ellie?

hi guys!
dont really know what to say...
has anyone heard from ellie yet? shes poo.
just that if we cant do it there, wherever we may get instead probably wont allow us to do whatever we want to the space which is also poo.
but i really like the ideas of creating an environment etc. also what pete was saying sounds welll good! the Christoph Buchel
bit especially! so if its all go with ellie then woop! but if not...what should we do? i hope she replys saying yep!
yh miriam! - i think we should go on a trip to the natural history museum when we're all back
hope everyone is well and loving the sunshine...
im not enjoying it soo much..
i got burnt today..
bad times.
x

Ellie the Bitch

I'm all for putting the pressure on Ellie and seeing whats going on, on the original post for this on blackboard there's an email address for a guy/girl called Sam as well so i'll email badger them too if you like and if you beat anyone up Flo we'll cover for you with the police, thats what Jungle Club's about. . . If it does fall through though i say we take the show on the road, and by road i mean different venue. I'll keep my eyes and ears open.

HEYA!

Sorry about the absence Jungle Clubbers! I use the internet at my local library and they had industrial action, then they were completely booked out then they had to evacuate because someone had left their shoppping next to 'Alternative Healthcare' and the staff thought it might be a bomb-Thats right, terrorists know that Birmingham and Britain would fall apart its female pensioners didn't get there fix of large print Mills and Boon. . .
Anyway, out of all the ideas, i'm most crazy in love with the transformation of the space into a Jungle.
I'd been walkin the halls of the Natural History Museum before i came back to Brum and looking at a lot of anthropological and botanical illustration. I particularly like the illustrations of environments where every inch is swarming with animals and insects and fish and stuff. I was thinking we could include something like this as part of ours?
xxxxx

she might just be on holiday!

In That Case

...lets be on the look out for other places to have our exhibition. Should I go down there and try and find out if we're still on? I could rough her up a bit.
f

i hate to be the bearer of (maybe) bad news

hoping for a response, i have been emailing the bitch, ellie, but to no avail.
i haven't heard from her since visiting the space.
so, she hasn't confirmed our slot.

as far as i'm concerned we should still continue throwing ideas out there. you know, it's all good practice. however, i'm starting to doubt ellie's commitment to us.

fuck her though, if all else fails, we can take the show somewhere else.

kiss.

brrap brrap

salut!

apologies for not writing for a while ---> moving house is S.T.R.E.S.S.F.U.L

not got long to write, but just read the idea about the masks and i was just thinking about how if you were a different animal it would change your perseption of what you were seeing i.e in colour/black and white/ height you see from/ what you see --bats see with sonar, snakes see with taste, moles see with smell

so maybe if you put a mask on of a deiffernt animal/creature it could change your view of what you see - like those amazing 3D glasses you used to get .

also with the jungley theme - scale might be an interesting thing to look at.

i have to go and finish painting a wall (the excitment) but will think about it as i paint ---really interesting ideas from everyone,

E xxx

some pictures and that

word up on monica canilao. i am a little bit in love with her. she did this show with swoon where they built treehouses and completely filled & covered the space






for an explorers camp we could make big canopies like this


also the singer of Fall of Efrafa makes these weird creatures and makes diary entries and documents etc asif they were discovered by explorers. they are really beautiful and i think relevant. i can't figure out how to post pictures from his website here but definitely take a look;



http://alexcf.com/blog/?page_id=6

i went to an exhibition a few years ago by Christoph Buchel and it was maybe the best thing i've ever been to. I think it might've been mentioned in one of our talks. Basically he completely filled this warehouse with stuff. you walked in and it was like a hotel, but then you had to climb through a hole in the bottom of a wardrobe to get into the next room. there was a massive truck and you climbed in it and then went to the front and climbed down into a secret circular room. there was another section where you had to climb down into a freezer which led into the soil under the warehouse, you then had to crouch and walk through a tunnel which then opened out into this epic tent room like an archeologists site. it was mental. we could maybe incorporate this into the space, like have people have to climb through or into things. i also think it might be interesting if we don't make it completely explicit its an exhibition. like if the shop front was all dusty and you didn't really know what was going on. i dont know. just ideas.

