Janine Harrington The Human Clock (big time, 2013) is a functioning clock maintained by an operator using only their own embodied sense of time passing, and a little feedback from audiences. It is an exploration of time and labour. ​ Janine Harrington is an artist whose work includes writing, dance & choreography, drawing, video, installation, costume and space design. She works mainly in gallery and non-stage spaces where her work prioritises explorations around access, play, agency, confrontation by times/scales beyond the human, neuroqueer experiences of information processing and attention. ​ www.janineharrington.com

A review of the Full Circle Forum: Arts and Ecology Lab WATCH HERE We convened at the newly-opened Doncaster Danum Gallery, Library & Museum on 26th March 2022 for a forum to discuss the future of South Yorkshire’s post-industrial landscapes, in response to a newly commissioned artwork, Full Circle by Yu-Chen Wang and curated by Mike Stubbs. In addition to Wang’s commissioned film installation, the forum also serves to highlight two new initiatives in Doncaster: an artist residency entitled “Re-wilding the System” which will support four artists to work alongside environment scientists; and “Symbiosis”, a series of ten bursaries offered to artists, environmentalists, designers, ecologists and imaginative thinkers to work together in interdisciplinary workshops, around themes of biodiversity, sustainability and local ecologies. These lab-based residency programs will feed into the ArtBomb Festival in August. Making our way beyond the two steam locomotives housed on the ground floor of the building, Wang’s film is installed in the art gallery at the top of the new building. It sits amongst the permanent collection which features 19th-century landscapes, portraits of majestic racehorses, portraits of gentleman and once-important local dignitaries, a painting of Doncaster’s bustling cattle market at the turn of the 20th century, and some more contemporary paintings depicting intimate domestic scenes of 20th-century industrial society. Full Circle begins with a long, slow circular pan across a lowland fen. An alien, lilac sky reflects in the surface of a vast body of water whose surface seems impossibly still. The surface of the water is broken by a lone twisted branch which extends out from the water, a petrified arm emerging from the pool like that of an Arthurian Lady of the Lake. Synth tones rise and descend eerily, above the burbling and colliding textures of a subaqueous soundscape, suggesting another world beneath the eerily dead surface. A narrative voice-over declares, “This picturesque scene hides histories of enclosure, and violent insurrection… the relationship between ecology, topography and human geography is rather confused and precariously entangled. Over time we got what we wanted, and we lost what we had”. This collision of nature, technology and memory in Doncaster’s post-industrial landscape sets the scene for today’s forum. Liz McIvor Writer, historian and TV presenter Liz McIvor kicks off the forum with the first presentation, taking us to Clifton Country Park, site of the former Wet Earth Colliery. Now a nature reserve, the industrial history of the land is largely hidden today. McIvor illustrates with an image showing part of a network of 19th-century tunnels which run under the park, echoing the opening scene of Full Circle with the notion of a world that lies obscured beneath the surface. She doesn’t explicitly mention the eerie, but she talks about the ghosts inhabiting the post-industrial landscape, sometimes literally, as in the reported sighting of ghosts on the site of the Hexthorpe Railway Disaster of 1887 in which 25 people were killed. Thus far we are thinking about how we deal with our industrial histories in the present, but of course it is also an historian’s work to understand how those histories were perceived by their contemporaries. McIvor presents us with examples of mid-nineteenth-century artworks to illustrate some of the attitudes held at the time towards, for example, the development of the railways. One slide shows John Martin’s The Great Day of His Wrath , a painting which American artist Dan Graham recognised as: “the first shell-shocked reaction to the anguish of the new industrial age” Suggesting also that this artwork was perhaps an early work of science-fiction. McIvor tells that, whilst touring Britain’s northern cities in the 1850’s, this work was attacked by workers who felt the painting represented an assault on their livelihoods, which for the first time were based on a wage economy. Management of the ecologies of industry and landscape has always been political. Yu-Chen Wang Next Yu-Chen Wang gives some insight into her research process. Wang’s practice involves her working closely with local experts, in this case ecologists, conservationists and naturalists who study and work with the Hatfield Moors, several of whom feature in today’s presentations. Walking the terrain with her collaborators is important for Wang in order to navigate the multiple narratives of the landscape, and these interactions formulate themselves within Full Circle’s voiceover: “Let the terrain speak for itself, you and I walk the landscape. Landscape is something you look out from, not something to be looked at”. Wang’s work sits within a tradition of artists’ moving-image practice which synthesises ethnography with science-fiction, a strategy perhaps to be at ground level within the landscape, whilst simultaneously distanced from it through a process of estrangement. Within this tendency artists are often grappling with what lies hidden within the landscape, the layers of which include the ghosts of our colonial histories, in the work of Larissa Sansour, Jananne Al-Ani or Grace Ndritu, for example. Wang’s Full Circle allows colonial histories, collective memory and geological time to collide, whilst also infused by the auto-ethnographic voice: “you’re really intrigued to hear that I’m going to narrate the story myself this time” Seeking to understand the landscape as a web of connections beyond the surface. Louise Hill Ecologist Louise Hill and conservationist Michael Oliver, both of the Old Lindholme Moor Management Group, between them detail some of the challenges facing