biennale 2012.