Story of Simon Birch
People often ask about my inspirations and how I developed @the14thfactory. This is my story...
17
After Hope and Glory in Hong Kong, I tried super hard to take the concept abroad, find an opportunity to show parts of it, or the support to build the whole thing again but was faced with many disappointments. I almost got it moving in Los Angeles, working with Ridley Scott's film company, but no interest in funding or sponsorship. I talked to museums and galleries and faced endless shut doors. A humiliating and frustrating experience.
I really believed in what we built, independent, collaborative, spectacular but grounded in intellectual and conceptual rigour. I thought the idea of immersive art experience, art the audience could inhabit, moving from piece to piece in procession, was the way forward. Maybe I was ahead of my time, or maybe it was just not that good!
Fortunately, it did get one brief second life dear friends, Jade and Rocky took the show to Beijing and presented it in their new gallery space, but again, it didn't gain much traction and the entire content sadly ended up being trashed or recycled as we had no resources to store the work.
Looked super cool though even though we had to censor a couple of works.
So that was that. The death of my biggest art adventure though we still of course have these photos to remember it by.
But it really encouraged me to develop these immersive experiences and to expand upon the themes I was exploring even though I couldn't get anyone to pay much attention. But I'm sure George Lucas got a few push backs on Star Wars.....
