Is someone coming to get me?

2003-06-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

The Hillary Step burns.

2003-06-03T14:47:00.002-07:00

The Coronation crew bow out.

2003-06-03T14:47:00.001-07:00

It's over!!!!!!!

2003-06-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

Mountain Culture...Nice Guys!

2003-06-03T14:44:00.002-07:00

Gau and Fischer stuck just below the Balcony.

2003-06-03T14:44:00.001-07:00

Rob Hall, Andy Harris, Doug Hansen stuck at the Hillary Step, beyond rescue but together.

2003-06-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

Pulling up to the South Summit.

2003-06-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

Sorry not to have finished up with last post. We were so desperate to leave we just went straight to bed having read the radio conversation between Rob Hall and his wife at 5am. So we made it. The last hour dragged by pretty slowly. Then we had to be up at 9am to take the mountain down. This was accomplished pretty quickly if in a slightly comatose state.

The mountain then succumbed to the flames at the Mountain Culture annual picnic. I watched the Hillary step burn as I swilled down salmon with beer.

We are so grateful to everyone who helped out in big and small ways, from the volunteers to the tech people, to the workshop guys, to the candy rock grrrls who kept us awake, to Mountain Culture and BNMI and the Dining Room who hosted and supported us, and to everyone who came to see us. Specific thanks go to: Leslie Taylor, Charla Sharp and Shannon O'Donoghue from Mountain Culture; Lori Ward, Sara Diamond, Susan Kennard and Cindy Schatkoski from the Banff New Media Institute; Radio 90; Joost Asselbergs for letting us use the Dining Room, Chef for making the Coronation Chicken, and tolerant Dining Room staff (we now realise the major effort you put into feeding everyone's creativity!); Security people for opening doors; Mike and his computer team; the sound man, whose name we never got but who set up the wireless mic that was invaluable at the critical moment; Wayne, Rod, Dave, Clay and other Rod and all the people associated with the carpentry shop; the men with the capacious truck and the sturdy forearms; Sarah Fabri and PR people; and all of our volunteers, including Anne-Marie, Seana, Trish, Trish's magic Reiki hands, Nina Wakeford, Charla's craft box, Steve and Jade, Kate our favourite sleep depriver, Anna, and others. Thank you all. The task was far larger than we had anticipated; it was more than we could manage alone.

We are both back in the UK now and begining to assess/process the whole performance. From my perspective it was really good, particularly socially! I will come up with some more fancy thoughts later. The jetlag and sledgehammer effect of sleep deprivation means my mind is still working slightly weirdly.

2003-05-30T03:08:00.000-07:00

Andy Harris and Doug Hansen have just slithered off the ridge into Tibet. It was a most affecting moment as we both watched the wool that links the figure to the bio board plume to the ground. They snaked downwards in a slow tangle. Rob Hall moved down the mountain to the South Summit, where he now sits having disposed his place as best he can.

Sandeee has lent us a CD to see us through the night. It is great and perfect for our slightly somber mood, tempered by incapacity.

2003-05-30T03:00:00.000-07:00

3:53am. The piece is winding down because we are. I feel really good about it, in the end. I think the piece really engaged people in a variety of ways. And it remained entertaining, so it seems and to my surprise (again). Too tired...i've raced beyond or far behind words.

2003-05-30T01:40:00.000-07:00

Small dance party here now, for the final hours. Three hours to go, in the strictest sense of loyalty to our own goals. Although loyalty is a serious abstraction on so little sleep. There are climbers stuck high on the mountain, and climbers lost in the whiteout of the storm on the south col. Like the Hastings performance, this stage of the story is particularly non-amenable to our visualisation methods. The storm. The climbers not moving very much. The middle of the night. Our tactics for staying awake. It all lends a sense of calm to a very serious, violent, even dire situation. The situation seems to want theatre techniques for visualisation/dramatisation, but that would attenuate the forensic qualities of the piece. There's a definition of fatigue: indiscriminate use of words like "attenuate".

2003-05-30T00:07:00.000-07:00

Chris and Ben are real troopers they have now been up for 40 hours and their attention to detail is still pedantic. We are currently watching the procession leaving the abbey and the climbers make it back down to Hillary step to die. The sculpture is magnicent, as is the blokes effort.

2003-05-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

Busy now 12.30pm and we have ten very dedicated visitors. Unfortunately not much is happening as Rob Hall, Doug Hansen and Andy Harris are trapped at the Hillary step. Scot Fischer and Makalu Gau are at the South Summit and everyone else is either pinned down in the huddle on the South Col or in the tents. The only thing moving is the procession of the coronation which is taking three hours to reach the west end.

