Hubbub at Wellcome Collection 2015/2016

The first ever Hub residency at Wellcome Collection, I was involved as a poet and artist, exploring the notion of rest and restfulness against a backdrop of neuroscientists, broadcasters, historians, psychologists and artists in location at Wellcome Collection. The Hub is designed to allow genuinely interdisciplinary practise and collaboration over two full years which explores the cultural and social contexts of health.

Residing in a dedicated space on the 5th floor of Wellcome Collection, and bringing together some fascinating people from a wide array of backgrounds, I was pleased to be a small part of the project. Please scroll down for more information on the blogs, texts, poems, performances and videos that represent my contribution. http://hubbubgroup.org/

Soundings #7: Phil Minton - Kings Place, London {24} October 7th 2016

An amazing privilege to perform an improvised sound poetry piece with the legendary Phil Minton on October Friday 7th 2016 at Kings Place, London. For over fifty years Phil Minton has been performing, singing, vocalising around the world. He absolutely has shaped, even defined, free vocalisation and improvised sound poetry since WWII. To get to work with him for the first time, with no prior preparation, no conversation about what we'd do before the performance even, was such an honour, and beautiful / terrifying in equal measure. So important for me to feel I'm crossing over with the greats of previous generations. This was a real landmark for me. A great night overall too, closing out the Hubbub residency in a sense, with some fine work from James Wilkes, Emma Bennett, Phaedra ensemble and others making it a varied and intense evening of performance. A perfect way to finish Soundings. More info www.stevenjfowler.com/soundings

Rest and Its Discontents exhibition at the Mile End Arts Pavilion {23} October 12, 2016

A beautiful job has been done, the exhibition runs until October 31st and is really well worth a visit. Some wonderful and works and installations by some brilliant artists and thinkers. http://hubbubresearch.org/event/rest-discontents/

DATE & TIME 30 September – 30 October 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm
VENUE: The Mile End Art Pavilion Mile End Park, Clinton Road London, E3 4QY United Kingdom

The Anatomy of Rest with Claudia Hammond on BBC Radio 4 {22} September 13th 2016

Pleased to contribute to the first of three programmes by Claudia Hammond, entitled Anatomy of Rest, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this week past. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v07p0

Claudia visited me during a training session, boxing and we discussed the notion that relationship of rest to its inverse state - exhaustion. This has been a major preoccupation of mine, pragmatically, my entire life, being someone who is high energy / agitated and having always found great solace, relief and control in more intensive forms of exercise. It has been a fundamental way of mediating my creative energy too, and meeting Arne Dietrich in Salzburg in 2015, where he talked of down regulation of the pre frontal cortex during exercise, I have spent the last year or two, reading more deeply into the subject. I am also reminded of Sam Harris' comments about weight training, that if we didn't choose to do so, the pain of such conditioning would be akin to torture.

Pleasingly, post programme, where I sounded a bit weird because my hearing had altered a bit, genuinely tired from training and unable to hear myself speak (a mercy), an article has been written by Alex SoojungKim Pang, referring to my remarks and the concept in general. Visit http://www.deliberate.rest/?p=1068

The final Soundings #6 with Sharon Gal {22}September 2016

Ed Prosser has done an extraordinary job capturing what was a wonderful day, and a genuine privilege for me, to work with an artist as powerful as Sharon. Very proud of this work indeed, it trails through the London that is my home, the industrial beauty of deep west london and shows the strong sense of intense play that has come to define both Sharon and I's work in sound art.

Rest and its discontents exhibition at Mile End Art Pavilion {21} September 2016

Rest & its discontents, a new exhibition from Hubbub exploring the dynamics of rest, stress, sound, noise, work and mind-wandering. Rest & its discontents explores the dynamics of rest, stress, relaxation, sound, noise, work and mindwandering in an evolving laboratory of moving image, performance, drawing, poetry, data, sound, music and debate.

Rest & its discontents features a video installation of my Soundings project with Wellcome Library. A specially made video installation, edited by Ed Prosser, shows my works with Maja Jantar, Emma Bennett, Tamarin Norwood and Sharon Gal.

