Some highlights from the last ‘Wave If You’re Really There’ event.
Wave If You’re Really There #05 – trailer
“it seems we think in tiny drops…”
My favourite lyric above from the title track from the album from which this event takes its name, ‘Wave If You’re Really There’ has become a kind of rallying call for creatives in Liverpool under the steering of Mercy Corps and their friends the Wave Machines. Their 4 events last year took place in St Brides church and gathered some of the best folk musicians, pop groups, performances artists, installation artists and poets to create a carefully orchestrated themed evening of delights for the audience, dutifully arranged in rows of pews (well, to begin with at least).
Last weekend was the first time the experiment had been exported, and saw a large group of collaborators and familiar faces transported down to London to install the the first of two capitol-based events (themed ‘marriage’) in St Leonards Church in Shoreditch. I went down to document the show, which its fair to say, turned out fantastic. Everyone worked really hard to set it up over 2 days, lending helping hands wherever needed; creativity abounded through the artistic direction of Scott Spencer and the Mercy crew and their collaborators, and all way lit in fantastic reactive colours by lighting guru known only as Guy. The performers (Karen McLeod, John Smith, Nathan Jones, Luke Kennard, Homework, Post War Years, and of course Wave Machines) all gave their best. It really felt very special indeed. Especially when John Smith did his folk cover of ‘Not Over Yet’.
More people than can be mentioned here contributed to the event, so I’ll simply leave these photos by John O’Shea to sum up the beauty of the evening. I’ll post the videos as they go through my patented topntail process.
Revolution of Form

This Sunday I will be providing some cunningly simple AV support to the Revolution of Form event at The Bluecoat. It features several poets exploring new methods of performance poetry, alongside other artists, musicians and illustrators. It has been organised by Nathan Jones, resident poet and Mercy man, who will also be performing two pieces with the support of illustrators Chris Rodenhurst and Neil Keating. Here are some pictures of our rehearsal last week. I’ll try get some better videos of the actaul show that show the buffering capture via isadora.
‘The Bell’ – Nathan Jones and Wave Machines
Another video that has been sitting quietly for a year. This one is a document of the first Mercy party at St Brides church, Liverpool in June 2008. Poet Nathan Jones collaborated with Wave Machines in creating this performance entitled ‘The Bell’
“No cameras allowed into the gallery at any time”
On Saturday I took part in an event at Tate Liverpool, run by the boys from Mercy. The day was simply called ‘The Making’, and together with several illustrators and graphic artists, a band and a poet, that is just what we did. We created a space, developed a rough ethos of overlapping and feedback, and spent the day simply making stuff in that space in front of the public. For my part I worked with film-maker Stuart Lancely to created a multi-camera / multi-projector feedback machine I called ‘The Videodrome’, which was intended to give a sense of things being interconnected and constantly representing each other.

The idea for the Videodrome came from initially being asked to ‘film’ the event, and from my unease that people seem to constantly need a record of a performance rather than just let it happen. If it is not recorded at all, did it ever actually take place? I feel in someways the recording of the performance becomes more important than the thing itself. Videodrome attempted to project the event back upon itself, making the act of recording part of the performance. This video shows a performance of ‘The Bell’ by Nathan Jones and Wave Machines. I decided not to record any performance or take any pictures of the day, but simply work with live feed, though inevitably it was photographed and filmed by others. I include Tim Brunsden’s excellent video here in order to prove that an event did happen.
Nathan Jones and Wave Machines – ‘The Barman’
Video document from my one-shot video project, ‘The Shoot Out Project’, as performed by Mercy poet Nathan Jones and Liverpool band Wave Machines at the Bluecoat opening weekend. The single-shot aproach is something I’ve been working with for a while now, but is perhaps best shown in the work of Vincent Moon and the Take Away Shows.








