Planning , making decisions, not making decisions, waiting for the right moment to decide, talking about possibilities as a means of testing them, not announcing them… allowing all these strategies to settle … waiting for a solution to appear, knowing that it will ..

I’ve dallied with various options as to how to “effect” the closing sequence of Taxi Gallery – a permanent final commission, a publication of fantasy proposals, a ritual burial and spoof blue plaque on the wall of the house. None of these ever felt “quite” right but needed to be lived with and talked about for a while in order to arrive at some other approach. I “think” I’ve found that now. There will be one more commission, but not for a permanent piece, a final transformation of the Taxi to run from early summer into the Autumn. It’s appropriate that the artist is David Kefford whose work with Abbey Meadows school was so extraordinarily popular with the local audience. David will have the opportunity to make his own work this time in response to the object of the Taxi. I’ve always hoped that someone would alter the space occupied by the Taxi, that it would literally morph into another sculptural/spatial relationship with the street. David’s work with everyday objects taped together and covered in his usage of tape to create a brightly coloured skin over the whole surface of the resulting shape seems at last to offer this opportunity. His work will remain until a catalogue of the whole project has been assembled and a new owner for the Taxi has been found. I have now decided that I can’t bear to wilfully destroy the Taxi. I’ve joined the London Vintage Taxi Association and recently submitted an article on Taxi Gallery for their monthly newsletter and am placing an advert offering the Taxi for free to someone who will undertake to collect her on a particular day and will either take her on as a renovation project or for spares for another FX4R. So hopefully this will come together with a launch event for the publication and a closing/sending off of the Taxi.
With this in mind I’m just about to get the front hedge removed partly to enable the Taxi to leave more easily but also it feels apt for the hedge to go just before the Radio Taxi project. So that the space feels more opened out and welcoming to people wanting to get involved. Maybe I should have removed the hedge earlier – partly/mainly this has been a financial/time constraint – but also I’ve liked the way the hedge has framed (and to some extent protected) the project, testing people’s curiosity, adding a dash of illicit pleasure in transgressing the taboo of entering someone’s garden– the gate after all has always been OPEN …

I’m much happier to let go of some kind of permanent art work as a residue of Taxi Gallery – I can’t quite imagine how I ever thought it was a good idea. But there will be the empty space, I’m not wanting to immediately restore the front garden as MY private space again. I’m dallying at the moment with the idea of a bench or maybe two benches at angles to each other – maybe some fast growing tree like shrubs to provide a screen between house and benches – privacy for me and for those choosing to sit and chat – a conversational space – would it be used? It’s a shame that the front garden so rarely gets the sun – if it was the sunny side of the street I’d be more confident about this idea – still ripening I guess –

On my blackboard I’ve scribbled down a quote from Indian Philosophy that I heard Brian Eno cite – the fruit ripens slowly and falls suddenly …

Hazel, my neighbour from across the street, has been friendly and chatty with me since I moved in but she has also studiously avoided the exhibitions at Taxi Gallery – the nearest acknowledgement being saying that “it’s for the kids” – and therefore, somehow, not for her? But today she came into my garden and was really enjoying exploring in detail the Second Skin installation by Pamela Wells – spotting familiar brand names and local shops in the remnants of coloured plastic packaging and bags that Pamela has used to create the bizarre, disturbing and technicolour cover for the Taxi.

The Cambridge Evening News coverage of Pamela Well’s Second Skin marks a significant shift in their approach to Taxi Gallery. It’s the first time that they’ve not “explained” Taxi Gallery – simply referring to it as "the famous gallery on Stanesfield Rd." !

