HOME 1994
In 1992, as part of the LODE Artliner project, Philip Courtenay traveled to Hamburg to meet with the WESTWERK artists collective. The welcome was warm, and the feedback was that they wanted to meet because the project was, well "crazy" to some extent, but mad in a good way. Our kind of artists. So Philip Courtenay invited artists from WESTWERK to participate in the LODE project when it was installed in The Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. Rupprecht Matthies co-ordinated the Westwerk contribution with "wall papers" surrounding the LODE cargo and video installation.
In contributing to the debates and discussions that took place in the Hull Festival 1992, Philip Courtenay, and Rupprecht Matthies discussed how the project might develop. Philip Courtenay spoke of the LODE journey providing a context for questioning the complex experiences associated with the idea of "HOME".
In 1994 Philip Courtenay worked with Mike Stubbs, then the Director of Hull Time Based Arts (HTBA), to organise an exhibition of work of artists associated with HTBA in the Gallery space at WESTWERK. The title of the project, GUESTWORKERS, was to some extent influenced by the LODE journey outcomes, especially those thoughts and questions about identity and migration, and so on.
So it was that as part of the GUESTWORKERS programme The Yellow House brought their LODE crate to Hamburg and created an ongoing multi-media installation with a number of performances 22.6.94 - 28.6.94 that ended up spilling out into both the street and canal.
The project was called HOME. One of the aims of the work was to in some way reclaim the everyday Bootle for the wider world in the aftermath of the atrocious murder of James Patrick Bulger, a little boy from Kirkby, on Merseyside, who was murdered on 12 February 1993, at the age of two. He was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson (born 23 August 1982) and Jon Venables (born 13 August 1982). Little James Bulger was led away from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle whilst his mother was distracted.
The Yellow House brought soil and flowers from Bootle to plant in the WESTWERK gallery space that opens onto the Admiralitatstrasse.
Philip Courtenay showed Super8 film of a bus ride to Bootle Docks.
Also shown on Super8 was the New Strand Shopping Centre, part of everyday life in 1994 for the people of Bootle.
CCTV surveillance from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle taken on Friday 12 February 1993 showed Thompson and Venables casually observing children, apparently selecting a target. The boys were playing truant from school, which they did regularly. Throughout the day, Thompson and Venables were seen stealing various items including sweets, a troll doll, some batteries and a can of blue paint, some of which were later found at the murder scene. One of the boys later revealed that they were planning to find a child to abduct, lead him to the busy road alongside the mall, and push him into the path of oncoming traffic.
That same afternoon, James Bulger (often called "Jamie" by the press, although never by his family), from nearby Kirkby, went with his mother Denise to the New Strand Shopping Centre. While inside the A.R. Tym's butcher's shop on the lower floor of the centre at around 3:40 p.m., Denise, who had been temporarily distracted, realised that her son had disappeared. Thompson and Venables approached him before taking him by the hand and leading him out of the shopping centre. This moment was captured on a CCTV camera recording timestamped at 15:42.
The other significant aspect of the project that HOME was to realise a LODE ambition, and to create a situation, and to a clear and positive benefit all round, of the experience of working creatively in a foreign setting for the Yellow House participants. As a young person from Merseyside, you may very well have travelled in Europe to a "holiday" destination, but working creatively in another world city, is something different. Photos generated over the six days of the project evidence the personal presence of these performers in an unfamiliar context.
The way the Yellow House participants explored the city of Hamburg, and documenting this exploration (while phoning home continuously -phone cards and call boxes in those days), revealed something new to the WESTWERK audience about their HOME city.
The Hamburg art audience - very cool - were won over by the directness of communication and "Scouse charisma". Rupprecht became "Startrecht" and "Biff the kidder" basks in the glow of a Hanseatic sunset.
Looking back now, and reflecting on this project, it does seem to have been a significant experience for all those involved, especially working with the wonders and the difficulties of communication exchange.
The misunderstandings that produce new ideas, and the experience of finding out that what we thought we knew was now something to question, has shaped the work over the years.
