July 2012
5 posts
End of Blog
This is the blog kept by Helen Petts while she made her film “Throw Them Up and Let Them Sing.” The project is now completed. To go back to the beginning scroll down, or to access the complete archive, click on the title bar.
The film was seen at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle from the 28 June - 18 August 2012. The Royal Festival Hall, London 31 August - 9 September 2012. Abbot...
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June 2012
1 post
Finished and Completed
Well that’s it now. I’ve done the sound edit with Dave Hunt. Its lovely. And I showed the film to the gallery and they are very happy. I also showed it to Cumbria’s other most famous artist - Conrad Atkinson - the other day. He was really supportive and positive. Very generous man. I went up to Cumbria again to finish editing the blog and have a rest. It was also the...
May 2012
1 post
Maggie Nichols, Molde.
Just listening to Maggie Nichols on radio 3.
Extended vocal technique and improvisation. Massive overlap with tradition of sound poetry. And she is featuring in a synposium at Tate Modern today called “Her Noise - Feminisms and the Sonic.” I used to go to her gigs when I was a young angry feminist who loved weird music. I now have filmed her many times. Fab.
Finished the picture...
April 2012
3 posts
Leaving the Lake District and Back to London
Its getting very busy now and I have not kept up to date on the blog. I left Cumbria in tears mainly because the dog insisted on sitting in the car while I packed it. She wanted to come too. Though when I said “stay” to her she got the message and went off to chew a bone. It made me cry a lot as I left - then I realised later that it was the week before Easter and my former partner...
March 2012
2 posts
Abbot Hall, Loughrigg, bats and moles
Thank God its coming together at last. In fact I am very pleased with the way the editing is going. So much so that I decided to have a few days off and have a couple of friends from London to stay. We had a great time, ate loads of food and I took them for a walk up Loughrigg Fell which seems to be my default walk at the moment. Its totally Schwitters’ fell and I like just repeating the...
Point of Departure magazine article by Stuart... →
The music magazine Point of Departure have done an interview with me. (Click on title above to view it). It was a bit of a last minute rush job and I didn’t get a chance to discuss how the work would be shown or which work. But its a good article and Stuart Broomer has really done his homework. Thanks a lot Stuart.
February 2012
3 posts
The concert, editing and a dog with a phantom...
I’ve been in Cumbria for 3 weeks now and I still don’t feel I have got started with the editing. There have been meetings at the Hatton Gallery and phone calls and my Mum’s 80th birthday. It was freezing at first and lots of snow. Then I thought the dog was pregnant (turned out to be a phantom one - poor girl), and lots needed sorting out in the house. Then I got a cold...
Zurich, Point of Departure and the Cultural...
Where is all the time going to? I have to get the film edited in the next few weeks as the sound edit will be quite complex I imagine.
I got a bit distracted in January. I had a new bathroom installed which is great. I spent ages doing an online interview with music writer Stuart Broomer for Point of Departure magazine, an international music magazine devoted to serious study of free...
Zurich, Point of Departure and the Cultural...
January 2012
1 post
Dacre, dog-sitting and the Northern Art Prize.
I’m lying in bed in Cumbria in my new room in Celia Washington’s house. I’m going to be here until the end of March, editing the film and dog sitting for her Patterdale terrier while she supervises the move of Kathmandu Contemporary Arts Centre to the wonderful Patan Museum. Being here, my mind is so much clearer and my health is better already. I’m re-reading Gwendolen...
December 2011
1 post
Never work with children, animals and free...
I’ve just finished the main part of the filming with Roger Turner and Phil Minton and I am really pleased with the results. I have filmed them both many, many times and almost always the results are wonderful. Not just the music but my visual interpretation of it. They inspire me. My Youtube film of Phil singing the Cutty Wren (which was a drunken chance event where we both made...
November 2011
3 posts
Video editing, Apple operating systems and...
I’ve pretty much finished all the filming and now have something like 10 hours of footage to edit down to about 20 minutes! Its on many kinds of formats from my professional video camera, through to high end stills cameras (which shoot video nowadays), to my iphone. And some is in NTSC – the US video format because I use that little stills camera when filming music as it doesn’t cut out...
October 2011
1 post
Kathmandu, Loughrigg and Mary Burkett
I went back to Cumbria last week but forgot to write the blog. I know I am making a fuss, but I feel like I’ve been inundated with admin since getting the Cultural Olympiad commission. Its all to be expected but it was a bit distracting and I felt a bit derailed. So I went back to Cumbria just to get away from all the emails and forms to fill and remind myself of what I am doing.
This time I...
September 2011
1 post
August 2011
8 posts
Oslo, Etterstad and the Henie Onstad Centre
I arrive in Oslo absolutely exhausted but the wonderful Anna Perry picks me up from the station and takes me back to Etterstad Garden Colony where she lives during the summer, cooks me a wonderful meal and introduces me to the colony. She contacted me a couple of years ago on homeexchange as she wanted to bring her daughter to London. She said she couldn’t leave Oslo as she had to...
