They Are Here is a collaborative practice steered by Helen Walker and Harun Morrison since 2006. From 2006 - 2008 we worked consistently with associate artists Joe Bell and Anne Jonsson.
Each They Are Here project has its own unique collaborative structure and hierarchies that emerge through the contributions of various invitees. These contributions may lie in the development of a work or its delivery. The potential of various models of collaboration is an on-going and foundational concern of They Are Here's practice. We continuously explore group dynamics, divisions of authorship and the effects of temporary engagements with practioneers of other disciplines.
We work as gatherers, editors, assemblers and facilitators to generate work.
They Are Here work across media and types of site, having shown work in theatres, galleries, former warehouses/ shops, online and civic spaces. Institutions we have developed or presented work include: Battersea Arts Centre, Camden Arts Centre, CCA Glasgow, Chisenhale Gallery, Man & Eve Gallery, LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) Tate Modern, South London Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery.
They Are Here invite a high level of interactivity on the part of their invitees. We often take populist systems or experiences (Myspace, a film promo launch party, a haunted-house) as a framework for ideas. These events may involve the participants engaging with a narrative external to the event itself to unlock it. Other works use strategies and models of participation derived from 'social gaming'.
Examples of our work:
Witness & Re-Shoot (Camden Arts Centre, CCA Glasgow, Tate Modern, 2009) are a recent strand of research focusing on the act of looking, memory/ digital data storage, video, re-enactment and the social politics of film-making. In Witness you are asked to re-enact physical actions or camera shots from memory in a chain of reconstructions. In Re-shoot you are assigned the role of 'extra' or 'camera crew' to make a series of films inspired by site-specific photographs and text. www.vimeo.com/6177837
Injured Party (Battersea Arts Centre, 2007) was a film-promo party organized by 'Gunstone Productions' on behalf of the fictional personae Ayo and Oni Oshodi. A film trailer, Anne ist supposedly written by Ayo and Oni, was given a screening on the night, alongside a Q & A, music acts and other spontaneous performative moments. It also functioned as an 'environmental portrait'; if two characters were a live event what would it be like? You can meet them at www.myspace.com/ayoyoueverything|www.myspace.com/iamtheoneandoni
Halfway-House (Man & Eve Gallery, 2007) was a performance-installation for two people at a time, which parodied the mode of an estate agent's tour. You were greeted by a performer in the guise of an estate agent at Kennington Tube station. Once inside, you were subsequently separated and simultaneously experienced parallel journeys that played with auto/biographical narratives before being re-united.www.manandeve.co.uk/exhibitions/Halfway-House
Uninvited Future(s) (James Taylor Gallery, 2008 as part of 5 Storey Projects' 'Matter of Time') brought together 3 potential futures for a single derelict site in an expanded installation. Located in 2010, we entertained at a flat-warming, held a private view fortelling the disbanding of They Are Here and opened a newly constructed school as designed by a 9 year- old child architect. www.fivestoreyprojects.com
Millipede (LIFT Festival 2008: Stratford & Southbank Centre) was a participatory archive project. www.liftlivingarchive.com/lla/millipede/
Becoming the Alien (South London Gallery, 2006) was a performance- video in which two collaborators imagined themselves as extra-terrestrials, who have landed in Peckham to explore indigenous flora and fauna. Punning on the American use of 'alien' to mean immigrant, collaborators' extra-terrestrial personae were drawn from the gestures they observed from local immigrant communities during the workshop process.
You can contact us at theyarehere[at]live.co.uk
Uninvited Future(s), 2008 (Image: Una Hamilton-Helle)