stump fucker

i really want to make a jungle. The sci-fi thing doesnt really excite me in any way- sorry im being a big girl.
What emma said about the "heads bodies and legs" idea was really interesting. We could play that game on a grand scale. Using large sheets of paper- someone draws a head (tiger,whale,armadillo whatever) then covers up that drawing and the next person draws the body of whatever animal they wanted and then the next person does the legs. If we did very detailed drawings, and forget about style or trying to look cool- drawings like the one's you find in scientific journals where the aim is to provide as much information and detail as possible we could end up with some really cool weird but nice bits of work to go in the explorers hut. I dont know if that made any sense.

Im also interested in making violent stuffed animals and people aswell.

I think we should definitely be as creative as possible. By that I mean lets not just regurgitate victorian biological type stuff, with wooden cabinets and all that, lets try and invent our own type of explorer's hut or jungle floor- not just recreate what we know already exists. We can and should take inspiration from taxidermy and victoriana but we shouldnt be all lazy and do whats been done loads of times before. dont know if that made sense either.

i want to put pictures up but i hate doing google image search and putting up stuff thats a bit random. im going to do some drawings of ideas for jungle club this week and scan them in.

I wish I didn't have to work so god dam much!!!!!!!!

lots of love from wesley snipes
xxx

thought i'd share this with you all

i got told i look like this today

ASL?

let's just make a fuck off jungle with retrofuture hybrid animals inhabiting the space.
i like this.

i lol 'cause florence is a stump fucker.

Hi guys, sorry not commented in a while-my stepdad likes to hog the computer. It's not so fun sharing lol.

Also, sorry but tomorrow I'm working all day then ill be out in the evening then sunday I go to Bristol for a week so I won't be able to comment again until after that..Just thought I'd let you all know so you didn't think I was ignoring this or anything!

But yeah...when I get back I shall reply lots...All the ideas sound gooooood! I especially like the jungle thing with the diaries with entries and making our own species up etc..this could be really interesting.. Also we could collaborate on some of these maybe? like when you're younger...

Ours could be abit more sophis lol or not?? but yh we all draw parts of creatures??? etc. maybe?

Also I like the mask thing..yeah if we wear them itl only have to be on the opening night? as we cant be there all the time. would ours be of animals or the people living and researching etc there? (the explorers etc) but i also like alices idea of getting the visitors to wear the masks? would this only be the opening night also? or all the time? what would theres be of? how many would we need etc?

I will try and think of as many ideas whilst I'm away and I'll check back as soon as possible.

Love em xx

the jungle club rules.

suggestions regarding the jungle idea:

-masks-maybe people could be given animal masks to wear when they come in so that it could be vaguely interactive without being intimidating. maybe.
- on the note of interaction there could also be drawers and books that people could open and discover something else. There are two plays- Faust and the masque of the red death made by a company called punch drunk and one of the things I like about their idea is that everybody who went to the plays had a different experience because of the nature of the rooms and the actors. I’m not suggesting anything on the scale of actors but it could be nice for each person’s experience of it to be more unique…




- Exploration: 18th/19th century explorers collecting samples of species- (the animal rooms at the horniman museum

animals in jars, butterflies pinned to boards…



Love the camp and journals ideas- Darwins journals...




Katie- you could put some of your animals in resin stuff in the exhibition. That would be coooool.

It would be so good to make our own animals to put in jars- ie people think they know what they are going to see cos it looks like something else but we could shock them with something they don’t expect…

-The hybrids thing…Objects like that monkey with a mermaid tail in the horniman- obviously people didn't know about the rest of the world and species were still being discovered- when people first saw the duck billed platypus they thought it was a trick like the monkey mermaid thing.
There are thousands of places like the rainforests in guyana where there are thousands of animals which have never been seen by humans.
Love Jordan’s idea about making our own hybrids and stuff - we could investigate different aspects of model making- like techniques used by special effects people for ideas etc as well as fabric and stuff…