Geiranger, Djupvasshytte and free improvisation
I drive up into the mountains from Andalsnes through a great zigzag road full of hair-raising bends called the Trollstigen (Trolls’ Ladder - this is troll country) which Schwitters painted for his tourist pictures. He came on the public bus, but there are now many coach tours and, even on a rainy day at the end of the school holidays, its pretty busy. But for me the rain is great as the...
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Rain, clouds and Andalsnes Youth Hostel.
Tuesday. After a really good few days on Hjertoya I took the weekend off and went to stay with an English/Norwegian man called Bertie Somme in Hustad on the north coast. I met him through couchsurfing. It was a much more remote place and I really liked being out in the wild country. Hot weather as well. Great food as Bertie fishes all the time. So arrived to halibut and then we went...
Hjertoya, crows, swimming and mushroom biryani
I’m here now to spend the night and its very cosy. Espen has lit the wood burning stove and the living room is very warm. I’ve made my bed upstairs and can find my way when I get tired without a torch, though its light until about 10.30pm at the moment. That’s my bed-time anyway here. I am now alone on the island which is great. I’ve just been for a walk to the other end where the mountains are...
Molde, Hjertoya and rain.
I spent my first day in Molde absolutely exhausted. Damp conditions make the M.E worse and I am right next to the fjord. But it was torrential rain as well. So I just rested in bed and listened to radio 4 on the Wi-Fi. Terrible riots in London. Quite surreal to be in this very small and seemingly rather dull town (but it is August) and hear about people dying in the streets in London. I...
Bergen, the Hurtigruten, on my way to Molde
I spent a couple of days very nervous about the weight of my bags and my ability to move them about. I’m not going to say carry them as I don’t - I wheel them and depend on the kindness of strangers to lift them if I need to. This happened on the flight here and the man concerned turned out to be Kanye West’s stage manager here on tour. He has worked with Prince who I saw perform a few weeks...
The Arts Council and the Olympics
Its official – I can now go public. My film “Throw Them Up and Let Them Sing” has now become an official Cultural Olympiad commission (the arts festival for the Olympics in London next year) with an Arts Council grant attached. Phew! I can now afford to breath again. And stay in a hotel occasionally in Norway.
Here’s the press release
Massively busy organising the trip as I leave in 3...
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On bereavement and making art
Amy Winehouse has died. I watch her parents on TV looking at the flowers and tributes to her and totally feel for them. But also know that they may well feel relieved now as watching someone commit slow suicide (which is effectively what she has done) is complete hell. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. What with the Oslo island massacre its been a weekend of lots of bereaved people...
July 2011
3 posts
Back in the Lake District
I have to get a press image of myself at the Merzbarn, so went back up to the Lake District for a long weekend. Decided to do a Cindy Sherman and buy a remote control for my stills camera. I know the shot I want and its easier to do a self-portrait than getting a photographer to meet me, then negotiating access and stuff. The Littoral Trust are running a Schwitters Summer School there at the...
Merzbarn Wall photo
It has come to my attention that the photo of the Merzbarn wall I first posted at the beginning of this blog - doesn’t actually show up on some computers. I have no idea why. I have been massively busy with organising the Norway shoot in August and very aware that the country must now be in deep mourning at the recent massacre. Feeling really unnerved today as trauma and bereavement is...
May 2011
6 posts
fourth day - still in Elterwater
Looking through the footage last night I think I have got pretty much everything I need so far. I’m collecting my own images of Schwitters related locations and land around the Merzbarn. What I don’t have is any signposts of where I am. Both literally and symbolically I need a few signs and signifiers that say Schwitters, Merzbarn, Ambleside and Cumbria. I may not use them but its best to do...
third day
Went public on the blog yesterday and amazed how many people wrote back and said nice things. It’s the music connection. I have a reputation for making interesting films with experimental musicians and lots of the fans of the music are also Schwitters fans.
I’m reading the new book on Schwitters by Roger Cardinal and Gwendolen Webster, who’s biography gave me the idea to make this project. ...
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second day
Worked a bit too much last night on editing the images and on the blog (thank-you to the Langdale Country Club down the road for the wi-fi in the bar - very cosy) and woke up at 6.30 feeling truly terrible. Sore throat, swollen glands, headache, foggy brain. But it was raining very heavily anyway so decided to stay in bed. Then suddenly around 9am the sun came out and I saw a woodpecker outside...
First day at the Merzbarn
Had a good drive up and it didn’t rain too much. I arrived only 5 minutes late and Celia from the Littoral Trust was waiting for me. They own the Cylinders Estate and the Merzbarn. They also have a sleeping barn which is where I will stay this week until the weekend when a group of art students from the Slade School of Art are coming. I will then move over the hill to the Grasmere Youth...
Leaving for Cumbria
I am having a hard time working out what to take. I’ve got the car so the tendency is to take the kitchen sink but I know I am bound to forget something crucial. A lead or a battery charger or something small but crucial. I’ve done research at the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum – going through the catalogue raisonnée, the 3 giant volumes that have details of every piece...
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the beginning
Well its not really the beginning as I’ve been working on this project for about 6 months now since I fell in love with Kurt Schwitters’ work in the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany, last November. I make films with a group of experimental musicians called free improvisers, and I was invited to Hanover to show my work at a music festival. One of the musicians who came with me,...
