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LEILA HOUSTON

just some of the developments and collaborations within encrypted sounds of wellbeing

11/6/2020

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CLICK HERE TO ENTER FINAL EXHIBITION
Click images to enlarge 
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October 19th, 2020

10/19/2020

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Denying the Pyramid: Artistic Labour and Self-Actualisation in Leila Houston’s Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing-by daniel kelly

10/14/2020

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Leila is a studio-mate of mine, and this text arises following a mentoring session and more informal studio conversations and group critiques where I have seen the project and its concerns evolve over the last year. ‘Studio-mate’ is a funny term, but feels the right one for co-habitants of artist studios, which at their best are real world spaces of community, of physical co-location and chance encounter - a relationship somewhere between friend, colleague, comrade and house-mate. In a year in which offices and schools have sat empty, where you work and who you work alongside have become intensely political questions - lifting the veil over any pretense that those who work in what David Graeber pithily termed “bullshit jobs” (1) are serving any economic purpose greater than buying sandwiches and filling rented office space.
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​Art is and isn’t work. In the week in which the chancellor Rishi Sunak said that artists and creative industry professionals hit by a lack of work following the COVID-19 pandemic should simply retrain, to suggest that art is not work might be unhelpful. But art is work and also something better. Artist studios and other sites of independent creative endeavour are more than just workplaces - they are sites of ‘Self-Actualisation’, the term that sits atop Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - the pyramid diagram from which this project springs. The theory proposes that once we reach this level we are able to be creative, empathetic, spontaneous and achieve our potential. Self-Actualisation is the galaxy brain level for Maslow’s protomeme, a pinnacle of human fulfilment that is only reached once we are able to go beyond base bodily function, have silenced the everyday rumbling of hunger and chronic pain, met our needs for shelter and loving relationships, and attained self-esteem. You might be able to tell, this diagram makes me suspicious.

Sure enough, the levels on Maslow’s pyramid are the things humans require to live fulfilled lives, and which we are summarily denied by a societal order that privileges economic growth above all else - it's the schematisation that irks me. Can this neat structuralist triangle really encapsulate the mess of complex and contradictory desires and impulses that make up a person? Can it categorise the range of experiences we see documented in Leila’s film Encrypted Sounds Of Wellbeing, such as the abandon and joy of bombing-it through town on your bike, ‘There’s No Business Like Show-Business’ played on a Wurlitzer organ ringing in your ears? Where do the new relationships with neighbours in lockdown sit? Those with whom we might have fundamental political differences but who have offered us companionship in a time of pronounced isolation. What about the compulsion to keep scrolling on news feeds, or stay glued to 24hr rolling news coverage that offers only more anxiety and uncertainty?

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To me this pyramid is compatible with a worldview in which artists desperate for work and following Sunak’s advice, can answer 20 questions in the National Careers Service retraining quiz (2) only to be told they are best suited to a role in the ‘Creative and Media’ sector. All of the algorithm’s outputs are either numbingly mundane (‘Horse-Groom’ seems to be a top suggestion) or naively unaware of the entrenched social hierarchies that obstruct meritocratic ambition (my results included both ‘Actor’ and ‘Newspaper or magazine editor’). The quiz’s ranked statements such as “I like to see the results of the work I do” and “I like working with my hands or tools” are a painfully unintentional pastiche of Marx’s theory of alienation, in which Capital separates us from the products of our labour, the processes of work, our fellow man and ultimately, our species-being, a phrase that perhaps encapsulates the kind of self actualisation Maslow envisaged. Marx’s ideal unalienated labour sounds most like that of the artist, who creates “an object corresponding to the need of another man's essential nature” (3)and “so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature,” the kind of labour which the National Careers Service will never be able to quantify or recommend. 