DATE & TIME 30 September – 30 October : 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm
VENUE: The Mile End Art Pavilion, Mile End Park, Clinton Road, London, E3 4QY United Kingdom

A note on: filming Soundings #6 with Sharon Gal {20} July 2016

The Soundings project comes to an end for the time being this October with the 7th instalment and the end of the Hubbub residencyand I've had an extraordinary time collaborating with 6 artists so far, the latest being Sharon Gal, a major figure on the London experimental music scene since the late 80s. Sharon's work has been a real influence on me, so it was brilliant to work so closely with her developing a series of performances, embedded in some unusual and industrial / suburban hidden spots of west london, for film. Again working with Ed Prosser, who has filmed most of soundings to great effect, we spent a brilliant day roaming from Kilburn to Kensal, along the grand union canal and into wormwood scrubs, playing with soundscapes, found sounds and instruments. We utilised the possibilities of film, performing in scenes of a sort, to create something original in the edit. Such a privilege to have this opportunity, and once again responding to materials given by Wellcome Library in response to prompts given by Hubbub curators.

A note on: Soundings IV with Tamarin Norwood in Wellcome Library {19} April 2016

The next instalment of the Soundings project, this time in Wellcome Library itself, with the brilliant Tamarin Norwood. The piece was fashioned just for the camera itself, a closed performance, intended to respond to and interrogate the notion of film editing or performance video, and how it relates to notions of authenticity and naturalness, while all the while following the process central to Soundings, that we respond to Wellcome Library resources provided to us by the librarians and 'sound them out' in conversing. Thanks to Ed Prosser for his brilliant camera work too. www.stevenjfowler.com/soundings

A note on: The first Respites - a claimant's day off: February 29th 2016 {18}

The first Respites brought together people claiming benefits for a day of exploration, creativity and solidarity at the Hub at Wellcome Collection, where myself, Ayesha Nathoo and Lynne Friedli met, all being residents and where Respites, as a concept, was conceived. We spent many months developing the project, really trying to maintain the open, pragmatic and inviting aesthetic we had agreed upon from the first, and the extraordinary expertise and intelligence of both Lynne and Ayesha made me absolutely confident that the day itself would be a success.

The day itself was structured with a series of workshops which those attending could drop into at their leisure. A careful balance was given to the contents of each, and how they sat around each other, taking the group from relaxation techniques to martial arts, which I had the pleasure to lead, into poetry, theatre and finishing with meditation. There was a sure sense of community from everyone involved, most having never met each other before, and a firm sense that the indirect aims of the project, to support without generalising everyone with their circumstance, to provoke and engage, without ever being heavy handed, created an environment of kindness and generosity.

In due time attendees expressed their insights and frustrations at the situation they experienced but this was part of the day and it's achievements. Rather this was expressed when it was good for them and everyone else to do so, and otherwise, we were just all people, getting to know each other, sharing a beautiful lunch, talking a whole day through with physical and intellectual ideas and pursuits. It was really a lovely, intimate, careful experience for me, one I savoured and felt very pleased to be a part of, to have begun new connections with people and to learnt much in a short space of time.

Soundings #4 with Tamarin Norwood (Wellcome Library) {17}

Date: 25th February 2016 closed viewing

A wonderful opportunity to work with an artist I admire so much, Tamarin Norwood. We will be visiting Wellcome Library and creating a performance work responding to the materials there for video. Visit http://www.tamarinnorwood.co.uk/ Here's a few of the images, as prompts, as given by the Librarians and Hubbub curators for us to respond to.

Respites: February 29th 2016 {16}

A project I'm very proud to curate with Lynne Friedli and Ayesha Nathoo. http://theenemiesproject.com/respites

Respites is a carefully curated series of day-long gatherings, exploring ideas and activities about rest, pleasure, contentedness, critical thinking and creativity. It is aimed at being a generative and respectful series of engagements with people who need and deserve more respite than they receive. Each Respite sees a group of specially selected people share their expertise in workshops and breakout sessions, covering everything from meditation to martial arts, from poetry to music, aiming to create a cohesive and generous experience for those who attend.

