n quentin woolf

on partnerships

Mohammed Yahya

First, Mohammed Yahya. If you don’t listen to the show but do read this blog (perhaps you’ve stumbled upon this page from the literary side of what I do), I’d strongly recommend you give Mohammed’s interview your ear. For your fifteen minute investment, your return will be reassurance: that there are people in the world who are turning experiences of profound loss and hardship into both beautiful art and hope. Mohammed, a big hairy hip-hopper, is not someone you’d expect, at first glance, to be channeling his creativity towards the good of the many – rap has itself too strong a guns’n’girls image for that to be your instinct. However, this erudite, respectful and charming man is all about peace. He is partnered with a Jewish performer called Danny Rafael; together they use their work to promote interfaith dialogue and to be positive male role models for kids who, in, the vacuums left by absent fathers, might otherwise latch on to dealer or gang-leader. I’m deeply impressed by what Yahya and Rafael are doing.

Naomi Woddis

The gear-change to the partnership between Naomi Woddis and Dzifa Benson would have crunched had Nora Connelly not been on the show with her brilliant, eccentric Irish poetry (which was extremely clucking entertaining, and made everyone smile). NW and DB, under the collaborative title Word Migrants, have re-hashed Beauty and the Beast, reversing its polarity: the Beast is now a fifty-something female TV presenter, who has fallen for a toy-boy TV chef. With, respectively, sneering cynicism and fey campness, PR and fashion gurus whisper into the ear of the Beast, pouring their poisonous (and well-observed) advice into her mind. Naomi and Dzifa,

Dzifa Benson

both well-used to being behind microphones, turned in a grand performance, but it was their sentence-finishing interaction when chatting that really interested me. This was a partnership of great equilibrium and honesty, I felt. We talked a lot about it, but didn’t need to: it was apparent that these women felt utterly comfortable as, as Dzifa variously described it, the two heads that were better than one, or possibly a troika of heads, or possibly one massive head.

Ivanov and Chan

And finally (after the whispered sculpture by Nicola Anthony – a performance whose effect was much more immediate than I’d expected from its description – I enjoyed it), came the partnership of Ivanov and Chan. They are a couple, as well as collaborating artists, and clearly come from very different backgrounds – she from Hong Kong, he from – well, apparently it depends on his mood… on the day of the recording Sergei Ivanov had decided he was of Viking stock. Here was another pairing, with completely different ingredients again, yet perfectly balanced. It is asking a lot of any type of relationship to alternate extensive periods spent on the road (with Easyjet manhandling your nomadic tent) with long stretches on a treeless, windswept rock, but these experiences have clearly cemented the bond.

In the edit, later, re-hearing the conversational dynamics, I found myself smiling. There is something very attractive about people getting on with one another.

Listen to this edition of The Arts Show.

Nora Connelly

reach

This week’s show was big on music. My headline interview was with

James Hesford

composer James Hesford, a genuinely charming fellow who, like all of my guests this week, is completely committed to his art. His collaborations with artists Ivanov and Chan, which take place non-stop over 24-hour periods, sound exhilarating and exhausting; James’ descriptions of the process reminded me of marathon runners, when they talk about breaking through ‘the wall’. I gather I + C are stationed up in the Orkneys, on Papa Westray; apparently a group of about 70 folk from the local community gathered around the laptop, WW2 fashion, to hear James’ piece. Certainly a wider reach than I’d anticipated our East End station achieving. But that was before I started getting emails from our Canadian listeners…

Lucy Tomlins and Marsha Bradfield turned up in a whirlwind of press releases and highlighted scripts – by far the most

Lucy and Marsha

organised interviewees to date. Their HTAP project sounds like an invaluable resource for future historians, quite apart from its relevance right now. The democratisation of urban planning manifest in Lucy’s board game artwork really appeals to me – as an architect chum agrees, a big part of the challenge with buildings is seeing it through the eyes of the people in and around them, rather than from the perspective of some deity playing with his model town.

I can’t wait to see what David Snoo Wilson does with his disused Heathrow warehouse – I’ll be following progress, and

David Snoo Wilson

 maybe we’ll try to get some pictures of the artwork onto the blog. Dave has an intensity and seriousness about him which leaves one in no doubt that he is the real deal; some artists get caught up in grant application jargon, but with DSW there is no intermediate layer between the artist and the world. For me, the enduring image from this

Hackney Map

week’s show is that of DSW attempting to explain, in gestures, to German border police, why he was taking away some soil from the site of a WW2 massacre. A sentence I predict I will never again have cause to write.

big fan

The one item of equipment we couldn’t do without on The Arts Show is the

Christopher Preston

big Dick Tracey-style chrome fan which works its magic from  under one of the mixing desks. Our studio is diabolically hot; so much so that, unlike most radio stations, we leave the window open whilst on-air just to save ourselves from perishing. I’ve lost a stone since I started on the show. Personally I think the sounds of motorbikes and fire engines whizzing past gives the show that urban authenticity lacking from some of our cooler counterparts.

Christopher Preston somehow pre-empted the temp situation and turned up attired in shorts – a very wise choice. The project his company, Maya, is involved with – the Write To Ignite festival – is a wonderful celebration of words and stories, and Chris’s belief in the artists he’s working with is obvious. I’m hoping to get to see some of the shows myself, especially John Hegley’s new one (despite having worked with John in setting up a show, I’ve yet to actually see him perform) and Nathan Penlington, who was on the show recently.

Jose and Oliver

Jose Campos and Oliver Herbert are a charming pair, and listening to their tales of being adrift midway through a project certainly took me back; it was great to hear how they re-kindled the belief of their dancers and brought the project together. Even though it was all about process, I’m looking forward to seeing the fruits of their collaboration. The conceptual distinction between between dance and movement, which can go undetected by the casual onlooker, is of such fundamental importance to the career of a dancer. I hope we’ll get a chance to explore that theme some more.

I hope you liked the music selection this week – eclectic is the word, I think. Next week’s interview with the composer James Hesford looks really promising – I think I’m already a big fan.