The Wurlitzer is played by Chris Barber, resident organist and Musical Director at the Musical Museum, Kew Bridge, London. (Filmed by Leila Houston) ​
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The pyramid also puts me in mind of David Cameron’s 2010 ‘Happiness Index’, the statistical accompaniment to that administration’s ‘Big Society’ scheme - at face value a pseudo-anarchist reversal of Thatcher’s “No such thing as society” line, seeking to place power in the hands of engaged citizens, but ultimately amounting to an erosion of state support and increased reliance upon charity and Noblesse oblige. Such projects are a small-statist perversion of projects like Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics that would seek a genuine replacement of GDP with categories including Gender Equality, Social Equity and Political Voice as metrics for societal success in the face of impending ecological catastrophe. 

If the contemporary era can be characterised or classified at all, it is perhaps as an unclassifiable age of uncertainty, of a complexity that denies structures, schema, pyramids. This is nothing new - the world has always been messy, it’s just that we are living for the first time on a global scale, connected on platforms that place harrowing world news alongside essential communication with loved ones. This complexity is exaggerated in contrast to our position at the tail-end of a project which taught us to establish facts and truths and to trust diagrams and structures above all else (i.e. modernism). 
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To deny the power of a diagram does not necessarily serve politically Left-wing aims - ambiguity and relativism have become the favoured weapons of a conservative politics that exercises its authority by stealth. Constantly shifting lockdown rules have placed responsibility on the shoulders of individuals, the scrambled texts and mixed messages akin to those scrolling across the screen in Leila’s film, making dyslexics of us all. As Eyal Weizman chronicles in The Least of all Possible Evils, the notions of objective truth and fact were contested ground throughout the 20th century. Originally the project of Left-aligned postmodernists, the practice of questioning the social constructions upon which society is founded has become the primary weapon of authoritarian states trying to get away with murder, often through the two word phrase “fake news”.
Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing, Video stills
This project has culminated with a mass act of colouring-in, whereby a favoured childhood activity becomes a method of data collection and processing, each coloured page a diagram charting a participant’s agreement with 19 more nuanced and subtle needs from Maslow’s research including ‘Good Sleep/Rest’, ‘Financial Security’ and ‘Moments of Joy’. Whilst adult colouring became an offshoot of the contemporary wellness industry a few years back, (the kind of self-care practice that is prescribed as a sticking plaster over the stresses caused mostly by the hell of work) this gentle act of communal labour has offered a moment of reflection and the chance to regain a small semblance of the sociality that is not being met elsewhere. With this in mind, I propose an alternative National Careers Service. The quiz will be undertaken by colouring-in, and will have only one answer: “Artist” - that's the kind of work most worth doing. 

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1 David Graeber, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/
2
https://beta.nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/

​3 Karl Marx "Comment on James Mill," Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.


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this saturday ! so many people involved showing thought provoking art work

10/6/2020

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Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing 

Online Exhibition: 10th-31st October 2020
Virtual Opening Event: 7.30pm, 10th October 2020
Location: www.leilahouston.com

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Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing( Still ), Leila Houston 

 Throughout lockdown artist Leila Houston has collaborated with an online community for her project Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing, funded by Arts Council England.
 The project will be presented as an online exhibition, launching on World Mental Health Day, Saturday 10th October 2020, and the public has had a chance to take part. 

“Over the course of this project my own work has sought to capture the haunting nature of isolation and the ghost-like memory of community and how people, communities, society, are visibly dislocated today. I have put together an exhibition that gives people a voice in hope that those that visit our exhibition will bring something wholesome  and converse something through the arts in these times of disconnect.’ 
​

 Leila has also commissioned a number of established artists to contribute to Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing both as part of an exhibition and a separate digital open event starting at 7.30 (10/10/20) . Artworks presented will include video, drawing and collage, as well as sound art and a previously unheard piece of music titled Weightless, recorded by Kate Jackson (The Long Blondes), Chris Constantinou and Marco Pirroni (Adam and The Ants).
 She has also been working with two groups of young artists from Charnwood Arts’ People Making Places programme. Many of these young people are from diverse backgrounds or identify as neurodiverse. 
 “With the groups we specifically looked at unpicking Maslow's theory of needs, relating it to how we viewed ourselves and the world we were experiencing. We also challenged ourselves to develop artworks that moved away from the pyramid diagram that Maslow’s theory is usually presented as - which I learned wasn’t actually designed by Maslow himself but is how business and management training events have presented the theory.”
 The other group developed a series of drawings depicting needs that will be made into a ‘colour by numbers’ participatory artwork.  The public’s interpretations of the ‘ Colour by numbers’ activity will be included in the online exhibition and a smaller number will be selected to be displayed inside The Exchange Bar, curated by artist Zory Rubel. 
 The online exhibition will be available to view at www.leilahouston.com and launches on Saturday 10th October at 7.30 pm with a virtual opening event showing 60 minute video carefully selected for this event and will coincide with World Mental Health Day. 
 