Since the end of January most of my time has been dominated by the preparations for Radio Taxi project. It began with the extraordinary experience of recording every pupil, member of teaching and support staff at Coleridge Community College reading one line each of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. This was a fantastic way to “meet” the school and to introduce ourselves to them over a series of 610 one-one moments of focussed attention. (For me there were strong parallels with Mierle Ukeles’ work ‘Touch Sanitation” which launched her twenty year residency with the New York Dept. of Sanitation – in which she undertook to meet and shake the hand of every department employee and thank them for “keeping the city alive”). Since then we’ve been in school several times and are now meeting once a week on Saturdays with a group of 10 students who want to get fully involved with all aspects of the project.
At times I’ve wondered if I’ve taken on too much with Radio Taxi, technically and administratively it’s a mammoth undertaking, even without trying to generate a substantial body of locally originated programming to enter the mix alongside the submissions from sound artists. I really hope that the broadcast will be an equal mix between the local and the translocal. But what’s been fantastic is the way that offers of help, enthusiasm, skills and time have been finding their way to me rather than my having to go out and “find” them. 209radio www.209radio.co.uk got in touch after seeing an article in the local paper about the Mariner recording basically saying – can we help? – YES PLEASE! – they are going to join in on the first broadcast weekend – lend kit, help out, share skills and they put me onto Commedia – an organisation set up to support community radio projects who will provide a sever so (hopefully) our internet stream will be able to serve as many listeners as want to access it. And then also – the wonderful Matthew Webb … Matthew has just turned 18, lives at the end of my road and is completely radio obsessed – he’s studying on a radio course at college, runs his own station and has helped out to a high level on others in the area. His wonderful serious enthusiasm is a joy and its going to be fantastic to have him around over the broadcast weekend and all the better for being someone from the local community rather than an “expert” from outside. He remembers seeing the Taxi being lifted into the garden and both he and his Mum are Taxi gallery fans ….

Still on a high from Radio Taxi - what an amazing month this has been and now I look out the window and David Kefford with Trisha, Troy and John are busily wrapping and appending the Taxi - gradually and utterly transforming its physical presence in the street.I feel my whole perspective on Taxi Gallery - on what it is and what it can be - has likewise gone through a radical shift of perception.

cris and I have just finished writing a short report on Radio Taxi which is available now with a picture diary etc at www.radiotaxi.org.uk so I won't attempt to repeat that here ... and at some point I hope to find suitable server space so that a large bulk of our recordings of the live broadcast can be put online as an archive. Just want to get down some of the flavours and anecdotes from the broadcast weekends.

- the day the transmitter was installed and aerial erected and the first test broadcast - it was just magic to drive away from the house, switch on my radio and hear Matthew saying "testing testing this is a Radio Taxi test broadcast - Radio Taxi will be on air LIVE on 87.7FM on 27th May at 6pm ..." - it was magic. Even Ernie (whose worked in Radio all his life and who was installing the transmitter) was excited - radio has such potential to bring people together - it has what excites me about site-specfic art - people can "happen upon" it, in amongst their everydays just by twiddling a dial and getting curious about what they hear.

- Radio Taxi was first and foremost about listening - such an underestimated skill and along with touch perhaps also an often undervalued sense. We played some really difficult, challenging listening, the nuances of almost silence and pauses between were was explored as much as the extraordinary noises, everyday sounds, huge diversity of music, speech and conversation ...

- an anecdote ... Alistair, one of Radio Club kids, chilling out in the garden one evening when cris was presenting his Listening Life live - he was playing Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien - which is literally "almost nothing" beautifully recorded soundscape of a french village waking up ... Alistair 'heard' it and got curious and wandered into the studio to ask, genuinely intrigued and still listening ... a week later on the final evening - a big barbecue party outside - cris's listening life 'on air' filtering into the hubbub of people chatting and celebrating ... cris calls over to Alistair - what's this playing now? and Alistair tunes in - focusses and his eyes light up - "Oh, it's that french village at dawn ...."

- there really were people listening, carefully listening, we had so many emails and phone-calls and visits ... people telling us what they were doing when they heard such and such ... Pete, an odd job man, telling us he was turning down work that was out of range for the entire weekend ... the girls across the road bringing a misaddressed letter across to cris when they heard his name ... Hazel, listening in the cab because the kids were making too much noise in her house ... emails from Canada and America ... the guy who accidentally tuned into the recording of the M23 at 2am and stayed up listening all night to the Night on Earth ... Keith who identified the birds singing on the recording of a Stanesfield Rd Dawn Chorus, Matthew who spotted that the soundscape of the chatter in the Radio Taxi studio was worth recording ...

