Listen to a Londoner: Owen Duff

Listen to a Londoner is a weekly interview with a Londoner – someone who lives in this city, born here or elsewhere. If you want to be interviewed, email littlelondonobservationist@hotmail.co.uk.

Owen Duff, 29

Singer-songwriter and sometime conceptual artist Owen Duff was born in Northern Ireland, grew up in Hull and now lives in Hackney, East London, where he makes songs and videos. His latest project is the EP ‘Under’, which is a set of songs inspired by living in the capital.

LLO: Which aspects of London life most influence your creativity?
OD: I think the biggest influence is just being amongst so many people, and being able to observe the things that people spend their time and energy making and doing. Life seems to happen faster here, so all these experiences, relationships, environmental and cultural changes are coming and going in quick succession, which can be overwhelming on a personal level but good for sparking off ideas. I also think the kind of people London attracts has an effect, in that it’s quite easy to meet people who’ve come here to try and achieve big and exciting things. Conversations with these people is often instrumental in provoking new thoughts and ideas.

LLO: You just released your first video to the song “London You’re My High”. What should we remember to appreciate about living in London if our spirits start to droop?
OD: Well, it’s an amazing place; most of us live in relative wealth and freedom, in a city with so much variety, history, and culture… really there’s so much opportunity to enjoy ourselves that we’re spoiled. Having said that, for me it’s the personal relationships that London has allowed me that I appreciate most – the size of the city means that I’ve been able to find many people with whom I have a lot in common and whose company I enjoy, whereas in a smaller town I might only have found a few.

LLO: Tell us a bit more about the video itself, where the idea came from, some of the locations you’ve picked out that are especially special to you, etc.
OD: The video was an idea I had whilst trying to get to sleep (most of my best ideas happen at this time; I’m a bit of an insomniac). I wanted to create something that both summed up my personal history in this city and was universal enough for other people to relate to. I started by making a list of all the memorable things that have happened to me since moving here, and then I started to think about where these things had taken place, which led me to think geographically, which is when I had the idea to use Google Earth to map out these experiences. I could have been more specific about what exactly each event was, but I wanted to leave it vague enough that people can read what they want into each.

LLO: You sing, play piano, guitar, ukulele, cello and percussion; write, record and produce. Sounds tiring. What are the most rewarding and most challenging aspects of producing an EP from start to finish?
OD: I think the rewarding-challenging aspects are intertwined – it is in overcoming the challenges that one finds the sense of reward. Certainly the early stages of writing can be totally euphoric, but after the initial inspiration comes the hard work of turning ideas into finished songs.

Lyrics are the thing I usually spend longest on, musically I tend to work quite instinctively and a lot from improvisation (sometimes I’ll just record a piano improvisation then go back and put words over the top, and that’s the song finished). There is a definite tension between the words and the music – often in order to express something properly I’d want to squeeze in as many words as possible, but that can really compromise melody and the ability to sing something well, so a balance has to be found. I tend to use extended metaphors and conceits quite a lot in my lyrics, which can make them hard work to complete as you’re trying to write about several different things at once.

I also find production difficult at times – unfortunately, I don’t have the skills nor resources to always arrange my songs as I imagine them (I’d love to arrange for different instrumental ensembles), so I have to find compromises, some of which work better than others. Production is so influential on people’s overall impression of a song that I can get quite hung up on trying to get it right. For example, ‘London You’re My High’ has gone through five different arrangements over a few years…

LLO: Your bio on your website says “Owen sometimes hides CDs in weird places around the world, just to see who finds them.” I’m intrigued. Tell us more.
OD: I did a project between 2008 and 2009 – http://twentytwominutesfourweeks.blogspot.com. The first part was writing and recording twenty songs in four weeks, which was a challenge I set myself just to see if I could do it. Once I’d finished the songs I was mulling over how and if I would release them, and decided that it would be fun to play with the way people find recorded music now. The ease with which music can be discovered and heard on the internet means some of its value is perhaps lost (of course there are many advantages to this, in terms of everyone’s ability to access music). I wanted people who found the music I’d made to feel that there was something different and enigmatic about them, so I had the idea to start hiding CDs with the twenty songs on them around London, for people to come across, without knowing what they were or who had left them there. I then extended the idea and started asking people in other cities around the world to help out – photos of all the different places that the CDs were hidden were then recorded on the blog. People should take a look! I haven’t hidden any in a while but I might do it again for a future project.

