Borreman

Title: Borreman

 

At: Hvitsten Artwalk, Hvitsten near Oslo, Friday 15.7.16

 

Concept: Folk rituals are a rich and historic manifestation of popular culture; a kind of people’s performance art. An extraordinary number are still observed in the British Isles, across every region and throughout the calendar. Many persist in mainland Europe; but in Scandinavia there are few, and in Norway almost none.

This performance transposes a performance from Britain to Norway.

 

The Burryman is a herring-charming ritual of east coast fishing communities in Scotland. A man chosen by vote is paraded around town wearing a bowler hat, balaclava and clothes completely covered in the small, spherical, velcro-like fruit of the Burdock plant and given whisky to drink through a straw in every pub. The thousands of burdocks needed must be collected only by the Burryman, and used while still green. He is forced to walk with his legs held apart and his arms extended, otherwise the burrs would cling to each other. The weight of the burrs is so great that he holds upright wooden staves to relieve the burden on his arms and shoulders.

 

Synopsis: The fruits of the burdock (Arctium lappa, genus Arctium, Norwegian: Storborre) were collected and attached, and the embellished performer appeared at an arts festival in a seaside village on the Oslofjord.

 

photo AW

Number Stations

 

I used to listen to these Cold War spy broadcasts in the late 60s and early 70s, on one of these, which was given to me by someone who captured it from a German unit in WWII and afterwards used it as a domestic radio. The British and DDR transmissions are jaunty, almost cheerful even, but at the same time have a sinister quality that all of the Number Stations output shares. My early enthusiasm for repetitive electronica made the appreciation of Kraftwerk a foregone conclusion.

Watercolours

On ladder plying hose, Ben Vautier

Watercolours, Musée d'Art Vivant, Nice, 6.7.81

"Conolly (sic), un performer du groupe de Liverpool genre Fluxus, réalise un merveilleuse petite pièce. Il s'installe sur le podium avec un chevalet et de la peinture à l'huile (sic) pour faire un paysage. Moi même sur un échelle un peu plus haut dans l'ombre avec un lance d'arrosage je l'arrose comme s'il pleuvait. Au fair et â mesure que son tableau se délaie â l'eau il le dechiré et en fait un autre. 7/10" - Ben Vautier's magazine 'Ben-Art', August 1981.

I contacted Ben when I was in the area to visit friends who were at the Fondation Karolyi artists' colony in Vence, and he invited me to come to his home in the hills above Nice. When I got there, he told me that it was the site of an international Fluxus convention that evening, that I was billed to appear as the official Fluxus artist representing Liverpool, and that I had two hours to come up with an idea. Using materials to hand, I said that I would paint the view at sunset in watercolours while he sprayed me and the easel with water, so that the image was constantly washed away and replaced as the light changed, eventually leaving a ghostly composite image to be torn off the pad and itself replaced.