- the intensely "on" live experience over (really) a 10 day period - moving from planning, to introducing, to performing, to to listening, to involving others, documenting, reflecting, back to planning .... nothing was scheduled unmovably, a rough (very rough) blocking all which could flow, shift, re-assemble according to what was happening ... so when a listener turns up with a song about the Falkands War that he wants to introduce and play we can shift the whole next 2-3 hours to allow for his intervention to segway into Martin Campbell's Listening Life in which he describes his experiences during that campaign. We could just do it.

- an incredibly heightened sense of time and its potential, packing so much in the breathing space offered by a 10 minute piece on air and relaxing into the luxurious range of possibilities offered by a one hour programme ...

- waking up to a dawn chorus being broadcast from your "own" radio station - dreamily thinking what would I like to hear next and wandering down in your dressing gown and bringing up the talkover on the mixer while the kettle is boiling and yawning a "good morning this Radio Taxi 87.7FM the sun is shining on the taxi and we're going to start the day with a good morning mix from DJ Johnny d"Bini ..... " later the house got mad and busy with Radio Club kids and visitors and people making stuff and people wanting to sing or read a poem in the Taxi or just hangout and watch, which was all great too but I liked the quiet of the mornings ..

- Peg, one of my elderly neighbours coming into the studio after our live chat-in-the-cab and absolutely fascinated by all the equipment and leads everywhere ... asking Karl "what do you dream about?"

enough .. I AM VERY EXCITED BY THE POTENTIAL OF RADIO ... !

This sums it up for me ... right now ... an email from a listener ... it makes all the work, stress and anxiety worthwhile ... cris and I wept when we read this ...

Hi there Kirsten,
 
Just a note to say what a fantastic weekend it was having Radio Taxi on as much of the time as possible! We had it on in the garden, the loft, the bedroom, the kitchen and the car at various times of the weekend, trying hard not to miss anything!! I even had it on at a friend's party!
 
I am trying to put down in words what it meant to be part of this project.
I realised that it was 22 years ago this weekend(!) that I moved into this house with Lisa, and she did a little dance on the floor as if she knew that this was now going to be her space. All weekend (22 years later) Nick and I were building the floor in the same, now extended room. I spent the whole weekend (all four days, building, cleaning and renovating old furniture . All punctuated by the radio taxi 88.7fm without which I would have had severe cabin fever!
 
What was amazing, was that the radio felt like having people here, talking about their lives, both in the Listening Life and Neighbourhood slots, playing music and just chatting about things that are important to them. There was a real sense of connection - with the students from Coleridge, with you, chris, the people who were talking about their lives and the community. I was excited about the fact that people could just think of something they wanted to say and there was an opportunity to do that, or just to play their favourite track. The sun was shining, there was a sense of being really alive and part of something positive, really creative, exciting and fun. It challenged commercialism, individualism, isolation and a culture that says you are nothing unless you are young and famous!
 
Today I walked back from town instead of cycling as I would normally do,  and it took an hour along the river. I spent time listening and looking at details that I have cycled past many times and it has inspired me to slow down a bit and pay attention to details.
 
Kirsten - all I can say is a huge THANKYOU for all the time, commitment,creativity, expertise, thought, love, care, attention that you and your lovely team have put into this.
This is a quote that I love.
 
“Go into any place where history is stored and listen. Hold your breath. Hear how still it is. Librarians and archivists will keep their visitors quiet, but this particular silence has nothing to do with them. It runs through buzzing computer rooms and waits in busy record offices, it is always there. It is the sound of nothingness. It is the huge, invisible, silent roar of all the people who are too small to record. They disappear and leave the past inhabited only by murderers and prodigies and saints.”
 
