Transparent Boundaries UK Pilot Video from UCA on Vimeo.

We are now in the middle of installing the exhibition in the Foyer Gallery at UCA Farnham of work-in-progress for the UK Project. It is absolutely amazing what has been achieved in such a short time – all praise to everyone, particularly the lead artists: Gail Baxter and Carol Quarini. We still have a lot of work to do in the UK Project after this first exhibition and the Colloquium on October 26th, but I am really excited by these first steps. Also it has been very interesting to engage with the students passing through the Foyer about the work and start the inter-generational aspects of the project.

We have had one ‘disaster’ and that is that Gail has broken her foot, but in true style has been directing operations while wheeling herself around on an office chair.

Transparent Boundaries is an EU project bringing together partners from the UK, Denmark, Greece and Italy in multi-disciplinary arts project exploring and responding to:

“Where are the older people and why doesn’t society recognize their presence more in popular culture? (Dr. Don A. Grady, Elon University, North Carolina).

The community of the Elder is a trans-national and cross-cultural invisible web of connection. The demographic in developed countries is one of an increasing, and increasingly, aging population with many born today who will live to 100 and beyond. Societal attitudes to the elder differ from culture to culture, but in many countries there is an almost total non-representation in the media, except when problems occur.

In 2007 the world organisation The Elders was formed: an independent group of global leaders who work together for peace and human rights. An Elder is a changemaker – someone who can lead by example, creating positive social change and inspiring others to do the same. The generation who are now entering the age of the Elder is composed of those who have been born since 1945.  This is a generation who have pro-actively shaped the culture in which they have lived, changing attitudes to the young, to women, to sexuality, to work and to the family. They have been politically active and used to seeing themselves represented in the media. There is no evidence that the force for change that this generation embodies is diminishing through age.

Transparent Boundaries is about seizing a moment, changing attitudes, providing possibilities – now. The project makes links across cultures and between generations, finding ways to increase the visibility of the Elder as a vital force with a cultural contribution and impact to be included and referenced. This is a project of empowerment, which will take micro and macro approaches to create a place and space for dialogue and a new kind of visibility through relationships that function between and across cultures.

The Project is in its earliest stages: the first workshops, run by UCA, are currently taking place. At this Colloquium, Project Partners will discuss their approaches each taking lace net-works as their leitmotif, which include dance, mapping, lace, net-works, song and poetry. There will also be a presentation from Australian artist, Fiona Davies who will discuss her exhibition ‘Blood on Silk’ in the James Hockey Gallery, UCA, Farnham, and from the organisation RHL on their Age No Barrier project.

FREE REGISTRATION – PLEASE BOOK NOW

We would be delighted if you would join us and put forward your thoughts which will inform the development of the project. There is no charge to attend but booking is essential as space is limited. Please click on the link to register Transparent Boundaries Colloquium – Friday 26th October 2012

For further information please contact: enterpriseoffice@ucreative.ac.uk 
or phone +44 (0) 1227 817435 / 817432

For me however, there is nothing quite like a hand-drawn map; often quirky, rarely to scale but always an indication of the points that the map-maker considers to be of relevance to what they are trying to portray.

Maps can be a personal aide-memoire or a legal statement of title – they can even be a means of subterfuge. They help us to make sense of our place in the world whether we are tracing the past, mapping the present or visualising possibilities for the future.

For this project we will be tracing where group members have lived in the past, mapping where they are travelling in the present and making visible some of the unseen connections where their lives and travels have intersected. These mappings will be complimented by consideration of their ‘Lines of Desire’ – where they would like to go if health, wealth and politics were no obstacle. With the abundance of information available on the television and internet my list has grown lengthy, for others it will be short but of immense vitality and intensity. It will be interesting to see which places prove to be most popular within our group.

Arrived at St John’s Church at Rowlands Castle and Dee greeted us and showed us into the meeting room. Most had arrived, including one half of the artist team, Gail Baxter.

Our Product/Outcome is very much being developed as we talk to each other, what is possible/interesting/useful and I came away yesterday with many ideas buzzing away.

As you know Gail has set you one or two tasks to complete before the end of the month if possible (we know that some of you are away and Gail is working with that). The tasks are:

1. Everyone to make a list of places where they have lived – these will form history lines
2. Everyone to make a list of places they would visit in the world – time, money and health being of no limit – these will form lines of desire

Please send these to me at this email address: lmillar@ucreative.ac.uk You can always just hit the reply key to this email.

Other points of discussion were:

• The 2 artists leading the activities are Gail Baxter and Carol Quarini (Carol was away on holiday yesterday)
• Dee Brien will act as Co-ordinator for Transparent Boundaries Project 1
• I will source and supply tracking devices, hopefully for Sept 10th when everyone will log their movements on that day.
• The other key date is October 26th, which is the first Transparent Boundaries conference at UCA Farnham. I hope that you will be able to attend and that one of you might speak about the project.
•  We will need ‘material’ outcomes of our working together by that time – but these can and probably will be ‘work in progress’.
• These outcomes could be all or some of the following:
  • A virtual Lace net-work created through overlaying of the lines from your tracking device
  • A large scale (room size or larger) lace net-work created from your mappings
  • many smaller individual mappings, with photographs of way markers, to be displayed together as a larger scale installation
  • A night walk with led lights left as traces for others to discover when you are not there. This to be videoed (and then the led lights removed)
• The website www.transparentboundaries.com in in the course of being re-designed, I hope much of the work will be completed next week. Once this is up and running again we will be posting images and comments/blogs up there. Anything you write, please email to me in the first instance and I will put it up on the website. I hope it will eventually be designed so that you can blog directly onto it yourself
• We need to create a ‘model’ activity that is transferable to the partner countries, so that they can do do it and we can make ‘comparisons’.

I was delighted to be invited to be one of the artists working on Transparent Boundaries; I hope that my skills and knowledge as a practicing lacemaker will bring an original twist to the work that develops as the project progresses. Reading the background to the Transparent Boundaries project has been fascinating and creating a response to the brief will be an exciting challenge to be undertaken in partnership with our participating group of Elders.

Previous research into the history of lace has made me very aware that its development was heavily influenced by trans-national cultural exchanges and so it seems entirely appropriate that lace should be one of the mediums chosen for this Europe-wide exchange of ideas, skills and experiences.

I should perhaps mention that although I originally trained in classic lace techniques (specialising in bobbin lace) I now have an extremely liberal view of what constitutes lace. Lace can be understood as the material which connects a series of voids and it is these voids which give lace its distinctive identity. Lace forms a porous boundary, a penetrable barrier, which in varying degrees both permits and prevents connections through sight and touch.

One of my favourite forms of lace is the spider’s web:

This beautiful web is, quite literally, a record of the spider’s movements and as such is an excellent demonstration of the sort of thing we are hoping to achieve through tracking the movements of our group. Hopefully we will be able to use lace to demonstrate the complex web of connections in our Elders lives at the same time as throwing into sharp relief the voids which are formed by the areas they avoid or to which they have no access.