2003-05-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

Quiet now. Dusk in Banff. Dusk on Everest. People trickle in to see one or two at a time. The calm is a little odd, a little at odds, because this is in fact an extremely violent moment on the mountain, with the storm kicking up, trapping people high on the mountain, zero visibility, people are frantic. Yet the dining hall is strangely soporific.

2003-05-29T19:09:00.000-07:00

Disaster is about to strike. The climbers are enveloped in a storm. However Jon Krakauer describes it as intermitment as well as the worst storm ever!?

2003-05-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

Hillary and Tenzing are down and safe. The 1996 climbers are spread all over the mountain now, from the Summit to the Balcony, and the storm is looming. Many people are far too high on the mountain. Queen Elizabeth is about to undergo The Homage. Jade Azzaria-Byrne and Trish are enacting this part. Stuart from the local paper is here taking pictures and asking kind questions. And Leslie Taylor, head of Mountain Culture, is here for a final look.

Interesting to perform the piece for so many people who know the books. They seem to experience the work in a particular way. But the visualisation really snaps the events into special focus for everyone. The people who know our source material tend to see the work as strictly about mountaineering; interestingly, the artists-in-residence here seemed to engage with the piece as art.

2003-05-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

Everyone has reached the summit now. So the fun bit starts in the descent. We have been really busy talking to people. As in Hastings many of them have come back several times. Word is spreading so we now have roughly ten people around all the time. We have been fimed and photographed and interviewed.

We have been awake now for 34 hours now so we are becoming mildly disengaged. I am sipping capuccino as I write. Trish is back again and has offered us reiki massages which we are saving for desperate times. Supper will be starting soon. It is very busy for us talking to people so we hardly have time to eat. We are almost in another place though.

2003-05-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

There's a happy chaos now. Many many people and I've gone into tourguide mode. Where does that smile and snappy patter come from? It does make me realise (aside from how much I can embarrass myself sometimes) how public this piece is, and how it likes an audience--despite my sense that it's a very inward looking piece. Maybe that's it exactly.

We're still getting the live music mix and I'm still in seventh heaven about that.

Hillary and Tenzing are on their way down the mountain. In 1996, the first climber has summitted and others (including the famous Krakauer) are soon to follow. Forlorn, blind Beck Weathers continues to wait for a Rob Hall who will never come for him. And altitude with fatigue are combining to cause people to make stupid mistakes. Yasuko Namba nearly clips into an as-yet unfixed rope and nearly pulls several other climbers off the mountain. We're all getting tired. But the crowds makes it so much easier. It makes it work.

2003-05-29T12:06:00.002-07:00

2003-05-29T12:06:00.001-07:00

2003-05-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

2003-05-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

2003-05-29T09:57:00.003-07:00

2003-05-29T09:57:00.002-07:00

2003-05-29T09:57:00.001-07:00

2003-05-29T09:57:00.000-07:00

2003-05-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

Just 20 minutes ago, Hillary and Tenzing ('53) reached the formidable free climb at 8766 metres that would later bear Hillary's name as The Hillary Step. He climbed up it using his crampons, wedging himself in a tiny crack and shimmying up backwards.

The 96 crew continue to bunch up. There is a threesome who are about to start seriously considering turning back (wisely, it turns out). Scott Fischer, the leader of Mountain Madness, and Rob Hall, the leader of Adventure Consultants, continue to lag dangerously far behind. Beidleman leads the way.

Lots of great visitors. The music continues to keep me excitable and engaged.

2003-05-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

Damn, the live radio mix is so good. There are nearly reference-less sounds intercutting coronation music (so overstuffed with reference that it behaves in the same way: reference-less; hard for me to hear), and placed amidst interviews with famous mountaineers, reflections on 1953, and reminiscences about Hillary and Tenzing and the 'golden age of mountaineering.' It's helping the piece pull together for me, while also helping the piece achieve an even greater strange-ness, which I always find useful for thinking. You can hear it wherever you are: http://radio90.fm. Tune in. It's great, and integral (makes me want to dance, oddly and wonderfully).

Sorry for the scarcity of posts in the last hours. We've been busy with the coronation, and the internet connection has been intermittent. Photos on camblog soon. Listen to internet radio 90 in the meantime.