-Monica Canillo’s installations are really cool. They are so intricate and detailed but a really big scale. I think they look so impressive. There will be so so much work to make ours as detailed etc but it could look amaaaaaazing…

Look at her website for more of the pictures I can’t copy to here.
http://www.monicacanilao.com/art.html






lots of love
alice xx

animals in cages = zoo!!
jungle = roam free!! (but then i suppose in bottom where bad things in the jungle could happen)

but lovin the ideas jordy!! the masks are amazing but would we wear them and just for the opening night or be there all the time because i dont think we can for this one. we could display masks so well though!! and the bear carrying dear drawing is incredible!

animals with weird connections to others??
deformed are reformed animals? - my old art teacher did an exhibition where she bought loads of cuddly toys then she took the limbs off and added them on to different cuddle toys bodies, annette messanger did it too (but with real animals) - we could play with it - maybe in the below canopy bit?? or a little off mark..

masks and drawings

just found these images from a school play of the jungle book... these monkey masks in the first image are pretty fucking creepy.



and check out the kid in the back:



i'm liking creepy jungle masks... may i also suggest that we could also turn the upper bar area into the inside of a tree house or jungle hut, with stairs leading to the jungle floor...


this could potentially lend itself well to the fact we're illustration students, as it will give us a context with which to decorate the walls with images and drawings... for example it could be an 18th century explorer's base camp, we could have lots of animal or botanical illustrations around the walls. it would also give us free reign to invent new creatures, weird hybrids etc... here are some examples of what i'm talking about taken from http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com (an incredible website, definitely check it out if you haven't already).










we could also make small cages to put stuffed animals in (like katie's plush toys from best before) and hang them from the ceiling.

in this sense there could be a narrative. we could leave journals lying aroud the tables filled with entries like "today whilst observing the workings of a bee colony i was attacked by what seemed like a large winged creature..." etc with some weird illustrations or whatever. we could create a narrative and create almost like a film set, or a place that's frozen in time where it's like you're just walking into some explorer's jungle hut and looking at all his/her belongings and discoveries...

i don't know, just ideas.

x

JUNGLE TIIIME

really really liking the massive jungle idea, we could make animals reptiles insects paint them draw them, history of the jungle tribes markings and costume, the whole idea of canopy and below the trees where not as much light is let through is also good for the downstairs and could be really creept and gory like insects and moulding animals and like tigers ripping flesh from killed prey. we could have a jungle pool and make fish or boats and then tree houses in trees we have made.

you could have to go through leaves and hanging vines to get in.
we could rename the coctails for the weeks we are there incorperating the bar.



1. forts - we can build things, structures
2. blow up things(i know this picture is stupid, but showing we can oush things out of general junle aesthetic)
3. weird ways of looking at things, this photo is just hilarious!









sorry these pictures are shite just needed some IMAGES

spacey space

i've just spent about half an hour retyping this post over and over and only just now realised all i'm doing is regurgitating what's already been said. so i'm just gonna say i agree with everything everyone's said so far, and there's not much i can really add. but i do have a couple of things to say...

RESEARCH
can we please start doing some visual research? i know people have occasionaly posted some pictures with their posts which is good but we definitely need alot more of it, whether it's entirely relevant or not. so far we're just plucking ideas out of our heads and there's nothing wrong with that but we need to be more informed, more focused and more inspired (case in point - katie's reaction to the musician exhibition she went to, plus the whole postsecret thing). we need to just start posting things we find interesting or inspiring or funny or whatever! in the same way flo's manifesto group project used their blog (the shelf society) to post up things they found interesting. it will lead us to much better ideas and will enable us to further explore ideas and get some substance to what we're doing.

ok, other than that i like all the ideas so far, and i'm well up for a jungle club thing (lovin the games and badges). i think the 3 strongest ideas we have so far are flo's jungle club, eliza's secrets/personality/brain thing (although this seems to me to be very ambigious at the moment) and jade's 2012 future thing.

i don't want to drown out the jungle idea or the inside someones brain idea but i'm just gonna focus on the 2012 idea cos i think it's been overlooked and i quite like it as i'm well into the cheesey sci fi crap.

