Tag Archive for 'Docklands'

I left a party early for this.

Published
by
Colm
on 22 June, 2008
in Misc.
. 5 Comments

So as I mentioned there was a second Spencer Tunick shoot in the city centre this morning. My excitement for it kind of waned throughout yesterday as the euphoria wore off and the sleep deprivation kicked in, but I have a pathological aversion to backing out of things so at 3am I made my way to Grand Canal Square.

Obviously, there were far far fewer people signed on for this one – somewhere between 75 and 100, at a guess – and we were all tired, so the atmosphere was much more muted than on Saturday morning. Once the crew arrived we were brought into a nearby hotel lobby (much more pleasant, in theory, than standing on a pier, but it felt like cheating) and briefed on what was going to happen. We were going to be lined up on balconies on a nearby (empty) apartment building, with the first shot consisting of couples only. That wasn’t great news for me, what with my girlfriend being at the arse end of another continent, but we were told that everyone would be brought out for the second shot. The third shot was to take place on the roof, but that one was just for the laydeez.

There’s one cardinal rule of any event like this: always push your way to the front. My diminished enthusiasm let me down here and I stupidly let myself get stuck at the back. After far too long of a wait we were split into groups of seven and each group was told to go to a certain apartment, with my group getting shunted into one at the back of the building. Our balcony was completely out of the camera’s line of sight, which didn’t bode well.

After yet more waiting in the apartment (which was very nice, incidentally, in an American Psycho, why-the-hell-is-there-a-photo-of-Steve-McQueen kind of way) a guy with a walkie asked three of us to move to the apartment across the hall. I jumped at the chance to actually do something and we went in to where two couples were already in the nip, having just finished the first shot. They seemed suitably embarrassed to see three fully clothed people walk in.

I was there for a grand total of three minutes when one of the other volunteers – a pregnant women – asked if I’d swap places with her husband (er, which is to say, her husband was still in the other apartment, and she was nervous and wanted to have him with her in the picture). Back I went.

Yet more sitting around… guy with walkie kept coming in and saying “five minutes, five minutes” while we wondered how the shoot was going to work given our position. This shortly gave way to wondering why the front balconies were filling up since we hadn’t even been given the go-ahead to strip. Ten minutes later and guy with walkie comes in looking sheepish: “Uh, it’s over.”

Six fucking am, I haven’t had so much as a shoe off, and we’re told it’s over. Second cardinal rule I broke: never be nice to a pregnant woman.

Ah, I can’t stay mad at her. She was very nice and hadn’t been at the South Wall shoot, so I’m glad she had the opportunity. Still, the concordance of piss-ups and breweries springs to mind.

At least I’ll always have the beach.

The nudd

Published
by
Colm
on 21 June, 2008
in Misc.
. 11 Comments

I managed to blag my way into the Spencer Tunick shoot at the Docklands this morning following rave reviews of the Cork event. Unfortunately the one person I knew was going pulled out shortly after getting me a release form. After taking to the mean streets of my phonebook and meeting a giant collective “Nuh-uh” I decided to go by myself, and I’m glad I did because cracking jokes with naked strangers on a wall jutting into the sea at five in the morning is about the most fun one can have with one’s clothes in a plastic bag several hundred yards away.

The actual stripping was not as weird as I expected. StereoTyping made it sound like a Village of the Damned kind of thing, like some kind of hive mind decision, but I guess that aspect of it was spoiled for me by the fact that I’d pushed up to within 20 feet of the guy with the megaphone. Maybe all the people at the back had a different time of it, I don’t know. It was a cool experience though – no nervousness whatsoever.

There followed a long walk to the end of the South Wall as everyone was asked to spread out. We were herded into staggered lines while the man himself nadged off in the other direction. There was a certain amount of waiting around here, although we were able to amuse ourselves by mooning the Stena Sealink and manically saluting the Irish Ferries boat (because English people are bad and Irish people are not, obviously).

After just long enough had passed for me to assume that he’d buggered off for a cuppa, there was muttering down the line about “Position A”. Position A consisted of everyone standing with their arms by their side and facing out to sea (well, there was sea on both sides of us so that’s not terribly specific… everyone facing in the same direction, is what you should be getting from this). At no point did I see any sort of camera so I don’t know if there was any good god damn reason to hold it for as long as we did, but any annoyance on this score was mitigated by the fact that Position B turned out to be A Nice Sit Down. This was shortly followed by everyone lying down in a foetal position, and… well, a piece of advice: if you ever find yourself in the nip on the South Wall at dawn on an overcast day, you might want to minimise the amount of skin you put in contact with the ground.

After the first shoot packed up there was a nice Schindler’s List-esque trudge back to the clothes, and of course I was one of the people who couldn’t find his… it’s amazing how standing around with a few hundred other naked people feels perfectly normal, but wandering lost among people who are tying their shoelaces and zipping up their hoodies just makes you feel like a crazy person. Fortunately my bag turned up in the hands of a lovely young gentlemen, who politely declined a hug.

We were told that another shoot would be kicking off in a while for anyone who wanted to stick around. Probably around two hundred people stayed, including yours truly, and after half an hour or so we all filed down to the beach, stripped off again and ran screaming into the sea. I should point out that it had started raining at this point, so the natural response was to start splashing each other, dancing reels and singing “Olé Olé”. Because we’re Irish and that’s how we fucking roll.

This last shoot was the highlight of the whole thing, hands down. The previous stuff had all been a lot of waiting around and pulling a pose and repeating, and it was cool but you weren’t necessarily that engaged. Whereas this was the 200 most euphoric and up-for-it people in the gaff standing shin deep in the sea and having a party. Even when it got to the posing, it was mostly about who could shout something to make the most people laugh. My personal favourite was ten seconds of silence followed by a lonely-sounding “I don’t know what a tracker mortgage is”. God bless you sir, you made my morning.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE. After the rather horrific experience of scrambling into soaking wet, sand-covered clothes (while using a bathtowel as an umbrella… not as ineffective as you might think), and while we were shuffling back towards the buses, Spence and some dude started handing out leaflets. One of these was an invite to a post-installation dinner on Sunday. The other was an invitation to a Super Extra Bonus Shoot that’s taking place on balconies in the city centre tonight.

Can’t fucking wait.