2003-05-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

The contrast between Hillary and Tenzing's climb and the confusion of the 1996 expeditions is amazing. Seeing the threads move up the mountain, I have this strong sense of witnessing both climbs in the present. It's hard to leave. I have a sense that all of the participants are still alive, and this ominous feeling that I am watching them climb towards their death. I'd like to change the story by showing them what will happen, telling them to turn around. I wonder what was their motivation. Are they wishing they were somewhere else and where? What voices are they hearing inside their heads? A guest at the Banff Centre indentified the music playing in the background of the exhibit as the coronation piece - she is a conductor. What a strange contrast. Yesterday I saw a photo of the members of the 1953 expedition sitting in their tents listening to the Queen's coronation on the radio. I'll have to come back at 11:30 to celebrate Tenzing and Hillary's arrival at the summit. -Seana

2003-05-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

AND...it's Bob Hope's 100th birthday.

2003-05-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

Breakfast is now in full swing, 270 people expected. Fortuitously Zadok the Priest by Handel came on the local internet radio at 7.30. All power to radio 90 (listen live on 89.9FM in the Banff area), Susan and Cindy who are planning to do mix up some sounds for us during the day, live and raw. http://radio90.fm

Hillary and Tenzing are moving steadily upwards although much slower than 1996 climbers who are now past the Balcony.

2003-05-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

Woo. Morning everyone. Or, good morning you one person wandering by out there. Here's the scene: there's an ugly pile up on the Balcony, which is about 8446m high. It's not a very big area and just about all 32 climbers will be stuck there eventually because nobody fixed the guide ropes above that point. In a few minutes, 4 people will leave to do just that. And in the coronation, they're about to enter a section called "Presenting the Holy Bible", full of more intimidatingly weighty language. And in 1953, Hillary and Tenzing are just readying themselves to begin their ascent to parts of the mountain that have never been seen before.

2003-05-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

PhotoCredits
[photographer/owner: subject]

Photosouth: Andy Harris
Scott Fischer/Woodfin Camp Associates: Scott Fischer, Jangbu and Tawainese sherpa,
Jon Krakauer: Stuart Hutchinson in Icefall, Ascending Lhotse Face, Krakauer, John Taske in Icefall, Mike Groom at Balcony, Lopsang Jangbu,
Caroline MacKenzie/Woodfin Camp Associations: Yasuko Namba, Beck Weathers
Neil Beidleman/Woodfin Camp Associates: Klev Shoening, Anatoli Boukreev, Boukreev moving towards Hillary Step, crowded summit, Neil Beidleman
Pete Schoening: Sandy Hill Pittman, Fox and Adams
Klev Schoening: fox and madsen, Stuart Hutchinson
Ed Viesturs: Everest labeled,
Collection Terres d’Evasion: oxygen bottles on south col
T. Kelly/ Woodfin Camp Associates: Lt. Colonel Madan Khatri

Alfred Gregory: photos from 1953 expedition
George Band/Royal Photographic Society: Hillary and Tenzing

2003-05-29T04:07:00.000-07:00

Dawn is just breaking. 5am. The same as on Everest. The climbers are all strung out now. With the new improved smaller figures we can really show this. We have just taken the Oath which is a pretty serious bond, to protect the rule of law and custom, the church and everyone else in the Commonwealth.

2003-05-29T02:58:00.000-07:00

Keep checking www.camblog.com for new pictures. We've been updating them regularly.

2003-05-29T02:56:00.000-07:00

The coronation party, after a grueling three hour procession (20 min. in 1953 time), has made it to the throne. Elizabeth is sitting on the throne. The people greet her with cries of 'vivat regina!'. The archbishop has presented her to the 4 cardinal directions of the assembled audience, asking if they will accept her as their queen. All implements but the swords are laid upon the altar.

2003-05-29T02:26:00.000-07:00

Frank Fischbeck has turned around and is now well below the main party who are approaching half way to the Balcony. Krakauer, Groom and Ang Dorje are leading, periodically waiting to allow the main body to catch up.

Unlike Hastings where we were pretty alone during the night, there are a number of kitchen, security and cleaning people working here. They pop in occasionally to see how it is all going. There is a strange background hum of activity.

2003-05-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

2:30am and a visitor has a helpful idea. One climber has just turned back...already, 2.5 hours into the climb. Soon, 3 others will follow him. There is a problem later with a shortage of oxygen and we were talking about this with our guest and he wondered: "what happened to the oxygen of the men who turned back?" Good thought. What did happen to that? Couldn't they have left it for the others to use when they came down? But then, they didn't know anything was going to go wrong. Maybe then went to their tents still breathing oxygen, which would have been a reasonable thing to do, given the altitude and the fact that it's very hard to sleep at 8000m.

