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Now we are back from our travels it’s catch up time for the blog!

Last Wednesday we were invited to perform as part of the programme organised by Max Bogner at Fluc Wanne, a club in the centre of Vienna. We provided the visuals to accompany Max, who was playing with the band Dr Katz; Maki and Iink with Anneka Lund were Tagtooling with our friends Weisse Waende. This is Maki’s very nice Tagtool-drawn lettering announcing their performance. It was a really great evening with very interesting performances from all the groups – but it was a very difficult location for drawing! Most of the club is below ground, formed from a disused motorway underpass with mostly black painted concrete walls, a long narrow bar opening onto a square performance area and a steeply raked stage rising almost to the roof – great for atmosphere, but where to project, where to set up the Tagtools?
The only solution was to beam one projector on the wall alongside the stage with the other covering the performers and the narrow strip of wall to the ceiling behind the stage. Dima managed to find a corner to set up the video camera, but meantime here is a collage of stills that I took of Maki and Iink’s session with Weisse Waende.Here is one of the many photos that Dima took of Weisse Weande. Unfortunately he didn’t take any photos of my drawing, so many thanks to Maki, who took the photos below of the session.

We were invited to do a Tagtool performance at the opening of the exhibition, ‘Utopia on the Abyss’,  curated by Mark Divo at the Veletržní palác.  The music for the opening was played by the Swiss musician and composer, Martin Andersson and the performance took place within Mark’s ‘Inhabited Sculpture’ installation in the exhibition. As the photo above shows, because of the combination of the ambient light within the gallery and the fact that the projection area above Mark’s installation was painted a dark plum-grey colour, it was virtually impossible to create any really vibrant colour in the Tagtool drawing. This was a pity as I would have liked to produce some lighter and brighter images to accompany Martin’s most enjoyable and accomplished performance.
I only managed to take this one image during what was quite a long drawing session but below here is one of Dima’s photos and also the video that he made for me.

The Veletržní palác is the impressive Functionalist building that  houses the 20C and 21C collections  of the National Gallery of Prague. As the organiser of the international project, ‘Spare Time. Utopias on the Verge of Commonness’  which  ‘focuses on those aspects of culture, which find a place beyond the borders of traditional institutions and genres in modern and post-modern times’, the gallery currently is hosting six exhibitions organised by curators from the participating countries.  Click here for the link to all the information about this exhibition, which runs until 13 November.

This video has already appeared on the Lunchmeat site and also on the front page of tagtool.org so I think that most people who are interested in all things Tagtool will have seen it already!

I decided to put it on the blog as well as this provides me with an opportunity to say a big ‘thankyou’ to everyone who helped to make taking part in this festival such a fun experience, specially to the Lunchmeat Festival organisers, Kuba and Ondra, and to the staff at DOX Gallery. It was also great to have the Red Bull car with its powerful generator and sound system for the projector bombing sessions (I am definitely going to put a mobile generator on my Christmas present wish-list this year………Dima, please note!)

Last but not least, very special thanks to Vladimir Turner for making this video – it certainly makes a difference to have a professional video artist to document one’s work! I very much appreciated Vladimir’s dedication, continuing to film even in the pouring rain, in order to record all the projector bombing sessions! To check out other videos on his website click here.

By the time that Dima had all the band’s instruments, electronic equipment, Tagtools and projectors set up on the terrace at Liquid Studios there was simply no room for another tripod to video the performances – which was a pity since, as happened last year, now I have only got the few photos that I took with my little camera.Most are like this one (the test drawing Maki did while Dima was setting up the projectors) – all out of focus and too dark! For our performances I was drawing with Maki, using two Tagtools and three projectors, with Supra+ providing the music. Although everything had worked perfectly in the studio equipment test in the afternoon, on Friday night for some reason my Tagtool didn’t want to start and I had a few anxious minutes before Dima managed to get it going.There was a big audience eagerly waiting for the session to begin but fortunately Maki was able to draw with his Tagtool and one projector in the centre of the screen while Dima restarted my computer and plugged and unplugged various cables in order to find out what was wrong and get my Tagtool to work.Meantime I went down to the street where took the photo below to show the reverse image of the Tagtool drawing on Ash’s big fabric screen floating in the sky across the lane.When I came back up the stairs the terrace was packed!Supra+ started to play, Dima got my Tagtool working and finally Maki and I were able to draw together!
Needless to say, after the performance the partying went on till late….

Lots of people in the audience were taking photos, some with cameras, others holding up their mobile phones so if anyone reading this blog has photos of our performance – please let me know!