Lindholme Island, a peat mire located between Hatfield and Thorne moors. Both moors were decimated through a long history of peat extraction, but the parcel of land known as Old Lindholme Moor was privately owned and the owners didn’t allow peat cutting, as a result of which the peat is one of the deepest in the area. Water management is one of the key issues mentioned by both Hill and Oliver, and it’s critical to keep the peat in a saturated condition - not only to preserve and foster the carbon-sequestering mire habitat, but also to reduce the risk of wildfires. Hill describes how in 2020 a wildfire spread across the southern edge of the moor, the carbon dioxide emissions of which were estimated to be roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of 30,000 people. Michael Oliver Oliver highlights that the objective is to protect the moors area, and its particular habit with extremely rare invertebrates (later during the panel discussion Oliver talks about how the nightjar which feeds off these invertebrates, was crucial to achieving designation under the EU Habitats Directive as a Special Protection Area, which ironically didn’t prevent the cutting of peat in the surrounding Hatfield and Thorne moors since permissions for rights to cut peat pre-dated European laws designed to protect such areas). It’s impossible to completely restore the moor, but the aim is to preserve it until such time as the fauna may have the opportunity to spread further afield. This critical endeavour, full of hope, reverberates through the Full Circle soundtrack: “You say it is almost impossible to return the moor to its original condition, but you try to do what you can, while you can”. Simon Pickles Simon Pickles, Director of the North and East Yorkshire Ecological Data Centre, begins his presentation with an image depicting the Saddleworth Moor ablaze at night. This photograph taken in 2021, echoes the slide of the John Martin painting shown earlier by Liz McIvor. Pickles recalls, “You could smell the peat… and standing there with the breeze coming towards me, you kept getting buffeted by the heat coming off the distant fire”. He recounts that whilst the newspapers spoke to the family whose fireworks accidentally sparked the fire, the mountain rescue team, and the National Trust who were out looking for livestock, he and his colleagues were studying maps and satellite images to try to understand what kinds of habitats had been lost, and what species associated with those habitats might be effected. Pickles asks, how can he push the narrative towards data-driven stories that contribute to a better popular understanding of our local ecologies, and influence the people who make the political decisions which can impact on them? Pickles understands that for his work as an ecologist to be successful, he also needs to be an effective story-teller, and this leads him to speak passionately in support of collaborating with artists to tell these stories. Following the presentations, we begin a roundtable discussion chaired by Mike Stubbs, Creative Director of ArtBomb. David Bramwell, one of the four resident artists selected for Artbomb’s Re-wilding the System , talks about how he grew up in Doncaster without much of a sense of connection with the Don—the river from which the town derives its name (and which itself gained its name from a mythical river goddess Danu), which was declared biologically dead until the 1990’s. Bramwell speaks about the importance of challenging the metaphors commonly used to depict nature and our relationships with it in terms of conflict (typically battles between species of plants or animals, or between humans and the environment), favouring a discourse which places emphasis on metaphors of symbiosis and collaboration. This seems to contrast with Mick Oliver’s experience of political “battles" during his period as Doncaster Borough Council’s Case Officer for Thorne and Hatfield moors, but perhaps this is the point: if we are to make meaningful advances in the ways our lives, economies and biological environments interact, we need to create narratives based around mutual benefit and collaboration rather than around conflict resolution. Many of the contributions from the floor echo the importance of becoming better story-tellers. Richard Scott, Director of the National Wildflower Centre at the Eden Project, suggests that “these steely terms like ‘environment infrastructure’ don’t really work”, and that it is the human stories about our environment which really connect with us. Paulette Benjamin, who works at Gomde UK Buddhist Centre (current owners of the parcel of land known as Old Lindholme Moor) says: “It’s not like we want to get people to be tourists, we don’t need people to enjoy the countryside, we need to really connect with the depth of nature, and the vastness of what it represents”. Visual artist Carolyn Thompson asks: “How do we make things happen on a grander scale, beyond the conversations in this room? How do we reach more people? How do we influence and have impact at a higher level?” Mike Stubbs Thompson suggests that artists are often operating as a kind of low-level annoyance in terms of provocation, but need to find ways of making sure their questions and ideas have an impact at a level of policy. Simon Pickles offers one solution, expressing that he is seriously drawn to the idea of a regional arts and ecology lab. Pickles admits that he is less interested in “artworks” but is interested in process and wants to work with artists, to see how they research, to engage with people who “think differently” and challenge the accepted norm of scientific thinking. This ambition for a regional arts and ecologies lab - the first steps of which are now in motion with Artbomb’s Re-wilding the System artist residencies and the “Symbiosis” bursaries - can plug directly into Doncaster’s efforts to rebuild its identity as a forward-thinking centre for arts and culture, and a wider ambition to establish a Yorkshire Great Fen. It takes both guts and vision to attempt something new, and from what I see at this forum Doncaster has that in abundance. What we need now is for other sectors from small businesses to larger-scale industry, to the Borough Council and beyond, to get on board with this urgent thinking.