Respites #1 - A claimants’ day off : February 29th 2016 at the Hub in Wellcome Collection

183 Euston Rd, London NW1 2BE.

The event will be free to attend and some travel expenses are available. More details about the programme and how to register early in the New Year. The day begins at 10am and finishes at 4pm, with a continuation of informal chatting and eating until 6pm.

The first Respites day will bring together people claiming benefits for a day of exploration, creativity and solidarity. For those whose experience is defined almost entirely, and relentlessly, by the psychological pressure to seek and find work, with an ever increasing set of debilitating sanctions should they not be able to do so, this day is designed to be a haven - a day of talks and workshops about a various set of ideas and practises, a space for them to share, learn and feel the respect every human deserves in our society.

Soundings #3 with Maja Jantar (St John on Bethnal Green) {15}

Date: 18th November 2015 Free entrance
Time: 8pm to 9pm
Location: St John on Bethnal Green 200 Cambridge Heath Road. London E2 9PA http://www.stjohnonbethnalgreen.org/

A great privilege to continue my project with Hubbub exploring sound art and the city, this time with Maja Jantar, incomparable and brilliant, someone I'm proud to call a friend and whose work has influenced my own since I met her in a Parisien circus a few years ago. We collaborated in the amazing environs of St Johns on Bethnal Green, an austere, acoustically remarkable church on the busy crossroads of East London. It's got a great reputation for sound art and experimental music and Maja and I presented our brand new work, that covered song, body, performance, shamanism, animism, again responding to prompts from the Wellcome Library staff, themselves responding to concepts given by Hubbub curators

... from the debut Soundings with Emma Bennett in Camley Street Natural Park, a beautifully shot video by Ed Prosser.

Soundings #1 - Restless Cities with Emma Bennett
Date: 18 August 2015

Soundings is a series of collaborative performances curated by Hubbub at Wellcome Collection, in conjunction with Wellcome Library, featuring SJ Fowler. Over ten editions, each in a different location in and around London, each with a different collaborator, these collaborative performance explore sound and the city...

Soundings #2 - Enforced Rest with Dylan Nyoukis (Wellcome Collection) {14}

Date: 4 September 2015
Time: 7pm-11pm (two 10-minute performances as part of an evening showcasing Hubbub’s research to date)
Location: Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE

So exciting to be part of the Wellcome Collection's late, all Hubbub themed, on September 4th. And to be collaborating with the great Dylan Nyoukis. http://wellcomecollection.org/events/friday-late-spectacular-hubbub This was a privilege as expected, Dylan and I had two sets over the evening, which was a huge success for Hubbub, the Wellcome Collection packed with people. We deliberately worked off an improvised methodology, and the exchanges became increasingly maddened and emotive, a kind of live kitchen-sink-boiler-drama-therapeutic-soup-opera on the bounds of language. People didn't know quite what to think and such was the wonder.

Soundings #1 - After the performance: August 19th 2015 {13}

The beginning of Soundings couldn't have gone better. Not only because the performance was unique and well attended and went to plan, but because it was also completely idiosyncratic and unexpected for the audience, and enjoyable. Emma and I have known each for a few year now, and been in collective work together, but never performed a duo. The performance itself and the entire preparation period could not have been easier and more fluid. We met up numerous times to make our performance not only responsive to the materials given by the Wellcome Library under the theme of 'Restless Cities' but also to make sure we responded very specifically to the amazing environmental of Camley Street Natural Park.

We knew people's experience of what we did would be defined by the surroundings, and decided in fact to put on a walking tour, one that fused elements of performance and immersive theatre all rooted in something like a slightly alternative version of the contemporary 'landscape' 'cityscape' 'mindfulness' lexicon. Our performance was a mix of improvisation, preparation for this and written text that lay somewhere between poetry and satire.

In the end we had a remarkable audience, those very generously helping us, Harriet Martin, James Wilkes, Kim Staines, bringing together lots of people so that it felt quite a significant event, marching 50 or so people around the small stone clearings and ponds of the park. A strange experience for them, I hope, a great experience for us.

