Somewhere
Encyclopedia
Somewhere is a multi-disciplinary UK-based creative organisation founded in 2001 by artist / film-makers Karen Guthrie (born 1970) and Nina Pope (born 1968) to produce and support projects with a concern for under-represented subjects, new audiences and innovative uses of media and technologies.
After studying together at Edinburgh College of Art
, Pope & Guthrie completed MA's
in London and began collaborating as artists in 1995, with their installation
"Somewhere Over the TV" at the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, followed by their live online travelogue
"A Hypertext Journal" in March 1996,http://www.somewhere.org.uk/hypertext/journal/proj.info/index.html which was one of the earliest blog
s. One of the UK's earliest artists' websites, www.somewhere.org.uk has been online since 1996.
Somewhere has long-term collaborators including composer Tim Olden and technologist Dorian Moore.
In 2008 Karen Guthrie & Nina Pope won the first ever Northern Art Prize Northern Art Prize.
, broadcaster Michael Smith
(who premiered his directorial debut 'Drift Street' aboard) and nature writer Richard Mabey
.
WWTHB? was initiated as a temporary site-specific project, and Somewhere also created a permanent design for the site. At the time of writing there are no plans to implement the permanent scheme. FOAG now manage the garden, holding numerous and diverse events for the community and visitors.
Among the 500 volunteers spending their summer holidays re-creating every aspect of 16th century English life, the film meets a core of loyal and protective re-enactors whose real life stories form a fascinating counterpoint to their chosen Tudor roles. Shepherding through the thousands of paying visitors who keep Kentwell afloat is owner Patrick Phillips, a distantly paternal leader who describes the epic spectacles as his ‘game’.
-ville: We are not afraid of the future", which was selected for the 2005 Edinburgh International Film Festival
.
The film followed a group of former Bata shoe factory workers travelling from the UK to Zlin in the Czech Republic, on a free coach trip hosted by the artists. The film sees the travellers visit the origins of the global shoe empire built up by early 20th century Czech entrepreneur Tomas Bata, in search of what his maxim 'We are not afraid of the future' can mean in a changing Europe. The film originated in a commission by agency Commissions East and the project has since become a benchmark for the contemporary public art genre.
Bata-ville has screened in many festivals and art venues, including at Tate Britain
.http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/film/batavilleninapopeandkarenguthrie3421.htm, SXSW Festival (Austin, Texas) 2006 and the Zlin Film Festival 2006.
of artists' projects commissioned specifically for the WWW, which took as its subject the demise of television
in the age of convergent media. Featured artists were Graham Fagen, Jordan Baseman, Jessica Voorsanger
, Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich, Rory Hamilton & Jon Rogers, Chris Helson, Giorgio Sadotti
.
The project is archived at www.swansong.tv.
's The Canterbury Tales
, which was 1999's Tate Modern
(bankside) Annual Event.
For this event http://www.somewhere.org.uk/broadcast they chose 29 people to act as pilgrims, and on September 11th they broadcast the pilgrim's tales live in Borough Market (Southwark, London) as well as webcasting them from this site onto the net. The website is now a record of the day's events, containing all the pilgrims' tales and prologues. The website contains an index, "The order of the day" and there is a link to each pilgrim's home page, with details of the journeys they made to their chosen destinations within the project's 24 hour period.
The contributors tales were as follows: The Fisherman's Tale, The Poet's Tale, The Artist's Tale, Interlude, The Management Consultant's Tale, The Tarot Reader's Tale, The Parishioner's Tale, The Scientist's Tale, Interlude, The Van Driver's Tale, The Analysand's Tale, The Friend's Tale, The Punter's Tale, The Counsellor's Tale, The Nun's Tale, The Fiddle Maker's Tale, The Phototherapist's Tale, The Writer's Tale, Interlude, The Scholar's Tale, The Diver's Tale, The Environmental Manager's Tale, Interlude, The Passenger's Tale, The Shopper's Tale, and The Dilettante's Tale.
At the end of the 24 hours, there was a feast where all the pilgrims met at Borough Market, ate and talked about their experiences.
