Heard And Not Seen

Well, it’s been a little quiet here whilst we work on our other projects over at Friction Arts. We haven’t finished with Heard and not Seen, not by a long chalk and are continuing to refine and develop the project, even if it is not ‘in major’ at the moment. We are currently developing a kind of tool kit for workshops relating to the themes of the project and hope to be using it with schools and community groups in the Spring. We have also secured another outing for the exhibition of Heard and Not Seen, this time at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery during Spring 2010. Watch this space for full details nearer the time. We will be holding facilitated discussions during the show, so keep checking back, we will be booking spaces from next March.
We’ll also be updating this website more regularly from January 2010 as we head towards the exhibition and always welcome comments or questions from website visitors, just comment or contact us.

Sadly, but temporarily, the Heard And Not Seen exhibition has closed. Thanks to everyone that came along and suported the project, it’s been fantastic.  If you didn’t manage to make it along, there will be further chances to see the exhibition next year as we tour it to a range of places, from small community venues to galleries and museums.  Keep checking the exhibition page for details of future opportunities to see the show, where you can also get a taste of the exhibition through photographs and film documentation.  There’s currently a an excellent documentary film by a student, Cherrelle, who interviewed Sandra whilst the exhibition was on.  We’ll be uploading much more soon, but do try and come along and see the show next time, even if you have seen it before, as each incarnation will be different as the audience and website community feed into it.  Thanks again to everyone who supported and assisted on the production of the first outing of Heard And Not Seen, especially the excellent volunteer invigilation team, the crew, the artists, supporters and funders, the people who attended the discussion groups, and the participants of interviews and workshops.

Welcome to the ‘Heard and Not Seen’ blog and website. ‘Heard and Not Seen’ is an arts project by Sandra Hall and Mitra Memarzia supported by Friction Arts. The project aims to create a unique, safe space for people to meet and ask questions with each other, of each other; particularly about faith, religion and spirituality. More details about the project can be found here.

There’s only a few days left, the show closes on Friday the 28th at 7pm, so if you haven’t seen the exhibition, get yourself down to level three of the Mailbox and grab a look.  The show will be touring next year, so if you can’t make it, keep checking back here and we’ll let you know when there’ll be another chance to see the exhibition.

We’ve had a great time so far, with a huge range of people attending the show, interested parties and Mailbox shoppers.  The facilitated discussions have been a resounding success and have been great at giving people the opportunities to talk and ask questions of each other that we always intended for the project, the opportunity to be seen AND heard…

Welcome to the ‘Heard and Not Seen’ blog and website. ‘Heard and Not Seen’ is an arts project by Sandra Hall and Mitra Memarzia supported by Friction Arts. The project aims to create a unique, safe space for people to meet and ask questions with each other, of each other; particularly about faith, religion and spirituality. More details about the project can be found here.

We got down to the space to test out the installations today – and we were not disappointed.  We managed to get the layout of the space sorted out and pretty much had the structures where they will be in the final show next week.  Darren Joyce got to test out our surround sound system for the audio environment he has created for the project and we were all impressed with the result.  There’s a great sense of being somewhere else which Darren manages to engender in the listener, with a layered, moving soundscape that is at once familiar and comfortingly strange.

Sneak preview - with adjustments!

Had to obscure the structures in the photos – you wouldn’t need to come to the exhibition if I didn’t!

We also got our first look at some of Steve Carson’s amazing, responsive video projections – it was fantastic seeing the films and interviews with people around the space and incredible being able to interact with them.  We are all even more excited about the exhibition and really looking forward to seeing everyone else get a chance to join in.

Here’s Mitra talking about the exhibition:

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Heard and Not Seen news 24th October

Its all systems go at HANS HQ as we move into the final stages, before the launch of the exhibition on 7th of November.  The technical aspects are being finalised with Steve Carson putting the finishing touches to the responsive video pieces and Darren Joyce working on the audio environment – meanwhile Lee is running around making sure we have all the right technical equipment ready in time for testing the whole thing out. For the rest of us its the usual accellerating experience as we dive headlong into the last two weeks.  As well as putting the exhibition together there’s all the marketing and PR to do, to make sure we get our message across, event planning and logistics and just plain old putting food on the table (when we remember to eat).  We’re looking for volunteers to help with the event – both in the set up and to invigilate the exhibition, so if you can spare us some time and energy, please get in touch with Sandra at sandra@livearts.co.uk – we’d be glad of the help!

Countdown to the Exhibition

It’s only a few weeks to go until the launch of the exhibition at the Mailbox, on November 7th.  We’re all getting very excited and the creative team are beavering away to make what promises to be a very special, stunning piece of artwork.  Please make sure you don’t just come to the launch party, the show will be well worth a visit at a quiet time, when you can really enjoy the contemplative nature of the artwork on offer. Hope to see you there.

Photography workshop 20th September

We’d like to thank everyone who came to the Mailbox, Birmingham, unit 183, between 10.00am and 3pm last weekend to have their photograph taken. Some of these photos will appear in the exhibition ‘Heard and Not Seen’ in November.  We had a great time on the day and took hundreds of photographs of dozens of people from all walks of life – a great addition to the interactive nature of the project.  We’re looking forward to seeing these photographs appear in the final exhibition – and hope those who participated are too!

Interactive Arts Exhibition. ‘Heard and Not Seen’ is an interactive, art exhibition taking place at the Mailbox 7th – 28th November 2008. Opening times 10.00am – 6pm Monday to Wednesdays, 10.00am – 7pm Thursday to Saturday, 11.00am – 5pm Sundays. To be part of a round table discussion in the event please see here.

Installation Structures - Watch this space!