• PROFILE: Helen Marshall has a track record in collaborative and socially engaged public art projects. She has worked in partnership with a number of organisations including The Photographers’ Gallery, BBC2, MUF Art Architecture, The National Trust, LIFT, Rosetta Life and Space Studios. Her interventions challenge and provoke the inadequacies of conventional social documentary approaches, often empowering the subject in the construction of meaning. Her work explores photography and film, still life, texts and objects and addresses social and individual identities.

• THE DIMENSIONS

• The opportunity for an artist writing an art strategy in an evolving masterplan for the built environment is certainly an unprecedented one. Without a code of practice or an established approach that has involved artists in this type of exercise before and the necessary consultation and diagnosis needed it is indeed a unique challenge and it has many implications that need to be unpicked. After all, perhaps moreso in this circumstance as opposed to other commissions, any permanently sited or designated artworks would be many years away from manifestation. Even given the extensive consultation with the existing community, is it not presumptious to announce an artwork or project that is packaged well in advance of tangible regeneration ? And given the fact that artworks made in the public realm can take a long time to be realised due to endless consultations and planning procedures, once it is realised and publicised the artist has moved on: So therefore to find really innovative approaches in the public realm we have to look at what is current, in process and in essence has not yet been made.

It could be argued that a site specific piece’s every possible success relies on the unexpected and ironic praxis that occurs as an outcome of its gestation. Is the existing community even going to care when it materialises, are they still going to be there even? This is not to say that the epheremality of a responsive, temporal ( seemingly more democratic approach ) to public art should denounce the monumental as a conservative and dead beat concept. It is more to say that the careful attention given to the potential of the epheremal informing the physical can form a continual dialogue tackling the problem that so much art in the public realm suffers from: that is durability and resonance. Public monuments and memorials should in fact be proposed as a key part of the regeneration of Queensborough & Rushenden given the remarkarbly modest visible presence in respect of it’s rich heritage of regal and state history. The castle site is a clear metaphor of this. Monuments can have a timeless quality that exceed temporal or conceptual artworks in that they represent events and ideals, often people in shape and form. In addition it strikes me that there is a place for further experimentation here with the figurative and the literal: The Wheelans concrete factory, The Sunday Painters group, The Pirate Re-enactors, William Hogarth; all offer extraordinary array of possibilities for collaboration with an artist and the community to create works that could become permanent features of the landscape and built environment, as well as being catalysts for a series of events and documents.

• THE RESPONSE

• An artist’s response to the qualities and conditions of a particular place is central to the development of a project, and it is the confident risk taking during the making and doing that informs the manifestation. As a result of this process context and content are often indistinguishable. Therefore it is exceedingly difficult to construct a an outcome, but more interesting to deconstruct and find a set of principles represented here through the sensory quality of ideas and case studies. This document is a presentation of a suggested desire to bring the ephemeral and documentary works that could take place from the very beginning, during and following the regeneration, into a series of sustainable outcomes. That they are permanent in the sense of being physical landmarks, but also in that they can be supported by an exhibition and residency programme that is open to change and makes the work of the artist continuously visible and engaged with it’s audience. The permanent could be taken to mean therefore a series of conceptual strategies enabling new works to be made and the adaptation and reinterpretation of previous works.This document is a selection of brief ideas that could develop into proposals/ illustrations and approaches that could inform suggestive manifestations. They do reflect my particular concerns as an artist and are really just give a flavour of the way I work and how I would like to develop my practice within the context of this project. This is an inevitable outcome of the process. Attached is an illustrated reference list of case studies of public art projects and initiatives, some of which have taken place not so far from the Isle itself. I feel these demonstrate a way of collaborating with artists and engaging audiences where the relationship between artist and place is of primary importance. They also provide useful references for the ideas and provide a sense of scoping for their potential accomplishment.

• I choose to focus mostly on one key theme in the context of the regeneration area.This seems to be an important area within which to focus the enquiry as it becomes an adjective of the discourse between the ephemeral and the physical. This in turn is supported by suggested media and concepts that reflect my particular strengths as an Artist:

• Transportation An area of key development, with the connections reaching beyond the Island by land, air and sea. Queenborough and Sheerness are at the crux of multiple networks at the same time as being at the end of them.  This is a conundrum common to all ports that is perhaps more poignant on the Isle of Sheppey, which can often feel like the end of the world.  The birthplace to aviation, a major car importer and a significant maritime heritage; it boasts an extraordinary history of transportation through the centuries to this day. Major new A roads and a substantial bridge is being built to connect the island to the mainland, changing the journey, extending the view. In it’s industrial era it was enabled by transport and at the beginning of a post-industrial service a tourist economy it is enabled, naturally by transport. Transportation by sea, air, road or rail are and always will be the Island’s main assets constituting so much of it’s identity. If every journey has it’s destination, and if the journey is the destination how could this inform permanent artworks in the landscape, and would these places be planted by the experience of the journey itself. Whatever form they arrive at, whether it be a publication, a monument or an edition of original artworks; Is there something about value and commodity here to be seen as a necessary product of art for the public realm? And could any unremarkable place be made otherwise simply by the exercise of creatively renaming it.

