On 24 October 2009, the night the clocks went back, we brought projections, audiovisual performance and spoken word to the Hot Walls in Old Portsmouth. Funded by Portsmouth City Council and the Big Lottery, The Thief of Time brought artists into the Round Tower for the first time in over ten years, with existing work, performances and new commissions spilling into the surrounding arches and spaces.
A group of us had been talking for some time about putting on a light festival in Portsmouth. I don’t remember exactly where the idea began. I think Brighton’s White Night was an influence, alongside events in other European cities. Somewhere in those conversations, Later, White Night became Light Night and the loose collective of creatives got it together, raised some funding and put on the event to a small audience.
At the time, Video Artists, Jez Stevens and I, along with others, were already staging audiovisual installations and site-specific projection work in Portsmouth, so lighting up more of the city felt like a natural extension of what we were already doing. We were aspirational, we wanted things to happen in Portsmouth that we would want to go to ourselves. We were trying to ferment a collective of artists, finding people with shared interests and opportunities to make work together. The city had a different cultural feel then, and this kind of practice was less established locally. Bringing audiovisual performance, projection and spoken word into public spaces felt like pushing at what was possible.
For me, part of working with a particular site is finding access to buildings you haven’t used before and discovering what you might make there. I had been writing proposals and looking for funding to do something around the Hot Walls for a while so this opportunity just cemented the desire to work with this space. The Seafront Manager at the time, David Evans (recently retired from PCC), had a wonderfully straightforward, can-do attitude. He wanted these old spaces opened and used. When we asked whether we could do something in the Round Tower, his response was essentially: yes, please do.
I remember him showing us around the tower and the other nearby spaces, including those that later became the The Canteen café. They were unlit, dank, unused, but for us, full of potential. In the end, he gave us the keys and let us get on with it. That willingness made so much possible. There were artists who wanted to work there, and here was someone who not only could, but did open the doors.
Inside the Round Tower, there was a strong sense of the past, it dripped, it was musty and cold. Opening a place that has been closed for years can feel as though you are letting out its spirit. We have used the tower since, and many others have exhibited and performed there, but that first access felt like a privileged moment.
Video artist Jez Stevens remembers encountering those spaces through his own long familiarity with military buildings:
The Square and Round Towers were familiar landmarks on my childhood visits to Southsea. Growing up in Richmond, North Yorkshire, I lived in the shadow of a Norman keep and spent weekends exploring burnt-out helicopters, tanks and the shells of moorland farmhouses on the nearby tank and artillery ranges. Military structures were part of the landscape of my childhood, places to explore as much as reminders of their original purpose.
Portsmouth’s military heritage is everywhere, yet I am struck now by how many nooks and crannies existed, and still exist, within those familiar structures. We become so accustomed to their scale and presence that we barely register them. The Hot Walls event allowed me into rooms that had been closed for decades: mysterious vaulted spaces built into the walls themselves. Stepping inside made those familiar walls strange again.
Some resembled the interiors of alien spacecraft, their surfaces marked with symbols, numbers and coloured squares of paint. Each marking must once have conveyed something to someone. Standing there, I was left wondering who had needed to read them, and what they had understood.
Jez Stevens
The work developed through conversations about what the artists wanted to do and what the spaces would allow. I remember talking to Christina Gyles about how we would put projectors into the (at that time empty) arches for her video work. Gail and Dan wanted to project their photographs of old buildings along the south coast inside the Round Tower. There was something hauntological about that: images of other buildings appearing within a space already full of its own past.
We also had a large 10K projector and had been doing what we called ‘projection bombing’ around Portsmouth, throwing images onto buildings. The Hot Walls offered another opportunity to work at that scale, using the architecture as part of the work.
My memories of the evening itself are fragmentary. I was producing the event and was probably too occupied with making it happen to take everything in. It was also a long time ago, and the other artists have also found that some details are difficult to recover. One thing I do remember is Jez flashing up words gathered from people attending: their impressions appearing as projections and becoming material for a communal poem.
Spoken word artist Stella Mandella recalls how that unfolded:
In those days, it amused me to describe myself as a ‘council poet’—a slightly oxymoronic title prompted by occasional commissions from the local council. Why not be that? This event was organised by Roy Hanney, AKA Dr Lighthouse, with the council and other creative partners involved in a supporting capacity. My role was as community-based as it usually was when working directly for the council: to create a communal poem from the contributions of those attending.
‘I’m putting together a community poem for midnight tonight as part of this event. Would you be prepared to offer a line or two about your impressions of what you’re experiencing here?’
‘Poetry, ooh!’ was often the response, or something similar. Then, after a little dreamy-eyed thinking, people would begin to speak about the atmosphere, the sights and sounds they were immersed in, or how the event made them feel.
I carefully jotted down their words and checked that they were happy for us to use them, either with their full name or anonymously. Then I passed them to our VJ, Jez, who projected them verbatim across the walls of Old Portsmouth, to the contributors’ surprise and delight.
As midnight approached, I retreated to reorder, edit and gather these fragments from audience members and artists into a coherent whole. A poem. Then, inside the Round Tower, accompanied by improvised VJ imagery, I spoke the communal poem to those assembled: their words returning to them at midnight.
Stella Mandella
Digging through the 1kp archive, I found a flyer and press release for the event, which I have included below.
And here is the press release.
Even the website addresses bring back something of the activity around it. We were using athousandplateaus.ning.com, an early social networking platform, to build a local artists’ collective. It was a lively place where people shared work and found collaborators. It didn’t survive the growth of Facebook and other platforms, but it was part of how we found one another and kept things moving. Kino Kult was then a VJ collective; the name later became home to Kino Kult CIC, the business through which 1kp runs its affairs.
There is a full image gallery in the following link with pictures of the work by all of the artists: The Thief of Time Flickr Gallery
Looking back, I connect my memories of that evening with what has happened around the Hotwalls since. The artists’ studios, the café and the refurbishment and regular use of the Round Tower for exhibitions and performances have made it the kind of place we had only imagined. Seeing a festival such as We Shine Portsmouth festival of light take shape in the city over the ast few years also brings a similar feeling of recognition. Things that were aspirations for us, and for other artists and cultural activists in the city at that time, have gradually become part of its cultural life.
I’m not saying we caused those developments. Many people have put work into making them happen. But perhaps something of those early conversations, projections, installations, performances and temporary gatherings added to the energy that carried them forward.
Maybe, just maybe, we laid in a spell.