Your radio taxi has stopped some of these people’s voices disappearing.
 
I will NEVER FORGET the weekend; it was one of the all time greats!

Bryan Watson came the other day just before this extraordinary transformation started taking place ... He got in touch via the article in the London Vintage Taxi Association Newsletter ... a former cabbie, he's keen to take on the Taxi as a renovation project once I finally let go of her ... He was nice enough, very caught up with Taxis but he didn't seem at all curious about the Gallery and what had been happening with it over the last three years ... it clearly just didn't "grab" him ... much more interested in trying to start her up (which she did! first time) and look underneath the bonnet etc etc

it's great that there's someone keen to take her on ... BUT I don't feel a 100% about it.

A set of really useful questions to address right now from Anya Lewin - would like to register my replies here also.

downloadable pdf link

The Abbey Action Newsletter has been delivered over the last week in which there's an article on Taxi Gallery and Radio Taxi announcing that Transmutation is the last exhibition. The number of people - some who I know and some who've I've never had a conversation with before - who have tackled me about this has been genuinely surprising. I expected a response when the Taxi actually goes but not just at the "idea" of it going ... they're all asking why and saying that they don't want it to go and that its a local landmark and an important part of the community ...

Something else is happening and it feels connected to Radio Taxi - I'm being turned to for help and I'm being invited in and included and deliberately involved ... the word lynch-pin is in my head - it's not quite right - but somehow there's an understanding now of what I'm offering and a serious engagement with that offer ... something to do with a point of connection with difference ...

Peg gets locked out of her house at 8am and she knocks on my door for help and then a few days later invites me into her garden to pick blackberries because she remembers I said I like them

Tony brings round veg from his allottment and leaves it on my back doorstep, he invites me to join the Allottment Society and shows me a DVD that he's been involved with about Cambridge United Football Club.

The electricity is cut off in the area and Lillian, a disabled lady, who lives around the corner comes and asks me whats happening.

Adam, a young man who got curious during Radio Taxi, pops round for a chat from time to time and when he heard that his Granny has died came and told me and sat and wept on my doorstep.

Julio, a Chilean guy who rents a place nearby comes round often to show me the photographs he's taken - he's keen to get better as a photographer.

need to process this all - can feel my nicely settled closure plan getting disrupted AGAIN

Came across Tim Brennan's polemic on what he calls the Nu-curator - firstly on the Information As Material website as part of the Interpretations series of publications/downloadable pdfs and there's also more here at his own website - Curationism

Initially intrigued by this statement: "Curating is performance in this context art, artists and their 'homes' are not that important anymore curating is." - by 'homes'I think he is referring to the gallery/museum network through which artists are "taken care" of by curators - but it presents itself as a real challenge to think about in relation to Taxi Gallery. He points out the origins of the term "curator" as being someone who literally takes care of a collection or building and rejects its current manifestation of exerting control and power over artists and their work in the guise of taking care of them. This reminds me of conversations way back between myself and Melanie during The Zwillinge Project when we started using the name "caretaker" for our role in the performance of the site-specfic events that we created. I've been using the signature "take care" on emails for years now - I like the expression of concern and reminder to pay attention that it offers. Beginning to see a way forward in which my role shifts from a conventional "curator" towards a "care-taker" - a term which those around Taxi Gallery are likely to find approachable with what I've been doing so far - it seems to offer the term I was looking for in my last entry - lynchpin wasn't quite right but caretaker fits ...

In the following extended quote defining the Nu-Curator Tim makes the radical assertion that there's already too much art in the world ... whilst part of me balks at the extremity of that as a statement of absolute fact, I do feel certain in relation to Taxi Gallery that any possible future role it might have in this community must not involve more art and more artists in the way that it has to date ...

