Painted from memory 1:
Alan Dunn, Superchannel Programme Manager, FACT
Friday 13th August 2004, 1.35pm,
Buckingham House tenants’ flat, Sefton
Park, Liverpool. We are in
the process of re-embedding tenantspin in a
community context again after
four years spent in the buildings of a
landlord and art agency. We
are only on the second floor but crucially
there are thirteen floors
above us.
The show is going live from
Buckingham but, due to an unauthorised dispute
between two contractors, we
are unable to send the signal from the room.
Despite this, the flat is
packed with around 14 tenants. The show must go
on. The afternoon begins with
a discussion between tenants and new
landlords Arena Housing.
Thereafter, a live review of the film I ROBOT and
related thoughts on cloning
and animatronics. This is chaired by Eddie
Berg.
Part 3 moves onto the theme
of high-rise dreams. There are disagreements
and revelations, shared stories
and opinions. Tenants film and monitor the
audio levels while others
discuss memory rather than memories. tenantspin
has never been nostalgic nor
a purely reminiscence project. By exploring
the idea of memory rather
than memories themselves, the project illustrates
how far it has brought and been brought by this community of
individuals.
tenantspin set out to bind
and link a community but inadvertently became
the maker of a new community.
It set out to become a political hammer but
is, in the words of a tenant,
like a boxing glove with a muffler.
Remarkably it has retained
involvement from some tenants from 2000 through
to the present day and is, at
the time of writing, shooting off into an
exciting and unknown future,
taking a whole bunch of interesting people
with it.