Category: site
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the problem with choosing
The problem with choosing is that it just goes on, moment by moment, for an entire lifetime, and happens without reason. I guess I just still want to feel that I can always re-choose. That no choice I make will be so bad that I can’t be saved from it, from myself… Over the past…
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together and alone
I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering how to discuss things at the moment; when opposition is dismissed as ‘fake’, and arguments and information are replaced with slogans designed to ‘win the narrative’ by stirring emotions rather than ideas – slogans that can mean whatever I want them to mean. Questions about which of us…
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wild scenes in Cardiff
We are in Cardiff completing the final stages of Storm.2, the second public work of The Storm Cycle, that we have titled Things come apart. We are trying to activate a running description of four days and nights of violence and rioting that erupted here a century ago, in the June of 1919. A description,…
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a thing done
A five minute extract from reference footage captured of the burning tree, as it happened during the opening performance of Storm.1: Nothing remains the same – Pontrhydfendigaid, Cerdigion, February 15th…
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things told, and things done
The first public step and proposition of The Storm Cycle, designated Storm.1, and titled Nothing remains the same, has taken its place amongst the possibilities of the real, amongst those things that can happen – and was performed, for the 350 people who travelled to gather and meet it, in Pafiliwn Bont, Pontrhydfendigaid. The work,…
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grey line [twilight]
Tomorrow we perform Grey Line – an interventional new public art work for radio, that Rosa Casado and I have been developing since spring, and that has turned out be simultaneously one of our smallest and largest scale works. The piece has been commissioned by Consonni, and takes as its context and broadcast platform an…
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no matter how many people believe in it
Here are a handful of photographs taken during our performance of What if everything we know is wrong? within a cleared out floor of Alhóndiga in Bilbao last weekend. This latest manifestation of the work was commissioned by Azkuna Zentroa as part of their final 3, 2, 1 programme – and was again retitled specifically…
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in the beginning…
Today sees the public launch of ILIAD – our new large-scale collaboration with National Theatre Wales. The project is our third work for NTW, since the company’s inauguration. It continues our attempts to reactivate classic and historic narrative texts in contemporary Wales, as reflective or resonant situations in the present. And will hopefully push forward some of the propositions we…
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autumn in New York
untitled [ West Broadway 29/10/2013 ], digital photograph, dimensions variable, Mike Brookes 2013 – from the ongoing small pieces of everything series.
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walking
As our final public work here in Providence, Rhode Island, today we walked the now ascent shoreline of the natural cove that shaped the original geography of this city – a body of water and salt marsh reclaimed and almost completely covered by developments of the city’s centre over the last 150 years. Accompanied and…
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introduced birdsong
Today we conclude our Historic parking lots of Providence project, highlighting thirty of downtown Providence’s surface level parking lots that – contrary to assumptions that they are spaces of transition, neglect, or failed development projects – have in fact been designated as parking lots, and have remained unchanged and in use as such, since at…
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greetings from Salina
Wrapping up one thread of our engagement with aspects of this city’s past and present – as both a playful exploration of the shifting character of downtown Salina, and an attempt to generate a tangible trace and record of the people we have met here – we have been inviting locals to join us in…
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still thinking about parking lots
Fountain Street and Mathewson Street, pen and watercolour on paper, 100cm x 175cm, Mike Brookes 2013 – from the parking lots of Providence series. Further details from the parking lots of Providence series can be found in the archive [ here ].
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postcard from the past
Greetings from Salina [looking north on Santa Fe Avenue], one of a series of twenty digital images adapted from archived postcards depicting 20th century views of Santa Fe Avenue in Salina KS, dimensions and proportions variable, Mike Brookes 2013 – from the participatory image work Greetings from Salina / crossroads of the nation, part of…
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thinking about parking lots
For the first time in quite a while, I find myself drawing as I think. I have never really sketched works, unless I need to describe them to someone else. I think them through, then make them. As usual, these drawings are really just another case of making more than one thing at once –…
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here we are…
Eighteen months after the last public work in the series – in which we ‘revisited’ the now absent buildings of the former Euskalduna Shipyard in Bilbao – we have shifted our focus back to the development of our long term just a little bit of history repeating project. And for this phase, we have moved…
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screens and headphones
Giving myself a little time and distance to reflect on the realities of our run of Coriolan/us last month, I have been spending some of my days slowly reviewing and combining the continuous camera and headphone feeds that we generated and broadcast live within the work – and which were captured and recorded on the evening…
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an emptied place
Before more detailed traces and remnants of our Coriolan/us project begin to gather, I thought that I would mark its completion with a quick camera phone image, snapped across that portion of hangar 858 temporarily designated ‘rome’, a few minutes after being vacated by the 350 of us who had populated it for the duration…
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what if everything we know is wrong?
Last weekend, commissioned to perform the initial work from our developing What if everything we know is wrong? project, Rosa Casado and I stepped into a large clear room in Artium – Vitoria’s ten year old contemporary art gallery – carrying a bag of pocket dictaphones, a small roll of tape, a black marker pen,…
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hangar 858
Today the site for our production of Coriolan/us this coming August has officially been announced – Hangar 858 – a decommissioned WW2 aircraft hanger in St Athan, South Wales. Built in the late 1930’s, and beautifully directly engineered, the vast open space contained and framed below its sweeping single span cast cement ceiling is providing us…
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lifeguard
A few short days in Glasgow, catching up with old friends and new – discussing Lifeguard, a new work with Adrian Howells and the National Theatre of Scotland, planned for this coming autumn. A work that hopes to locate itself within a recently derelict public baths in the city, requiring at least a partial restoration…
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are we there yet?
I always look forward to site visits. Even when they are likely to end in disappointment, they are still revealing. The collective decision to step beyond the theoretical that provokes them is always helpful in itself. Looking for somewhere to meet, a place where our intentions might actually happen – in reality – requires a…
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located or camping?
As Mike Pearson and I simultaneously turn up the heat on our Coriolan/us process with the new year, trading thoughts over distance for little while longer, it seems that we have reached that familiar turning point where we both start re-asking the hard and big questions – but this time in order to really answer…
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a map to find meetings in places that aren’t there
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time lapse
Three photos of the just a little bit of history repeating site in Bilbao – firstly the working Euskalduna shipyard and docks, then its subsequent dereliction, and the present (the Guggenheim is nestling behind the tower block that now stands over one end of the site):