ARTISTS TALKING

Man walks into a greengrocer’s in Kensington, Liverpool with a camera.
‘Do you have a kettle?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I would like you to take a photograph of it for me with this camera.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m in the process of twinning Kensington here in Liverpool with Kensington down in London and, because everyone’s got one, I’ve decided that the kettle can symbolise, in a positive way, what we in this country all have in common. You go around anybody’s house and what’s the first thing they say? “I’ll stick the kettle on.” So now I’m going around Kensington asking people if they will photograph their kettle with my camera and once I have done 1000 pictures I will go down to Kensington in London and do the same. Each of the kettles up here will be paired with a kettle down there. I don’t know yet what I will do with all the photos – so tell me if you’ve got any ideas – but once all 2000 pictures have been taken I will know that the Kensingtons have been fully twinned.’

You might expect the person in the greengrocers to say ‘You’re takin’ the piss’ or even just ‘Fuck off’ but they don’t. What they say is, ‘That sounds like a good thing to do. I’ll just get my kettle from the back of the shop and while we are at it, do you fancy a cuppa?’

This conversation has not happened in reality, but variations of it have been going on in my head all day as I try to psych myself up for what’s going to be happening in the next couple of months. Now I will try to explain why conversations like this have been going on in my head all day and what it is that I am psyching myself up for.

The village where I live is twinned with a similar rural village in France. Our house is on the edge of the village. On the roadside verge outside the house is the village sign with the TWINNED WITH... sign underneath it. Early in 2000 the TWINNED WITH... sign disappeared. I wondered why. Who would want to nick a TWINNED WITH... sign? Then the gossip spread. A couple of local farmers had taken it and were going to hold it hostage until the French started to buy their beef again. Remember BSE? I liked the ludicrousness of their protest. Then I decided to get a replacement TWINNED WITH... sign made but this time I would twin the village with somewhere else altogether. It would have nothing to do with whatever authority it is that decides which village, town or city gets twinned with which other village, town or city.

The morning after I had this idea I got a letter from Catalyst, the artist-run co-operative in Belfast. They were asking me to take part in an exhibition about signs and notices within the Belfast cityscape. Another idea struck me, and I forgot about retwinning our village. I already knew that Belfast was not twinned with anywhere – maybe nowhere would have it – so instead of responding to Catalyst’s invitation in the required fashion, I did something else.

A fortnight later I had had a sign made by the people who make highway signs. It measured two metres by half a metre. I took it over to Belfast and, with the help of a couple of friends who live there, I bolted it underneath the WELCOME TO BELFAST sign on the verge of the main motorway into the city from Belfast International Airport.

On my way back home I thought, ‘I liked doing that. I want to do it again soon somewhere else.’ By the time I got home I was the founding member of the Intercontinental Twinning Association.

For the next month, 51,8701 motorists a day drove past the two combined signs. If they cared to read them, this is what they would have seen: WELCOME TO BELFAST TWINNED WITH YOUR WILDEST DREAMS. By this time the authority responsible for such things had removed the sign, but by then the hearts and minds of many of the citizens of Belfast knew that their city was then and forever twinned with their wildest dreams. Citizens there now wear BELFAST TWINNED WITH YOUR WILDEST DREAMS T-shirts. The Belfast Information Centre has a life-size replica of the sign on the wall of its reception area and the more liberally minded members of the City Council want to adopt the twinning in some sort of official yet unofficial way.

Since then the work of the Intercontinental Twinning Association has been involved in a variety of projects. In 2003 I spent a week in an empty flat on the fourteenth floor of a condemned tower block in Liverpool. I was there to write a piece for an art book called Further Up In The Air. I spent most of my time standing and staring out of the window down at an area of Liverpool called Kensington. Kensington is considered by many of the people of Liverpool as the most run down, deprived and heroin-infested area of their city. The population of this Kensington is, in the main, unreconstructed white working-class Scousers, whose families have lived in the same streets for generations. Much of Kensington is row upon row of two-up, two-down, red-brick Victorian terrace houses. Kensington’s main thoroughfare is also known simply as Kensington, without the addition of words like High or Street. Over 50 per cent of the shops along it are boarded up. Those that are not are the traditional grocers, barbers, butchers and hardware shops still hanging on or the more ubiquitous fastfood outlets and off licences. It was obvious to me that there was a job here for the Intercontinental Twinning Association. This Kensington should be twinned with its more renowned namesake in London.