After studying together at Edinburgh College of Art
Edinburgh College of Art
Edinburgh College of Art is an art school in Edinburgh, Scotland, providing tertiary education in art and design disciplines for over two thousand students....
, Pope & Guthrie completed MA's
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in London and began collaborating as artists in 1995, with their installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
"Somewhere Over the TV" at the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, followed by their live online travelogue
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
"A Hypertext Journal" in March 1996,http://www.somewhere.org.uk/hypertext/journal/proj.info/index.html which was one of the earliest blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s. One of the UK's earliest artists' websites, www.somewhere.org.uk has been online since 1996.
Somewhere has long-term collaborators including composer Tim Olden and technologist Dorian Moore.
In 2008 Karen Guthrie & Nina Pope won the first ever Northern Art Prize Northern Art Prize.
The Floating Cinema
In 2010/11 Somewhere was appointed as guest artists to programme and create content for the Floating Cinema, part of Up Projects' Portavilion series of temporary cultural spaces for London. Housed in a customised narrowboat designed by architects Studio Weave, the Floating Cinema is an Olympic Development Authority commission taking place across summer 2011 on London's East End canals. Guest speakers and performers aboard included Olympic polemicist Iain SinclairIain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair FRSL is a British writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.-Life and work:...
, broadcaster Michael Smith
Michael Smith
-Music:* Michael Joseph Smith , British saxophonist in the pop band Amen Corner* Michael Joseph Smith , jazz composer & performer* Michael Peter Smith , American songwriter and performer...
(who premiered his directorial debut 'Drift Street' aboard) and nature writer Richard Mabey
Richard Mabey
Richard Mabey is a naturalist and author.He has been called by The Times 'Britain's greatest living nature writer'. Among his acclaimed publications are Food for Free, The Unofficial Countryside and The Common Ground, as well as his study of the nightingale, Whistling in the Dark...
.
What Will the Harvest Be?
In 2008 Somewhere gained a major public commission from London Borough of Newham to rejuvenate a barren site with Scheduled Ancient Monument Status close by the site of the 2012 Olympics in East London. The resulting proposal - What Will the Harvest Be? - became major project to create an unregulated, publicly-accessible harvest garden where anyone could grow and harvest vegetables and flowers. Working with an active residents' group Friends of Abbey Gardens (FOAG) from spring 2009, the ruins of 19th century housing and a medieval Cistercian gatehouse were stablised and protected, and the plot was transformed with bespoke raised beds offering 1000 linear metres of growing space. The garden design was influenced by historical research (e.g. the Plaistow Landgrabbers' Triangle Camp & the legacy of Cistercian gardens) and includes many specially-designed elements which create a spectacular public space.WWTHB? was initiated as a temporary site-specific project, and Somewhere also created a permanent design for the site. At the time of writing there are no plans to implement the permanent scheme. FOAG now manage the garden, holding numerous and diverse events for the community and visitors.
Living with the Tudors
The culmination of four years spent incognito within the UK historical re-enactment scene, "Living with the Tudors" is a documentary feature film shot entirely inside the 2007 Tudor (16th century) 're-creation' at Kentwall Hall in rural Suffolk (UK).Among the 500 volunteers spending their summer holidays re-creating every aspect of 16th century English life, the film meets a core of loyal and protective re-enactors whose real life stories form a fascinating counterpoint to their chosen Tudor roles. Shepherding through the thousands of paying visitors who keep Kentwell afloat is owner Patrick Phillips, a distantly paternal leader who describes the epic spectacles as his ‘game’.
Bata-ville: We are not afraid of the future
In 2005 Somewhere co-produced Pope & Guthrie's first feature film, the unorthodox documentary travelogue "BataBata Shoes
Bata Shoes is a large, family owned shoe company based in Bermuda but currently headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, operating 3 business units worldwide – Bata Metro Markets, Bata Emerging Markets and Bata Branded Business. It has a retail presence in over 50 countries and production...
-ville: We are not afraid of the future", which was selected for the 2005 Edinburgh International Film Festival
Edinburgh International Film Festival
The Edinburgh International Film Festival is an annual fortnight of cinema screenings and related events taking place each June. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running film festival...