so not only is the bar called 2012 which lends itself to unrealistic expectations of the near future, but also the interior of the bar is reminiscent of sci fi (i think). for example those symmetrical silver lights on the ceiling, and the slick curvey white chairs. the shape of the bar, with it's long thin shape, also reminds me of space shuttles and space stations or star trek interiors - small thin cramped spaces. another good example is stanley kubrick's 2001: space odyssey...

slick curvey chairs, narrow spaces etc. okay so the walls aren't white... but we could overcome that with rolls of paper or sheets of fabric (look at the floor in the above shot and notice how the same effect with the black lines could be achieved with long strips of paper or fabric next to each other - that isn't a suggestion for the floor though obviously as it'll get ripped and dirty, but for the walls maybe).

also check out these visions of the future from the 1950s and 60s... (taken from http://www.fabiofeminofantascience.org/RETROFUTURE/RETROFUTURE1.html - it's all in italian but there's hundreds of images, i got up to page 16 and there's even more than that - well worth a look).




amazing! there's loads of magazine front covers about the future to:


and these amazing blue prints/architectural designs:



we could potentially turn the bar bar area into a space station or control room of some kind (control boxes made out of cardboard) there could also be interactive elements as flo mentioned with the jungle games. we could take it as ridiculously as we liked, we could even decorate the walls with portraits of aliens or something - it could be an alien space ship, not necessarily a human one. and then the stairway could be the entrance/landing hatch/stairwell to the outside world. and the basement we could turn into some alien landscape, and have made crap everywhere. the dj could be dressed as an alien.

anyway, i'm not saying i want to do the 2012 thing, i just want people to consider it as much as the other ideas cos i think it has potential.

i'm well up for the jungle thing. the concept of transforming the place could really be applied to anything...

x

jungle club

IF WE'RE JUNGLE CLUB, WHY DONT WE JUST MAKE A BIG JUNGLE AND INVENT JUNGLE GAMES AND BADGES AND LITTLE JUNGLE CLUB UNIFORMS AND RULES AND THE MEMBERS AND STUFF? there can be some members who are animals.

seriously does anyone want to do that?

It can involve a load of what katie was saying- we would make all the work together.

I remember ages ago someone suggested the basement could be the forest floor and upstairs can be the canopy/tree top bit.

flo

ok

SIMPLE IDEAS
i always liked the ideas we had in the beginning. Like Best Before i think simple ideas are nice because they dont take any time to explain, anyone can understand them and get something out of the work and we don't run the risk of doing something overcomplicated and mega arty. We are only just starting out on the road to illustration stardom after all. We have to start somewhere.

Exhibitions with a simple idea, i think are quite rare. there are tons of overcomplicated concept heavy shows, especially around brick lane and THE EAST. I always felt like having a simple show would be quite nice in the face of all that. like a whole show about circles or something but better. like what we were thinking before. Front and back etc.

Having a simple idea doesn't mean the work will be simple or it will be boring to execute it. its our job to be able to take any theme and produce exciting, personal, original work and if we can't do it now then were fucked!

SECRETS...
At this stage lets let the secrets idea go. however it did start off as something more interesting than just secrets. Eliza talked about the two or more different sides/minds/personas that a person can have. I think that that idea is still a strong one and lends itself to the upstairs downstairs set up of the bar.

I think we are an interesting enough group of people to make any idea exciting and original.

THE BAR
Also Jade made the point about relating what we do to the name, environment, or expectations people would have of the bar which I also think would be an interesting and relevant road to go down: buying, selling, brewing, drunkenness, mixing, arguments, fights, binge britain, 2012 etc.