The Nu-Curator
Aesthetics, in it's advanced state, formerly existed at a subdued level in the culture. However with technological developments a magnified realm of aesthetics has effervesced into the day-to-day. The world of art acts as a subsidiary to the globalised engine rooms of design, advertising and marketing - orbiting the spectacularised culture. In the 'developed world' the conjoining of the media industries with that of utilities has reached protean dimensions, the announcement of the commodity being all pervasive. In this sense, the condition of the contemporary art curator becomes transparent - their 'job' is to broker. At best they can only select and present menus of 'interesting' commodities and the gallery/site is only another trading post. Furthermore, this condition is highly resilient to change, having been galvanised from the Reformation onwards. Resistance is absorbed time and time again by Capital as a form of anti-heroism.
Curationism, on the other hand involves Nu-Curators as performers, unfettered by preceding art-form criteria or packaged notions of 'live-art' or interdisciplinarity. The Nu-Curator as performer understands that the commodification includes all human behaviour and they are obliged to consider their own performativity as 'already aestheticised'.
Nu-Curators work with individuals from various walks of life to construct spatial debates which lay bare the conditions of possibility for future human agency. A sustained activity of this nature has broad implications. It might suggest a relationship to the vicinity, based not on the limited and naturalised notions of 'community arts', but rather on new forms of co-operation. This vernacular approach roots an initiative within its immediate surroundings without losing sight of foreign relations. The combination is discursive, existing as a sculptural performance in which social processes become the very substance of work.
A range of material forms may pass through a Nu-Curator's practise but there is no dependency upon iconic or reified objecthood. Nu-Curators must not be confused with artists who have worked with the idea (or form) of the Museum. The Nu-Curator's work is not focused as a critical reflection on the existing system of art (although it may indirectly do so). Nu-Curators are involved in building new-systems of cultural production in which critical events emerge beyond the existing terms of art. This construction is one in which everyone is considered experientially well versed, regardless of age, background or culture ('everyone' is not 'an artist' but everyone does have experience).
Curationism harnesses aspects of the collecting impulses found within the histories of the collection and curating in which the notion of specialism is not fixed. Human 'necessity' exists at the core of its practice, along with lay-work beyond that of the academy. It adds to the blurring of subject/object which can be found nascent within much pre-industrial ritual and it siphons certain approaches to negation in C20th fine art practice to form, in the first instance, a meta-aesthetics of curating. At this early stage in the development of Curationism, the Nu-Curator may appear to embody a highly advanced form of artistic production under the mantle of politicised organiser or activist. At this stage they may be understood as 'ecologists' in the sense that they work from the position that there is already too much art in the world. Curationism is then a performance which is aimed ambitiously at navigating the rubric of global capital. It is this injection of performance into the field of curating, administration and taxonomy that will make, at once naïve and redundant, the role of the artist and their bureaucracy.

Late one night recently I went out just to check on the sculpture - I still can't quite believe that it hasn't been vandalised - poked and prodded and pulled a little but no direct aggression or even playful subversion (except for the traffic cones carefully placed as horns). A gaggle of noisy, drunk teenagers pass by and call out - "what is that?" and my stock reply "what do you think it is? predictable replies: alien, spaceship, insect .... but then one girl says "it looks like a snow covered mountain to me, I really like it, it's something different isn't? it's good to have something different round here ..."

Breakfast time - look out the window and see two young lads wandering around the Taxi - I've seen them before ... they are there for ages just patting the sculpture - all over - patting and touching and talking about it .... and then they wander off ...

Transmutation is coming down on Monday and over the last few days I've finally stopped prevaricating and hesitating and have made some definite steps towards announcing the next step for Taxi Gallery. I've submitted this article for the community newsletter:

