The Incomplete Archive is a celebration of 14 years of the community project tenantspin.
I had the pleasure of being Lead Artist on tenantspin between 2001-7 and this exhibition at FACT pulls together archival material, a set of recent interviews by Ed Pink and my selection of 200 images from the project composed as a new billboard work. I will sit down and properly write about tenantspin one day but for now these are some thoughts while going through thousands of images.
My selection naturally focuses on the people involved in the project from its inception as a Superchannel in 1999, the original concept developed by Superflex and facilitated in Liverpool by FACT's Collaboration Programme and the Housing Action Trust (HAT). Behind the scenes, the project always had brave supporters willing to back the new venture, and the early work of Eddie Berg, Charles Esche, Maria Brewster, Olga Bailey, Paul Kelly, Fee Plumley and Jitender Shambi should not be forgotten.
Ultimately, through its many phases, tenantspin was a model for
new collaboration that offered innovative or risky situations and contexts for artists and community members to make new live or digital content.
Crucial to this project was an ongoing re-invention to ensure that the collaborations were never
tokenism but maintained a critical level of challenging the artists, workers and community members.
tenantspin recognised its roots in early 1970s community art as well as its relationship with Fluxus. We crossed paths with many key cultural innovators and agitators, including Richard Demarco, Miranda Sawyer, Anthony H Wilson, Margi Clarke, Ladytron, Rene Block, Rirkrit Tirivanija, Wayne Hemingway, Bill Drummond, Jayne Casey, Anthony Minghella, Jeff Young, Sunetra Sarker, Kelly Mark, Chris Watson, Kim Ryan, Pavel Buchler, Mike McCartney, Otto Berchem, Foreign Investment and Gustav Metzger.
tenantspin was also about treating Liverpool as a playground and exploring the social and cultural mechanics of the city, chatting with politicians, ethical bankers, paranormal investigators, historians, architects, bookmakers, brewers, fire-arms licensers, auctioneers, landlords, security companies, health workers, retailers, Biennial organisers, philosophers (in pubs), cryonics companies, smart home designers and the emergency services.
We unearthed tenants that could write, sing, recite Russian literature or play the spoons. And Kirk Ward who played guitar for the doomed British entry on Eurovision in 2003. We offered artists opportunities to work with tenantspin to develop new films, songs, broadcasts or webcasts as the Liverpool landscape changed; the European Capital of Culture, the Biennial and Liverpool One. Some of the elderly tenants were rehoused or relocated. Younger tenants became involved. The HAT dissolved and we collaborated with Arena Housing. FACT moved into the newly built FACT Centre, seismic shifts and challenges for any community project.
24.10.2013 The opening night of The Incomplete Archive at FACT was a chance to reflect on parts of that journey from Coronation Court in 1999 through to the final webcast, a show that started fashionably late (no other way!) and warmed up around the technology-old-young debate.
Those issues were certainly part of tenantspin and integral to the original ideology that many of us held up over the years, but the project was
so much more than just that. As Patrick Fox said, it was also about using a wry humour to maintain the energy over many years, of
developing real relationships with people while keeping a trick or twist in store.
Mike Stubbs commented on its role in a pre-Relational Aesthetics cultural landscape. As Adele Myers said, it strove to remain a political project and Paul Stringer summed it up as being 'simply about the people.'
When invited by Mandy Romero to have the final word on the final webcast (which rightly turned out not to be the final word!) I talked about the importance of the format, the 'DIY TV Channel' model that allowed outspoken people, shy people, researchers,
eccentrics, film makers or story tellers all to contribute. Without that carefully constructed and managed model, tenantspin would not have attracted such a broad range of
people, as evidenced in The Box during the final show. It was always about a good blend, of the interesting spaces between people of different mindsets and of orchestrating situations in which people
were being creative without really realising it.
And from this is the second point, as Katie Lips noted and I reinforced, that what is left is a collection of high-quality content (moments of encounter) that
deserves to be further disseminated, rather than archived into a cupboard or website.
Within the project are a series of landmark commissions, many of which
I continue to present to contemporary art students; the BBC Radio 3 commission SuperBlock with Jeff Young and Skyray, Chris Watson's A Winter's Tale, Kelly Mark's Liverpool A-Z,
Foreign Investment's Sunday Matinee and The Bold Street Project for example. Our ParkLife CD included the lovely collaboration Michael on the
roundabout between Wibke Hott and the Liverpool Women's Hospital and a short story told by The Greenhouse Project reworked by local skate punk ensemble Walk The Plank as
The Stoory. The short collaboration between myself, Superflex and Rene Block, Never mind the blocks introduced the
SuperBlockRockingBeats CD. These are just a few examples I'm currently thinking about, but much of the content was in fact (no pun) very very good.
And of the future? Alongside resurrecting some of the commissioned content, writing about tenantspin from a more academic viewpoint will
be important and hopefully this is something that will happen, building upon previous articles such as the two pieces in Corridor 8.
Until more gets written, thanks to all those that made tenantspin such a brilliant project to work on and one of Britain's
most interesting community projects of the past twenty years. You have indeed been watching.