2003-05-29T01:18:00.000-07:00

2:10am Thurs morning all the teams are getting slowly jumbled together. It's a long slow climb in the dark and cold. The ridge is thin and the climbers basically have to walk in a single-file line. People pass each other, but it's difficult and dangerous to do so as it means walking on a very precipitous ridge.

2003-05-29T00:59:00.000-07:00

See camblog for new photos now and throughout the night. www.camblog.com. Our blog will probably always be first in the "recent" list.

2003-05-28T23:43:00.000-07:00

Mountain Madness team have just stepped into the tracks of Adventure Consultants team. The strings are already a chaos...

2003-05-28T23:04:00.000-07:00

11:55pm Banff time. The 1996 climbers are waking up in their tents. The coronation began 25 minutes ago and (in the unnaturally slowed time of our reconstruction, to match the timing of the climbs) have managed a few metres of their procession to "the theatre", where all the action will be.

There is a happy crew of volunteers, well-wishers, and curious folk here to see, help, and take part. Anna, Charla from Mountain Culture, and Linda (Charla's friend).

Soon we'll have to start discovering what happened in 1996 again. Anna and Linda have already learned so much about the coronation by having to figure out the order of the procession. The power of reconstruction.

-kris

2003-05-28T20:58:00.000-07:00

Here we are on site; it's all good... all systems a GO. The simplicity of the South Col was beyond our imagination.... The team work at base camp is remarkable and loads of fun... we stayed a few extra hours to play with wool, cut out bios, cover th edge of Everest in snow and actually assemble the mountain!! Off to bed, but back for the anointment on Thurs @ 11:30am... be there or be square!! Adios from Banff.
-Jade Azzaria-Byrne & Steve Byrne, Banff, AB

2003-05-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

Good news. We're almost there. I'm about to start calculating the rates at which 1:240 scale mountain climbers and 1:22 scale coronation goers walk their respective to-scale routes.

And...camblog is back up, which means...photos soon.

-kris

2003-05-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the comments everyone. We're in the dining hall now. Steve (one of our heavenly volunteers and Jade's husband) and Ben are building the mountain. Jade and Trish and Anna (three more stupendous volunteers) are creating the biographies for the climbers and coronation participants. Lots of people are eating, an everyday activity that seems, somehow, very very far away from our present reality. We just talked to Steve from a local Banff-area newspaper, who was very nice and will probably come back for tomorrow's action. And the theatre people here are making a time-lapse photography film of the building of Everest, which is very exciting (I seem to have lost all of my interesting adjectives and adverbs: i'm all "very"s).

Sorry everyone for the multi-blog confusion. Camblog seems to have disappeared from the internet, which completely scuttles our photo-posting capacity for now and is somewhat tragically sad. This is the problem of relying on someone else for your tech. Next time we'll build our own site. And for now, we'll wait for them to reappear. Keep checking back. Please and thank you.
-kris

2003-05-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

The blog seems to be working again but if no pictures show in the last few posts try www.camblog.com and seek out 'Is someone...' there. Sorry for any confusion.

The mountain is finished and we now have 54 little figures for the coronation. So just tidying tasks tomorrow and then moving the mountain to the dining room (Mohammed), no small undertaking.

2003-05-27T11:39:00.017-07:00

This is Eddie who is a nice guy from North Carolina with us at the top of Tunnel Mountain. Before you get any ideas that we have actually been climbing mountains it is about 30mins to the summit from the back of the Banff Centre. A well groomed trail leads to the top.

2003-05-27T11:39:00.008-07:00

Isabelle who we are planning/hoping to recreate Saturday Night Fever with. She is an anti gravity dancer. Oh the joys of collaboration. Staying Alive!

2003-05-27T11:39:00.007-07:00

Kris and Ben on the top of Tunnel Mountain in the sun. Kris loves me.

2003-05-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

Hi, this is Leslie Taylor in Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre. Ben and Kris are looking a bit unshaven this morning, and Patsy is attempting to ply them with coffee. They're obviously working hard! It's fun for us to have them doing their computer work right in the centre of our office - all of us get to see what's happening and ask questions - fun for us but probably time-consuming for Kris and Ben. A pyjama party in the dining room, eh? What a concept! - LT

2003-05-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

We're having some trouble with uploading photos to this account, so, for now, you can find photos and posts here, www.camblog.com. From the home page, you'll probably find us under "recently updated". If not, choose "more blogs" under "recently updated", where you'll search for "issomeonecomingtogetme" or look under F-J. If the problem persists into tomorrow, we're going to use this account during the performance.
-kris

2003-05-26T17:56:00.000-07:00

We're trying to convince the Mountain Culture folks here (our hosts) to sleep in the dining hall over one of the nights of our performance, and to bring their tents. It would look perfect if there were 4 or 5 tents, glowing softly, assembled near the South Col.
-kris

2003-05-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

We've started cutting and assembling the model of Westminster Abbey this morning. There was a deer chewing grass just outside the shop. We walked right by like we've seen it a million times. Ho hum, gorgeous mountains all around; ho hum, a lovely deer. Lunch now, then more cutting and screwing.
-kris

2003-05-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

Playing hooky from the afternoon session, but only so we can pay our full attention to what comes next. Bright sun and heat makes the place feel even more unreal. We're plotting at just this minute to build a 1:1 scale model of Everest and reenact every expedition ever, eh.

