London based visual artist Claudia Wegener currently runs a series of writing and audio workshops at Crisis/ Skylight in the East End. ‘Street Writings’ is funded by the Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts programme. Audio Works resulting from the current project will be presented in two radio broadcasts on Resonance104.4fm and the release of a CD at the end of June.

Wegener describes herself as ‘continental drifter’ and ‘an artist with a bag’. She recently returned from South Africa where she organized LONG WALK, the first public chess tournament across a fence: the large floor-based chess sets being divided by a fence between the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Joubert Park. Her stay in Johannesburg was funded by the Triangle Trust’s residency programme.

The workshops in London’s East End are an off spring of Wegener’s ongoing audio, writing, performance project ‘24hrs’ (street writings of divided cities) which she started in 2001 while living in Rio de Janeiro, and since then continued in other cities she crosses such as São Paulo, Istanbul, Nicosia, Athens and London.

‘Let me make clear that the workshops are open to people with and without homes. We all spend a lot of time in the streets and in transit between one place and another. With the workshops I intend to put to a test when and where and how our haphazard street encounters and habitual survival techniques in the city slip into ad hoc creative actions, and if and how these become shared initiatives, or events which move things and people. My work is an exercise in listening. I like finding ways to entice my audience to slow down and listen. I am interested in how words move bodies and how language passing through bodies moves words. This is why I start my project by inviting other artists to collaborate with me. Valerie Vivancos, Alan Dunn & Jeff Young and Charles Hayward also work with or in audio and the urban space and will lead some of the workshops.’

Broadcasts on Resonace104.4fm are on 22nd June 7pm for a presentation of audio works (repeated on 29th June at 11am), followed a week later by an informal radio conversation about and around ‘street writings’ with the writer and curator Guy Brett: 29th June 7pm (repeated on 6th July 11pm). A CD with an edited compilation of audio works by the workshops participants will be launched and for sale at ARTWORDS bookshop in the Whitechapel Gallery.

Claudia Wegener is available for interviews.
contact: 07931 269 125 or e-mail:  long_walk_abridged@yahoo.co.uk

Notes to editors:
‘Street writings’ is funded by the Arts Council England, the national development agency for the arts, through its Grants for the arts programme for individuals and organisations.