WHAT DOES EVERYONE THINK OF ALL THAT?

ps. where's Miriam? she needs to get on here and sort us out!!

lots of love
flo

silly silly

we could do a completely over the top monster take over or jungle take over making it really silly and not taking ourselves seriously at all.

big pink fluffy poodle walking a fat little man with his willy out?

i went to an exhibition at the weekend and it was a collection of people now in bands who used to be artists or who had done art there was the pete doherty shite there and some coco rosie stuff but it was all major balls because they all took themselves so seriously but the best thing there was some paintings of like big rabbits wearing clothes and dogs with knickers on their heads and a big fluffy poddle painting and then a giant snail made of paper.

the only thing im worried about is the bla bla arty snoot snoot of brick lane and pretentious crap they expect and which we may end up with but not pulling it off so well. not that there is lack of faith xxxxxxxxxx

Stronger Before

hey all, i have not been on here in ages but just sat down and read everything all at once and feel as though we had much stronger ideas at the beginning.

and now its all getting a bit angsty to me with postcards of secrets, which has been done before and i have definitely seen in other places before, in the clelsea summer show there was a girl who put secrets in melted sugar and then it dried and then in the exhibition she had a light over it and as it melted the secrets came out. i just think its all a bit revisited.

i think we need to think away from ourselves and push ourselves into another frame of mind. making the space so that people are uneasy in it i think is the best thing so far for me, the above/below and different feelings in both areas. or different world.

i really like the idea of people understanding the top but not necessarily the bottom, but that the aesthetic of it is uneasy/disturbing/gory and the darkness sounds great and the pods! i dont know about the tents idea beacuse it could get a bit crowded down there and its really not that big.

i think we should also think about what the people who come to see the exhibition have a role as, where they stand and look at the stuff we produce, should they interact say sitting on things we have made which add to the environment creating space and how they are part of the installation without knowing.

we could almost make our own worlds like the needs project, where we are organisms and how we interact with one another, producing work together in our origional styles or adopting styles of everyone elses in a need to survive in the environment. i think it could get too bedroom if we all do our own stuff on our own. and it was so much more fresh when we all did stuff together at best before, i know we all want to do stuff on our own too but i think it should be stuff that we dont work on all holiday and all produce something totally different from each others i think we need to beat together or things would look odd in a collective exhibition.

riiiiiiiiiiiiight love to all. Au revoire de la belgique x

whatagwan timmy

alreet

I totally forgot about fuckin POSTSECRET. sneakin up and ruining our fun. i agree its too damn similar. WE WOUDA DONE IT BETTER THOUGH.

1. However i still think something on the theme of THINKING could work and be good in the same way. what goes on inside 'the mind' etc. Before i started going out with Samuel i had a dream that he had no hands or feet and that he had sex with me using his stumpy arms and legs. this made me feel wierdly attracted to him and we started going out. WHAT THE FUCK.
Also things you think when you're just sitting around that you never remember later.
When i walk past things like tables or chairs i sometimes imagine people falling over them in my head and i burst out laughing.

This idea has the potential to be too personal to me so maybe it wouldn't work as the theme for a group exhibition. Anyhoo.

2. When is Chie going back to Japan and for how long? This could affect her joining the group- or not.



I intend to start doing some of my own work on these or any other ideas we come up with in the next few weeks just to get the ball rolling. I think doing some drawings or whatever and posting them on here could really help us to work out what were doing. nothing major just sketches and visual ideas.

xxx flo

I'VE JUST HAD A CRACKIN' SHIT

• i'm deffoz up for a bit of chie action. get her in on the game.
  
  
• the venue is called bar 2012 (or 2010). anyway, it's a number, which references the future.
  
• i think the 1999 show is funny. i have never seen it. although, i can just picture it being a 1960s snapshot into the year 1999. when we'd apparentz have flying cars and all that shit.
  do you remember when it was new year 1999 and everyone was like , all the computer systems will become infected with uncurable viruses, the world is going to end, the sun will burn out and jesus will be reborn? do you know what i mean? that was funny too.
  
• how good is the postcard thing? they're so interesting. i love tiny bits of narrative. they give you a cheeky incling (sp) into something much bigger. as j-dog mentioned, we do need to be careful of copy catting, if we're going down that route. however, it's not like the launch night of our careers,so i don't think people are going to be TOO judgemental. whatevz.
  
