LIAR - The Psychogeography Of Silent Reading

LIAR - Paul Conneally Avignon Festival 2008

In LIAR Conneally explores cities and other spaces through the act of reading in public places.

Silent reading as psychosplacist intervention.

Originally performed in Avignon as part of the Avignon Festival 2008 Conneally has gone on to read silently in many other locations exploring the line between where it's acceptable to read silently in public and where it is not.

What are the messages given out when someone decides to read to themself in a paticular place - home tube cafe shopping mall busy street sat down stood up top of a hill in a stream?

And how are the spaces and people passing through them changed by such reading?

LIAR Eccentric City May 2009  LIAR - Look I Am Reading - Paul Conneally - Extract from Eccentric City May 2009

Jobs Fair

She tells me she's tired. Her sandwich board is heavy and she's got three more hours of street pounding to complete before lunch. I see more and more young sandwich board men and women, often stationary at the intersection of two busy thoroughfares or roads, usually advertising one pizza chain or another, sometimes in fancy dress.

This young woman is kinetic, in civvies, not carrying a fast-food chain message but boards emblazoned with the slogan 'Jobs fair today - Free to attend - Hundreds of jobs'.

She smiles and walks on. I take her photo from behind and my mind rearranges the words to align with my thoughts:

Fair Jobs

TODAY!

Paul Conneally
May 21st 2015
Leicester UK

HELTER SKELTER - A Proposal To Alter Carillon Tower

HELTER SKELTER - Paul Conneally 1999

HELTER SKELTER is a splacist art work from 1999 where I faxed Charnwood Borough Council's Director of Planning and Technical Services, Jonathan Hale, a proposal to form a Helter Skelter for peace around Loughborough's famous Carillon Tower war Memorial.

The intervention was based around the fact that all planning proposals have to be responded to by the council. The piece generated several press reports and a number of responses from the public. Contrary to Jonathan Hale's view that the public might find it controversial and be against it many were broadly in favour of it, at least as an idea. The official Carillon player, who fisted out songs from the shows and such on the Carillon keyboard in among the bells at the top of the tower, told Loughborough Echo that it was a fun idea, the bells playing as Loughbohemians slid down the helter skelter in the name of peace and in memory of those who died in the First World War.

I'm now revisiting engagement with Loughborough's Carillon Tower, an amazing building and now on all the signs heralding entry to Loughborough by road. Watch this splace!

Extract from The Splacist Manifesto:

We will own this city.
We will take it back.
We will link and shift; across time, space, people, places and processes
We will weave throughout the fabric of people’s lives.
We will unpick it.

We will affect and be affected.
We will glory in the moment, the collage, the marking and then passing on.

We reject your shopping centre, your pavement, your cultural quarter;
We will undermine pre-defined spaces. We reject them.

We will reclaim the city, not for you, but with you.
We are you.

Splacism is a contemporary mode of practice proposed by Paul Conneally. A new set of ideologies defined by Hannah Nicklin and Nikki Pugh. A hop, skip and a jump away from phsychogeography and the works of the situationist international. Think space, place and splice. Developed empirically by whoever’s interested.

Paul Conneally
May 24 2015

Loughborough Carillon:


Loughborough Carillon Tower War Memorial, Paul Conneally, 2015

Across The Far Bank

this late spring evening
a streak of kingfisher blue
across the far bank

Paul Conneally
The Boathouse
Barrow-on-Soar
May 2015

Rising Excitement - King Power Stadium

rising excitement
the turnstile assistant
gives me a wink

Paul Conneally
King Power Stadium
Leicester May 2015

The Visitors

The Visitors

It's early May. Leicester City FC are hosting south coast opponents Southampton, The Saints. Both clubs need a win. Southampton are hunting a place in the Europa Cup and Leicester fighting relegation from the Premier to the Championship League.

Many of the Southampton fans are in shorts, some coupled with flip-flops. Maybe it's living by the sea, it's surely not shorts weather today here in the English East Midlands.

They arrive in coaches, buy burgers and drinks from the vans outside the ground and then make their way into the visitors' end. The atmosphere is good.

season's end
police share nods and smiles
with away fans

Paul Conneally
King Power Stadium
Leicester, 9th May 2015

Roll-up

Roll-up - Paul Conneally, King Power Stadium, May 10 2015

Two young Leicester City football fans have a roll-up, a cigarette, before City's fixture against Southampton. The Foxes (Leicester City) came out 2 nil victors and a step nearer towards escaping relegation to the Championship from the Premier League.

when Saturday comes
a pint a pie
and a game of two halves

Paul Conneally
May 2015

May Day

May Day
a bag of French fries
and a Big Mac

Paul Conneally

Photo: Loughborough - Paul Conneally May 1 2015

Loughborough Carillon Tower and War Memorial

'Loughborough Carillon Tower & War Memorial was built after WW1 to commemorate the men of the town who gave their lives. Unique in Britain, it is the only purpose built carillon tower.

Set within the beautiful Queen's Park the tower is also home to a museum, 3 rooms packed with military memorabilia. Including one room dedicated to the Leicestershire Yeomanry.

Climb the 138 steps, past the 47 bells and you are out onto the balcony with fantastic views across Loughborough.'

Above text from Go Leicestershire

In 1999 artist Paul Conneally proposed to Charnwood Borough Council planning committee that the Carillon Tower be turned into a Peace Beacon with the addition of a helter skelter slide around the external walls of the tower. The proposal itself was the artwork as Conneally knew, correctly, that the proposal would be rejected but would have to be considered. The proposal was made in the form of a poem and resulted in newspaper coverage and media discussion of the piece.

As Britain embarks on a frenzy of state funded events between 2014 and 2018 to commemorate 100 Years passing since the carnage of World War 1 Conneally will formally once again propose the transformation in some way of the Carillon Tower War Memorial into a more upfront peace proposing landmark whilst still remembering all those from all sides that lost their lives in the conflict, the war (Conneally will not call it the 'Great War') of 1914 to 1918 and all other wars too.

Photograph: Paul Conneally May 1st 2015

Pedestrian Zone

Pedestrian Zone
Paul Conneally
Loughborough
May 1 2015