No place - Some place

“No place–Some place” was produced for the Liverpool Biennial exhibition WALK ON, curated by Bryan Biggs of the Bluecoat Arts Centre Liverpool, for the 6th International Shanghai Biennale, 05/09/06 – 05/11/06 The work developed from cultural exchanges, e.g., Loop-Pool, Loop-Pool II and “in different places”, linking people at a local and global level experiencing large scale changes to their urban and social fabric, was recognised as relevant to the Biennale taking place in Shanghai, Liverpool’s sister city. However, at this point, Actor Network Theory (Latour) is now guiding e-space lab’s activities, shifting its focus away from the specifics of mediated technology as an artistic tool, and towards the social and cultural contexts and the practices of everyday life, where questions of connection and representation become linked. Actor network theory (heterogeneous engineering) and non-representation theory have reconfigured our research questions, especially in examining participatory roles of the audience in this virtual context. The piece in Shanghai was a three-screen work showing DVD loops on either side of a central e-space distal mediation space, essentially documenting e-space concepts and processes. On the penultimate day of the Biennale (05/11/06) a further event in which audiences in Liverpool connected with those in Shanghai negotiate a real time walk through of the Citic Square exhibition, Shanghai, whilst observed by an audience at the A Foundation (Independents Biennial), Liverpool. This was developed in a follow-up exchange at the Out of the Bluecoat space and The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Café in Shanghai on 10/03/07. The final upshot of this phase included an event at BBC Radio Merseyside on 07/07/07 where the audience included Yellow House members from Liverpool