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Here are two videos of our Kristianstad performances on 11 and 12 April.

This one, from the 12 April, is by photographer Fredrik Grönwall (a number of whose photos I have used in my two previous postings) and was sent to us by Torjus Wrangell from Barbacka. To Frederick – a big ‘thankyou’ for your documentation of this event!

The video below is also from the second evening’s performance. We don’t know who made it as we just ‘found’ it on YouTube – so ‘thankyou!’ to the member of the Thursday night audience who made and posted it.

I don’t know if anyone took any video on the first evening (Wednesday 11 April) – but if so it would be nice to see it….
We really enjoyed our trip to Sweden and Tagtooling at this great location for outdoor drawing in Kristianstad – despite the rain!

For our second evening performance Torjus and Dima rigged up overhead cables so that we could position one projector on the other side of the street from our gazebo and get a projection area which, as the test image on the left shows, would cover all of the taller building.
By the evening the sky had clouded over, so instead of just mounting this projector on a tripod positioned on the pavement we fed the overhead cables through the window of our parked van and put the projector inside – which worked really well and turned out to be a very wise decision, as during the course of the evening it began to rain heavily.
But as the photos above show, the rain didn’t deter the audience from standing in the street to watch the whole performance!

Having this larger projection area covering the taller building was really great!


It allowed me more scope to develop my drawing and it was also easier to link images between the two projection areas.I was also able to incorporate the ‘real’ architecture into my drawing, making it into ruins with an archway where the shadow cast by a TV dish became a ball with a figure balancing on it…. which was great fun to do, and much more interesting than merely projecting on to a flat surface! To end the evening I drew this sequence of big black and white heads.
While I was able to shelter from the rain under the gazebo the audience was not so lucky, but even so people were taking photos with their mobiles…...and after the performance there was a lot of interest in the Tagtool with a number of people patiently waiting in the rain to ‘have a go’.

As well as having lots of photos from this visit to Kristianstad, I also have video of our performances which I will put in my next posting.

We were invited by Torjus Wrangell from the Barbacka Cultural Centre to do two outdoor Tagtool performances on the gable ends of buildings on a nice big corner site directly opposite Kristianstad art gallery and museum. This was a great location and an excellent opportunity for some large scale drawing!

The photos on the left show musician Leo, from the group Autotes, who accompanied our drawing.
And as you can see from the collage of photos below, Torjus and his crew were extremely well organised and professional, helping us to get everything set up and ready for our evening performances. We really did need all these gazebos to shelter the Tagtool and music equipment – by the time darkness fell it was raining hard!Torjus had asked photographer Fredrik Grönwall to document both evening performances and I also remembered to take a few photos when I wasn’t busy drawing, so now I have plenty of visual material to choose from for the blog.
Despite the wet weather a small audience gathered to see the projections and a reporter arrived also to do an interview and take photos for the local paper.
The photo above shows one of the Super8 film projections Dima made to accompany my drawing and below is a still from one of the short films by Skane film-maker, Anders Weberg that Torjus showed in the ‘interval’ between drawings.
These photos are from my final sequence of drawing on one of the buildings. Somehow, it seemed appropriate to end with a wintry scene to match the dark and wet evening!
In the photos below – the next morning the Kristianstad newspaper had this big photo (on the front page!) and inside a feature article about the Tagtool with more photos from our first evening performance – which was great publicity for our second evening performance!.

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On Friday 6 April we took over the Trafo Gallery in Prague for one night of art, music, and Tagtool performances. Our artist and musician friends from London, Berlin and Vienna who were staying with us for our spring party weekend joined with friends from Prague at this event which was part exhibition, part concert/performance and part just a good old- fashioned party!
Everyone lent a hand to set up all the equipment, put in place the installations and get ready for the evening performances – and soon the gallery was completely full of electronics, instruments and cables – as Dima said, ‘Look, it’s an installation already – with people!’

I didn’t take many photos for the blog during the evening and, as usual, most of them were not very good but I hope that this selection will provide at least some kind of record. (Note to self – next time don’t forget the documentation!)

Two ‘real’ installations, above by Ernst Altmann and below by Bego di Santiago.

These photos show Aldryn and Ade’s very interesting installation/projection in which they combined the video from this fish tank with Ade’s Tagtool drawing.

Below is one of my (unfortunately not very good!) photos that shows their visuals accompanying the performance by Berlin-based Metrobeat Allstars.
For their projections, Stefanie and Damian used old Super8 found footage.