Preparing Soundings #1 with Emma Bennett - August 2015 {12}

Great to be working with longtime collaborator Emma Bennett on the very first edition of the Soundings series, new collaborative performances that respond to prompts by the Wellcome Library and materials they offer in response to themes given by Hubbub curators. The performances are all each about the city of London and space and the sound environment too, and it's a wonderful thing to begin such explorations in such a beautiful and unique environment like Camley Street Natural Park. Sat right on the canal, and positioned just behind Kings Cross station, it is an oasis of green in the middle of regenerating urban London. http://www.wildlondon.org.uk/reserves/camley-street-natural-park

The performance will take place on August Tuesday 18th 1.15pm – 1.45pm and Emma and I have developed a performance which will both intensely responsive to the park itself, it's layout and character and content, as well as the materials, which struck us as in someway about un-restfulness and how the city space might create / mediate that, and how perhaps, in our time, this unrest is internalised and turned into often esoteric and problematic discussions of concepts like mindfulness and self-awareness.

The announcement of Soundings - July 3rd 2015 {#11}

Without doubt what will be my biggest output from the opportunity that is Hubbub, the Soundings project will see me perform ten times from August 2015 to October 2016, each performance in collaboration with a sound artist or sound poet, and each new work in response to prompts given by the Wellcome Library, originating with the curators at Hubbub. This is an amazing project for me, literally tailored to suit my concerns and passions as an artist while being synchronised to the symbiotic expertise of the Wellcome Library and the Hubbub group. So much more to come. http://hubbubgroup.org/2015/07/02/soundings-hubbub-collaborates-with-wellcome-library/

" Soundings is a series of collaborative sound performances devised by Hubbub resident poet SJ Fowler in response to prompts – including images, manuscripts and books – chosen by Wellcome Library staff from their collections. Each interaction will begin with library staff using their expertise to suggest items from the Library’s collections in response to a title inspired by our research strands. These prompts will form the basis for a public performance of sound poetry, devised by Fowler in collaboration with other poets, vocalists and sound artists. Over the course of a year, Fowler will work with fellow Hubbub collaborators Emma Bennett, Patrick Coyle and Tamarin Norwood, as well as performers from the worlds of sound poetry, experimental music and sonic art such as Dylan Nyoukis and Sharon Gal. Soundings is curated by Kimberley Staines, James Wilkes and Felicity Callard. All events are free."

Neurocantos - responding to Daniel Margulies {#10}

My new poems based primarily on appropriated Neuroscientific language and the conceptual principles of the field (as much as my own limitations allow me to conceive of them) continue to grow, my collaborations with Rebecca Kamen driving them and my concurrent readings of Ezra Pound too. A recent inspiration was meeting Daniel Margulies, a core group member of the Hubbub, someone I hadn't got to know in the first months of the residency, but recently having considerable exchanges with, and following my experience in Salzburg, it was another pivotal moment in my understanding and his energy, expansiveness and brilliance is powerfully unique. I took his paper "Visualizing the human connectoome", written with Joachim Böttger, Aimi Watanabe & Krzysztof J. Gorgolewski and published in 2013, and created a long poem, an excerpt of which is below.

Tractography

Maps never show us everything about a place or a space; their value is rather in the cartographer's insight to enunciate selected features over others. Daniel Margulies

a first scan

And then knelt down to the brain
it is a green hold, the human brain
the circle reworked, & began
to prod within its waters
to find where else had been made

And found not much yet
but beginnings must be made.
            “the hydro cortic cerebration
            is no friend to draw
             nor dream now

Can you separate the muscles for study … ?
what charges brains
more than some word, that represents concept

to study the chimp is to approximate
a beginning animal that moves itself
as perfect a subject for knowing what came before
afore in the mind, the parabellum
malformed

the part of the brain that lights
when placing oneself
& the light when receiving such a master
creates children
& has common lights
with creativity, spontaneity
& improvisation
considered in in slide #1 #6 & #9

The Hub Summit - April 2015 {#9}

The pace of the Hubbub and those present in the space varies from week to week depending on who is in London visiting, but the Summits, designed to be a locus for the developments of the whole group are mass concentrations of ideas, and a chance to begin new projects in collaboration with people as well as further existing projects face to face. Great to meet some new people and to have extended conversations with Lynne Friedli, whose work with wellbeing and welfare system reform is really inspirational. I left our conversation with new writings in fact, something I hope I'll publish in the near future. There was also a really interesting breakout discussion on Data, the nature of its formulation, use and collection and that began a series of thoughts for me on conceptual poetry possibilities on the theme.

