'Gwennan and James Collaboration' At The Southbank, Wimbledon College of Art

First of all the compositions began with us standind still, but then the movement of the ribbons came into play more; so we decided to develop it and it became more about stillness and movement and lines. We'd already looked at working with ribbons but decided we needed something even lighter so we used long strands of crepe paper. We decided to take it to the southbank due to the river, the view and that we'd get more wind there. We also talked about being purposefully disengaged with the public in a public space. In a way we felt this was like a strange opposite to what we'd looked at in Urban, Colour, Movement as this was a much more active piece which really affected people's sense of space as they were commuting whilst other light and shadow work we have done has been a lot more subtle.

What we found difficult was relying on the elements. The weather does pretty much what it likes in England and in this sense we were lucky to get at least a little wind on the Southbank, whereas we didn't the first time we tried it out in Dundonald park.

The other thing we found troubling was that we positioned ourselves outside the Royal Festival Hall and security took an interest in us. It was here that we learned to not use the word performance as you apparently have to ask permission before. We therefore tried to negotiate by saying that it was for an art project at college and we were mainly interested in photos of the view. This seemed to work especially when we said that'd we'd tidy up after ourselves.

The visual documentation of our piece is better than the piece itself. Not interacting with the public was strange and this felt like a strangely private performance in the public realm.

Breaking up the lines of the city with flexible paper that follows wind and water.

What we were interested in doing was to change the nature of the lines around us by using strips of paper and the wind to blow them. We particularly liked the idea of the water below us following its own current. The piece therefore had a direction whilst we stood still.