Tape Modern got evicted. We were aware that it will come soon but the beliefs and security came a week earlier than our sources let us believe, so we were taken off guard. In an ideal world, we would have been ready, reinforced the barricades and knowing where we would move. Alas, we only had a list of possible buildings we could move into, but we had not done our research on them yet. It turned out none of them was viable so we ended up house hunting while part of the crew stood watch for all our gear. In the end, we only spent one night under the sky and it didn’t even rain. 

Naturally, we wanted to get indoors as soon as possible, so once we found a half suitable building we moved in. The moving process in itself was quite a hassle. In our last eviction, moving from the Cozy to the Naan Bakery the distance between buildings was less than a 100 meters. Our crew and the gallery don’t have our own van yet, so most of the stuff needed to be moved by hand. (Many many thanks to Zoe who came to help us with her van and everyone else who came to our aid.) Luckily our new building wasn’t too far, 1,2 miles according to Google maps, but with all the gallery equipment, tools, scaffolding, kitchen, everyone’s personal stuff, lights, amps, band gear, instruments and our swap shop of up-cycled treasures, the mountain of stuff felt quite overwhelming in comparison to the size of our crew. 

The new building was gorgeous and massive! It seemed to be in good shape and our minds instantly saw the possibilities of the vast open space. On top of that, it still had the luxury of many private rooms for bedrooms. 

After spending a night in our new building we realised that we can only get electricity for half of it and no water. The worst surprise though was to find that the supporting columns of the warehouse are rotten which makes the building too unsafe to stay in. This all means that we are trying to find a better place as soon as possible.

I would also like to acknowledge, raise awareness and send solidarity to another active squat in Manchester: the crew staying in Ancoats was evicted last weekend in a horrible display of unprovoked violence and brutality. Young women were dragged out of their beds half naked, spat on and slandered. Verbal abuse, broken ribs, jaw, knee and some bruises were the overall damage on the crew. The security company and beliefs were stepping over their legal bounds and assaulted unarmed people taken off guard in their home. Naturally, squatters can expect evictions, that’s how it goes, but this was a horrific display of misuse of power and authority. Plain brutality distributed by the authorities that we are supposed to trust to enact the law. It was despicable.

Solidarity and love to the whole crew! Luckily they had a place checked out beforehand and they got a safe place to sleep after the horrible eviction. 

I will write follow-ups on this incident since this kind of criminal behaviour must be held to account and this will not be the end of it. This all needs a more thorough analysis once we have settled in and have had time to chew on what happened.

In the meantime, other news on the gallery:

We have managed to get a sponsor for a Tape Modern gallery van! We are currently on a short hiatus to find a good home and to craft the most amazing and well-equipped van for our mobile studio/gallery. Stay tuned! Our next show will be coming up in the autumn and we’ll keep you posted. 

Before we move on to transforming the space back to an artist studio, there’s still a few things about the show we would like to share with you:

Last Friday we had a small event at the gallery: altercation by enne&moffa was performed for the second and last time. We had a small but a lovely crowd to experience the work and the wine with us. I don’t usually repeat a performance so it was an interesting and new experience for me as well. It was lovely to hear the thoughts of our gallery visitors and by the sounds of it, people enjoyed the experience.

So that’s a wrap. Life at the studio will continue as usual. We decided to close the show early due to an expected eviction, but it looks like we get to stay at least a bit longer. Since we never know how long we get to stay and where, we won’t give any promises of the time or location of our next exhibition, but I can promise this: It will happen. Before that though, we are looking forward to our series of public place performances taking place all over Manchester. We’ll keep you posted.

Here are a few pictures from Friday and a documentation video of altercation from the preview. Thank you to SB Cooper Films for the footage.

See the documentation video on Vimeo

I am very excited about this exhibition! It will be the first one we do with our new space, the artists we have lined up are interesting and I love the works we’ll have the privilege to show.

Naturally, we need to keep in mind that we might be evicted at any point. We have plans in place of how to get all the works safely to the next building and how to keep the ball rolling if this would happen. Because of this, we are doing this on a very tight schedule, hoping that we get to stay in this building for the whole duration of the show. Of course, I wish that we could stay for a long time since we have finally got it to run smoothly and I am utterly in love with the space.

