Artist Spotlight with Variable Matter
28 August 2024
David Shearing is an artist and director. His artistic practice invites audiences to reimagine their sense of place in the world, often drawing inspiration from the magical, more-than-human materials and the natural world that surrounds them.
In 2020, he established Variable Matter, an art studio rooted in collaboration, with a mission to explore the intersections of our environment, technology, and social justice. He is driven by the power of design, art, and outdoor installations to enable deeper connections and foster richer public conversations about who we are and the unheard stories around us.
In this blog, David discusses presenting his first touring project, ‘World Kiosk’.
World Kiosk is an intimate digital sound and light installation that creates a unique space where communities come together. Visitors are invited to sip tea in a calming environment designed to encourage thoughtful conversation and the formation of new connections. The aim is to transform often unused sites and spaces into temporary public squares. Through this installation, participants can explore and connect with the diverse life journeys that shape individuals from around the world, creating a shared experience that bridges different backgrounds and perspectives.
The project prompts us to consider how we might have better public conversations. In these fraught and difficult times, where community tensions are rising, and disinformation and superficial judgements lead to violence, the need to more deeply understand those around us is ever-present. World Kiosk provides an antidote to these tensions – a small radical act disrupting the every day, challenging our assumptions and preconceptions about our nearest neighbours.
‘On our journey so far, I have been deeply moved by the emotions people have expressed in response to the work. A simple invitation to engage has provided a sense of care in a hard and often brutal world’
Our collective narrative is one of constant movement, where home and place are not static, but processes defined by arrivals and departures. This highlights the importance of recognising impermanence, transience, and displacement in people’s lives. Through the voices of everyday people, we uncover the social politics that shape us, revealing and opening up aspects of class and heritage. World Kiosk showcases the values we inherit from family, friends, and religion, as well as the value systems we choose to reject, documenting the evolving ethics and wisdom of everyday people.
Thousands of people have engaged deeply and meaningfully with World Kiosk, both as guests and as our local hosts, whom we train to hold the space in each new location. I am interested in the power and potential of outdoor arts to inspire change and make a meaningful impact on those we engage with – festivals, local communities, hosts, and audiences.
In Havering, where our journey began as part of a Creative People and Places project, Havering Changing, residents are now rethinking how new street furniture might help bring people together in their otherwise unused public square. Local hosts at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival were excited about engaging with the public and learning how to facilitate public space, demonstrating the power of providing new training sessions for local teams on how to hold public conversations in inclusive and accessible ways. Brighton Festival enabled us to tour the project to two locations, Moulsecoomb Place and The Level. At Moulsecoomb Place, World Kiosk was part of a drive to ensure the festival reached residents across the town and supported a location undergoing renewal as a cultural site.
The Level, one of the most complex public spaces we have visited, enabled us to reach people from all walks of life, helping to reanimate a part of the park that was otherwise dark and uninviting. New community bonds are forming in East London, where we are working closely with Greenwich + Docklands International Festival to present the project in the East End hotspot of Green Street. We have established connections with a residents’ group at Hamara Ghar, gathering new stories to ensure the piece reflects those from the area. Local hosts are employed from within the community, allowing different languages to be spoken and helping to engage more local people.
Listen to the World Kiosk Audio:
‘With each place World Kiosk visits, my hope is that it helps to produce a sense of place as much as it captures it.’
Accessibility is at the heart of the experience, and Without Walls has supported us throughout this process. We have integrated a range of features to ensure people feel welcome and represented, from live audio descriptions and BSL-interpreted stories to a large print version of the newspaper and a relaxed environment. We have been inspired by our British Sign Language (BSL) user hosts, who have engaged with both hearing and non-hearing communities, and we continue our journey in finding new ways for people to access and feel part of our project.
Place is a practice we all engage in, prompting us to consider how we might better create the places we live in, understand the nuances of those around us, and reconfigure our relationships with strangers. In a rapidly changing world, it’s the small things that can have the most impact.
Image credits © Luke Witcomb
Audio Clip from World Kiosk: Composer by James Bulley