Collaborating with Noah Hutton - April 2015 {#8}

Perhaps the most considerable impact the Hubbub environment has on my own methods and processes is to refine and define, as has often been the way in 2015, how I work best, and how I seek to curate others working, with things like the Enemies project. The fact is the Hubbub group is, for many, the ideal. A well supported enterprise, with an array of expertise, an interdisciplinary genesis, a specific theme, a beautiful space and a non-determinate model. It is yours to shape, it is up to the participants to define their spark and be helped on from there. This can mean that one feels responsible to produce, well certainly I often feel this way. At this point, three or four months into my time at the Hub, so I realise the true benefits of the extremely unique environs of the Hub. I can build my projects on friendships. I can create the most generous context for my creativity and research. So it is spending time with Noah Hutton, an extraordinary film maker based in New York, and someone involved in the Hubbub from it's outset. We have begun a project together which is as open ended in its methodology and it is in its theme. Yet, whether it ends up as an output of the Hubbub specifically, it is from this program that it has been born. This is magnificent, and really all I'm after - generous process and opportunity, and human connections that'll last. Noah and I have been filming various scenes and ideas and concepts, some about my martial arts practise, others about the city. Noah's expertise is between Neuroscience, Neuroaesthetics, and film, so naturally what emerges will reflect this shared ground between us.

Refracted Light: an anthology launched - April 2015 {#7}

James Wilkes has done a grand job editing this anthology of new works written in response to Jackson Mac Low's light poems. The anthology was launched at the Wellcome Collection this past weekend, and it was lovely to read on the first day alongside some brilliant poets, Philip Terry, Amy Cutler, Edmund Hardy and co. in the newly refurbed Reading Room. Here's a few lines from my poem Unselfish Light

Everybody’s got something to hide light except me
Massacre of the innocents
fragment of brutal evening when the roads lead
off into the blue, but no one

lights;

The Neurocantos: poems on the brain - March 2015 {#6}

At the same moment I am revisiting my commission for the Tate on Ezra Pound for Kettle's Yard I am collaborating with the sculptor Rebecca Kamen, I am trying to work through ideas I discovered in Salzburg, conversations I've had with Ben Ehrlich, Noah Hutton, Lotje Sodderland and Thomas Duggan. And I find myself in the Hub, daily. Neuroscience is around me, and organically it seems my writing has started to respond. I have started to build a new collection of texts, poems, about Neuroscience, both the principles as I am beginning to understand them, trying to render them conceptually in language and the very discourse itself, the specific language of the field. I am pleased this writing practise has come into being without being forced and seems to be continuing across the weeks and months of being in the Hub. At the end of the residency, perhaps I'll have a new collection. A small excerpt from one below:

Constellations

The crowds we have become acquainted with are filled with all kinds of emotions, and scarcely anything has been said about these. Elias Canetti

in constellation lie Universal Patterns / Patterns
As Above. So Below
as present
themselves as words, phrases, fragments
phases happened at 4 am this morning that philosophy reminds us,

"a journey of a thousand miles is manifest and provides
an invitation for visual possibilities.”

what begins in the view
becomes relevant
separate from it’s objective

at the Salzburg Global: on Neuroscience & Creativity - February 21st to 26th 2015 {#5}

Thanks to the Hub I spent an extraordinary week at the Salzburg Global Seminar. Such was the experience that I've written a whole section of my site about the week www.stevenjfowler.com/salzburgglobal

& you can visit the Salzburg Global page about the seminar http://www.salzburgglobal.org/calendar/2010-2019/2015/session-547.html

"In recent years, there have been an increasing number of scientific investigations into art, exploring what actually happens in the brain during the creative process. Most of these collaborations have been based in neuroscience and psychological approaches to how art is perceived, produced and created, with music the main focus of studies carried out to date. These studies have yielded important new information that relates to a very basic fact of human biology: all behavior, even that as complex as creativity, can be linked to brain function. Building on this fundamental linkage, the neurobiology of art promises to yield exciting new insights as this research field evolves. Creative behavioral patterns are likely to be a critical component for developing the neurological capacity for innovation."

