e AdultsT

On the 15th of July 2013, Gary and Lena held a 45 minute-long conversation between 9:18pm to 10:03pm in the front room of 7 Bright Street. T ey decided not to record it, but to ref ect on it through a writing up the f ve things which came up whilst thinking about the future.

* Everton to Anf eld

T e Institute will be relocating from Everton to Anf eld. We are buying a new-build, with help to buy 20% equity loan from the government. Our monthly mortgage repayments will be £482 a month for the f rst f ve years. After that we will need to either repay the equity loan, start paying for loan fees or remortgage the house. T e house has three storeys, 4 bedrooms, 2 lounges, integrated kitchen with dining area, 1 toilet, 1 bathroom and 1 shower. T e whole house will be carpeted. We will also have a front and back garden as well as a garage and two parking spaces. We anticipate that the Institute will be situated in the second lounge on the f rst f oor, at least for the next year or two. Gary’s thinking about putting it in the loft, or the garage.

We thought about the borders between Everton and Anf eld and dif erent areas of Liverpool. We thought about creating a walk between 7 Bright Street and 55 Kemp Avenue, and marking the border between Everton and Anf eld. We wondered if we would ever call ourselves North Liverpool. How North can North Liverpool get? We wondered about dif erent districts in Liverpool. Anf eld and Everton both speak for themselves. It’s only recently that we started bothering about the locale of Everton. We were preoccupied with it when living in L17 near Sefton Park and Lark Lane. T e local suf ocated us. Now we are looking forward to painting the wall in Everton Park, we have come to accept the local and engage with it. We are still very near to Everton Park. We are not moving far. We are only on the other side of Everton Park. We are also very close to the Anf eld stadium.

* Places and their Energies

We wondered about the generation of energies in a new place. When we f rst started the Institute, we ran numerous events, we hosted numerous residencies, we created a network of people, a kind of community for critical arts practice. We were buzzing... It is dif cult to sustain such levels of energy. We worked in and outside the Institute. Bringing the Institute to a new place, albeit the same place but from a dif erent angle, will bring energy. But how would we like that energy spent? Events, residencies, public events? Where will we get our

energy from? Places are things that have energies, that’s why they are places, that’s what a place is. What kind of place is tied to what kind of energy is available or is released there, made to be released there. T e Doctor’s Surgery (the house we never bought due to structural damage) was going to be an anarchist cafe - it had that kind of energy, but this new-build doesn’t have the same kind. We need to f nd out, investigate what kind of energy is there in this new place. We might be stuck in the beautiful form of domestic spaces initiatives like 25SG, but then again, there is Anf eld Bakery nearby anyway... We will need to bite into regeneration politics and break a few teeth and without the Biennial’s help.

*New Baby

We are 41 and 38. Fingers crossed, Lena will be 39 when the new baby is born. Children will be 13, 11 and 6. T is will be the biggest age gap amongst the children in the family. Everyone is excited. What else is there in life to do? Is there anything better? We are giving ourselves a burst of reinvigoration. We are starting again. We don’t want to let go of the idea that we are a young family. We thought about having a new baby on Fuerteventura in El Cotillo. We imagined a little toddler on white sand. T is was one of those beautiful moments on the beach when the adults were relaxing on the beach, in some shade, whilst the kids were playing with big rocks in the sand. It wasn’t too hot, it was utter bliss. How ambitious are we? Do we really wanna be pushing through with academic careers, the endless line towards Professorship. Ah! Are we really that bothered to continue to produce an innovative arts practice, non stop, on demand. T is is the time to end twoaddthree and start a new life... twoadthreeaddone?

*Are we the norm?

Everyone seems to think they are the standard, the norm. I know people won’t self-identify as such, but no matter where they sit on all the social, cultural and political scales the judgements we make are often AS IF from a place where things are best viewed. Being the norm is a spatial thing. It’s about from where you are looking. We’ve been trading on being the norm (heteronormative nuclear family) since the beginning. Now, buying a new house, having a new baby, moving to a new house in the area are all things that could qualify as the norm. T ere’s an enormous privileging here that is really hard to keep an eye on, but that privilege makes Gary a little Evangelical; he wants all of our friends to be like him in the sense that he wants all of our friends to have the privileges he has, the same job, house, garden, car, money, holidays. Gary spends a lot of his energy worrying about how his friends don’t have as much as him, even though he knows fully that they may not want what he has and are perfectly content without any of Gary’s stuf . But Gary persists. Lena knows that is not normal!!! Lena is also convinced that both Gary and Lena work too much and are therefore slaves to the system and can’t imagine who else would want to do that. Full time jobs, three kids, arts practice which involves both art world

*What bothers you at the moment?

Lena is actually rather content at the moment. It is summer. T ere isn’t much to do. T e university work has f nished, just a few more REF forms to f nalise... T ere is this Institute publication and immersive performance paper for TaPRA, but this is all pleasant work. With the autumn, new courses and re-rehearsing of 1994 solo performance will start, but that seems so far away now... Lena will be going to maternity leave in early January: new baby, new house, a break from work, happy children in happy schools. Lena is the happiest on Saturday morning, when after a sleep in, she gets the children to do their homework. It’s 11am, and all the homework is done, ah!

Now, the world is still messed up, there are terrible injustices, social and ecological, all around us. What bothers Lena right now? Gary feels the same, and wonders if it’s something to do with having been successful at combining the privileges of life with a gentle accepting questioning that f nally justif es those privileges. Gary is bothered about how Lena is. How the kids are, will be, but also and always feels like he’s already about 87 and with not long to go and , f nally, is greeted by a sort of angel or fairy or something who asks Gary to chose a time to go back to and relive. Gary’s answer is always wherever he is at the moment, always right here right now. He’s so boring sometimes!