Artists included - 
Glenn Fitzy Fitzpatrick
 Courtney Askey
Khush Kali 
James Chantry                
Beverley Isaacs
George Sarell             
Zory Rubel                        
Kate Jackson                 
Leila Houston
Ash Eddy
Georgia Ward
Mike Millward
David Johnson
Kirstey Eggleston
Daniel Gray
Kerry Jackson     
Ashley Fitzgerald       
Jack Halford 
Johnny McJohnston 
Echolocation 
Paul Mazzitelli


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A TASTER for this saturday at 7.30pm- something a bit different to view in your home!

10/5/2020

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George Sarell 
Join us for something abit
different in your home Saturday evening
10 / 10 / 20
Live event - From 7.30 till 8-30pm
@ www.leilahouston.com
*Video Art *Drawing * Digital Art * Collage *
Animation * Sound Art * Public Involvement
Music * Photography * Mass Collaboration
* The Artist's Voice

An unheard piece of music titled Weightless, recorded by Kate Jackson (The Long Blondes), Chris Constantinou and Marco Pirroni (Adam and The Ants)!!!

​

WATCH OUR 2 MINUTE CLIP SHOWING A TASTE OF WHATS TO COME ! 


Selected Artists


Ashley Fitzgerald * Glenn Fitzy Fitzpatrick Johnny McJohnston * Echolocation Paul Mazzitelli * Courtney Askey Georgia Ward K * hush Kali Mike Millward * James Chantry Beverley Isaacs * Jack Halford David Johnson * Zory Rubel George Sarell * Kate Jackson Kirstey Eggleston * Leila Houston Daniel Gray *  Ash Eddy

Presented by Leila Houston and supported by Silver Vine Arts, 'Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing' is an online exhibition featuring artwork by Leila Houston, selected artists, and artwork made by participants of Charnwood Arts' People Making Places programme
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VIDEO AND PHOTOS of my collaboration with Johnny C  & A snippet from my artist statement with support of my amazing writer Khush kali

9/23/2020

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A snippet from my artist statement 

Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing

Leila Houston


The artist cycles along a canal path. We are attached to her handlebars and though our view shudders and shakes, we can see how closely she skirts the waterside edge. She pedals faster, negotiating the gentle curve and the jolting bumps of the towpath, seemingly heading downhill at speed. But it is silence that crashes into the birdsong, before returning again to the haunting strains of an eerily upbeat Wurlitzer organ: 

There’s no business like show business
Like no business I know...

The artist pedals faster still, chasing on two wheels a promise of freedom, liberation. Furiously propelling herself towards just that one cool moment of relief, we know the futility of her attempt even before it is affirmed by the glimpse of a silent, gliding swan.

--------------------


Come to online group exhibition and digital opening showing the developments of this work 
10th October 7.30pm 



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Online exhibition- mass collaboration - community involvement - encrypted sounds of wellbeing

9/17/2020

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Online exhibition
Saturday 10th October - 31st October 2020
www.leilahouston.com
​

Virtual opening: Saturday 10th October 7:30pm BST
Presented by Leila Houston and supported by Silver Vine Arts, 'Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing' is an online exhibition featuring artwork by Leila Houston, selected artists, and artwork made by participants of Charnwood Arts' People Making Places programme.
Throughout lockdown, artist Leila Houston has collaborated online with local community groups for her project Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing, funded by Arts Council England.
The project will be presented as an online exhibition, launching on World Mental Health Day, Saturday 10th October 2020, and the public will also have a chance to take part.
Leila has also commissioned a number of selected artists to contribute to Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing. Artworks presented will include video, drawing, and collage, as well as sound art and a previously unheard piece of music titled Weightless, recorded by Kate Jackson (The Long Blondes), Chris Constantinou, and Marco Pirroni (Adam and The Ants).