But without further a do, let me introduce our artists:

Nicola Ellis
www.nicolaellis.com/context/

Nicola Ellis (b.1987, St Helens) currently lives and works in Manchester. She studied BA hons Fine Art at The University of Central Lancashire and following this, completed an MA in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art. In recent years she has undertaken research projects including Sculpture: A Fabrication(2017), which focused on the mechanics of large scale sculptural commissioning, and Play/Pause: the turbulent history of UK steel (2016). She is currently undertaking an open door residency at ACA and The North Pennines Observatory. She is also doing a placement in manufacturing in order to produce a commission for The National Festival of Making in Blackburn. Her work recently featured in exhibitions including; From A to C, this being B. Caustic Coastal, Salford. Da Vinci Engineered, Zebedees Yard, Hull; It’ll Hold Until It Breaks (solo exhibition), Platform A Gallery, Middlesbrough; More room for error (touring solo exhibition), Arcadecardiff, Cardiff, &Model Gallery, Leeds & Bloc Projects, Sheffield; You won’t see that bit anyway (solo exhibition), 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, UK; Head to Head: Nicola Ellis and Aura Satz, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK; Part of the Programme, FAFA Gallery, Helsinki; and Cabedal, Plataforma Revolver, Lisbon. 

Riikka Enne
www.riikkaenne.com

Riikka Enne (b. 1990, Tampere) lives and works in Manchester. She studied her BA in Fine Art in Tampere School of Art (2014) and continued to her MFA in Manchester School of Art (2016). Enne works in sculpture and performance: Her work examines the gap between an individual’s experience and the tensions of society through found objects seen as revealing residue of human life, concentrating on materiality and restrictions. Recently she exhibited in Disponere, 5th Base Gallery, London; Femfest, Tanner Street, London and Pittsburgh Performance Festival (PGHPAF), Pittsburgh; Emergency Break Glass, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester. Most recently her work has been visible as public space performances across Manchester. 

Matt Girling
www.mattgirlingartist.tumblr.com
www.instagram.com/subsurfacepondwater/

Mutabase
www.mutabase.net/
www.mutabase.bandcamp.com/releases

Review by silent radio: “With Strange Friends off the stage, the next act to wow us is Mutabase, she is incredible! I would say she is a performance artist in her own right and she captures the crowd with her haunting voice and impressive songs. She completely owns the stage, and calls herself a “DIY electro punk rocker.” With a few gigs already under her belt it seems today is the biggest one to date which is hard to believe. I can see Cristi becoming a big star and I would buy tickets to her next gig in a heartbeat.”

Sophia Moffa
www.sophiamoffa.com/

Sophia Moffa (b. 1994 Rome) is interested in the relations and tensions between the body, and the socio-political and technological events surrounding society. Initially working intuitively, experimenting and negotiating within her settings and materials, her works question topics surrounding existentialism, the human condition and modern ethics. She mainly works in performance, video and sculpture to materialize the concepts, and has exhibited in the UK, Italy, Singapore and Egypt.

Willow Rowlands
www.willowrowlands.com

We have had two events in the studio, they were like pilot runs of how to move everything quickly and transform the space to suit any kind of event the crew has planned. The other side of the building is living quarters, so combining the event space and the studio is really the only viable option. Not necessarily the most convenient solution, but so far, I have found that every time I had to move my sculptures and materials they have ended up back in the studio in a different way. As if every move was contributing to the process.

So far, there are only four of us working in the studio more or less consistently. I don’t want to crowd the space by having too many people, but we could do with a few more. Our model is still the same as it was supposed to be back in Cozy; we have a few people who have their own working stations in the studio and any one from the community who wants to do a project, build something or just needs a practice space can come in and if they need help or tools we will provide it. We have had a few people come in to do things, building carts and boxes but I think we need to get the word out more now that we have got the space up and running smoothly.