LLO: Favourite venue to play a gig in the capital?
OD: Well, I played Bush Hall last year, which was lovely, it’s a really nice building and has a good acoustic. I think though the favourite gig I played was at the Fleapit in Columbia Road, it was completely unplugged so I just sang and played guitar without having to worry about how I sounded through a microphone.

LLO: According to Twitter, your reading rate needs to match your book buying rate. Where are the best places to buy books in London?
OD: The best book shop I’ve found in London is in Notting Hill, the Book and Comic Exchange. I also like wandering around the second-hand bookshops south of Euston road.

LLO: Favourite London discovery?
OD: Ah, that’s a difficult one… I think it would have to be the amazing experiential/site-specific theatre that happens here, Punchdrunk being the main proponents. I have to give a mention to You Me Bum Bum Train as well, as I had an absolutely mind-blowing experience courtesy of them just last night.

LLO: Where is the most unique or quirky place you can recommend for food or drinks round here?
OD: I love Mess Cafe in Hackney, but it closed recently for refurbishment and I’m a bit worried they’re not going to reopen… For drinks my current regular haunt is the Nelson’s Head (also in Hackney), and I went to the Jerusalem Tavern in Clerkenwell recently, which is quite special – the current building dates back a few hundred years and going in there feels a bit like traveling back in time.

LLO: What’s next for you and your music career?
OD: At the moment I’m working on another EP/album derived from some of the 20 “Two Minutes 4 Weeks” songs. I have woodwind arrangements I wrote for a live show in 2009 so would like to get those recorded. Once that’s done I’ll be gigging again, although I’d like to find more offbeat venues to play than those on the regular London circuit. I’m also working on new songs to release after that, and recording a few cover songs and videos – so far I’ve done Buddy Holly, Joanna Newsom and Whitney Houston, and I’m very open to suggestion as to others I could do. Last but not least I have some side-projects which involve different styles of music to be released under different names, but which will all exist under the banner of ‘Clothmother’, which is a sort of nominal label I created recently. After that, who knows…

Thanks Owen!

Links:

http://www.owenduff.co.uk
http://www.owenduff.co.uk/videos
http://owenduff.bandcamp.com

For more Listen to a Londoner posts, click here.

London Art Spot: Maximiliano Braun

Meet Maximiliano. Born in 1983 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, he studied at the University of Utah and then in completed his MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography in London where he now lives and works.

While I found his still life photography in the Elephant & Caste Community book published by the London College of Communication, his real interest lies in reportage photography. He is currently expanding on a project called Stay With Me, building a database of multimedia and photographic experiences from families and individuals who have been affected by brain injury.

Maximiliano has taken some time out to answer a few questions for this week’s London Art Spot. He talks about his experience working in the Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle, lets us in on the expected outcome of his Stay With Me project and shares some of his wonderful photography.

LLO: Which aspects of London life most influence your photography?
MB: I think the fact your have so many galleries, awards and other contests based in London, and the UK as a whole, helps seeing the diversity of work coming up from the young emerging photographers to those who are more established and, in many cases (like the Barbican’s This is War and the travelling World Press Photo exhibitions) works that are seldom seen in other cities.

LLO: I first came across your work in the Community book put out by London College of Communication as part of the Elephant & Castle project, an area that is now being regenerated. Tell us a bit about your experience working on the book
MB: The book was edited by Patrick Sutherland and promoted by the London College of Communication and Southwark Council. As the book mentions, Southwark Council and LCC’s MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography students are commissioned to produce a body of work about the Elephant and Castle area and the changes and life that develop there. The area, as you note, is being regenerated and the book helps keep record of the Elephant and Castle life, architecture and it’s citizens seen through the eyes of those attending the MA at LCC.

