Kokova Magazine

Seven giant sea containers lie marooned in the Wiltshire landscape. The mysterious remains of an ancient civilisation or the shape of things to come?

Since 1982 WOMAD has presented successful festivals in the UK and in 26 countries around the world. With a magnificent disregard for creative and national boundaries, for pigeonholing or for playing-it-safe, the festival again welcomes artists from all over the world next month, to the rolling hills and rural beauty of its idyllic location in Wiltshire.

As its name suggests, WOMAD brings to worldwide audiences the best of music, dance and art from many culturally diverse traditions. While music forms the core of each festival programme, the visual arts have always played a key role.

Following the success of last year’s installation Moving Portraits, WOMAD has once again invited Jeni Walwin and Tammy Bedford to curate a programme for the 2011 festival.

We decided to focus on the new wave of animation which is sweeping the country and the world. As the technology gets more accessible, so mere novelty is being replaced by the exciting, thought-provoking work the best artists are producing

Jeni Walwin

So this year no fewer than six leading artists will be showing their films inside their own sea containers in an exhibition named GIVING SOUL. The title is taken from the translation of 'animation' for the Greek word psyche, and related to the Christian concept of 'soul'. By this definition 'animation' would be the technique of 'giving soul' to inanimate objects, drawings and images.

Each container will be fitted with the technology to display a series of short animated films at cinema-quality, free, to all-comers throughout the festival.

Each full cycle will last approx 8 minutes, focusing on the work of six artists considered to be leaders in the field in this medium. The selection will take in a wide definition of animation, involving a range of techniques - the drawn, the painterly, the sculptural, and the digitally adventurous - and will represent a variety of themes which include humour, global politics, the environment, ecology and club culture.

This broad interpretation of animation is reflected in the selection of the artists themselves..Edwina Ashton; Sebastian Buerkner; Melanie Jackson; William Kentridge; David Shrigley and Simon Faithfull. Simon Faithfull has a dual role at WOMAD this year as he is the festival's artist-in-residence.

The final weekend of July sees WOMAD appointee Simon Faithfull working as its Artist- in-Residence for the festival. Simon is an established artist of strong reputation. His work has been widely exhibited in both international solo and group exhibitions, in London, Berlin, Edinburgh and at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Surprisingly for such an exquisite draughtsman, (but understandable in 2011) he works mainly with new technologies and most recently through his mobile phone application, Limbo.

With this installed on your Smartphone, you can receive a daily image. Simon has been Artist in Residence on many notable projects, including a trip to Antarctica as the first visual artist to receive an Arts Council fellowship to travel there with the British Antarctic Survey.

For two months during the journey, Faithfull made daily drawings on a PalmPilot recording the events and sights of a journey ever further south. These sketches were then relayed back to the inhabited world via email..

I'm absolutely delighted to be able to come to WOMAD anyway, let alone in a professional capacity. I‘ll be taking the entire festival site as my subject matter, drawing anything and anyone that takes my fancy. Using my electronic drawing board. Can’t wait.

Simon Faithfull

These hi-tech images will then be sent through to his 'residence', a central hub sea container where they’ll be printed as distinctly low-tech postcards and subsequently offered to festivalgoers to send to friends and family around the world. Simon Faithfull’s usual approach is to send drawings from remote places back to personal and domestic sites: this time he’s inverted it to send drawings from WOMAD around the globe.

His container will also include a substantial 'Ops' table featuring a large scale map of Charlton Park. As images come through and postcards are printed, Simon's position on the ground will be tracked and recorded with the precision of RAF Strike Command.

WOMAD is a celebration of the varied voices of the world, a salute to difference and diversity, an assault on the forces of homogenisation.
www.womad.org