On the other hand, the thoughts about what we wanted for modestly ambitious didn’t quite work in this space. The squat seemed like too precarious a frame to invite artists from very far especially if we couldn’t pay for their travel expenses. Also, having a lot of big heavy machinery for the workshops would not work in the squat if we had to move all the time. Personally, the thought of an eviction wasn’t fully real to me, since the crew had had conversations with the owner of the building and apparently he had religious reasons why he did not want to evict us. I gathered that is a fairly safe position to be in. Alas, I was wrong.

We had just finished our space and I had managed to get some bits and bobs together for my own sculptures, but didn’t have anything quite finished. I had a studio visit approaching fast. I was going to be part of an exhibition coming up in Castlefield Gallery in July and my first studio visit with the curators Ian Rawlinson and Michael Penderguss were going to be on the nineteenth of April. On the 18th, I got a call at 7 am that we were being evicted and I should run to the squat to get my gear out of the building. I am the worst morning person but that got me up quick.

Sophia and I went to the Cozy straight away. By the time we got there, the eviction was well on its way. The first words I heard were that we had less than an hour to vacate the premises and that they got in through our basement door. I felt utterly stupefied: all that hard work we put into fixing up the place, all the work that the crew had done to make that place their home and a place to facilitate art, music and all the other activities they hosted there. All of it was gone. Not only that, I felt horrified and guilty because our door had been the one they got threw, whereas the front door barricades withstood an axe. We had fiddled with that door just a few days before, didn’t open it but we were looking at how to get it open and build a new barricade behind it so we could open and close it safely whenever we needed to. Apparently, that door had never been able to be opened by anyone so we were investigating on how to do it. I was struck with guilt by the thought that we might have done something to give them easier access knowing very well how paramount secure barricades were at the squat. This was the first eviction I was part of and I was utterly shocked and on top of that, I was panicking because I was supposed to have a studio visit there to show my work the very next day! The crew though, were not. They told me how it wasn’t my fault, that the bailiffs would’ve got in any way. Despite just losing their home, they were consoling me and promising they’d find another building by the evening and I had nothing to worry about for my studio visit. Jamil gave me a beautiful speech about how these things happen, telling me stories about earlier evictions and how they always found their feet. Buildings come and go, but because the people stay, whatever we are doing will be taken over to the next building and the one after that. So I put my faith in the crew.

In the end, we got more than an hour to carry out our things, as long as we needed actually. The security guards and the bailiffs helped us carry out some of the gear as well. It seemed to me that they were genuinely saddened to throw us out. By 5pm, the crew had found a new place they had been scouting for a while, a beautiful old naan bread bakery less than 100m from our original building, which was convenient since the amount of gear we had was astounding: lights, instruments, amps, kitchens, bedrooms, tools, materials, tents, decorations and everyone’s personal belongings. A solidarity call was sent to other squatters in Manchester and throughout the day we had loads of people coming in to help us carry things and occupy the new building.
Taking over the new building went very smoothly. There was some excitement when we realised that the building was owned by the same person who owned Cozy and he was outraged at us. He came over personally, took photos and video of us and tried to evict us straight away with the court order for Cozy’s address. The crew calmly explained to him that we have a legal right to stay on these premises and that his court order does not apply to this address. He insisted on calling the police but when they showed up, they only confirmed that we were right and wished us a good day. Later in the day when the police got off their shift, they swung by to see that we were ok and the security guards brought us pizza, profusely apologizing for having to through us out. Even today they sometimes bring us fruits and all kinds of food. I was surprised by the solidarity and wondered at this weird balance of squatters and authorities charged by evicting us and keeping us in line, but who actually are not very keen to see it through. I heard stories of evictions going down in very different ways, sometimes they get out of hand and had violent altercations. I wonder how big of a difference it made to the attitudes of the authorities that most of us talked to them like people to people and that it was an event squat where very clearly people had made a great effort to build something for themselves.

