They are Here, are a collaborative and multi-disciplinary practice made up of Helen Walker and Harun Morrison. Helen and Harun answer some questions about their practice, their experience of working together and their current project.

How long have you been working together and what initiated the collaborative process for you?

We first worked together in 2005 on a project at Whitechapel Gallery called ‘Night Just Before the Forests’ (1977), a play by the French writer Bernard-Marie Koltès. The collaboration began with an invitation on Harun’s part for Helen to create a filmic response to this text, to accompany a live performance by a solo actor. We began to consider how, as different individuals with varying interests and specialisms, we might collaborate meaningfully to create something beyond what either of us would be capable of on our own, and yet retain a sense of the individual voice in the work produced. That is still an important consideration today.

What do you think are the benefits of working collaboratively?

“9 Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: 10 If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. 11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? 12 Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Ecclesiastes 4:9 - 10

Do you make any work independently, and if so, how does this differ from your collaborative practice?

Yes, Helen Walker is also a filmmaker; creating works from ephemeral fragments of the world that she worries might be missed if she didn’t catch them with her camera.

Harun Morrison curates, produces and writes with an emphasis on live performance.

These experiences feed continuously into our collaborative practice.

You collaborate under the pseudonym of Ayo and Oni Oshodi, what do you see as the benefits of functioning under the anonymity of a pseudonym? Do you think it provides you with more freedom to carry out more diverse artworks as artists?

Ayo and Oni Oshodi are not pseudonyms and we have always been explicit about their fictionality, consciously avoiding any notion of hoax. Their online personae are operated by a pool of ghostwriters working to certain key constructed biographical fictions. The work produced by Ayo and Oni Oshodi is more often devised by Helen Walker and Harun Morrison. They are both an exploration and critique of online social media and its relation to the physical world. At the same time their practice is distinct from They Are Here’s (if you think of them as separate entities or distinct artists), and centres on observations of behaviors in public and communal spaces. These observations are often noted and re-distributed in the site they were originally observed, for example, ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’ (2010), in which a found portrait painting of a young Caucasian girl hangs on the wall. The twist is that the painting has a gleaming pair of eyelets drilled through it. One twin at a time is able to sit and silently observe viewers of the exhibition, making an understated spectacle of their hidden presence. They Are Here’s practice, meanwhile, is conspicuously diverse, ranging from performance, text, installation, theatre and film; Ayo and Oni Oshodi therefore do not function as a valve for creative diversity which we actively embrace already, but offer a parallel universe and parallel practice which we enjoy moving between.

What projects are you currently working on and what is lined up in the near future?

We are currently developing a performance lecture titled ‘Reflections on Stendhal Syndrome’ (at VIVID in Birmingham), which looks at a psychosomatic condition that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and extreme emotional response when a person is exposed to an artwork. It was initially identified by a Florentine psychiatrist named Graziella Magherini, who noted it as recurrent outcome amongst visitors to Florence. We are interested to consider reverse engineering such a response to an artwork that we might create just for this purpose.
We are also working on a project called ‘Trailing Henry’ with Tate Modern. This is sited in and around Brixton Library – exploring the legacy and politics of philanthropy, linked to the founder of the gallery, library and Tate & Lyle factory, Sir Henry Tate. This began with us inserting 500 golden tickets within library books at Brixton Library, inviting everyday library-users to come with us on a series of exploratory day trips. We are particularly engaged with the politics of the encounter here. What happens when divergent groups - library goers, gallery staff, factory workers all linked by the legacy of Henry Tate are re-connected by a fine trail of sugar?

Website: http://www.theyarehere.net/

Image credits:
1)Ayo & Oni Oshodi, Brown Eyed Girl, 2010, Found painting and frame with eye holes (Installation view at Grey Area, Brighton), Variable Dimensions. Courtesy of the artists.
2)They Are Here, Trailing Henry, 2011, Golden posters (Installation view at Brixton Library), 42 x 59.4 cm. Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Cody-Lee Barbour
3)They Are Here, Trailing Henry, 2011, Tate Britain Archive (Documentation of Day Trip 1). Courtesy of the artists.Photo: Laura Hemming-Lowe