• at the moment, i think our strongest ideas lie with these two:
  
  
  
  FUTURE (referencing name of bar)
  AND/OR
  SECRETS (need to tweak this, so it's not like the postcard mania thing)
  
  thoughts?
  
  
  
  finally, by having chie onboard, i know we're not in it, but i'm hoping she'll get us out the dogpoo.
  
  kiss.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

secret tings

holla. sorry i haven't been blogging it up much, i've got so many things to do at the moment and i'm mega stressed out.

it's really good to see everyones enthusiasm for this. i'm really into all the ideas so far... haven't seen space:1999 but lovin those screenshots! it's all getting much more imaginative so well done everyone.

i have a few things to say about the secrets idea... i like it a lot but there's a couple of issues that conern me somewhat. i don't mean to be a kill joy (again) and i feel like all i've contributed so far is harsh criticism so i do apologise but i think it's important to be critical of what we're doing as well...

anyway, she's beaten me to it but emma mentioned www.postsecret.com in the previous post. i'm not like some massive postsecret fanatic or anything but i've done some research into it and i think a few things should be mentioned about it....

post secret, if you're not aware of it already, is a pretty big phenomenon. it originally started in 2004 as an art installation inviting people to write their secrets on a postcard and decorate the walls of the gallery. in 2005 a blog was set up by frank warren and it has since become massively popular and has collected up to 2,500 postcard secrets. it's updated every sunday and people from all over the world send in anonymous postcards with their secrets on. lots of people email in saying things like how a postcard has touched them in a certain way or how one particular postcard stopped them from commiting suicide and all this kinda stuff. last year a community website was set up (www.postsecretcommunity.com) and over 10,000 people have signed up to the discussion forum. there's also been four post secret books published and people often go into book shops and hide their own postcard secrets into some of the books. here's some more examples:






some of them are pretty well designed too. all i want to say is that we need to be careful we don't make something that, to the audience, looks like we're just jumping on the postsecret bandwagon. also don't get me wrong, i know there will always be something or someone who has done something similar to what we do but i think postsecret is almost too new and fresh (and popular) to be referencing it (intentionally or not).

the other thing about postsecret is that it works so well because it involves pretty much everybody. there are secrets that range from funny little musings, to sexual habits, criminal confessions and suicide notes... it encompases a broad range of human emotion from every walk of life and i think for the nine of us to do something so similar it may become a really watered down version... i don't know, maybe not. but something to bare in mind.

honesty. i agree with what flo says about being honest, as half hearted secrets will appear bland and meaningless... however this is a tricky situation to get into because making work about our secrets is almost hypocritical considering the nature of a secret is that you don't want anyone to know about it. which means we'll get into all kinds of confusion over where we draw the line on what secrets to express and what ones not to express. i think maybe the only way to go about this is to be anonymous (like postsecret) however we all know each other's visual style and will be able to guess who's who, which is not a problem necessarily but if anyone actually has something personal to them they don't want people to know about then chances are the rest of the group will find it out (or the person will not submit the secret in the first place - which defeats the point of this whole idea). i don't know... maybe i'm missing the point here but this feels like a complicated issue to me.

however i like flo's suggestions of including everyday thoughts, i really love the ones she's posted, there's something very warm and human about them, good too in that they can be funny or serious (as with the secrets). i also wasn't aware that the bar was called 2012... i thought it was just called the brick lane gallery... could someone enlighten me on this please?

i apologise again for long ranting... and also sorry if i'm missing the point or misunderstand what the ideas are surrounding the secrets thing... but i think it's important to bare this issue in mind and be aware of other projects that are similar to what we want to do.

also i will try and be more involved from now on with this blog, but i am very busy at the moment, there's about a million things flying around my brain so it's difficult to concentrate and think about this project. but i'll try be more pro active about it. we should also keep our eyes peeled for other projects similar to the ideas we come up with, the more informed we are, the stronger our ideas and work will be.

x

p.s. i was talking to chie in college yesterday... she's so cool. i was wondering whether we should invite her to join in on the jungle club fun...?

p.p.s. i just added the photos of the space to the side bar.