2003-05-24T08:47:00.002-07:00

The spreadsheet version of the 1953 coronation.

2003-05-24T08:47:00.001-07:00

The blog of our blog. This is the last slide in the slide presentation we just gave at Banff. The following 30ish posts follow the slide show back to front.

2003-05-24T08:47:00.000-07:00

2003-05-24T08:46:00.005-07:00

Left 1953. Right 1996. Summit of Everest. Spot the difference.

2003-05-24T08:46:00.004-07:00

We're very clever here: this is our analysis of the key difference between 1953 and 1996. It has to do with the constitution of team and individual, and what the outcome of the expedition is held to be.

2003-05-24T08:46:00.003-07:00

Coded telegram sent by Jan (nee James) Morris to London announcing the success of the 1953 British expedition.

2003-05-24T08:46:00.002-07:00

This is a picture of 4 members of the 1953 Everest team listening, after their successful ascent, to the coronation of the queen in London. Pictured clockwise, starting from the bottom left corner: George Band, Ed Hillary, Charles Edmunds, and x Wylie.

2003-05-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

2003-05-24T08:44:00.002-07:00

Clockwise from top left: 1953 sherpas and British climbers (names given below), 1996 Mountain Madness team, 1996 Adventure Consultants.

2003-05-24T08:44:00.001-07:00

2003-05-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

2003-05-24T08:43:00.002-07:00

2003-05-24T08:43:00.001-07:00

2003-05-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

2003-05-24T08:42:00.002-07:00

2003-05-24T08:42:00.001-07:00

2003-05-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

2003-05-24T08:41:00.002-07:00

A Hastings Museum and Art Gallery exhibition.

2003-05-24T08:41:00.001-07:00

2003-05-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

2003-05-24T08:40:00.001-07:00

2003-05-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

2003-05-24T08:39:00.001-07:00

2003-05-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

2003-05-24T08:38:00.002-07:00

2003-05-24T08:38:00.001-07:00

2003-05-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

2003-05-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

We thought we would post parts of our talk that we gave here on Thursday as people here have been asking for it. So here are our notes. We ad libbed a lot though. I will post some of the images we used as well.

NOTES FROM 17/05/03
BANFF TALK

Intro about the piece, hastings then here.

Hi my name is Ben and this is my collaborator Kris. We are going to talk about a project we undertook in February this year which we are restaging and embellishing next week here in Banff. The original project was a recreation of the 1996 Everest disaster imortalised in Jon Krakauer’s best seller, into thin air. Next week we will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the first ascent of Everest on 29th May 1953, by recreating that climb along with the 1996 climb and just for good measure we will be adding in the Coronation of Elizabeth II.

I. Intro on delicacy of collaboration [see last email; kc to work more on this to shape it up]

TALK ABOUT THE TALK
As it turns out, I’m going to start with a short talk about creating this talk. We weren’t intending that, but our insights, such as they are, seem to lie at this level.

TOO SPECIFIC TO MATTER; THE GENERAL SEEMED BETTER
We had been wrestling with how to frame our presentation. My instinct was to Generalise from the gritty specifics of our work, which seemed too contingent, too personal, too idiosyncratic to be helpful here, and move towards helpful abstractions.

DESTRUCTIVE OUTCOME; TOO MUCH ABOUT OUR INDIVI CONTRIBUTIONS
But it turns out that this effort led to something of a destructive outcome. What it kept leading to was an analysis of how we each behave in the relationship, falling upon things like the differences in our personalities, and attempts to define our roles by identifying, and subtlely evaluating, our distinct contributions. Thinking in this way about what collaboration means for us devolved, in other words, persistently upon Difference. The implicit assumption that underpinned these initial conversations, almost a reflex on our parts, was that we are not the same and that working together requires addressing this difference—in fact, that working together IS the process of addressing this difference. It’s interesting that this particular arrangement of collaboration, implicit in our conversations about it—of two poles and the distance between them—figured as the starting point, as the way of thinking collaboration.

