Invisible City, Schiedam, 2-4 September 2011

Claire Weetman has been selected to participate in Invisible City, an event currently in production in Schiedam, NL. Artists, builders, architects, actors, dancers, players and thinkers are invited to react to the notion of the moving, invisible city culminating in a public event at Ruimte in Beweging, Schiedam between 2-4 September 2011.

"Invisible City is the first project of Shadowing Cities, a cooperation of Liat Magenzy, Fiona Weir and Ans Kanen. Its goal is to put the spotlight on Schiedam by means of art and culture. For the first time the city will be flooded with artists from all over the world. Invisible City aims to free Schiedam from the shadow of Big Brother Rotterdam.

Ruimte in Beweging on Boterstraat is the central point of Invisible City. Several entrances give access to the building. It has a large, open main space and some separated smaller spaces. Each has its own atmosphere and peculiarities. For Invisible City, the building will be transformed to a city in itself, a shadow city.

The individual visions of the artists form a city installation, an integral work built up from personal views of the city. The way the city dweller moves around in a city, the way a city is discovered, is the way a visitor of Invisible City discovers the town that springs from the artist’s imagination. Nobody will take the same story home."

During the next week, Claire will be producing new works that are a development from her Passing, Watching, Waiting, Following interventions, previously produced in Liverpool and Linz. Working with live projection, drawing and public spaces, Claire will produce a series of new works under the title Motus:Immotus.

Visit a-n's Artists Talking site to read more about Claire's preparation and activity as part of Invisible City.

Invisible City, New Work by Claire Weetman in Schiedam is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and by Shadowing Cities.

New work - inspired by John Cage

'Every day is a good day' opens at the Southbank Centre today and is a chance to see this touring exhibition of John Cage's work. I saw it at Baltic back in September and in the past few months have been producing drawings inspired by Cage's process and his use of stones.

John Cage (1912-1992), Where R = Ryoanji (3R/17), 1992, Pencils on handmade Japanese paper, 25.4 x 48.3 cm, The John Cage Trust, Red Hook, New York, Photo: David Heald/SRGF, New York, © The John Cage Trust at Bard College. via arttattler.com

John Cage, Where R=Ryoanji: R3, 1983. Courtesy Henning Lohner. © The John Cage Trust. via www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk

Here is a selection of the recent drawings I have been working on:

Tabloid (Square Root 4), pencil on paper, 420x590mm

Tearing Space Apart 4:3, pencil on paper, 66x50mm

Tearing Space Apart 4:3 (black), correction fluid on tempera, 66x50mm

Cracks 1: Watersoluble Graphite and pencil on paper, 170x120mm

White postcard on black: Collage, black tempera and paper, 170x120mm

Contentores, pencil on paper

Net: 7 sided cobble, pencil on paper, 590x420mm

7 sided cobble, net x 7. Pencil on paper, 590x420mm

7 sided cobble, net squared. Pencil on paper, 590x420mm

Contentores, Lisboa, Portugal

I came across this project by P28 at the Belem Cultural Centre in Lisbon through an article in the guardian and decided to visit and respond to it on my trip to Portugal this month. A series of exhibitions are taking place in the containers, and the ones that I caught were by Inês Amado + Sonia Boyce, curated by Paul Goodwin (Tate Britain).

Boyce's dance of Belem includes a section, which appealed to me, where she follows and mimics members of the public within the gardens opposite the cultural centre.












Contentores - a response
As this project is due to come to Liverpool as part of Biennial 2012, I decided to create my own response to the use of the shipping container. Taking the format, I've created a net of the container and created a drawing onto it's surface.


I've taken this model to Lisbon and photographed it in situ with the containers there. If realised I'd like to have the drawn lines cut into the metal, with the box being lit from the inside creating a 3 dimensional drawing referencing the space and volume of the box.

Ersilia - A project about connections

I'm taking part in an event called Invisible City in Schiedam, NL in August, and coincidentally came across Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities. Connections abound, as several of the chapters are titled 'Trading Cities', a similar title to the next project (Trading Station) to be undertaken by POST.

As connections have recently been appearing to me from all directions, the chapter in Calvino's book about the city of Ersilia struck a chord; also it's visual description of the connections between people felt like a description of a drawing.

Here is the text in full:

Trading Cities 4

In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city's life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.

From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia's refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and they are nothing.

They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.

Thus, when travelling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.

In response to this I've decided to set up my own international postal exhibition project that highlights my links to places that I visit and the artists, curators and galleries that I have worked with in the past, or would like to work with in the future, creating my own Ersilia. I'm not going to write where and who I send them to, you'll have to wait until air mail comes through your letterbox, however, I do plan to create a map of where I send them to and from as a record of my travels and activity.

I've started this project off during my recent trip to Portugal, where I have continued to play with the concept of 'tearing space apart', but was also distracted by the fabulous patterned pavements using black and white cobbles. Here are the 5 works I produced, three of which are in transit right now (2 were too large for an envelope and I wasn't as fond of them)

Cracks 1: Watersoluble Graphite and pencil on paper

Portuguese Pavement I: Graphite and black tempera on paper

Portuguese Pavement II: Collage, black tempera on paper

White postcard on black: Collage, black tempera and paper


Portuguese Pavement III: Pencil on paper