Working with Freedom House Art puts an honourable practice not only in the 21st century, but also puts it into practice.
The print is connected to history of struggle and protest becuse it was the pre-digital form of interconnections. Its inherent multiplicity and cheap production form enabled the print widespread dissemination. The print was viral. Remove the paper, and the internet makes the image as viral as the woodcut print in the late middleages illustrating the feudal uprisings. Here, the artist took the peasant’s side against the church and nobility, because the print already sat on the margins of the underdog.

Freedom House Art is that Printer in the Sky of then and now, where the making of an image or a letterpress poster can be called up for a workshop through a web of socially engaged printbased artists. Freedom House Art offers prints, workshops, conferences and talks on freedom as well as educational creative material to institutions. There wil be shows and meetings between artists, scholars and students, but most of all, with people.

So the print walks out to the world- again. The print is not only my instrument for freedom- but now a tool for others to share.

Watch out- Amos might just come your way with some woodtype in hand!

Stolen Voices is now called typeFACE! This is the genius naming by Emily . who wrote in an e-mail: ( edited version )

‘ There are so many great aspects to this project. As I ask other artists to participate with a description of an image they can’t describe, I’m finding that this aspect of uniting artists and talking - at various stages of life, artistic development and working in myriad ways - is becoming a really exciting aspect of the project. Wouldn’t it be great to build of a great archive of these stumbling/articulate/uncertain/strident/humorus/intelligent statements with corresponding facial expressions and typeface? [AH! Maybe we can call it typeFACE …… Emily Candela 16 june 2010

Imagine linking the 500 year old technology of letterpress, shaping the spoken words by the artists in to posters, then projections of their silent, but talking heads next to the prints…As alway s I am not quite sure where this wil take us/ me- but it feels as if the project is opening up something to something greater- like a vista of play.

Amos Kennedy’s work inspires:

” the world is big- full of connections and
ideas to be made. ”

Don’t forget it!

For the full effect of the stolen voices - go to Emily’s blog; http://emilycandela.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/pale-voce/

- and check out our moving heads. In the end these will projected on to our posters ( what is seen here is a rudimentary start up version.

A new project has started to sneak in - about the use of English in Higer Education. I am working with Emily Candela adn we will combine our expressions- printmaking , letter press and video. Language can be used as a tool for exclusion ,and in the UK it seems to be linked to the obsession with the class system. we call it stolen voices- still looking for the latin translation , playing on the academic term ‘Viva voce’ which is an exam carried out through talking - and not writing.

Emerging and older, more established artists will collaborate with us in an experiment to develop ways of thinking and working at the intersection of linguistic and visual representation that addresses the challenges faced by many artists in the area of language. Together we will create a series of text-based prints, therefore bringing language to tangible form.The artists will be filmed- as in a series of moving video portraits. These will be shown projected on the prints in a final exhibition. We also aim to produce an article in the end- returning to the written word.

The artists will collaborate with a group of artists who either experience difficulty with the linguistic requirements of their course or are being forced to speak about their practice in an academic art theory language which is alien to them. At our first meeting, each artist will bring with them an image that they believe defies simple description. The artist will be invited to speak freely about the images. We will then introduce a template for speaking about the images that mirrors the conventions of academic composition. The artists will be asked to use these to present verbal representations of the images, but will be encouraged to amend or disregard the template as they see fit. In this way, they are actively contributing to an experiment in generating a framework for synthesising image and text. The artists’ verbal descriptions will be recorded and transcribed. Selections from these transcriptions will provide the text for a series of typographic prints, created with the artists at the second meeting with them. The prints’ format will be based on the templates mentioned above, and will reflect the artists modifications to these templates.

Background:

This artwork takes as its starting point a central issue in fine art higher education: the difficulties experienced by many art art students in the linguistic articulation of their ideas (Hudson, 2009). In our own experiences working with students, we have witnessed the anxiety, self- doubt and frustration caused by requirements to apply academic language to visual artistic work. We - ourselves as foreigners,one american and one Swede, have found it challenging to modify our language to the British English academic conventions. Many practitioners are examining alternatives to conventional academic writing within art and design higher education (Candela, 2009; Orr et al, 2004). This parallels a larger conversation concerning the relationship between image and text, impacted by postmodern cultural theory (Barthes, 1977) and by 20th and 21st century artists experimenting at the interface of visual and textual representation.

This project is unique in its invitation to artists to experiment with formats for linguistic representation.The resulting prints will represent a record of dialogue and negotiation towards a new conception of the roles of linguistic and visual representation in the world of the fine art establishment.

We are not Sorry for sounding like ourselves.

Less than 3 months to go. Work is developing. The Bristol based group is closer to nature.

This work shows water, and land. Liz is working a series of woodcuts showin a stretch of water from dusk to dawn.

Anna is screen printing with mud collected from the River Avon.

Martine is taking a bird’s eye view of a coast line.

The only landscape available to me is the man made views of London. The Littoral Zone becomes something physical, and the ebb of flow the abstract notions of the arrival of people in to the city. Where as the flotsam of the river Avon in Bristol is mostly bicycles and shopping carts haf submerged in the rich mud, the flotsam of London is the debris of human aspirations. Some victories, then losses and in between just the ordinary dreams and private tragedies sinking in to the mud of time. The river Thames hold the physical remains of past ordinary lives in its grey mud of the Littoral Zone- a pipe head made of clay, coins and leather shoes of Romans and Victorians. The sight of these stir my memories and senses, to come alive in London as an artist while I hold the crisp, cold smell of the Swedish West coast’s water within my being while I bicycle past council buildings. The flotsam of city life pile up among the baby clothes drying on the balconies, where people struggle and dream as the debris of a media society flow in through the satellite dishes.Nature is only an image on a screen.

The Create Center in Bristol focuses on enviromental issues, clean rivers, recycling and the increasing problems of plastic debris.

Our work in the galley will reflect the ethos which concerns a clean enviroment. I hope a visti to its gallery will be a place of both contemplation and flow.