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Collaborators

This term needs a brief note. Our friends in Austria and Germany have pointed out that it has some unfortunate historical connotations. We were aware of this, of course, but in Britain it is widely used in an artistic context and doesn't necessarily have a relationship with dubious political situations, or at least no more so than many other words in English - a language with a far from pristine past. We tried to think of another word for collaborating but couldn't. Someone suggested 'consorting' but on balance we thought that was worse. Bas Kromhout, who is a Dutch historian, said in the Parking Space that collaboration is really kinky word and that we shouldn't worry about using it. Then again, we don't know quite what 'kinky' means from a Dutch person. But we're happy to live with the paradoxes and complications that come with translation, or at least transition: English may be a global language but we don't all understand it in the same way. So since we can't live outside language we embrace collaboration in all its kinkiness. And our collaborators in all of theirs.

Parking Non-Stop spent much of 2005 involved in collaboration with other artists. In April, Alan and Zoë visited Dutch writer Bas Kromhout at his home in Den Haag, where they recorded various household appliances in his flat. Recordings of Bas's refrigerator and gas fire were then interwoven with sounds from PN-S's own plumbing system to create an international domestic symphony. This was then overlaid with some of Dewi's most cinematic string arrangements, along with Bas's reading of J.C. Bloem's poem "Altjid November" and Zoë's responses to the poem. The resulting piece will appear on the forthcoming Parking Non-Stop album. Bas Kromhout is pictured here (right) with Alan outside the International Court at The Hague, 6th April 2005.
	The following month, they headed off to Bosnia to appear at the Sarajevski Dani Poezije festival in Sarajevo. Here, Zoë's texts were translated into Bosnian by the poets Mario Hibert and Islada Sertovic and performed bilingually at the festival by the writer Zlatan Persic with Parking Non-Stop. Recordings of the extended work "Formula For A New City" read in Bosnian by Zlatan Persic were made later that week in the park immediately adjacent to the site where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28th 1914. Zlatan Persic, pictured left ,at Hotel Bosnia, Sarajevo, 16th May 2005

Dewi, meanwhile was busy collaborating with performance artist Eddie Ladd in productions in Madrid, Montreal, Ljubljana and La Norville (near Paris), where he managed to slip in an extra Parking Non-Stop performance.

Back on home territory, the full 3-piece Parking Non-Stop continued their series of collaborations by improvising a live accompaniment to a performance by the renowned Welsh poet Robert Minhinnick, as well as performing their own set, at Llandudno town hall on the 12th of July.

October 2004 brought about an interesting collaboration when Parking Non-Stop performed at the Ars Poetica festival in Bratislava,Slovakia where they were joined on stage by the noted Slovak actress Tana Pauhofova, who performed the Slovak versions of the texts, as translated by the poet Martin Solotruk. Visual contributions were provided in the form of digital projections by the graphic artist Jan Sicko. Tana Pauhofova is pictured here (right) on stage at the Ars Poetica festival at Studio 12, Bratislava, 1st October 2004
	In a further ongoing collaboration, they continued working with Annie Stubbs from London wicca group Devotion. One completed piece took the form of an evocative homage to the mythical Lorelei of Germanic folklore, featuring a quite otherworldly vocal performance from Annie, and is set to appear on a forthcoming album of her recent work. She is perhaps best known as a one-time member of pioneering industrialists SPK, and has also worked with Lustmord, The Long Decline, The Zuggs, 11th Hour, Blow By Blow, The Dekorators, Aquarelle, Pillow Talk and The Ominous Dr Clip-Clop (amongst others). Annie Stubbs, pictured (left) at PN-S HQ, 1st June 2004

In the words of Ian Davidson:

"This project involves the development of a multi media response to the topography of Ynys Mon / Anglesey. It will produce verbal, sonic and visual artworks; poems, video, music, photographs and drawings. The project's art based activities will be guided by an understanding of the ways in which places and spaces are socially and historically constructed. It will explore the ways in which social and cultural power and influence is established and maintained, and ask questions about the landscapes we see every day. The theoretical and aesthetic background to the project involves a vision of Ynys Mon as a multi layered landscape, crossed by roads and railway lines, mapped by the big estates and by the church, by language and culture, by environmentalists. Traces of previous cultures remain, some of the oldest in the world, side by side with modern means of communication and mapping the landscape. Through connecting with archaeological digs, and seeing them as a time based activity which temporarily exposes the past and locates it within the present, further layers are added. Textual practice and visual artworks alone cannot adequately represent this complexity. Digital media can. The project will produce a range of artworks which could exist in isolation, including poems and other texts, drawings and paintings, musical pieces, photographs and video and site specific responses."

Ian Davidson at Schiphorst, Germany, 19th September 2005

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