Other selected visual artists include Vanya Balogh, Beverley Isaacs, Glenn Fitzy Fitzpatrick, George Sarell, and Leicester-based artists James Chantry, Courtney Askey, Dan Cowlam, Zory Rubel and Khush Kali.

GET INVOLVED
From 21st September, Leila is inviting the public to take part in the exhibition by downloading an artwork made by members of a local community group from www.leilahouston.com, completing the activity, and then photographing the result and emailing it to encryptedsoundscbn@gmail.com. Physical copies will be available from 21st September at The Exchange Bar, 50 Rutland Street, LE3 1RD, and should be returned by 5th October, again at The Exchange Bar.
The public’s interpretations will be included in the online exhibition and a smaller number will be selected to be displayed inside The Exchange Bar, curated by artist Zory Rubel.
Visit Leila’s website www.leilahouston.com for additional locations to collect and return physical copies of the participatory activity.
The online exhibition will be available to view at www.leilahouston.com and launches on Saturday 10th October at 7.30 pm with a virtual opening event and will coincide with World Mental Health Day.
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Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing

8/26/2020

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ENCRYPTED SOUNDS OF WELLBEING


10TH OCTOBER 2020
UPDATE 
​
INVITES TO SELECTED ARTISTS BEING SENT OUT TOMORROW EMAIL WILL BE FROM ARTIST LED ORGANISATION SILVER VINE ARTS WHO IS SUPPORTING THIS PROJECT !


10 PAID ARTISTS WILL BE CONTACTED 
  
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arts council project meeting with the talented artist led Silver vine arts team & co  ! GETTING ready for to go live 10th october - world mental health day .

8/18/2020

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ARTS COUNCIL england PROJECT
ENCRYPTED SOUNDS OF WELLBEING

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Silver Vine Arts zoom meeting 

Great to get the team back together and to have 2 new people joining us on the journey !!!!!

DISCUSSION INCLUDED 

​- SCHEDULING AND PLANNING READY FOR TO GO LIVE 10TH OCTOBER - WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY .

​- ONLINE EXHIBITION WITH SELECTED INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS

- ART WORK FROM 2 VERY CREATIVE GROUPS BASED AT CHARNWOOD ARTS 

- INVITE TO THE PUBLIC TO TAKE PART IN 'COLOURED BY NUMBERS DESIGN' BASED ON MASLOW'S THEORY OF NEEDS AND DEVELOPED BY YOUNG PEOPLE AT CHARNWOOD ARTS 

- LEILA HOUSTON WILL BE SHOWING A WORK THAT UNPICKS AND RECREATES MASLOW'S THEORY OF NEEDS AS AN ART WORK. USING RECORDED DISCUSSION AND DOCUMENTING LIFE OVER THE LAST 10 MONTHS SINCE THE PROJECT BEGAN LEILA IS LOOKING TO EXPLORE OTHER WAYS TO PROJECT OUR NEEDS TODAY COLLECTIVELY.       
​follow updates on 
​www.facebook.com/silvervinearts
Previous work developed by SILVER VINE ARTS - SUMMER ART TRAIL, WTS GALLERY 
THANKYOU FOR YOUR INVOLVEMENT 
KHUSH KALI, KERRY JACKSON, MELISSA FLETCHER, JAMES CHANTRY, ZORY RUBEL, COURTNEY ASKEY  




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Corona Viewed From Maslow’s Hierarchy of NeedsWhy a public health crisis supersedes all else

6/11/2020

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Glenn Geher, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is founding director of the campus’ Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program.
Online:
 Dr. Glenn Geher's website at SUNY New Paltz,

www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/202003/corona-viewed-maslow-s-hierarchy-needs

