Subtext
Stories for the Kingsway Tram Subway

Writers of all ages and experience are invited to contribute to the short story collection Subtext, published to accompany the forthcoming site-specific installation Chord at the Kingsway Tram Subway.

Deadline for story submission: 31st July 2009

To celebrate the opening of the exhibition Chord by artist Conrad Shawcross this autumn, Measure is inviting writers to contribute to a collection of short stories inspired by the Kingsway Tram Subway and its history. The stories must involve the subway in some respect but they can be on any subject, set in any time, and written in any style.

Contributors to Subtext are asked to submit a complete short story of up to 1,000 words in length. Subtext will be published as a book and online.

The collection will be selected and edited by Karen Holst Bundgaard, a creative writing student at Middlesex University as part of her third year placement.

For further information on Subtext please email: karen@measure.org.uk

Click here to download the full Subtext information sheet with images.

Puss and Mew Public House Snug

Chancery Lane area, 2009

Puss and Mew, is a heritage based arts project by Luis Carvajal and Annie Davey. It explores the social and vernacular history of London, particularly its entwined relationship with gin, through the recreation of cultural artefacts and events. Chancery Lane is situated between the once notorious parish of St Giles to the west, where one in four homes was a gin shop, and the site of Tom Langham’s distillery to the east, destroyed during the Gordon Riots. In Lincoln’s Inn fields itself, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Joseph Jekyll was hustled and trampled during a riot subsequent to one of the unpopular Gin Acts in which he was instrumental.

The result of specialised research and an adherence to traditional craft techniques, previous Puss and Mew projects include The Revival of an Eighteenth Century Gin Vending Machine, Clerkenwell (2004), and Southwark (2006). Although mostly situated in historic or unexpected venues the projects have also been exhibited within museums and galleries such as the V&A and arts organisations such as Artangel. Examples of Puss and Mew trade tokens are housed in the British Museum collection.

Later this year and for a limited time, a functioning early Victorian public house snug, a curious and short lived example of social architecture, will re-open in an undisclosed venue around Chancery Lane. It will be available for up to six guests at one time and will serve authentic “Old Tom” cordials, the progenitor to London Dry.

Measure and Conrad Shawcross in Holborn

Harmonic Tree at Gate Street

inholborn and Measure announce an ambitious and exciting work of public art for London, in the heart of Holborn Gate Street is an important pedestrian link in Holborn which is used by approximately 300 pedestrians an hour to link the Holborn Gateway and Lincoln's Inn Fields which has been targeted for regeneration by inholborn, Camden Council and partners.

Taking a prominent position at the head of the street, Conrad Shawcross' Harmonic Tree will provide a new landmark for local pedestrians and visitors, forming a key component in the local application of the Mayors' Legible London programme - a new network of signage to suppport pedestrian wayfinding in London.

Conrad Shawcross talks about the work ‘The piece continues on a series I started as pendulum driven drawings, which took, as with a lot of my work, the ratios of the harmonic spectrum as their subject matter. The machine that makes them is based on a Victorian machine called a Harmonograph, which involves two pendulums of variable length, one holding a pen, one holding a piece a paper. Harmonic Tree is a three dimensional interpretation of one of these drawings’.

New projects for 2009

Chord by Conrad Shawcross. September - October 2009

Chord is a new collaboration between Measure and artist Conrad Shawcross. A new site-specific work is being created as part of a unique temporary opening of the Kingsway Tram Subway in Holborn, London.

Chord is an epic installation that Shawcross is creating in response to the Tunnel. Two machines, each five metres in diameter will slowly spin a rope made from over 80 individual spools over a length of 80 metres.

London Borough of Camden has granted special access to the Kingsway Tram Subway, a fascinating and unique survivor of London’s tramway heritage.

Conrad Shawcross explains: 'Conceived specifically for this subway, this twin rope spinning machine will start at the centre of a 100 metre section of the tunnel. The machines start together back to back and run on a track system that echoes the original tram tracks. The idea is that these tracks will be laid out only as the machines move slowly down the tunnel. By the end of the month of the show the machines will have laid down their entire track, reaching the outer limits of the space and leaving a thick long hawser of multi-coloured rope in their wake.’

Chord is commissioned by Measure, funded by The Arts Council, Bloomberg, The Henry Moore Foundation and The Victoria Miro Gallery, in partnership with Camden Coucil and the London Transport Museum and supported by Fontsmith and the Holborn Library.

Puss and Mew: Public House Snug Luis Carvajal & Annie Davey. 2009

Puss and Mew: Public House Snug will reconstruct a functioning public house snug circa 1850, centered around the selling of specially made Puss & Mew gin. the snug will form the basis of a fiction created around the history of the architectural phenomenon short lived in their original form due to scandalous reports of illicit activity, from prostitution to drunken police officers.

Luis and Annie will construct a functioning public house snug, circa 1850-70; a small private room or box directly off the bar. Centered around a serving hatch that allows a transaction with minimal human contact it is echoic of the Puss and Mew gin vending machine swapping an external public space for an internal one and providing anonymity for the customer rather than the vendor.

Like the gin vending machine they were a short lived architectural phenomenon in their original form due to scandalous reports of illicit activity, from prostitution to drunken police officers, although they were also accidentally progressive by providing a ‘back door’ for women into what had previously been a strictly male domain. the few snugs that remain in the uK today are of later revised open designs that allow the publican to supervise its occupants.

On Overgrown Paths by Ben Rivers. Summer 2009-onwards

A series of cinematic portraits by Ben Rivers showing the lives of three individuals who have made the isolated pockets of Northern Europe their home. Living self-sufficiently off the land, the subjects of the films are independently evolving a way of life that quietly, but resolutely, refuses to submit to the demands of conventional living.

The three film-works are projected within huts made of reclaimed wood. This Is My Land, observes the daily routine of self-sufficient Jake Williams. Sördal focuses upon an abandoned film set found while searching for a Norwegian hermit. Origin of the Species surveys the geography surrounding a 75-year-old amateur inventor and Darwin enthusiast.

After a very succesful first show in Brighton at the Permanent Gallery and Regency Town House, On Overgrown Paths will now tour the UK into 2010.

Please check the Measure website for further updates during the year about all these projects or email us at info@measure.org.uk.

onemillionstories is an online project by creative writing student Karen Holst Bundgaard. Ten interconnecting stories are split into six parts that appear in random order each time the page is refreshed. Thus the reader plays an active part in creating a potential one million darkly comic narratives, subtly commenting on how the choices we make each day affect our lives. A literary experiment following the legacy of authors such as Raymond Queneau, B.S. Johnson and Peter Adolphsen.