'Let's Play Records!'

Since stepping out at Newlyn 'LPR!' has been testing the water with a couple of benefit events for the Lafrowda music fetival in St Just. Moving on from Death Disco I'm now using a new format - 'B.Y.O Disco' - where the audiences are invited to bring along the music they want to dance to with 'LPR!' supplying the traditional card board cut out instruments.

As a lapsed collector the importance of the collection that I had built up [from the age of about 10 ten] has not lessened in its cultural value – hey! and it might have even gone up in monetary terms. Thank you UK Subs for all the coloured vinyl you gave us - even the brown one! The first record that I could actually call mine was the ‘Wombles Greatest Hits’ [fun] and Jean Michel Jarres’ ‘Oxygene’ [interesting] and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture’ [liked the canons] given to me on my 10th birthday. After a brief foray into prog-rock influenced by big brother it was later rejected for Punk and New Wave. I remember vividly the arguments about whose turn it was to choose the radio station we would listen too when me and my brothers were in our bedroom at night. It was a toss up between the ‘Rock Show’ on Manchester Piccadilly Radio and John Peel on Radio One. The first time I heard the Sex pistols ‘Holidays in the Sun’ [shortly before we discovered John Peel] was on the Rock Show. The DJ laughingly - he was actually laughing -introduced it as utter rubbish by a band that couldn’t play. It was like nothing I had heard before - both disturbing and alluring. After that there was no turning back. Music and the record collecting habit became the pivotal activity that all the major events of my teenage life and early adult hood revolved around until I suffered a major hearing loss at a chumbawamba gig in Manchester 1987. When I look back now at my collecting it's obvious that records, music and the artwork helped me make sense of a world I couldn't identity with. My Brave New World had suddenly become circular, made of plastic and came in a variety of sizes. A place where the easy listening had been replaced by protest songs that, importantly, went at a variety of [fast, faster or furious] speeds and had a hole in the middle.

As an artist I have long recognised Vinyl’s influence on my early creative development - from the music, to the art work, to the social situations that develop around its use. In a kind of celebration of all things vinyl, focussing on its ability to act as a hub for creativity and the related social scenes that inspired me, I set out to create new work about and informed by these early inspirations and interactions in collaboration with other enthusiasts. Acting as artist-curator during 'Transition' gave me the perfect opportunity to take a trip on a bus mans holiday and explore this more fully and collaboratively with an audience. This offered me space and time to reconsider play as tool for my practice, develop prototype ideas and work with the unresolved in situ without the constraints of presenting a finalised exhibition. As a curator I wanted to create a multiple platform for an art event that strove to be universally accessible to all, test out ideas of engagement and explore how, as an artist, ‘dumbing down’ can be avoided in the development and presentation of your work. The presentation of ‘LPR!’ was modelled on the places I have used or lived in - independant record shops, my teenage bedroom and previous squats for example. The adaptation of these environments grew organically and creatively from playing records. These references came initially from my own experiences but were further influenced by conversations with other collectors and enthusiasts directly associated with the ‘LPR!’ experience. ‘LPR!’- included orchestrated events, films, projections, presentations, photomontage, drawing, collage and performance, informal interviews and discussions all of which related to playing records. I regarded the whole curatorial process as a performative event. The planning, meeting and interviewing of collectors and enthusiasts, curating discontinued collections etc, and putting it all together at Newlyn were all part of that. The main focus of the show was a rolling programme of displays of records curated from a variety of personal collections. These were brought into and played during 'Collecta-Selecta!’ These records were placed in a rack and were on view as long as the collector was in session. During the session they would retrieve records from the rack and play them whilst we talked or I worked on large scale drawings of stars from music history using an updated camera obscurer -an overhead projector. I wanted the collector to be in control of and be responsible for what went on display to share the role of curator. The collectors included a teddy bear repairer, hairdresser, artists, mental health worker, young adults, students, young children, music promoter, DJ’s, teachers, archaeologist, mechanic, musicians, librarian and drop in enthusiasts. 'The Book of Lists' became the archive of submitted catalogues detailing the contents of collections from all types of genres and all types of collector both national and international. As well as the records people have and do collect, I was also interested in what people have given up collecting as well. During the 2 months of planning I built up a selection of discontinued collections from the dispossessed. This was accompanied by 'The Book of Lists 2: eBay killed the second hand record shop'. A film covering the technical background on the process of record production filmed at the famous EMI record factory, Hayes Middlesex - now Portal Space Records - was shown daily. A number of artists work was shown throughout the exhibition also – these included photographs of Duchamp’s roto-reliefs, a film and photographs of a series of painted vinyl works entitled ‘Experiences’ by Kim Walker from Scotland and photographs of vinyl collage form Esther Bourdages from Canada. Other sessions such as 'The ABC of Play' and 'Debate on the plate' happened naturally in an ordered kind of organic chaos. The 'Prop - Pose' workshop provided the cut out instruments for the power house event ‘Death Disco’ at which the Cobra Club DJ’s played the 'Furtive 50'. Cobra Club have since gone on to use the format of 'Choose Your Own' records and cardboard prop in their own events.

I curated this exhibition as an artist curator at Newlyn art Gallery, Cornwall in Jan/February 2008 as part of ‘Transition' series of exhibitions . This exhibition was a visual and performative look at record collections and the social happenings that form around the activity. It consisted of a visual display of records selected by collectors. The exhibition featured a variety of interactive ‘sessions’ that investigated various elements of audience engagement and all that it entails.
Below is a list of the events.

Cheers, Bruce Davies Let’s Play Records!

Wednesday- PLAY SESSION 1: ‘Collecta-Selecta!’ on ‘Lets Play Radio’ Interviews and live pod casts on LPR - an internet radio station created especially for the exhibition. These sessions are for the creators of the collections on display. These pod casts are recorded from inside a wooden garden shed ‘studio’ situated in the gallery. Out side the ‘Shedio’ while the broadcasts take place the audience will be able to relax on ‘LPR’ bean bags and listen to the live pod casts or walk around browsing/looking at the collections and watch the sessions through the windows of the shedio. Thursday - PLAY SESSION 2: ‘Collecta-Selecta!’ on ‘Lets Play Radio’ More interviews and live pod casts on ‘LPR’ with the creators of the record collections on display. Friday - PLAY SESSION 3: THE ABC OF PLAY - children welcome. Morning session: ‘Learn to Care’ - includes practical sessions and tips on cleaning and caring for your records, what to buy and what to avoid 'Learn to Play’ - this is the session for those who never did. Choose a record from the new acquisitions collection and get to grips with vinyl. PLAY AWAY – Afternoon session: ‘Free Play’ a drop in session for the audience to select records from the “Lets Play” collection and play them for themselves and ending with… CONDUCTION: This is where a new recording is created (for release on vinyl at later date) by conducting the decks of the participants from 'PLAY AWAY' Saturday – all day event: RECORD FAIR - 10am-4pm: a 'real' event inviting regular stall holders to attend and sell their wares from the gallery. ‘Collecta - Selecta 2’/Swap Shop – have newly bought acquisitions from the fair played on LPR and be interviewed live. Exchange a disc from your own collection with another willing collector at the ‘Swap Shop’ stand. Spontaneous requests by the audience played throughout the fair. Saturday – evening event ‘Death Disco’ 7-11 pm: come and dance around a hand bag to the "Furtive 50" chosen by the audience from the collections on display and from the compiled book of collections not on display. Sunday – event 2.00 pm: CUBE! GYM! JAM! - The final farewell: A legs, bums, and tums work out to high/low octane recordings on Newlyn Green.