Rita Says and Jennifer is live performance of beats and oral recordings. Sampling workshop demonstrating the use of found sounds to create music. ​ Jennifer Rozenfelds was born in 1977 and grew up in Doncaster. As well as a house/techno producer, aka Jackhno, she is a sonic artist using found sounds to weave soundscapes. As an environmentalist, Jennifer explores the relationship of the River Don and the people of Doncaster, collecting the words of locals to build the narrative of her piece. ​

As part of the Wild Weed Kitchen , artists Sacha Gray and Anton Hecht, worked with the public to create a number of artistic responses to the theme of rewilding. This included making stencils and text to create temporary graffiti art that used poetry to instigate provocations in public space about the themes. This included text on the pavement and street furniture. There was also the use of photomontage, working with images the buildings down the street, to create a multimedia work on site in the space leading to the courtyard of the Unitarian church that allowed visualisation of the theme of rewilding. All the workshops' creative activities were focused on public space, and representing the theme of rewilding through creative means. It was great to work with the youth that popped in to see what was going on and eagerly got involved in the making and painting on the pavement whilst chatting about then idea of a 'wild' Hall Gate! The workshops were drop in and This workshop was in collaboration with Gallery Gate through an ARG found.

ArtWorks are a cic organisation based in South Yorkshire, we work with adults with learning disabilities and autism to develop their confidence and creative skills by developing them as artists. For ArtBomb22 our artists will produce both an intervention and installation that focuses on some of the many endangered animal species in the world. From 11:00 until 12:00 on Friday we will perform a series of interventions that combine both an animal protest march with funeral procession of near extinct species, which will be later displayed in the Doncaster Unitarian and Free Christian Church. ​ www.artworks-sy.co.uk

Due to The Portland Collective move, the "Open Studio Event" has been moved and we are HIJACKING Bentley Urban Farm , we are TAKING OVER! This only means ONE thing! A Bigger, larger, more extravagant event. Who is in? There will be LIVE music from the one and only SKIN TONES, lots and lots of art work up for you to admire and for sale, there will be stalls, demonstrations & even workshops. https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Portland-Collective

ArtBomb is more than a festival, and is deeper and wider than an artist presenting their work. It’s about process, development and a strong emphasis on collaboration and experimentation. I am the ArtBomb lab developer and I have been engaging with artists and environmental scientists and enabling them to explore new ideas together through the residencies, and development programmes that we, ArtBomb, are currently running. A lab is not traditionally associated with art and certainly not familiar in my home town of Doncaster. This is a more contemporary art space set up where boundaries between practices and media can be blurred, deconstructed, played with through experimentation forming new ideas and questions. I have been working with artist, lecturer and prolific space designer/maker, Micky Bunn to construct the ArtBomb lab with a focus on an easily adaptable and fluid use of the space for our resident artists/scientists to use including making the most of a double window frontage to showcase ongoing developments to the public. The space is an exciting formation of workbenches, tool kits and resources such as video projectors, raspberry pi’s, green screen, retort stands, audio recorders and art materials and mini library, courtesy of ArtBombs’ Creative Director Mike Stubbs. The library contains catalogues of contemporary artists, artworks and theories that inspire. Over the past few weeks I've been very lucky to hang out and work with some super interesting people already doing exciting work. David Bramwel, Carolin Sinders, Rebecca Smith, Angela Robson and Brigitte Perenyi are the artists in residence at the ArtBomb lab. The concoction of ideas and interests within this cohort of artists/scientists/activists is intoxicating at times. ArtBomb lab is currently hosting a 3 week residency with Wild Weed Kitchens ’ Monika Dutta and Jake Harries, who are working in collaboration with artist Janet Wallace and myself. This residency is a predominantly public facing and public engaging project bringing the idea and reality of wild food to the fore with drop in events and workshops. In terms of public interest and willingness to get involved and chat to Monika and Jake, the residency has been very successful, evidenced by the public being very curious of these goings on and particularly intrigued and even keen to try a dandelion burger and stir fried weeds. The last half of this residency crosses over with the first Re-Wilding the System lab-based residency scheme in which artists research experimental work alongside ecologists and environmental scientists. This is the first of 3 rounds of lab activity where the four artists and special guests have been undertaking a get together of various events and activities to assist them in developing their work. This has included a field trip out to Hatfield Moors which I took part in. Mick Oliver, our expert tour guide brimming with not just knowledge but immense wisdom and lots of humour took us on a journey through the peatlands that he is evidently, acutely familiar with. We looked and learned deeply through Mick’s relentless and meticulous work to ‘re wet’ and assist restoration of the species of plants and insects that have been lost through human ignorance and are so vitally important to that particular land and consequentially important to the whole health of the environment. This experience will inform the rewilding artists work they develop for the the upcoming ArtBomb festival. The works that come from this will be mixed, and range from written pieces, to films, projections and performance with the emphasis experimental, collaborative and deep thinking using new media, new ways of making art that connects to people and provokes inquiry from its viewers. This experience and gathering of artists sees the beginning of a development of work that will continue with more sharing and learning on the themes of environmental issues, hyper local and global. With input form scientist Simon Pickles and a number of amazing environmental organisations and individuals. The work has only just begun and the process is proving exciting and surprising.

