Aelyn Belyn

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_01/ Foreword

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____ In November 2010, sixteen students and staff from Edinburgh College of Art’s School of Art initiated and undertook a temporary residency project in Berlin, presenting our work at Matthew Bown Gallerie: Aelyn Belyn.

____ Aelyn Belyn emerged between us from a shared desire to set up a residency-situation which could enable a variety of site-related projects; artworks, events, interventions, and happenings, where the em-phasis was on place, locality, time, context and space. Berlin was chosen as our destination, for its complex layering of historical and contemporary culture, and the richness and diversity of its spaces: green space, urban space, day-life, night-life, from metropolis skylines to barren and uncontrolled landscapes. Berlin allows a level of freedom not readily found elsewhere. Amongst the openness of its citizens and the plethora of artistic, performative, underground, and guerrilla activities, we could carry out our fieldwork in an unselfconscious way.

____ Our intention was for the project to have no de-fined limits, where we could experiment, be inventive and open in our responses to the city. An exhibition was planned, not to present finished artworks, but as a situation to bring together ideas, proposals, exchanges. Artwork was not the endpoint of our trip, rather the importance was placed on the process.

____ A great deal of preparation followed - talks, proposals, workshops, meetings and cake-and-bakes, and our blog became an essential way for us to share information and ideas. Projects were thought through in advance, to then become undone and reformed during our journeys.

____ I don’t believe any of us could have foreseen the colossal energy and drive, the spontaneity and creativ-ity, connections and friendships that were to evolve during the residency. Living and working communally promoted a collective spirit and closeness, where conversations were open, working methods shared, and natural collaborations arose.

____ Each day, individually and as a group, we ex-plored sites from colour towers and observatories, to dance halls, forests, runways, abandoned funfairs and listening stations. We unraveled the city and its en-ergy merged with ours. We explored Berlin with a psy-chogeographic approach; it encouraged wanderings, journeys, meanderings and delvings. Artwork formed through this direct experience of the city, and the shift of awareness and heightened responsiveness created through being in unfamiliar territories.

____ We shared ideas and findings in meetings each day, and our work merged with our research. Amongst many other things, we found ourselves

dancing in Devil’s Mountain, listening to derelict railway lines, watching a galaxy lift off, transmitting our thoughts through space, inverting walls, chart-ing trees, growing architecture, freezing wasps and filming the sky in three-dimensions. As our artwork was brought together at Matthew Bown Gallerie, a common thread emerged as that of translation; trans-lation, passage and displacement between people, thoughts, forms, objects and things.

____ Aelyn Belyn provided us with a crucial interrup-tion, a situation outside of the studio and our familiar surroundings which opened up new and unexplored approaches and challenged our everyday ways of working. The memories and experiences are a con-tinuing influence. This book brings together important elements of our Berlin research.

Many thanks to all those involved.

›› Katie Paterson, John Florent Stone Fellow, ECA›› Karen Forbes, Professor of Art, ECA

›› P 14: Jessica Argo

›› P 17: Rachel Barron

›› P 21: Rachael Cloughton

›› P 24: Hazel France ›› P 25: Hazel France

›› P 29: Hannah Knights

›› P 22: Claire Adams Ferguson

›› P 18 - 19: R Barron, R.King & M.De Laborde

›› P 15: Jessica Argo ›› P 16: Rachel Barron

›› P 20 : Rachael Cloughton

›› P 23: Claire Adams Ferguson

›› P 26 - 27: Rachel King

›› P 30 - 31: Manuela De Laborde ›› P 28: Hannah Knights

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›› P 32: Faith Limbrick ›› P 33: Faith Limbrick ›› P 34: Claire MacCrory

›› P 36: Grace Sherrington ›› P 37: Grace Sherrington ›› P 35: Claire MacCrory

›› P 38: Peter Skibinski ›› P 39: Peter Skibinski ›› P 40 - 41: Katie Paterson

›› P 42 - 43: Chelle Tomes ›› P 42 - 43: Chelle Tomes ›› P 44 - 45: Exhibition

›› P 46 - 47: Exhibition ›› P 48 - 49: Information

_02/ Contents ›› Page 05

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_03/ Research ›› Page 07

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_04/ Artists ›› Page 12

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_ 04.01 Jessica Argo

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_ 04.02 Rachel Barron

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_ 04.03 Rachel Barron, Rachel King & Manuela De Laborde

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_ 04.04 Rachael Cloughton

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_ 04.05 Claire Adams Ferguson

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_ 04.06 Hazel France

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_ 04.07 Rachel King

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_ 04.08 Hannah Knights

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_ 04.09 Manuela De Laborde

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_ 04.10 Faith Limbrick

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_ 04.11 Claire MacCrory

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_ 04.12 Grace Sherrington

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_ 04.13 Peter Skibinski

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_ 04.14 Katie Paterson

_ 04.15 Chelle Tomes

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_05/ Exhibition ›› Page 44

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Argo, J _ 04.01 ›› pages 14-15

I responded to Berlin’s contemporary minimal techno music through compiling a sequence of abstracted patterns of the city’s traffic, in time to the changes of rhythm and tone in the music of Shed, Modeselektor and Harmonious Thelonious. I also collaborated with Claire Ferguson in a musical experiment at Devil’s Mountain, using contact microphones to distort and amplify spontaneous echoing percussion, with a result similar to an electric keyboard.

