This year’s Silver Artrage Festival incorporates a diverse array of exciting new work spread over 25 days from October 16th. Amongst the offerings is a piece created by OUTinPerth journalist, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, entitled ‘The Trickster’s Bible’. A street art adventure, the work follows ‘the tattered remains of a love gone horribly wrong’ through a ‘poetic narrative which mixes obsession with intention’ leading the reader into the broken heart of the city.

Scott-Patrick shared more of the story behind The Trickster’s Bible project with Zoe Carter.

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What creative and physical processes were involved in realising the work?
This work draws inspiration from a number of different sources. To start with it deals with psychological ideas of obsession, voyeurism and stalking. I then tie in old Trickster myths from Nordic mythology, particularly those concerning Loki and how he brought about the death of Balder, the god of poetry. There’s a degree of crazed vengeance which runs throughout the narrative, which is then underpinned by moments of intense emotional sincerity. Of course, there’s some Gertrude Stein-esque linguistic play thrown in, a style which I think capitalizes on the nature of The Trickster, creating leaps in language which are instantly familiar and yet disorientating. In fact the whole piece plays toward constantly shifting foot, the intensity of the narrative changing tone but never losing momentum. As a result it moves from linguistically twisted instructions to heartfelt confessions, dark and treacherous invocations and playful charms which induce more harm than good. There are also a series of unaddressed ‘love’ letters and moments of awkward sincerity.

The whole narrative appears as a series of posters which shift in size from A1 to A5. They thread their way along the path of the story – or course of the map – although with this installation I am approaching it from a more organic perspective. The Trickster’s Bible debuted at TINA in early October, a festival which spans only five days. Now, Silver Artrage spans October 16 to November 9 – 25 days in total (kinda cute once you realize the festival celebrates 25 years of Artrage). That’s five times the size of TINA. In order to accommodate this, this installation of The Trickster’s Bible will shift and play more within itself. Poems will be amplified and edited during the course of the festival, resulting in a narrative which undulates, ebbs and flows, just like the traffic of people encountering it. This means that during the course of the festival the entire narrative will change significantly, meaning that people will always be encountering new facets and elements of the story.

With the work having premiered at TINA – the This Is Not Art festival, held in Newcastle from October 2-6th – did you find that audiences engaged with the pieces in unexpected ways? How did you originally expect that people might engage with or react to the work?
I find that people always engage with art at street level in a peculiar way. After all, if something impacts on a person in a more profound way at street level then say in a magazine or on TV, then naturally that person’s reaction has to reflect that impact.
The premiere of The Trickster’s Bible at TINA in Newcastle was a point in case. After a few days of the posters being up, I noticed that someone had actually physically collected some of the larger specimens. At first this threw me a little. I thought that someone had ripped them down, until a friend reminded me that I myself used to collect street art. Having the non-collectable suddenly become collectable was quite a kick.

Elsewhere and the piece actually contains blank love letters. It’s not known who they are written to, or who has written them, but each one contains an ironic rebuttal of the other’s intentions. One such letter discusses the need to invoke amnesia on the other. It was funny because at one point during the installation of the narrative someone addressed the letter using red crayon to one Clint Murray, obviously an obsessive ex worthy of amnesia. That letter was still there when I left Newcastle – I wonder if Clint Murray has seen it yet?

How do you see The Tricksters Bible relating to other street art, or to other forms of storytelling?Street art typically concerns itself with imagery of ironic slogans. This project concerns itself with poetry and narrative. It attempts to blend in with advertising posters on the one hand, yet distinguishes itself by containing far more abstract notions. I don’t know of many people who are writing and presenting poetry in such a manner, but there does seem to be a groundswell trend of people creating such narratives, where the reader has to actually physically engage in the story to read it. There were at least two other projects at TINA which had the same degree of self-propulsion through the landscape, one which was like an old skool choose-your-own-adventure and the other using more advanced mobile phone technology. It’s exciting to think that there are other writers out there who are also exploring the reader’s place within the context of the story and the landscape and how the two can converge to reveal narrative.

Will TheTrickster’s Bible lead to future projects?
There is a certain potential of exploring narrative and poetics at street level. The winner of the recent TropFest Short Film Competition was a film – shot entirely on a mobile phone – that used street signs to highlight the plight of homeless people. I think there’s also a certain degree of wonder and delight people experience when they ‘find’ something unique on the streets, like art or poetry. And because poetry has the potential to be both profound and endearing, I think it can invoke a moment of transformation in the reader, a moment which can occur on their way to work, during their lunch break, out shopping or while waiting somewhere for someone. The real beauty of projects like this is that you never know exactly who it will touch people, or whether it will. But the possibility of doing so is what makes projects like these so exciting. I think there might be future projects in similar veins but exploring different facets.

The Trickster’s Bible map can be found online either at Artrage, MySpace or Facebook by doing a search for the group The Trickster’s Bible. Flyers of the map can also be found in various venues around town.

Zoe Carter