The musical events of the evening began with performances by three of our friends from Vienna – Margaret Unknown, Idklang and Kajkyt.
And here is one of my better photos – Olivia Pils’ performance as ‘Fakemistress’ with Schmacke, from Berlin with my Tagtool drawing in the background.
Below is my visual for the finale of the performance by K.U.N.T.Z., a band with whom we have done Tagtool performances on a number of occasions.
Then it was partytime for all – DJs Stevie Weenie and Rubbergums at the helm!
It seemed like everyone who came to ‘Transformania!’ had a good time – so a big ‘thankyou’ to everyone who took part, to all our artist and musician friends, to the Lunchmeat crew who helped Dima with the preparations and, last and most definitely not least, to our ‘soundman’ Jakub.
And to end this post, here are some of Dragan’s photos of my Tagtooling…

Although I haven’t done any postings for a week or two it is not because we haven’t been Tagtooling – I just haven’t had time to write up the blog and I now have lots of photos to sort through from our recent work!

I will be doing some postings in the next few days (I hope!)
Here is a summary of our Tagtool activities for this month.

Friday 6 April – our big spring event – ‘Transformania!’ in Prague.
Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 April – Outdoor Tagtool performances in Kristianstad, Sweden.
Sunday 15 to Tuesday 17 April – Tagtool performances at the Writers’ Festival in Prague.

So – more postings ARE coming soon!

Last Saturday we were invited to do a Tagtool performance at the event entitled ‘Unorthobox’, organised by Passenger Films and The Brick Box at Tooting Market.We had not been to view the venue beforehand and didn’t really know what the space would be like, only that it was an old indoor market that regularly hosted art and community events ‘after hours’. The evening programme consisted of a number of performances and installations with the theme of ‘light and visual interventions’ and a large and enthusiastic audience gathered for this event. Unfortunately, as it took us some time to set up and test our equipment I wasn’t able to see many of the other performances and during the evening I was only able to take a few photos of our work.Because there were lots of different shops and stalls lining the narrow aisles of the market it was not possible to find a position to make the long panoramic projection we had planned to do; instead Dima set up our three projectors to beam onto the metal shutters of some of the closed shop fronts.Although this collage of projections worked quite well, when people were walking past it wasn’t always always possible for me to see what I was drawing!Another problem was that the two musicians who were supposed to play while I was drawing were some distance away from me. Because of noise restrictions in the evening they were not allowed to be amplified – which meant that above the buzz of audience conversation they were completely inaudible.With such an interesting array of instruments is was so sad that they could not be heard – and I found that this lack of musical accompaniment made drawing more difficult too! But despite these problems, after the performance several people came to have a closer look at the Tagtool, wanted to know more about how it worked and said how much they had enjoyed the performance – which in the end made it all worthwhile.

Recently, on the homepage of the Tagtool website, there was a posting by gnu (Joseph Dorninger of the Tagtool ‘family’) that brings together a lot of photos and videos covering performances that we have done over the past year with the psychedelic rock band Supra+ from Austria. Most of the photos and videos I’ve published elsewhere on the blog but this article brings them all together and gives a very complete picture of the kind of collaboration between musicians and Tagtool artists that has been the principal focus of our work to date. In some of the videos it’s just me doing the drawing; in others I’m joined by Maki or Itzi – which always makes for really exciting improvisation and ‘visual conversations’, one of the many nice features of drawing with Tagtool!

Here is Dima’s video of the drawing that I did last Saturday in Prague. It compresses what was several hours of drawing into one and a half minutes!

The soundtrack is ‘Blues Ain’t Dry’ by Stefan Grossman.

Below is the stop frame video Dima made and projected at the wedding reception of the the caterers assembling the centrepiece for the wedding buffet – it’s not drawing live, rather ‘painting’ or collage with food, but as this ‘edible mandala’ was so unusual and spectacular, I thought I’d post it here.

On Saturday we were invited to do some Tagtooling as part of the entertainment for guests at a wedding reception being held in this beautiful early Baroque palace in the centre of Prague.We arrived in the morning before the wedding ceremony began. Dima set up our Tagtool and projectors and tested everything in readiness for our performance.

In the afternoon the programme opened with a puppet theatre for the children.
Then, led by the bride and groom, the guests went upstairs.

There was a very spectacular display of Mexican dancing….…and afterwards downstairs a beautifully presented Mexican themed buffet followed by an evening party with live bands and DJs.

In the two large interconnecting salons where the bands and DJs were playing there was a great party atmosphere with both children and adults joining in the fun. (The fairground motor car especially, was a huge success!)During the course of the evening I made several drawing sequences and here are a few stills that I took with my little camera.Dima will make a video of my Tagtool drawing for me to put in the next posting.

Here is Dima’s first 360° video! The sharp eyed will notice that the images are reversed because the video is captured from the reflections in the silver ball…
Dima says, ‘Look out for more 360° experiments – coming soon!’