.
The film followed a group of former Bata shoe factory workers travelling from the UK to Zlin in the Czech Republic, on a free coach trip hosted by the artists. The film sees the travellers visit the origins of the global shoe empire built up by early 20th century Czech entrepreneur Tomas Bata, in search of what his maxim 'We are not afraid of the future' can mean in a changing Europe. The film originated in a commission by agency Commissions East and the project has since become a benchmark for the contemporary public art genre.
Bata-ville has screened in many festivals and art venues, including at Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
.http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/film/batavilleninapopeandkarenguthrie3421.htm, SXSW Festival (Austin, Texas) 2006 and the Zlin Film Festival 2006.
TV swansong
In 2002, Somewhere produced the innovative media art project "TV swansong", the first live webcastWebcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand...
of artists' projects commissioned specifically for the WWW, which took as its subject the demise of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
in the age of convergent media. Featured artists were Graham Fagen, Jordan Baseman, Jessica Voorsanger
Jessica Voorsanger
Jessica Voorsanger, born in New York in 1965, is an American artist and academic, living and working in London. She studied Fine Art at Rhode Island School of Design in Rhode Island before gaining an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London....
, Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich, Rory Hamilton & Jon Rogers, Chris Helson, Giorgio Sadotti
Giorgio Sadotti
Giorgio Sadotti UK is a conceptual artist based in London.In the 1993 he exhibited at City Racing with Gavin Brown, and in 1996 participated in a group show in Vienna curated by Muntean and Rosenblum on behalf of City Racing...
.
The project is archived at www.swansong.tv.
/broadcast/ (29 pilgrims, 29 tales)
In 1999, Pope and Guthrie organised a contemporary version of Geoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
's The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
, which was 1999's Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
(bankside) Annual Event.
For this event http://www.somewhere.org.uk/broadcast they chose 29 people to act as pilgrims, and on September 11th they broadcast the pilgrim's tales live in Borough Market (Southwark, London) as well as webcasting them from this site onto the net. The website is now a record of the day's events, containing all the pilgrims' tales and prologues. The website contains an index, "The order of the day" and there is a link to each pilgrim's home page, with details of the journeys they made to their chosen destinations within the project's 24 hour period.
The contributors tales were as follows: The Fisherman's Tale, The Poet's Tale, The Artist's Tale, Interlude, The Management Consultant's Tale, The Tarot Reader's Tale, The Parishioner's Tale, The Scientist's Tale, Interlude, The Van Driver's Tale, The Analysand's Tale, The Friend's Tale, The Punter's Tale, The Counsellor's Tale, The Nun's Tale, The Fiddle Maker's Tale, The Phototherapist's Tale, The Writer's Tale, Interlude, The Scholar's Tale, The Diver's Tale, The Environmental Manager's Tale, Interlude, The Passenger's Tale, The Shopper's Tale, and The Dilettante's Tale.
At the end of the 24 hours, there was a feast where all the pilgrims met at Borough Market, ate and talked about their experiences.
Other works
Other works include:- Almanac, Site-specific permanent commission for Cinema City in Norwich (2007)
- Sometime Later, Commissioned by BBC & Arts Council England, web / film project at www.sometimelater.org.uk (2005/6)
- Seven Samurai, Site-specific project for Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, Japan - curated by Grizedale ArtsGrizedale ArtsGrizedale Arts is a contemporary arts residency and commissioning agency in the central Lake District in rural Northern England. It conducts cultural projects locally, nationally and internationally...
- A Fair Place, British Council Group show, Nouvelles Peripheries, Istanbul, Turkey (2001)
- The Festival of Lying, Grizedale Show, Cumbria, in collaboration with Anna Best and Simon Poulter (2000)
External links
- Somewhere's official site
- Floating Cinema project site
- What Will the Harvest Be? site
- Living with the Tudors official film website
- Broadcast (29 pilgrims, 29 tales) Tate Annual Event Borough Market – 11 September 1999, Tate Online press release (1999)
- The Festival of Lying", Grizedale Show, Cumbria (2000)
- Bata-ville: We are not afraid of the future: