ppd lecture: matt stokes - residencies, commissions, and communities

• commissions, residency, working with communities... how this happens, challenges, practicalities - applications..
• his practice- inquiry into subcultures particular musical ones. 
• stems from moments that bind you together, music stability, working with communities, reframing common perceptions about a place or people or culture. 
• often fluid processes and research. often work with gallery, period of research, the research that dictates what the final outcome will be. range from gallery settings. 
• collaboration with six extreme metal vocalists. looking at how they use their voice, looking at traditional choral music function. thinking about how, those vocals are considered unskilled. don’t really get to hear the intricacies of the vocals from the drums etc. physicality of how vocalists produce sounds. process, put together a long list of bands, then sat down and listened and selected six vocalists with range, internationalism within selection. workshop, filmed and recorded over five days in Berlin. no score was written before started. at the very start very hard to persuade them to step up to mic without other instruments. filmed on six cameras. 
• 2015 project commissioned. live action rope play about the history of the place, psychiatric unit set up during ww2. form of role play- very collaborative, no external audience. psychological focused on stigma control and fear, realistic social drama. roughly thirty players. inmates and camp staff, over two days, everyone had to stay in character. 360 immersion, has to feel real in 1940s. three main tools- monologue box, allowed to express inner voice, confit resolution (three tier level- done through eye contact, body proximity, levels of shouting) colour triggers, attached to uniform, no one else knew what the colours mean, promoting gameplay. took a lot of convincing. laughed out of the room but talked more about the history /heritage context. treated differently. very closed event. what came out of that- producing objects, response. 
• ‘long after tonight’ 2005, group exhibition for 10 artists. northern soul music. distinct dance genre in 1960s,70s. blown away by church. designed in gothic style. wanted to stage the expressionism in church. they allowed him, to stage a night, which generated a film. all people in the piece, took a lot of time to collect those people in the UK. Film structure, sense of place (starting from outside of building) 
• ‘objects to see further’ 2015, heritage in a more traditional sense, looking at a museum context, asked by museum to respond to their collection. worlds largest refracting telescope. started looking at objects, piece together a narrative led to him writing a script events and characters, drawing in 1870 of crater in the moon. 9 hours movement from 10 hour factory times to 9 for more leisure time, education time. argument with machine, surreal. 
• ‘these are the days’ 2008. produced an archive related to the post punk movement. public contemporary gallery in Austin, asked him. looking at counterpoints, the city archives have the earlier punk scene, started talking to video archivist. he got very involved in the punk scene. he’d given him loads of names. meeting with more and more people. flyers and posters. producing a film. two channel film, concentrated specifically on the audience reaction. edited down into a silent film, given to a band from Austin, haven’t played together before, given 48 hours to come up with something. wanted it to be immediate. who’s responding to who, audience reacting to band, or vice versa. the gallery didn’t have that much money, needed more time, get arts council funding, turned into residency, working with NY gallery with funding, publication that came out of ghat as well 
• 2003, came out of research in development residency, three weeks, through chance. first experience of working with music community. series of raves that happened in cave, very small scale, those parties suddenly became bigger. police tried to shut it down by blocking roads, tried to blow up the cave. for their safety. talked to resident who was affected from the cave, fear factor that it would happen again. preserving what the group had done. producing things like silkscreen quotes from the people he talked to. the kit they used, build from drawing. Speaker stacks. people donated him. establishing a piece of sculpture. 
• ‘this liberty’ heritage. prison in England, collaborating with musician, history of building, exploring stories that could have happened within medieval prison. created five new songs from research. contemporary setting. final piece installed within the prison
• five channel video, commissioned. started talking about change of landscape in the city. five places in particular that stood out. working with local bands to perform in spaces. baton from one band to another. can never see all screens at one time. never went blank, had to navigate.
• quite a lot of ideas being rejected in proposal stage. failures. things can go wrong involving community, unexpected. pressure that something has to come out of it. finance available, commissioner, particularly in public project. 
• approached to work on another project after finishing one in recent years. prior to that keeping a look out on opportunities and applying. 
• finance, had commissioned, proposal to arts council England, Netherlands gallery and a partner, actually went to Netherlands to show it as well, managed to find an Uk organisation interested in music and artists. if gallery is commissioning a work, then they would expect to recoup their costs, film work, usually in 3, 5, additions. strange relationship with commercial galleries, don’t produce work that is very sellable. film work very hard to sell. had sold privately to individuals. gallery will take 50% cut to whatever you’re selling. set budgets, in proposal, timescales, practicalities, deadlines, budget. funding. in terms of applications, open call, good concept to start with. if there’s a guideline set out, make sure to read them carefully. quite surprising how many people haven’t followed them. cover important points succinctly. word count typically 400 words , aim to be ambitious but also realistic. no point proposing sth not going to work. know your audience and panel who’s looking over it. avoid over elaborate writing. if start to go into flowery language, seems irrelevant. map out ideas in exciting way, explore something within practice or context, set enough out so you know a path but don’t set bc what’s the point of applying for residency. quite easy to take sweeping statements, how are u going to build relationships with community. what route are you going to take, those practicalities important to put in. spoken to them already or not. quotes in your budget shows it’s realistic. start off with one or two liner summary in proposal. shortlisting panels - will sit down 4 or 5 people, sit and then go through all application, intensive one or two days process, your application won’t be given that much time. images you put in make sure are good. succinctly written. seconds seeing those images and reading out application. if hasn’t grabbed interest. you’ll be put into shortlisted if interested. will go through that pile in more detail and cut down more. final five or six artists for interview etc. when you get to interview stage, expected to present briefly what your practice is, what your project you’re proposing, 10 mins for your practice, 20-30 mins about your proposal in more detail. tailoring your language to panel. if you can practice what you’re going to say, but not from script or seem stiff. take a backup - bring their laptops, might go wrong, in connection, bring in USB stick as well. less likely to get flustered and enjoy the fact you’ve been chosen for this stage. don’t rush through the important stuff. at the end the panel will ask you. think about what they’d ask. usually simple ones. how it’s going to bring to your practice. 
• project management. end product probably about 5% of what put into project. the LAR project was really tough, had budget of 10,000 production but not a lot, thirty people transport cost, original real navy uniforms, build full scale, barrel, building on his own, really remote site, vintage vehicles, borrowing. had to get friends involved, pay people. 
• how you document the process so this thing exists in multiple ways. if it’s not document very difficult to present. would get worried at what the outcome to be. time element important. if feels rushed or not enough communication. Element of compromise. esp with organisations. might have idea developed but.