COLLABORATION BEGINS WITH PREMISE OF DIVIDE
Probably we weren’t going about it right, but here’s another reason why I think this happened: the idea of collaboration begins with the premise of a divide and a meeting across that divide. And these differences are real, material factors to contend with.

WHAT OTHER WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT COLLABORATION ARE THERE
But maybe they also blind us to certain other ways that collaboration works, certain ways that the work happens. Maybe they aren’t the best analytic tool here. They certainly don’t constitute the only approach.

IN THE MOMENT V. NOW, AFTERWARDS
For instance: during the first performance, it hardly felt like we were collaborating, in that sense of a slightly weird tension between two different people both working on something in common. It, the ‘it’ of collaboration, felt insubstantial…in those moments.

Now, here, at this conference and in the preparation for it, our project feels very keenly like collaboration again: ‘collaboration’ is what this conferences gives me as a way of thinking about our work.

WHAT KIND OF ANALYTIC COLLABORATION IS FOR THINKING COLLAB.
The point of the critical tone is not really to cast a suspicious eye on collaboration. This is just a check on what that word fully contains, or codes for, and what kind of analytic collaboration is for seeing the work of collaboration.

IT MIGHT BE ABOUT PERSONALITY, BUT THAT’S NOT HELPFUL FOR OTHERS
TRIVIALISES THE DISCUSSION ABOUT COLLAB.
We could say, by way of an alternative approach, that our collaboration works because of who we are now, our histories, the circumstances we find ourselves in and what we are working on. That our collaboration is such a specific forum for creativity that its usefulness to other people is questionable. And this would be true enough, though it seems to trivialise collaboration, as such, as well as the effort of looking at it. And that’s not so helpful either, as a way of approaching collaboration.

JUST DESCRIPTION
So we decided to simply describe the work itself, under the assumption that THAT is ALSO, at the same time, a description of the collaboration—even while we know that the collaboration isn’t reducible to the outcome alone.

Transition: “talking about the work IS talking about the collaboration”.

II. Hastings and 1996 Everest

WHAT WE DID
A. Ben tells story of how we met, and brings us up to point of Hastings collaboration

Why I love mountain histories
I have been reading mountain and exploration literature since I was a boy. Indeed my school, designed to provide functionaries for the Empire, placed a good deal of emphasis on tragic bravery as a quality to be cultivated. Captain Scott was our Hero. I know the short comings of adventure literature, however it does not stop those stories being captivating.

I want to do that
So how do you get from reading about it to doing it. I am already spending too much time away from my work, walking biking and skiing. So why not make that part of ones practice. Also I am not actually very good at these things nor will ever be.

How to experience something that is far away
So I conceived of the idea of reconstructing various journeys that would help me to visualise, in fact more than that as near as possible have the experience, of the adventure.

Naturally I am attracted to stories of disaster….

Kris and I met in Banff at a conference held in October. Shortly after returning I was invited to apply to programme called experimental spaces at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery. This is a small seaside town on the South Coast of England. I decided to pitch a reconstruction of the 1996 Everest disaster. The frantic apportioning of blame by all those who survived had troubled me. The experience of Everest in 1996 seems to drastically deviate from the noble ideal I had been brought up on…

Anyway my bid was successful which called my bluff. I quickly realised I was going to need someone to help me. Kris had shown a mild interest in my work at Banff and we had met up a few times subsequently back in London. He seemed like a nice guy and might be persuaded to stay up for 29hours moving little wooden blocks around. Which is after all what sociologists are good for.

1. “Experimental Spaces”
B. Ben talks about the difficult politics of Hastings accepting a collaborator in a program that was nominally about collaboration.

So I emailed the Museum saying that I wanted to work with Kris. Much to my surprise they emailed back that they were unsure whether that was in the spirit of experimental spaces.
1. His/our preconceptions for what the collaboration was for,
2. The NEED that collaboration addressed
3. Helping to make decisions
4. encouragement
5. discouragement
6. useful, in part, as a way of closing down options