Initially the twinning was going to be more of a low-key, under-cover-of darkness, almost private affair, but the coin flipped. I decided to involve as many of the population of the area as possible. The kettle idea evolved. Four junior schools in the area got involved. Children were bribed with the offer of a slice of toast spread with Marmite if they brought in their family kettle to be photographed. Two thousand ‘Kensington Twinned With Kensington’ mugs were manufactured, one to be given away to anyone willing to have their kettle twinned. Brightly coloured flyers were printed and put through all the doors in all the streets of Kensington. These flyers invited people to come along with their kettle to the Kensington Fun Day. I had a stall between the Saint Brendan’s homemade cake and jam stall and the local majorettes’ tombola stall, where I was set up with camera on tripod and boxes of mugs.

In November 2004, to celebrate the twinning, a dozen pensioners will travel down the M6 in a minibus to the Hilton Park Services just north of Birmingham, with their kettles. There they will meet a dozen citizens of Kensington, London, who will have driven up the motorway with their kettles. They will have a kettle-swapping ceremony and a celebratory meal together after which they will all return to their respective Kensingtons with their new kettles.

A month later both parties will travel back to Hilton Park Services, swap back the kettles, have another celebratory meal, then go back home with their old kettles. This endeavour will be considered a kettle exchange visit.

The third Liverpool Biennial is happening this autumn. I had some association with the two previous ones. I felt that neither of them involved the people of Liverpool in any meaningful way. They failed to draw upon the spirit of the city. All the exhibitions and activities were sited close to the city centre to make it easier for people coming from elsewhere to do a quick dash around before summing it all up and making their escape back to wherever it was they came from. I also felt that what was going on was more about people within the art world trying to impress other people within the art world.

Of course I know that is only natural, always the way and in fact it is what I am trying to do here. To counter this in some small way I decided that this kettle-twinning thing would be part of the Liverpool Biennial, although I have had no contact with this year’s directors or curators and there is no reason for them to consider my contribution to be part of it.

Over the duration of the Liverpool Biennial I will be spending time in both Kensingtons, going into shops from one end of Kensington and Kensington High Street to the other, knocking on doors of private homes and visiting schools to seek out kettles wherever they can be found. I will be armed with only a camera, a box of mugs and missionary zeal. By 28 November, the official end of the Biennial, I hope to have 2,000 kettles photographed and an idea of what I will use the photos for. But more importantly, the two Kensingtons will be twinned in the minds of at least some of the people all the time, if not all of the people some of the time.

And if asked why I have done this I will say, ‘I was only following orders of the Intercontinental Twinning Association.’ And if asked why again, I will say, ‘I was only trying to make the world a better place as all art can do.’

For the duration of the Liverpool Biennial (16 September – 28 November 2004) Bill Drummond will be involved with a number of other kettle twinning activities. He will be visiting every retail outlet and licensed premises along the length of Kensington High Street asking who is ever behind the counter or bar if they have a staff kettle that can be twinned with a staff kettle in a similar establishment in Kensington, Liverpool. And he will then visit every retail outlet and licensed premises along the length of the main shopping thoroughfare that runs through Kensington Liverpool, this is called simply Kensington.
He will be making appeals to the congregations in all the religious establishments in both Kensingtons to bring their kettles in for twinning. He will have a stall within Kensington Central Library, Phillimore Walk, London W8 7RX, between 26 September and 2 October, where people can bring their kettles in to be twinned.

www.penkiln-burn.com
1 Figures provided by Traffic Information & Control Centre, Northern Ireland.