Imagine this: You’re on vacation and are about to take a swim in the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of southern Florida. You check your phone right before you head to the water, only to find some pretty upsetting news:
You just received an email from your supervisor indicating that you’ve been passed over for the promotion to Director. Worse, one of your not-so-favorite colleagues, Ted, who has stabbed you in the back every chance he’s gotten for years, apparently got the position. 
You shake your head and put your phone down. What a blow to your self-esteem. Uggh. You cannot believe it!
Well, you’ve paid all this money to come to Florida so you might as well make the most of it. With your tail slightly between your legs, you walk to the water and dive into a nice-sized wave. The water is warm and you’re in. That email, of course, still smarts …
Suddenly, to your surprise, you find yourself smashed by a huge wave. You are actually fully submerged and scared. You can’t seem to touch the ocean bottom and you are having a hard time breathing and, for a moment, you can’t figure out which way is up. This is downright frightening!
After about 20 seconds (which seems like an hour), you find your footing, get your head above the water, and you realize you’re going to be OK. Thank goodness.
But for that 20-second bit of time, you were petrified. And for that whole while, the disappointing news of your having been passed over for the promotion had completely escaped your mind.
 
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

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In 1943, iconic psychologist Abraham Maslow presented a theory of human motivation that was so elegant that it has, for decades, been met with strong acceptance and praise. The basic idea of Maslow’s model is well-conceptualized if you think of a pyramid with five levels.
The levels represent five categories of needs, with “higher” needs being dependent on the satisfaction of “lower” needs. Thus, based on this model, if your “lower” needs are not met, then you’re not in a position to work on fulfilling your “higher” needs.
​

These needs, starting with “the highest” on the pyramid, are as follows:
Self-Actualization: The need to become the best version of yourself that you can be.
Esteem: The need to genuinely appreciate and respect oneself.
Love and Belonging
: The need to feel fully and unconditionally supported by someone else, and the need to provide such support and love to another.
Safety: The need to feel physically and emotionally safe from harm and genuine threats.
Physiological
:
Needs that are biologically basic, such as the need for water, food, or air.
In the fictitious example provided above, you went from being someone who was worried about esteem needs (based on that unfortunate email about your not getting the Director position) to suddenly being flooded, literally, with a physiological need: the ability to breathe. As predicted by Maslow’s model, if your primary needs are lower on the pyramid, then you find yourself less focused on needs that are higher on the pyramid. In short: If you’re drowning, you’re not worrying too much about being passed over for a promotion ...
Corona and Maslow’s Hierarchy
If you’re like most readers of Psychology Today, then you likely have most of your physiological needs met. After all, if you’ve got no food or water, what business do you have reading a blog post?
In terms of Maslow’s hierarchy, most normal adults can be thought of as working, generally, on the upper parts of the pyramid. Trying to figure out love needs (such as trying to re-ignite a long-term romantic relationship), taking steps to advance your esteem needs (by, perhaps, applying for leadership positions within your organization), and/or trying to achieve that elusive state of self-actualization (perhaps by meditating, doing yoga, or going on retreats in the mountains, for instance).
But the coronavirus situation, a worldwide pandemic, has knocked many of us, regardless of where we may have been “on the pyramid” just a few weeks ago, to the bottom of the pyramid.
As Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, said in a statement that was released earlier this week:
I understand that this is a burden to businesses. ... There is going to be an impact on the economy, not just here in New York but all across the country, and we're going to have to deal with that crisis, but let's deal with one crisis at a time. Let's deal with the crisis at hand and the crisis at hand is a public health crisis.
Put in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy: While the fiscal fallout of the corona pandemic will be nothing short of enormous, that must take a back seat to the more imminent health crisis that we are facing as a broader community.
We can’t worry about higher-level needs when we’ve got physiological and safety needs that need to be addressed. 

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    Leila Houston

    Leila Houston (London, 1977) is a visual artist whose work investigates the social, political and historical aspects of a place.

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