The other side of our ethos was the questions around public space, who is allowed to use it and for what. UK is notorious for having a lot of private land amidst the city centers and most every where, spotted around the public parks and footpaths. In preparation to the event, we tried to get permits for every performance and in this mission, the biggest hurdle seemed to be the council on how to use public space; some areas of the city centre are not permitted for people to use for events like this, for security reasons. Piccadilly Gardens is heavily policed and so instead of art or citizens activities, the town centre is a place of surveillance. Other areas can only be booked if they are paid for and the smallest structure requires insurance which pricing starts at 1700£. Leafleting needs a printed materials distribution permit unless you are a charitable, political or a religious organization.
As you might have guessed, we did not get all our permits. Either because we could not pay for it or because we couldn’t find our way through the kafkaesque bureaucracy in time.
We informed all the artists of these rogue elements and for some, the day involved some negotiating with private security companies and the police. Everybody got to present their performances in full even though Kun Fang and Youngsook Choi had to move to a new location but in the case of Maria Orengo, the security guards took part in her performance by writing on a post-it note. Thank you for all our artists for being flexible and adventures! Based on our conversations in the evening’s shindig at the Soup Kitchen, the interactions with the public and even being moved seemed to add a lot to the work and was not entirely a bad thing when one is sensitive and quick to readjust the work based on the surrounding reactions. Less control, more improvisation. For many of the artists, this was their first time performing outside in the streets and happily, the experience seemed to get them curious for more.
The performances seemed to arouse the curiosity of locals if social media feeds can be taken as an indication; The most common question was simply, what is this? The most interesting comments and questions by far where the critical questions and views on the works. Personally, I would like to say a special thank you to Dave the Rave from Picadilly Rats, who with his friends who wanted to stay anonymous, posed the most challenging questions on Tim Knights piece “This home has a heartbeat”. It is vital for artists to consider the ethics of their work where the line between social commentary and raising awareness for social issues gets blurred by the risk of appropriating someone else’s struggle or advancing one’s own career by showing light on people in vulnerable positions. There are no easy answers when boundaries are searched and pushed. Homelessness is a massive issue not only in Manchester but in the whole UK, and as a squatter and as a part of Tape Moderns practicalities (functioning in occupied properties and public space), we touch on it very often. The right for housing, in our eyes, is a human right. I am grateful that the Market Street rough sleepers came to say their piece about how they viewed the art that directly commented on their precarious situations.

Once again, thank you to all our artists John Carney, Youngsook Choi, Claire Doyle, Kun Fang, Amy Guilfoyle, Tim Knight, Maria Orengo and Jade Williams. Thank you to all our volunteering squatters for legal aid and expertise in dealing with the autorities, thanks to all our documentors and thank you to the memberrs of the public who came to engage with the art and the artists.

A collaboration between Scaffold Gallery and Tape Modern presents, Allure of Sorts.
We are holding a one one-day performance festival where performances will ripple across Manchester city centre. We invite the use of architecture, history, the cityscape and relation with the social landscape of activity. This project was born out of a need to be within life, to not be exclusive.

The event will probe on the uselessness but essentiality of art and what is the accepted use of public space; What is space and how do we occupy it? Is the white box tired? How does performance art operate in public space? Our largest pool of witnesses will be the people passing by or stopping to share the space with us and to wonder, what it is that they are actually seeing.

The artists involved will explore a variety of themes including social history, absurdity and homelessness.

Featuring new performances by

John Carney
www.johncarneyart.com

Youngsook Choi
www.youngsookchoi.com

Claire Doyle
www.clairedoyleart.com

发自我的华为手机 (Kun Fang)
www.kunfang.be

Amy Guilfoyle
www.facebook.com/AGEconceptualartist

Stefan Klein
www.stefanklein.org/

Tim Knight
www.timknight.live

Maria Orengo
www.mimi3901.com/mjamorengo

Katie Shevlin
www.katieshevlin.co.uk

Jade Williams
www.instagram.com/dance_or_die_with_jade

Free event
Follow @allureofsorts #allureofsorts on Instagram and Facebook.
Find our Facebook event here. Keep an eye out on it for we will be posting a map with all the perfromance locations and times within the next few days.

After a few weeks, somehow the drabness of the building settled on the people. This was not a good time for us, so we took some time to figure out how we look after one another and how does the crew function as a community. This lead to some restructuring and part of our crew ended up merging with the bigger group, myself and Tape Modern included.
We took a new building with our new crew and it is perfect for us! We could do with more space since there are so many of us, but it’s in a fairly good condition and we still have a lot of communal and workshop space. The building used to be a radio station and a club. Our studio is in the loading bay bar, take a look:

It is an excellent space! That’s the long-story-short version of how we ended up in this building with a different crew and what our new place is like, now to Art News!

We have a new van! It is a beautiful (in all honesty it’s a bit battered second hand, but it is what we need), 2012 long wheel base Ford Transit. I am currently making a conversion plan to transform it into a “mobile studio gear and temporary accommodation”- solution. Unfortunately I can’t start the building itself in this space, we can’t drive vans in, but the next building will be chosen with that in mind.
It’s not only the conversion we can’t do right now. We can’t really facilitate an exhibition in this building either, so unfortunately the next show will be pushed to next year.

It’s not just because of the building; enne&moffa has been very busy with happenings/performance and it has definitely taken a toll on Tape Modern’s exhibition program. But it seems there is a time and a place for everything.
We have had a fantastic autumn with showing work and we are looking forward to enne&moffa’s upcoming performances, like the Dhaka Live Art Biennale. (If you want to know more about the work of enne&moffa, the dyad behind Tape Modern, take a look at what we’ve been up to while the gallery has been downshifting: enne&moffa

Even though we didn’t do an autumn show, the gallery hasn’t been in complete silence! We had the pleasure to be part of peace of video art by Finnish artist Aimo Hyvärinen. Him and his team are making a video installation and then possibly a documentary about artists working in peculiar conditions and the storage, moving and handling of works of art. We had a lovely day at the studio with David Malcolm Chapman and one of his students Gui who came to film us in the current studio. Since we had just moved into our new building there was not all that much to show in terms of finished work, but since we were in the process of some inventory it turned out to be a good time for their shoot. We had a lovely time chatting about the conditions of other artists and art world professionals they had interviewed while making this work, shared past experiences, talked about lost work, funny mishaps in evictions and other squat stories. Enne&moffa and Tape Modern thank everyone involved and thank Aimo for having us to be part of the peace. We are very much looking forward to seeing the installation in Helsinki in the autumn 2019. We’ll keep you all posted on that.

On a more personal note, there has also been a major change in my life, which was letting go of my flat. I have been working and part-time living in occupied properties since June, but since I had mandatory time left on my contract I had to keep my flat till last month. It feels very different living here without having my apartment, but I don’t feel homeless. This is good.

From the midst of all this flux, I apologize for not delivering the autumn show we promised but not to worry; there will be a next show and it will be a good one! We have loads of plans with Tape Modern and we’ll let you in on them as soon as the time is right. Till the end of the year though, there won’t be much to report. I’ll try to coax a guest article from Sophia for the next entry. Maybe she can give a little inside scoop of what’s been going on with the happenings and what was up with all that jam. If this tickled your curiosity, stay tuned.

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

[See image gallery at tapemodern.org]