Remote Performances in Nature and Architecture

Outlandia is an off-grid artistsa€? fieldstation, a treehouse imagined by artists London Fieldworks (Bruce Gilchrist & Jo Joelson) and designed by Malcolm Fraser Architects, situated in Glen Nevis, opposite Ben Nevis. It is performative architecture that immerses its occupants in a particular environment, provoking creative interaction between artists and the land. This book explores the relationship between place and forms of thought and creative activity, relating Outlandia and the artists there to the tradition of generative thinking and making structures that have included Goethea€?s Gartenhaus in Weimar, Henry Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond and Dylan Thomasa€?s writing shack in Laugharne. Based on a series of residencies and radio broadcasts produced by London Fieldworks in collaboration with Resonance 104.4fm, the Remote Performances project enabled twenty invited artists to consider and engage in transmissions, sound performances and dialogues on their artmaking strategies immersed in this specific rural environment of mountain, forest and river; flora and fauna. Some artists engaged in dialogue with people living and working in the area with a range of specialisms and experience in, for examples, forestry, mountain culture, wildlife, tourism, and local history. This book explores the ways in which being in the field impacts on artists and permeates through to the artworks they create. It considers the relationship between geography and contemporary art and artistsa€? use of maps and fieldwork. It charts these artistsa€? explorations of the ecological and cultural value of the natural environment, questioning our perceptions and relationships to landscape, climate and their changes. The book is an inspiring collection of ways to think differently about our relationship with the changing natural environment. The book includes essays by Jo Joelson, Francis McKee, Tracey Warr and Bruce Gilchrist, and texts, images and drawings by the artists: Bram Thomas Arnold, Ruth Barker, Ed Baxter, Johny Brown, Clair Chinnery, Kirsteen Davidson Kelly, Ben Drew, Alec Finlay & Ken Cockburn, Goodiepal, Sarah Kenchington, London Fieldworks & Mark Vernon, Lisa Oa€?Brien, Lee Patterson, Michael Pedersen, Geoff Sample, Tracey Warr and Tony White, reflecting on the notion of contemporary remoteness and creative responses to Outlandia and its wider context.

Tracey Warr writes fiction and non-fiction. She has published two medieval novels, Almodis (Impress Books, 2011) and The Viking Hostage (Impress Books, 2014). Almodis was shortlisted for the Impress Prize for New Writing and for the Rome Film Festival Book Initiative. She is currently working on two new novels: one set in 11th century southern France and Catalonia featuring a female troubadour, and the other set in the 23rd century on the south Wales coast, contemplating a future of climate change and its environmental and social impacts. Her publications on contemporary artists include A Study Room Guide to Remoteness (LADA, 2014), Setting the Fell on Fire (Editions North, 2009), The Artista€?s Body (Phaidon, 2000) and essays in Women, the Arts and Globalization (Manchester University Press, 2013), Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Sensualities / Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st Century Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Panic Attack!: Art in the Punk Years (Merrell, 2007), Art, Lies & Videotape (Tate, 2003), Marcus Coates (Grizedale, 2002) and London Fieldworks: Syzygy / Polaria (Black Dog, 2002), She also writes book reviews for Times Higher Education, New Welsh Review and Historical Novels Review. She is currently a commissioned writer in the Frontiers in Retreat project working with Jutempus in Lithuania and undertaking writera€?s residencies at Centre da€?Art i Natura, Farrera, Spain and HIAP, Helsinki, Finland. London Fieldworks (LFW) is the collaborative practice of artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson, formalised in 2000 and based in east London. Having formed a notion of ecology as a complex inter-working of social, natural, and technological worlds, they create installation, sculpture, architecture, film and publications with works made for the gallery, the landscape and the public realm. Recent exhibitions and commissions include Dover Street Market New York; Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, Hong Kong; Tropixel Festival, Ubatuba, Brazil; Bio-Fiction, Vienna; Trafo Gallery, Budapest; Tranzit.ro, Bucharest; The Negligent Eye, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; Sprengel Museum, Hannover. Their work is featured in a number of publications including, On Not Knowing: How Artists Think (Black Dog, 2013); Null Object: Gustav Metzger Thinks about Nothing (Black Dog, 2012); Far Field (Intellect Books, 2011); Searching for Arta€?s New Publics (Intellect Books, 2010); ART+SCIENCE NOW: A Visual Survey of Artists Working at the Frontiers of Science and Technology (Thames and Hudson, 2010); Beyond Architecture: Imaginative Buildings and Fictional Cities (Gestalten, 2009). LFW projects have been supported by the British Council, Arts Council England, National Endowment for the Arts (USA) and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation among others and have received awards from The Arts Foundation (Art In the Elements); Ars Electronica, Linz; Vida, Art and Artificial Life, Madrid and London Short Film Festival (Best Experimental Short 2014).