The idea from doing Cast Off came after a colleague of mine told me that apartments were being sealed permanently at the Heygate Estate. They do this to avoid squatters to populate the vacated apartments which, eventually, will be demolished to allow for new estate housing projects being developed. I always thought that objects possessed by people tell something about themselves. So I set out to document the objects left behind found in the vacated apartments to speculate about what kind of people lived there.

LLO: You said this still life work was a one off and you are now a reportage photographer. What have you gained both personally and professionally from switching your approach?
MB: I began doing reportage, or trained for it, before the Elephant and Castle project. The idea of the work is not far, if at all, from the idea of producing a photographic reportage, though it does not contain the traditional approach to reportage. The viewer is welcome to assess the work however they want, but it would be misleading to imagine that I was not doing reportage before the Elephant and Castle project. There were other more traditional reportage ideas that I would have wanted to do during that term, but neither of them came to fruition.

LLO: Your most recent project is called Stay With Me, quite different from what you were doing in the Elephant. How did this project start?
MB: Stay With Me has been a long running project that began during the MA at LCC. I would say Stay With Me, so far, and compared to my Dad series, is what I have always dreamt of developing since I began doing documentary photography. Roughly in 2004 I read an article in a newspaper about a mother who visited her child who was then, and maybe still is, in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). As my father is old (99 now),  I’ve had the experience of being in hospitals throughout my youth and I could clearly sympathise with the woman written about in the article. It struck me deeply and I never forgot about it. When, for our thesis project at LCC, I was given the chance to document whatever I was interested in, I remembered the article and I decided to find out what is life like for families who have a relative in a PVS. Stay With Me, since then, evolved into looking at family and brain injury as a whole and the way life goes on.

LLO: It’s a worldwide project. Where have been shooting and researching for it so far?
MB: I have documented families in the US, England, Northern Ireland, South Africa and soon will do some work in Bolivia.

LLO: Tell us a bit about what you hope it will achieve and what will be the final result.
MB: Stay With Me will, in time, become a segmented story of families around the globe and the lives they lead dealing with brain injury. Stay With Me’s own website will become more interactive not only for the viewers, but for the families that participated by allowing me to document their everyday. There will be a blog type page for every family for them to update the site and its viewers on the latest developments in their lives.

LLO: What is the biggest challenge you’ve had to face so far to get a shot you wanted?
MB: I cannot recall specific shots I ‘wanted’. I pretty much go with the flow with everyone I document. Challenges come out every time when you are shooting. The real and constant challenge is to convey in a photograph what you see and make sure it is good enough the audience gets a hint of it.

LLO: Before completing your MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography, you studied Anthropology, Mathematics, French and Photography at the University of Utah and then Fashion Photography in London – an interesting mix. How does this background play into your interests and work today?
MB: I think that all you do and have done in the past influences you in one way or another. Anthropology is useful in photojournalism, as well as speaking other languages. I did fashion photography because I like the idea of creating imagery from nothing. I liked the commercial aspect of it and thought of it as an interesting vessel to communicate ideas, dreams and lifestyles. I began doing documentary because I wanted a more interactive and investigative approach to things I was interested in. As you know and encounter several people around you during your life, you learn several things. All those I have know from the US and those I got to know in the UK and abroad have helped me in looking at things with a diversity of viewpoints. I think the most important aspect I have learnt is how to interact with different people when working.

LLO: You have some stunning and emotional images in a series called Dad on your website. Can you share one of your favourites and tell us a bit about this collection?
MB: I just want to remember my father and my time with him. There really isn’t much to it beyond that.

LLO: Have you thought about other subjects you’d like to tackle photographically in the future?
MB: I only tackle things photographically, I don’t know what else I can do, really. I have several subjects in my mind. I always run with at least 3 projects in my mind; the one I am shooting, one that I am about to shoot and one I am beginning to research into. Unfortunately some of these are time sensitive and I won’t be able to elaborate more on them.

Thanks Maximiliano!

For more about Maximiliano or Stay With Me:
http://www.maximilianobraun.net
http://www.staywithmeproject.com

For more London Art Spot interviews, click here.