C. Kris talks about his preconceptions for collaboration and for his role.
1. I was coming to this pretty cold; I knew Ben, but not in the context of a working relationship; and this felt very much like his project.
2. So I spent a lot of time listening and asking questions, trying to arrive at a point where I felt I could meaningfully contribute.
3. It turns out, these open questions were useful, because the questions I was asking, hoping for an answer, not only didn’t have answers, but were some of the questions most in need of answering.
D. Kris on visualising the piece and the build work in Hastings
1. We spent a lot of time researching the piece, and this we had to both do.
2. But in the on-site preparations, we could divide up tasks, because a lot of the harder conceptual work had been done.
3. We sustained a conceptual-level conversation throughout, making critical decisions about how to visualise the events we were dealing with.
4. But we also just had to make it, and in this Ben orchestrated the build and I orchestrated the informational materials (i.e. the computer). Another expedient.
5. This, too, was collaboration, but of a far more banal, workaday sort; we were just racing to get everything made, and decisions made between us always had the fast, loose sense of expediency about them.
E. Ben on adaptability
E.5 kc on crisis of confidence and is it art?
F. Tell abbreviated story of 1996
1. Oxygen
2. The icy bulge and sherpas
3. We did this to learn more about the stories we were recreating, as an alternative way to SEE a history.
4. we weren’t thinking too much about audience yet; we were surprised when people were as engaged as they were.

Transition: the diagram and comparing team dynamics in 1996 v. 1953

III. 1953 Climb
A. Avoiding Good:Bad::1953:1996 binaries
1. There are stories that get ossified in history, that history likes to tell
2. The deaths in 1996 have been used to bolster the common story that history likes to tell of commercialism’s encounter with nature: that commercialism is bad
3. This isn’t necessarily an entirely wrong conclusion, but it’s not a good way of arriving at histories; it relies on reflex rather than thought and analysis, rather than an open-eyed looking at the events. This is what the piece tries to help us do.
4. Counter-examples: on Scott trip, Oats and Cherry paid; and in mountaineering, climbing with guides has been the norm
5. That said, there are significant differences in 1953 and 1996
a. E.g. climber-sherpa-mountain relation diagram, as outcome of what we learned [see attached for diagram]
b. 1953: the economics of sherpas and climbing
c. 1996: the rhetoric of sherpas and climbing; also, the fantasy being sold is that of an individual’s relationship to the climb, one man against nature

Transition: the historical relationship between climb and crowning, via Jan Morris, also, the art and art historical epistemology of compare and contrast.

IV. Coronation
A. I felt like we needed to get some critical distance from the climb as a framework for the piece; but we also wanted to work from common themes in the stories we were reconceptualising.
B. In this sense, the historical link between the climb and the coronation was fortuitous.
C. The idea of alchemical transformation in making a queen and climbing a mountain as another common thread.
D. There were clear historical relations between the events, but the coronation, we thought, was also slightly odd in relation to the climbs, and so, we hoped, slightly denaturalising. Especially when slowed to 1/6th speed. We’ll see though.

We thought we would post parts of our talk that we gave here on Thursday as people here have been asking for it. So here are our notes. We ad libbed a lot though. I will post some of the images we used as well.

2003-05-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

Much to be impressed by here: people, mountains, beyond the pale tech-savvy. But what I'm thinking about a lot is how stunningly generous Mountain Culture has been. Charla and Leslie have given us space to work, a budget, an ideal space to perform, their book and video library, an army of volunteers, and their own personal crafts supply which includes purple velvet. Purple velvet! It's exciting to think about the work in the context of so much enthusiasm for it.
-kris

2003-05-23T08:16:00.002-07:00

This is one of the three workshops here in Banff Centre. This one is the maintenance shop where we will be working. Nicely equiped!

2003-05-23T08:16:00.001-07:00

Ben in the dining room where we will be perfoming. I can't explain my grumpyness. The food is great. I love a buffet!

2003-05-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

This is Sara Diamond who set up the conference. She is working on a collaborative/cumulative excercise set by Nina and Kris.

2003-05-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

Hi, this is Lyn and i'm delighted because this is one of the first times that i actually get to walk my talk - listening to and interacting with people from lots of different disciplines and directions. What I found so intriguiing about the work Kris and Ben discussed was that we are wrestling with the same problems in the (supposedly) radically different domains of science and high performance computing. What are the processes of collaboration, and what happens to the process whenyou try to measure or define or analyse it? I would really like to follow this work, and i hope it gets written up/ produced/ archived in a form that we can refer to later on as a case study in this type of understanding and supporting collaboration.

2003-05-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Greetings, this is Steve and Nina just passed this computer to me so I can add to this. Without further ado - Ben and Kris' talk was well received because it's the perfect topic of a summit like this one - the fact that collaboration, as something which exists somewhere but is difficult to pin down (or gets destroyed if we do try to do so) is fascinating and possibly one of the major things to come out of the day for me so far. I'm upset that I'm not going to be here to actually see the performane though - from the pictures in this mornings presentation, it lookslike it would be both inspiring and moving, and I will be checking in on the blog to watch. As an aside, Banff is probably the best place in the world for a performance like this - amazing landscape, motivating people, and good, hard work (and beer). Smashing.