On the Saturday night I decided that I wouldn’t attempt to take any photos at all. This turned out to be a good decision as there was an even bigger crowd than there had been on Friday and after Maki and I finished our drawing session with Supra+ the London group, The Coolness, did a set and asked me to draw for them too. This was fun – but I was really exhausted by the end of the evening! Afterwards I asked our friend Aimee if she had some photos of our session – like mine, they are rather dark and not in focus, but here are a few – they are the only record I have of what was a really great Hackney WickED weekend!

This was our second year at the Hackney WickED Festival and, as last year, we planned two evenings of live Tagtool drawing, making the projections from the roof terrace of Liquid Studios. This year, however, we invited a group of artist friends from Germany and Austria, as well as some old friends from London, to exhibit work at the studios and perform with us. So – everyone was ready to get together and have a good time, but first, as always, there was the hard work of preparing the roof terrace for the evening Tagtool performances.Ash had this enormous length of white material in his workshop (much better than the screen that we used last year!) and he masterminded fastening it on to a wire using plastic clothing tags, hoisting it up between the buildings in the lane and holding it taut with bungee ropes to form a spectacular wide screen of cinemascope proportions.Because we were performing with a live band and using two Tagtools and three projectors it was essential to erect some form of roof to protect both performers and equipment from the weather. We bought a big tarpaulin from the local builders’ merchant and, with the architectural know-how and nautical skills of Barry and Philip, there was soon erected this elegant temporary ‘roof’ over one end of the terrace, which cast a very nice cool shade in daytime as well as serving as a protection from any rain that might fall during the performances.The next job was to get the drum set and all the other music and electronic equipment in place……while at the other end of the terrace Vlad and our friends from Germany prepared the bar.This seems the right place to say a very big ‘thank you!’ to everyone who helped in these preparations – and also to all of our friends who worked so hard serving at the bar throughout the weekend – it was your combined efforts that helped to ensure the success of this event!

In this video we are providing the visual accompaniment of video and Tagtool drawing for the music that Anja Kaufmann composed for her performance at the Echofluxx Festival of New Music and Media Art held at Trafačka Arena, Prague on Friday 15 July 2011. Although this took place a number of weeks ago it is only now that Dima has had an opportunity to sort out and upload the backlog of videos from all of our recent Tagtool performances.

As my earlier posting showed only photos of the Trafačka interior and the setting of our equipment and I wasn’t able to take any photos of our visuals, I am very pleased now to be able to post this video clip of part of the performance.

I put some photos of this gig in an earlier posting but now here is the video of the performance given by Supra+ at The Victory Pub, Kingsland Road, London.

The video is 27 minutes long so – pour yourself a drink, turn up the volume, sit back and enjoy!

There are lots more photos from this evening of Tagtool performances in an earlier posting on the blog but Dima has now made this video of my Tagtool drawing on 16 July at Mica Moca Project space as part of the Summer of Tagtool II events in Berlin.

The sound track is ‘Stars’ from the album ‘Apollo’ by Brian Eno.

Our Austrian friends, the band Supra+, had their first London gig in the basement bar of The Victory Pub in Dalston, a typical London ‘local’.Downstairs the corner stage had a low ceiling and black painted walls so when we arrived at the venue the first job was to pin up a length of white material behind the band for the projection.Although the room was not very large there was enough space for the projectors to be mounted at ceiling height, giving a drawing area that covered the whole of the stage and extended up on to the ceiling.Dima set up the camera to video the whole session but as well as drawing I also managed to take the photos below with my small camera – unfortunately most of them were not quite straight or in focus but I think that they do capture something of the atmosphere of the performance!I will finish with this collage and put Dima’s video into my next posting.It had been a really good gig – the band was very well received, with the audience calling for more at the end of their set.

On Saturday 16 July we drove from Prague to Berlin to take part in the Summer of Tagtool II event at Mica Moca Club – an evening of open air Tagtool performances in the courtyard of this former factory.When we arrived there was a very lively atmosphere with musicians playing, families sitting in the courtyard in the sunshine and all over the buildings there were installations and pieces of artwork, some by visiting artists and others made by local groups.Dima set up all the equipment in one of the empty rooms so that Bego, Dieter Puntigam and I had an opportunity to test everything before the evening performances and then when it began to get dark we took the projectors and Tagtools outside into the yard.When we were drawing Ernst kindly took these photos for me with my small camera. Below is a sequence of images from my first drawing….….and below are some stills from Dieter’s performance.The enclosed courtyard was very dark at night – which was ideal for Tagtooling – and the pattern of the windows and brickwork gave a nice added texture to the drawing.