Month one in residency - February 16th 2015 {#4}

I've got my rhythm now, and finding my purpose amidst the immense possibility of the Hub. Somehow I assumed I would be able to land here and spark collaborations immediately, but what I've realised, being here a few days a week for over a month now, is that's not even desireable, even if it was possible. At root this is because it's still hard for me to comprehend the freedom we have to explore new work on our terms, the real space we have to create interdisciplinary works. Anyway, my work with the Hub is evolving into these areas:

- Some experimental classes that take my martial arts teaching and develop them as wholly process orientated practises, to emphasise the students knowledge of their own bodies possibilities, integrities and corporeal limits / potentials. That is to say these classes will be about motion, mental focus, muscle memory and not about harming other bodies, through the developed exercises and techniques that originate toward the product of hurting bodies.

- Video art performance pieces of me training, hitting the punchbag so far, and which emphasise the rest periods between this exertion in order to create vistas of human perception when altered by this exertion. A long time preoccupation of mine, this is taking form for me in the realm of video, which is exciting, and at the moment I'm tinkering with making these pieces glitchy and kitsch.

- A new series of collaborative sound poetry performances, called Soundings:
"Soundings in the Reading Room is a series of collaborative avant-garde sonic art & sound poetry performances which will present site-specific writing, composition and performance that explores how noise and silence mediate the relationship between the city and the text, artwork or musical score. Receptive to the unique surroundings of the Wellcome Collection Reading Room, Soundings will be an exploration of the potential poetics of sound amidst city noise and the profound effect it has on our experience of restfulness."

This last one is really an extraordinary platform for me to work with artists I admire in a beautiful new space.

I also helped build a hammock and have made lots of new friends.

Week one in residence - January 16th 2015 {#3}

The first week in residency at the Hub, ensconced in the magical upper story lair above the Wellcome collection in Euston. Already I have to reign myself in to not be annoying to those professionals who maintain the hallowed space of the Hub, who have created this extraordinary circumstance out of thin air, and who have spent years at work at a certain and designated discipline to get to this point, who have taken me on board like a body found floating in the sea, who has all the skills you'd expect of someone who writes obtuse poetry for a living.

I am so thoroughly keen to make the most of this project. It is immensely rare to have the chance to build on new ideas, concept, projects, in dialogue, in live time, as brilliant people come in and out of the space itself, and to work in such a wide field, with such a specific focus, thematically.

I did prepare before coming into the space, and suggested a series of ideas I might develop and implement with the help of the hub's leading lights, Felicity Callard, James Wilkes and co.

- I'm going to undertake a series of performances that explore exhaustion, using the gym facilities here, and that are recorded as pieces of video art. The notion is that by engaging in what is a often a daily practise for me, a regular, organic engagement that I pursue for reasons of health and fitness, and by editing the video of this happening, so that the rest periods between exertion are emphasised, that there might be a chance to create aesthetically attractive, abstracted insights into an active, purposeful notion of rest.

- A series of experimental classes for the Hub members and the Wellcome staff. For a long time I have wanted to do something pedagogical, in a unique space, that blends the practise of martial arts, yoga and other physical activities I've spent a lot of my life doing, that is entirely about process and not product. I think that on the road to expediency the ever shifting and endlessly inventive skills of martial arts have thrown up an exploratory world where the human body sits with another human body in proximity. This physical touch, the learning of bodily tessellation and the maintenance of mental states of focus and relaxation while learning and applying technique all offer profound insights in and of themselves, toward a better sense of corporeal awareness. The more tangential notion of tessellation, how one body might interrelate with another for a specific purpose, is a key notion here, as is the understanding of balance, the understanding of instinctual reaction and action, adrenalin and chemical dumps, body language and so forth.