Once the building was secured, we got to work again. Bringing everything in and looking around. Half of the crew stayed up and helped me to clear the other side of the building that they had thought to become the studio and event space. After the space was cleared I started making new work. I slept two hours that night, but by the time of my studio visit the next day, the space was a studio and I was quite happy with the work I had done. It was an exhausting 24 hours, but it was so amazing! I was struck by the attitudes and spirits of the squatters to carry on, the solidarity and the way everyone came together to make it all work. After that day, I was even more convinced that I had ended up in a place with people I really wanted to stay with. Don’t get me wrong, there are loads of people with difficult pasts, mental health and substance abuse problems so the social setting is not always functional or harmonies, but people are so acutely themselves that I just appreciate any challenges to be a necessary part of the whole of it. Mostly though, I have met interesting, talented, smart and beautiful people. Some of them have come to the squats as a political act, some have come because there is nowhere else to go. I’m not going to make any effort to simplify or summaries it all since there seem to be as many reasons for people to squat as there are squatters.

After all this, many evictions followed that week. Other squats all over Manchester were evicted barely days apart and many of them ended up temporarily into our new building since we had loads of space. The piles and piles of peoples things took over the studio, people slept anywhere and everywhere and naturally everything to do with the studio stood still because peoples housing and comfort always comes first. Amongst all this though, Bald Paul threw in a comment of how I should call the studio Tape Modern since that’s the first aid fix to anything, loads and loads of gaffa tape. It gave me a good laugh, but the more I thought about it, the better it was and the name stuck. Tape Modern was born even though it took a few weeks before I actually got to any work.

This is the first post of a new gallery and studio space founded by Riikka Enne and Sophia Moffa: Tape Modern. Tape Modern is a mobile gallery, currently collaborating with a squatting crew Love C.O.Ps [Community Occupied Properties] and operates in various buildings in Manchester. Love C.O.Ps are dedicated to hosting events that are open to all and everyone.
I should start from the beginning: Sophia, myself and a third friend of ours, a fellow artist Katerina Eleftheriadou, founded a collective called modestly ambitious. The goal was to find a studio space where we could also host exhibitions and build workshops for wood and metal with all proper equipment, but most importantly, we wanted to start an international artist residency to have an exchange with artists from all over the world. We did a crowdfunding campaign in the autumn of 2017 to have a little nest egg for our new initiative to get us off the ground. We had our eyes on a specific building, an old GP’s practice in Miles Platting that had been empty for a few years. The building was owned by the city council so we approached them only to hear the sad news that the building would be taken down the very next month. But since we had a conversation channel open with the city council, we started the council supported process to get another council-owned space. The only problem was, we could get started in our new space in a year. Naturally, we couldn’t wait that long, so we started searching for other affordable options.
Cutting a long story short, we found Love C.O.Ps, who kindly offered us the basement floor of their building as a studio if we cleared it out and offered project space and assistance to anyone who wanted to work in the space. The building was a gorgeous old knitwear mill with four floors in all. The building was casually called Cozy, short for Cozy Dragon which was the name of the pirate ship that the squatters had built in the event space.
The basement was a beautiful space, but it had been used as a tip for the squats rubbish and due to some unattended leaks it took quite some time and hard work to make the space up to a functional studio.

In the vast open space, the amount of rubbish didn’t seem like that much but we cleared three full vans of bin bags, rubble, carpeting and loads more. Luckily, through gracious donations, we also collected two vans full of furniture, brand new carpet, wood and all sorts of bits and bobs.
I got a lot of help from some of the crew members, one that should be specially mentioned is Paul. He was cleaning with me almost every day and often when I arrived at the studio, he was already at work. Paul has now become our gallery technician. Another person who should also be mentioned is Triky. He fixed the electricity into the studio. Not an easy task since the building was squatted sometimes before we came there and some bits of wire were missing so the greatest challenge was to try and follow all the wires and figure out which cables brought electricity to where. But all that got sorted. After two weeks the rubbish was cleared out, we had electricity on all sockets and lights and the only thing left was the fun part; building working areas, a little kitchen and bringing in our own tools, materials and all our studio gear.

There are more stories to tell from the early days; all the events held there during the time, people coming in and out, the squat life in general to be honest, seems to be full of stories! I’ll start a thread later, titled the Memories from Cozy to show more images and get to the details of things, but for now, this is the beginning in a nutshell. We got the studio to a point where we could start doing our art but we didn’t get to enjoy it for long, full two days…