Art of Survival conversation (continued from Alasdair Hopwood’s page)
Ella Gibbs: Donald Crowhurst’s story is really interesting. He was trying to travel around the world in a sailboat. He got to a point and started to circle round and round but meanwhile he was communicating saying that he was somewhere else entirely. He’d promised his wife, his family, and the media that he would travel the world and he had to keep this myth going. Ultimately, he went absolutely crazy because his complete drive for success was all that was keeping him alive. What is the motivation of these journeys? Is it just for show?
Barry Sykes: Or is it vicarious and for the benefits of others?
Sarah Carrington: Doesn’t that also comment on whether the processes we’re going through are for ourselves or whether we feel a sense of responsibility to other people and whether that is part of our survival?
Alasdair Hopwood: I think it’s also about a general sense of what constitutes success and that is inbuilt to what we do.
EG: Spare Time was a project I did at the Chisenhale Gallery and it was about inviting people to respond to and think about the idea of what spare time is and to create a space in which to think about what we could be doing or what we should be doing. I set up the gallery as a base for discussions and activities, and different exchanges started to happen from providing very practical advice for things you could do like learning relaxation techniques if you can’t relax. The project was in response to the Chisenhale’s brief to work within the local remit. But during the project a huge amount of things started to happen and it was really important that it was about generating a structure and it was about starting with a group of people and finding out what they could put into it. There’s a huge amount of information collected and now it’s about moving that into another space where it can also be usable in some way. For me the idea of spare time is for re-evaluation within non-productive space.
(continues on Paula Roush’s page)


Barry Sykes (1976, Upminster) and Sean Parfitt (1974, Hitchin) regularly collaborate on the research project Staying Alive, dealing with the day-to-day behavior of survivalists and adventurers. To date this has involved seeking refuge in a house by the river, pounding the streets of East London, and now these self-set tests for Prague.
They have exhibited widely both together and individually, most recently in the
exhibition Model at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in April 2003.