Fundamentally these are experiments, more about physiology, touch and mental state than technique. Through the application of a series of exercises, often from the world of grappling, those participating will get access to unique and specific knowledge bases which, by their deliberate lack of direct correlation to fighting, will benefit their sense of corporeal feeling, their sense of physical control, their sense of the potential of their body as it relates to another. The classes aim to show us gently how contingent our bodies integrity and restfulness really is. They are designed to illuminate the participant as to the limits and potentials of their physicality, as a tool designed to control, embrace, or harm another body. We'll do classes on joints, breathing, balance and so forth, very excited about this.

- A series of events exploring sound. This picks up on James Wilkes' desire to explore the notion of Mapping the City in sound, and my own exploration of pure sound as an engagement with the foundations of language, that have a specific interrelation with the brain and thought processes.

There's lots more, but I must save stuff for another post.

It's been a week that's already filled me with a sense of purpose and optimism. Everyone is enthusiastic and approachable, and patient, tolerating my humour. There is a sense of energy that is paced with the demands of a project this size and the works in entails, and a consistent focus that there needs to be innovation and collaboration, while maintaining sight of the core ideas of the Hub. This, and I say this in light of leaving a pretty relentless full time job a few months ago, is an environment of great intellectual possibility, and an environment that affords people great respect, and dignity even, without overblowing things. I'm delighted to be here and to see what I can learn, and contribute, in the upcoming months.

The Being Human Festival in the Hub - November 18th 2014 {#2}

I had a great time this past tuesday afternoon, nov 18th, in the new Hub space at the Wellcome Trust.
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/what-we-do/residents They were hosting a drop in station with seven different interactive stations as part of the Being Human festival http://beinghumanfestival.org/ and I was invited to have a place, called Martial States of Rest, that was essentially a discursive exercise in things I'm interested in that connect the martial arts, my art projects and neuroscience, exploring in this conversation with visitors, alongside a few small demonstrations. It connects with my residency in the Hub, on and off, for the two years of the project, with an intensive period of residence January 2015 to March 2015. After this few hours, I cannot wait to be in this remarkable space and project for much of time come 2015. It is an amazing place filled with equally amazing people. (the picture here shows me throwing a rear naked choke on Jamie Wilkes, which was fun)

The atmosphere of energy and generosity really permeated through the day, I had a wonderful time exchanging ideas with the public, the fellow Hub participants and the Wellcome staff, really grappling with ideas around active states of rest under physical duress, whether neural pathways and behaviors of rest are effected by genetic predisposition, habitual training or active mindful engagement. The conversations were extremely wide ranging and intense, and in the midst I tried to tie this into my life's training in the martial arts, using the technique of the choke to express ideas around psychological / physiological states of relaxation and resistance, and the use of active states of rest in daily life. A really lovely day and a wonderful precursor to much of the work I hope to engage in with the Hub and the Wellcome Trust, all the stations were fascinating, covering issues around sleep, employment, voice, language and more.

Hubbub: The Hub's inaugural residents - October 1st 2014 {#1}

The first residents of the Hub at Wellcome Collection, are Hubbub who will investigate the busyness of modern life. Bringing together a rich network of scientists, artists, humanists, clinicians, public health experts, broadcasters and public engagement professionals, the group will explore states of rest and noise, tumult and stillness, and the health implications for lives increasingly lived in a hubbub of activity.

Hubbub is led by social scientist Felicity Callard (Durham University) with core contributing members comprising psychologist and writer Charles Fernyhough (Durham University), broadcaster Claudia Hammond (BBC's All in the Mind and Health Check), neuroscientist Daniel Margulies (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences) and poet James Wilkes (University of East Anglia). The group will start their two year occupancy at Wellcome Collection in October 2014, as the venue opens new spaces and galleries after a £17.5m development.

The ambitious project will be nourished by the research resources of Wellcome Collection, the Wellcome Library and the Wellcome Trust and will embrace the noisy city beyond and the people who live in it. The group, selected from 55 applications, will have freedom to develop ideas and outputs over their residency.

We look forward to the process and outputs of their collaborative curiosity and anticipate their work leaving rich a legacy for academic and creative inquiry, clinical practice and public policy.

For further information on Hubbub please visit their website.

Other contributing members of the group