2003-05-22T16:36:00.000-07:00

Hi this is Nina, and I'm here at the Summit. Kris and Ben presented a show and tell on their previous Hastings project, and the audience here loved it. I'm interested in how everyone here seemed to be able to relate to doing a project which itself is about an expedition, and wanted to engage with K & B in terms of how they actually wrote a presentation about doing collaboration. At the break we discussed different kinds of reconstructions which might be carried out - I suggested the Stonewall Riots, Sara Diamond thought Saturday Night Fever. I was also struck by the way in which the pictures which Ben showed of the mountain teams have changed over the years - position of the sherpas, etc.

2003-05-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

We have just met all the team from Mountain Culture, looked at the workshop, which is great and wonderfully equiped, and seen where we will be in the dining room. Leslie Charla and Shannon have done a great job in preparing for our arrival. Thankyou for all your hard work, and thankyou to the dining room and workshop staff for accomodating us. It is all very reassuring. Now all we have to do is make the mountain , prepare the figures and bios and do the actual performance!

2003-05-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

Kris and I are now in Banff. Right now Kris is giving a paper with Nina Wakeford about how to evaluate collaboration. It seems to be going down well. Kris is talking about nuggets i.e. good/useful things that can be identified from research/data. 'Cut to the chase' items.

I have been listening to Walton's Te Deum performed at the coronation. I am struggling with it and with Parry's anthems.

So far despite being in the beautiful Rockies we have hardly been outside. We both woke up at 5am and started work on our paper. that we are presenting this afternoon. at 6am. Oh the weirdness of jet lag.

2003-05-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

We've been taking a close look at the British coronation ceremony and it occurred to me that something the leader of the 1953 expedition, Colonel Hunt, said about climbing Everest is equally applicable to the coronation ceremony: [paraphrasing wildly] "climbing Everest is just a matter of getting the right equipment to the right place at the right time". Oxygen tanks, boots, gloves, biscuits. Sceptre, orb, ampulla, crown.
-kris

2003-05-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

2003-05-17T00:16:00.001-07:00

2003-05-17T00:16:00.000-07:00

2003-05-17T00:15:00.000-07:00

2003-05-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

Just to continue my 1996/1953 comparisons...I know it is boring for everyone else, but hey its my special subject!

I am struck by the passivity of the 1996 climbers compared to the proactive team of 1953. I understand that all the climbers in 1953 were amateurs just like the clients in 1996 yet they, 1953, all had a rôle to fulfil, work to complete, responsibilities to shoulder. In the absense of any work to do the 1996 lot seems to have languished in turpitude, doing what they were told, while the guides seem to have over worked, and under lead. It is true that 1953 climbers relied on Sherpas for most of the carries however there was always a climber with the teams of Sherpas. The climbers almost always seem to have carried a load, broken trail and ensured the security of the route. As the route had to be discovered though the Icefall and up the Lhotse Face most of the climbers spent protracted amounts of time above the Icefall, which proves the effectiveness of their acclimatisation and increased it. Boukreev in 'the Climb' reckons that work at altitude is the best form of acclimatisation, along with descents to below base camp to rest.

I managed to track down a video of the Coronation. I am still coming to terms with the fact that it does not conform to how I thought it would be (maybe it does. It is just disappointingly 50's and bourgeois. I was expecting high camp. I think this is the deadening effect of 50's TV direction and technology rather than the ceremony itself which puts Baz Luhrman to shame). I need to listen to Zadok the Priest very loudly to recover my sense of mystical transformation and imagine being in the front row.

My girlfriend's parents have given me an original souvenir book which is good. Great text! She says it was hers anyway. Neither of them can remember where they were at the Coronation. I thought everyone British knew. There are some nice shots of Mounties on the video. What we need now is an order of service to pin down the times of each action.

Too long as ever.

2003-05-15T01:41:00.000-07:00

Dear Ben, This loooks extermely dashing. I am sorry to report that we won't be in Banff for the forseeable future but will be very interested to hear how you get on. I have no doubt at all that it will be a great success. We wish you the very best of luck. Lots of love, H and V

2003-05-15T01:40:00.000-07:00

.......I haven't had chance to read it properly as I'm far too knackered today but I love the sound of it. .....Love Kate D.

2003-05-15T01:39:00.000-07:00

Good luck hope it goes well - Sallie xx
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Coode-Adams
Sent: 12 May 2003 12:13
To: Everest
Subject: Everest