Chomko & Rosier is the collaborative studio of artists: Matthew Rosier and Jonathan Chomko, based in London and Montreal respectively. Their work explores technology and the built environment, resulting in installations and experiences for public space. The studio’s work has won multiple awards and been installed in the public spaces of Tokyo, Paris, Austin, Bristol, York and London. ​ Shadowing gives memory to streetlights; recording and replaying the shadows of those who pass underneath. In Doncaster Chomko & Rosier have created a new, semi-permanent version of this award winning public artwork, which will now be installed next to Waterdale Street for one year. This new version of Shadowing has been manufactured in partnership with UK based street lighting manufacturer Ark Lighting, supported by Doncaster Council and Doncaster Creates, and launches as part of Artbomb 2022.

A performance by Filippos Tsitsopoulos Revenge has many forms and the one chosen by the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler against his patron, the shipping magnate from Liverpool Frederick Leyland, was quite visual. The artist painted an evil anthropomorphic figure - half peacock, half man - playing the piano sitting in a house and surrounded by amounts of money. The painting was called The Gold Scab: Eruption in Filthy Lucre , in a clear reference to his ex-sponsor and client, M. Leyland and his Jewish origins, who decided not to pay the commissioned the Peacock Room to Whistler, after several disagreements on the costs and the way that the piece was designed. As a consequence of the non-payment, the artist lost his house because he couldn’t pay his debts. Even though, the reference of this performance drawn from an old show about Whistler’s Peacock Room at the Bluecoat in Liverpool, that was including a reconstruction of the Peacock Room and a copy of the painting The Gold Scab: Eruption in Filthy Lucre , is mostly articulated around the “charismatic public persona who challenged the art community” with his art, words, writings and innovative ideas on the exhibition space, Whistler is most of all, an artist devoted to the art for the art’s sake. An artist against the system, surviving into the system, standing by his art. When Whistler decided to make the Peacock Room in his own way, against his client’s desires, he was choosing sides. The natural debate between being a part of the system (curators, galleries, actionists, biennales, critics, academics, institutions, collectionists, sponsors, clients, grants…) and being an artist true to his principles and his art, arises at this point. The complex mechanism of the art world shows the artist’s vulnerability. The monster devours the artist, giving voice to his words. The reflection of the artist’s nothingness, the artist forced to be whatever the monster says he has to be.There is always a moment when a person must stand his ground, and defend himself.

Celebrating the work of Daz, or Kozi as he was known, along with his collaborators and Doncaster's street artists. Josie Mallinder says: "Daz’s creativity and love for art began at a young age; he skateboarded, learnt to DJ as a teenager and enjoyed drawing and painting. His passion continued into adulthood, he completed a degree in contemporary art in Leeds and his interest in street art continued to grow. After finishing his degree and returning to Doncaster he continued to spend all his free time thinking about or creating art, his imagination and creativeness was endless and he was always bursting with new ideas for walls, projects and new pieces. He began to get involved in some community projects including graffiti workshops and creating illustrations for Doncopolitan and he was excited to be involved in more in the future. Daz had a joyfulness and passion that was infectious, he was filled with love and could see the best in everyone and everything. He encouraged everyone to embrace their artistic side and was never anything but supportive, kind and positive. The impact he has had on the people who he came into contact with is ongoing and I still meet new people over seven years after he died who talk about him with much love, respect and admiration. The immense and enduring positive influence he had, and the devastating hole he left, is also shown through the artworks that are still designed and painted each summer in his memory." https://www.instagram.com/freightsmatesandbellyaches/