›› Untitled. Still from video (unfocused office lights from Panoramapunkt, synched to minimal techno music from Berlin, 9m45s). Still from video (zoom in on mesh advertise-ment on Glasgow Airport Flyer bus, flickering and distorting with movement, and change of background, 4m26s).

Barron, R _ 04.02 ›› pages 16 -17

A series of drawings which map the dancer’s move-ments as they orbit in space, created in response to a collaborative work, Ballroom Dancing at Teufelsberg.

›› ‘A notational response’. Works on paper, 210x148 mm.

R Barron, R King & M De Laborde, _ 04.03 ›› pages 18 -19

A staged scenario which resounds the movements within the Ballhaus, suggesting an echo between paired dancers and orbiting planets.

›› ‘Ballroom Dancing at Teufelsberg’. 3min looped DVD, documenting group performance at Teufelsberg.

Cloughton, R _ 04.04 ›› pages 20 - 21

By fostering anomalous content into visual culture’s explicit methods of presentation, the series of works attempt to set up an analogy with the museum that exposes its didactic premise as a myth and its contents as malleable to ideology. Specifically focused on the Pergamon Museum, the posters seek to raise questions surrounding public and private property, information and interpretation and the implicit codes of the gallery space.

›› ‘Culture Makes All Men Gentle’. Digital prints, photocopied images and wheatpaste.

Ferguson, C.A _ 04.05 ›› pages 22 - 23

A contact mic reveals hidden noises within solid objects by amplifying vibrations. It is an essential tool for those afraid of missing something.

›› ‘Ten hidden sounds’. 6m05s looped audio CD, headphones, walkman, A5 printed map.

France, H _ 04.06 ›› pages 24 - 25

Teufelsberg, Turmkunst, Fernsehturm, Flughafen Tempelhof.

›› ‘Left eye / Right eye’. 5 minute looped DVD, stereoscopic viewer.

King, R _ 04.07 ›› pages 26 - 27

To dislocate and dis-locate a dialogue, a series of taut exchanges.

›› ‘A Pirate Story’. Digital photography, 10x8in print.

_06/ Information ›› Page 48

Knights, H _ 04.08 ›› pages 28 - 29

Imagining Berlin as framed by a series of projected images, which have been fixed by those who have worked there so many times before, I began to ex-plore the city through an indirect gaze; ‘I am thinking of something. In fact, I’m thinking of something else. You can only think about something if you think of something else.’

›› Ohne Titel. 20 second looped DVD, video monitor, DVD playing device, shelf and A2 folded catalogue.

De Laborde, M _ 04.09 ›› pages 30 - 31

Yesterday I became a galaxy! Video documentation of bicycle night ride at Templehof, 11th November 2010.

›› Untitled. 1m41s looped DVD.

Limbrick, F _ 04.10 ›› pages 32 - 33

I have been using faceted lenses to look at the city. Making my own architecture, growing it on the pre-existing facades and urban furniture. Many of the places I have been to visit have been abandoned.

When places are neglected other things start to grow.

›› Untitled. Paper, glue, tape; plastic kaleido-scope lens, tripod.

MacCrory, C _ 04.11 ›› pages 34 - 35

An imagined dialogue, “the point of producing a new image or thought”.

›› Untitled. Analogue photograph (9cm x 13cm), card shelf installed at eye level.

›› Untitled. (10 x 15cm),black fineliner pen on cartridge paper slotted in floorboard.

Sherrington, G _ 04.12 ›› pages 36 - 37

›› ‘2 Colour Carousel’. Duplex card, slide carousel.

Skibinski, P _ 04.13 ›› pages 38 - 39

An installation of a dead wasp in a sealed, found vacu-um packaging is a response to a concept of translation

of visual forms. A juxtaposition of physical remains of an animal with a mass produced object confronts the viewer with an idea of a thin line between physicality of an object and its form. Formal qualities of a com-modity contain a fine art approach, induced in a range of primarily industrial techniques. An act of shifting importance of an object by rearranging its context cre-ates an ambiguous line of interpretation for this piece.

›› ‘Katie’s flat, 9 nov 2010, on the floor, by the window’. Vacuum formed packaging plastic, mirror cardboard, metal eyelets, wasp, photo-grams, mirrors.

Paterson, K _ 04.14 ›› pages 40 - 41

A series of letters that announce the deaths of stars.

›› ‘The Dying Stars Letters’. Paper and ink.

Tomes, C _ 04.15 ›› pages 42 -43

An intervention that proposes that two spaces can exist in one place.

›› Untitled. Ivy.

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›› http://aelynbelyn.blogspot.com/

Many thanks to Matthew Bown Gallerie, Thomas Carlile, and ECA’s School of Art for their generous support.

Design by Thomas Carlilewww.thomascarlile.co.uk

aelyn belyn. a b

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