Last month, we sat down with Zack Mennel to discuss their exciting residency at Metal Liverpool, as part of a commission with DaDa Fest International.
- Please introduce yourself?
I’m Zach Mennell. I’m a queer, disabled artist working across photography, performance, writing and moving into some film and video work. I am from outer East London, where generations of my family have lived and moved out, and I spent much of my time growing up in Essex.
I was recently on residency at Metal Liverpool, through my commission from DaDa Fest International 40 for this year’s festival as their live art commission for my live art and performance practice to make a new piece of work to go into The Bluecoat later in March.
- If you could define your arts practice in three words, how would you?
I’m work across mediums. I fall into lots of different things. I would say assemblages is a process that kind of touches through everything. I don’t really see my practice as being so siloed and separate that these things all feed in and inform one another, and often coexistent and occur together. So, I guess assemblage is one of those three words, for sure. I work with thinking at the core of my practice about presence and visibility.
I’m particularly interested in the question that really underpins my practice – can I find a way of being present but unseen?
Visibility could be the second word. My process is very much about intuition and what compels me. For this [residency] work, I kept on having visions about this very personal object, which is a small tin with teddy bears painted on the middle that contains something quite significant and thinking about ways to work with that and work with memory and difficult experiences.
I think the third word would be compulsion.
So: assemblage, visibility and compulsion.
- Which artists are you inspired by?
A core artist who inspires me is David Wojnarowicz, who is an incredible artist in New York, who worked with performance, writing, fine art practice, painting, printing and installation.
Similarly, Paul Fech was one of his contemporaries. Paul Fech is a really core influence for this, for this work, particularly thinking about burial, entombment, death and sort of what lingers beyond our end.
I think, obviously, Derek Jarman, as the English contingent of that is very, very present.
David Lynch is a huge influence for me as a film artist, someone who I’ve always loved, sort of reaching to the surrealism, and Laurie Anderson is an incredible artist and musician.
Artists that sort of seem to continually move across practices and seek ways of shifting, moving into discomfort and into new mediums. And it doesn’t always work, but it’s broadly always interesting and heading somewhere.
- What is your ambition across the duration of your DaDa residency?
I’m here for a total of two weeks with a generous time and space residency through Metal Edge Hill Station, which was thankfully organised, in partnership, through the working partnership with DaDa Festival, who are based at The Bluecoat.
The first week was really about getting to grips with what the materials were. I’ve done a lot of research and thinking.
Because I’m across The Bluecoat for two days on the 22nd and 23rd of March with an installation that I then come in at three different times to activate across the weekend, and so just for an hour each time.
And so, thinking about structuring those three together and individually across the hours, and what are the thematics and the rules that hold the work and drive the actions? And then also experimenting with materials, yeah, trying out some things and realising that they don’t quite work the way that I want them to, but they work in different ways and offer for different opportunities.
My granddad was born just around the corner from Edge Hill station and part of this process is thinking about estrangement, how we are estranged from these systems and structures and estranged from the future that they will impact continually so much of our life reaches so far forward, beyond what we can even comprehend, and so thinking about that estrangement, but and then also thinking about ways to remediate or shift that estrangement.
Coming here has also been plugging into a past and a history that I don’t have access to; of my grandfather’s early years being born here and growing up in Liverpool. That’s been a really powerful and difficult thing, but also really galvanizing and really driving for thinking about why I’m here, why now, and what I’m working with.
I’m just really, really grateful to DaDa Fest and to Metal for hosting me and allowing me to make a mess in their space. And, yeah, hopefully it comes to something strong and good that they’re interested in, that works with the program, but everyone here has been really generous and kind, and I’m looking forward to sharing some things on Friday with an invited audience.
