Greetings LightNighters, we’re pleased to bring you the first in our emerging artists series. First up: HairStory: Interested in tracing peoples history and culture through ‘hair’. HairStory is a large scale project developed and created by artist and performer Lydia Cottrell. We took the chance to catch up with Lydia and find out more about the project… Hi Lydia, can you start by telling us what this year’s Light Night – Hairstory involves? Well, we’ll have a series of workshops followed by a performance and interactive experience on event night (03/10/14). The HairStory project workshops for this year’s Light Night will require willing participants to come to the venue, style their own or each other’s hair whilst photographs are taken and they share their stories amidst the glitter and clippers. I’ll come and take people individually to one side to record the actual interviews. From the workshops, I take the stories and condense them down in to what will become a performative response to the stories we’ve recorded. The piece will then be performed at the venue through event night, in the window for all to see, and the venue will have giant mirrors, photos of our workshop participants, with chairs and headphones on which you’ll be able to sit and listen to mp3 recordings of the stories and a central space with giant books and pens for our audience/visitors to leave their own Hairstories. Another great thing is that the venue is an actual hair salon. It is two tiered, so there’ll be a section of the space where people are actually getting their hair done too! It’s an exciting project and is going to be great fun. Can you tell us how it all came about? A few years ago I developed Alopecia. I started getting bald patches. This, as a healthy young woman, initially came as a shock. Developing Alopecia really made me think more deeply about the relationship I had with my hair. I used to have it cut short, style it, do anything to it and up to that point I had never really thought too much about it. I was really surprised at how I reacted, it really affected me. It wasn’t until I started talking to other people about my feelings and experience, that I became aware we all had hair stories, about our experience, how it had impacted upon us and how we each felt about a relationship with hair. I learnt through the process of communicating with groups and sharing experiences, that as people, in some way we all have a different relationship with our hair. I found it really interesting being able to begin conversations with hair as a starting point. It was fascinating to hear the chats develop in to more general, life experience, Hairstories about relationships with and experiences relating to hair. It was also great to see how the sharing of experiences really helped illuminate the social and cultural value attached to a person’s hair. The ‘HairStory’ project was born from that first set of experiences really. I began to interview and record conversations with people about their experience and collating the stories. Some of them are hilarious, times when younger sisters have had haircuts from older brothers, those that are more hairdon’t than hairdoo. Some are deeply emotional and heartfelt. Some are very political. Hairstyles facilitate self-expression and within that, can enable a visible public protest. It is in those kinds of political stories we see how much significance can be attached to hair. Something that for most people can generally be taken for granted, when you think and talk about the subject more deeply, in relation to how one expresses their self, you find is of importance and actually quite fascinating. That is fascinating, so how does the project or project workshop come together? Firstly, I usually ask people to go right back to the start and to tell me about their hair timeline. So, where, when and which different styles and cuts they have had. In doing that, you see people transported back to different phases of their life. In the 70’s I had, In the 90’s this happened and don’t mention the 80’s, when everyone had a perm and so on. One of the first Hairstory projects we did was up in Doncaster and another soon after in London. In spite of being so far apart, it was astounding to see the similarities in the experiences shared at each venue. Through collecting stories from people in different parts of the country we could see that not only were there historic and cultural similarities, but that there were also specific differences. Those differences were revealed in central themes tied directly to the experiences of those in specific geographic locations. ..& where do you host the projects usually? The venues have been salons, barbers and hairdressers which I have found to be these vibrant micro communities. When people have hairdressers that they really like, they often stay loyal for years and years. When we’ve been running these projects, we’re at these places where people have built up long trusting relationships over long periods of time. At a project at Chisenhale we found that everybody in the salon new each other. There was a real community buzz, with everyone saying “hello” and talking to each other. I find that the community that builds around the frequenting of an establishment often treat the salon as a very candid place. Some of these interviews we’ve done have lasted for three hours and have become, in essence, therapy sessions for both the participant and myself (*giggles). It’s amazing to think that supportive community networks can come about from both the personal/community relationships with, and the social, cultural practice of ‘hair’. People can really define themselves with their hair choices, at the same time; people can really perceive or define others for the hair choices made. When I decided to shave my head, people’s reactions were a mix and mixed, from ‘Wow’ to ‘Woah!!’. One guy we talked to who had also had a shaved head, surprised us by revealing he used to have dreadlocks. A guy, who was a big burly bald guy, told us he always thought carefully about what to wear on a night out. He did this as he was forever being perceived as a thug or security staff. When in actual fact he was a longstanding children’s entertainer. Its intriguing isn’t it. So the project is a real blend of art, history and community then, a work of cultural value.. There is a cultural value to and if you will a cultural heritage with, ‘hair’. It is found when we start to look at how we define ourselves through choices, styles and cuts and colours and in starting to talk to each other about those processes and our experiences. There was an African hair shop full of interesting products, wigs, brushes, and extensions etc, attached to one of the salons in which we ran a recent project. The excitement of the participants in the project attracted interest from the local community attached to both the salon and hair shop. It was brilliant to see the project take on an element of cultural exchange as people who hadn’t communicated with each other before, started to, introduced through the arts initiative project and beginning with conversations relating to ‘hair’ as a cultural concept. We’re really looking forward to seeing who participates in our Light Night project this year. We are eager to hear from people wanting to get involved, to the workshops and performance on event night. Perhaps most importantly were looking forward to hearing Leeds Hairstory. If you would like to participate in the project and/or submit your Hairstory, you can do that here: our-hairstory.co.uk/submit To find out more about the project, visit the Hairstory website: our-hairstory.co.uk/ stream the promo vid on YouTube: youtu.be/htd5S8_1cI0 and contact Lydia @LidyaaAndstuff We’ve more news on emerging artists for you tomorrow.. Till next time.. #ArtintheDark
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 16:35:51 +0000