Making the Everyday Extraordinary
By Antonia Cucchiara
The Cultural Company introduced the uniquely redesigned Bus Shelters to the city of Bradford, UK. We speak to Artistic Director Nicola Stephenson after two years of installation.
Antonia Cucchiara: As the Artistic Director of the Culture Company, what is your role in the creative effort?
Nicola Stephenson: I suppose it is a curatorial role, almost acting like a marriage broker among the artists, the designers and the clients. And then at the end it is about advocacy, talking to T.V or the press. But I like the beginning stage—when you’ve got those ideas and it’s all bubbling and you ask "What if?"
AC: During the "bubbling" stage, what was the "What if" question that led you to develop the idea for interactive Bus Shelters for Bradford, England?
NS: Well, normally, it is a boring experience standing at a bus shelter: it could be cold; it could be noisy; you are being blasting by traffic. It’s like a lost waiting time. So we asked, "What could we do to make that different?"
AC: How do each of the two varieties of Bradford Bus Shelters make "waiting time" different?
NS: Well, the Culture Company is a commissioning agency that commissions artists to make cultural interventions. For one type of Bus Shelter, Greyworld [one of the collaborating artist groups] created a sound piece programmed so that if you were in a certain vicinity of the camera, a female voice would tell you the colors of the clothes you were wearing. Say, "I see pink, oh I like pink." It was trying to create a sound-scape within a very gritty urban environment.
We did a second project with the writer and performer Tim Etchells. He wrote a twenty-four hour prose piece about what happens in a city at any time. [These time-sensitive phrases scroll along the bus shelter walls]. Then between the hours of 1 and 5 o’clock in the morning, the computer goes into "dream mode." It generates new phrases and new sentences from all words in its memory. So you get some surreal things happening in the middle happen in the night—one phrase it came out with was, "tree branches are dreaming of trees."
I see the structure of the bus shelters, [designed by architect Bauman Lyons], as metal origami of bright red, steel and glass. As for the color, we wanted them to be bright red, because bright red is a very traditional color for post boxes and phone boxes—a color you would associate with communication in this country and we wanted to be part of that tradition.
AC: Have you had any unusual responses to these installations?
NS: There are things that come up that I had never even thought of. A few people asked, "Well, what about people with mental illness? Would they be disturbed by hearing these voices?" Oh dear, I hadn’t thought about that. But, so far, I haven’t heard of people upset.
AC: It is the Culture Company’s mission to make "the everyday extraordinary." What happens if the bus shelters become the everyday, usual backdrops for Bradford bus riders?
NS: I think that is the big advantage of temporary work: it can make something extraordinary for a short time, and it doesn’t get that familiarity factor. But I think what you say is a good point, how many works can really stand the test of time?
AC: What spaces are begging you to make them "extraordinary"?
NS: The heart of the city is where we all come together, and there are many things you could do: the pavement, the grey areas, the in-between areas that can become magical. The tunnels that you walk through, the bridges you pass under. They can make us look again…