WHERE TO NEXT FOR THE TAXI?
In the last Abbey Action Newsletter we announced that Taxi Gallery was closing after three years of varied exhibitions and events with the spectacular final artwork – Transmutation – by David Kefford which was much enjoyed and commented upon over the summer.
But, so many people have expressed sadness and dismay at the idea of the Taxi leaving our area that Kirsten has been persuaded to put her plans for its departure on hold to allow time for new ideas on how it can contribute to the life of the Abbey Neighbourhood. She is convinced that after 36 different exhibitions that it has exhausted its potential as a space for art – but maybe you have other ideas? The Taxi is currently open to visitors during daylight hours and you are welcome to call by to browse through the books and pictures of the Taxi Gallery exhibitions, leave your feedback on what Taxi Gallery has meant to you and suggest ideas for its future use on the message board provided. Some ideas have already been suggested including: a swap-shop for unwanted household articles or surplus garden/allotment produce, an unusual community archive or museum of images, and small artefacts, a noticeboard/information exchange point with a daily copy of Cambridge Evening news available for shared use or even an alternative community library where books you’ve enjoyed can be left for others to borrow … and comment upon.
In due course Kirsten will publicise a meeting to discuss all the responses and ideas and decide whether the Taxi has a future role - or not?
SHOULD IT STAY ? OR SHOULD IT GO ?– YOU DECIDE!
You can also contact Kirsten on 01223 576017 or by email to kirstenlavers@ntlworld.com

Yesterday I went to the bi-monthly local groups networking meeting - The Mingle Munch - to let people know what was happening and to invite ideas and involvement. I floated the transition from curator to care-taker in terms of how I was seeing my role and was really heartened by the nods of understanding and appreciation that went around the room. I'm really nervous about this - I'm anxious that disinterest will prevail that noone will pick up on the idea - that the outcome will be after all this that the Taxi has nothing further to offer ... but I have to find out ... maybe it was just a quirky intervention of "difference" - no more than that - successful on those terms and no more ... lots of questions - the word gallery I plan to partially erase by painting over a series of question marks ...

Transmutation disappeared extremely quickly - a busy hour of cutting and snipping and 4 carloads to the landfill. A brief chat with Marge and Peg whilst this was happening - their divergent views on the future of the Taxi representing a potential binary to come. Marge says she's looking forward to it going so that she'll be able to see up the street from her living room window. Peg would like it to stay ... she also told David of her name for the Transmutation sculpture "Bits and Pieces" and he read this as a knowing use of a euphemism for sexual parts ... he was sure there was a twinkle in her eye ... I hadn't read it that way ... but maybe ...

A gentle coating of mould on the interior but otherwise unscathed by the experience.

Hazel (from over the road) is very delighted that Transmutation has come down - she came across whilst I was washing it and literally hugged the Taxi she's so pleased to see it back (she didn't like "the monster cow" very much!)

Decided to call this next phase "From & To?" - a nod to Taxi as a vehicle always going from one place to another - transition integral to its function - it is now time to move on whilst also making time to reflect on where it has been ...

This is very scary - almost as scary as the beginning - it is a new beginning (at least I hope it will be) but it might also be the end.

This phase of transition has become "Change of Direction" in the process of framing the exhibition, drafting leaflets and posters .... less elliptical - clearer .... the word GALLERY has been overpainted with question marks

Cambridge Evening News published an article on the closing of Taxi as Gallery and flagging up the question of if people what it to stay what they see it doing or being in the community instead .... ? bit disappointed they cut the article that the journalist sent me as a draft and have used just one rather poor b/w pic from their files despite asking for a whole range of images from various exhibitions - particularly disappointed that the cutting of my stating as a personal highlight the fact that the Taxi has never been vandalised, graffitied or broken into - demonstrating the respect shown to it by the local neighbourhood - young and old.

Peg brought the article round - she says she'd miss the Taxi, she'd like it to stay but also that Marge (her friend, 86, who lives next door to me) would really rather it went ... so she feels torn ... I'm not surprised about Marge she is a very tidy person in all aspects (house-proud to an extreme) I think she's found it difficult and has only not complained out of consideration for my feelings ...

Walking up the shops to get another copy of the paper and lads collecting horse-chestnuts ask me why the Gallery is going - so its obviously a topic of conversation - they seemed unclear on their position on whether it should stay or go and couldn't stretch to an idea of how it could be used, re-used, transformed or translated ...