• Photography & Text Photography in the realm of public art is often a document, a temporary installation and ephemeral in it’s aims. The challenge here is to resulting in permanent pieces in the built environment.

“Temporary public art practices deal in the mobile guerrilla warfare of topical political issues, and often characterize permanent public art as 'bureaucratic exhibitionism'1 upholding the status quo. But are permanent pieces necessarily doomed to be dull monuments to (or by) white manhood? What about more permanent relationships between photography and public art, and why have there been so few?…. There are nevertheless numerous commercial and technical processes by which photography-based images can be sprayed onto vinyl, digitized, drilled into metal, baked onto ceramics, or indeed etched into stone. “

1993 Beryl Graham.http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~as0bgr/asunder/pubart.html.

• Day Tripper A photographic and textual/narrative publication/series of monographs, whether social document, landscape or visual to provide a true and formal document of the development regeneration process from start to finish. This could be published and distributed, as well as be editioned and collectable printworks. In process that could become large and small format works sited in and along the landscape as billboards, small interchangeable plaques, souvenirs, signs and frontage for buildings and hoardings. Images can be sited virtually anywhere, through postcards and throughout the transportation system. On trains, car graphics, on the backs of the trucks travelling to and from the Isle, in the back of a cab, on bus tickets and shelters. On the road and pavements themselves as temporary interventions and as outdoor floor graphics. Photography projects with the community, for example the new school: Many prospects will be held by the young about the regeneration and photography is a way for them to shape and inform the development process. If their work became part of the changing and moving landscape the implication of ownership is powerful. Places could be named, even those places that do not need names. Local archives could be explored and old photographs researched in terms of their unique personal, socio- political, geographical and architectural histories. An intergenerational project could potentially become about collaborating with local experts and historians like Brian Slade who has published books like: Minster Miracles: The Facts Minster-in-Sheppey in Old Picture Postcards Gatehouse Gallows: Mysterious Minster. A photographic archival project could stem from local archives such as http://www.pbase.com/luckytrev/isle_of_sheppey ( see illustration ) These could be processed into the large format images and signage, and become installations in places undergoing change and development. They could be enlarged and reproduced, sited within their original places of capture or disassociated from their original context and traverse the transportation system. The possibilties for engaged work here are patent as well as large travelling audiences .Photographs as signs. The absence or dislocation of the printed word not only draws attention to the role text plays in the modern landscape but also simultaneously emphasises alternative forms of communication such as symbols in the architecture. In doing this, it serves to point out the growing number of ways in which public voices communicate without using traditional forms of written language.These signs could be sited along walking routes such as the sea wall and flood boundaries as well as on the roads and major routes.

Anonomous.Baker Lady.Taken by a local photographer.

Sheppey Light Railway. Last Day.Queenborough. 1950

Ghost Train : Works could include Performances, Interventions and Installations on the train to Queenborough that engage with passengers. A train carriage could become a vehicle for a series of installations with interactive opportunities for passengers. The steelworks trainline still in operation that connects as well divides Queenborough from Rushenden, it also extends to Dead Man’s Island, a place of unforgettable and unforgiveable grisly history where corpses were dumped from the historic prisons. These parts of history surely must be preserved within the ephemeral landscape.How many other Hogarthian narratives could come from the account of the contemporary traveller? Fiction and Fact in storytelling can have a strong purpose as the prospects of the young can also offset the harsh and mutinous history of the area and truly uncover the contemporary heritage of their community. http://www.a2a.org.uk/ A good starting point could be the parish records : written /oral history QUEENBOROUGH PARISH Harry Highstead, overcome by the flames at Queenborough Pier he jumped or fell into the Swale and was drowned, 1882; George Banks drowned by the overturning of his punt while out shooting, 1883; Frank Herbert Collins after an accident at the chemical works, 1908; Henry Percy Rothwell killed at Rushenden by coming into contact with electric wires, 1908; body of an infant female child unknown found in a ditch in Rushenden, 1913; newborn infant male unknown found on sea wall, 1922] and photographic archives see examples at : http://www.pbase.com/luckytrev/isle_of_sheppey ( an example featured below right )

Drive in: A drive in cinema intervention with synchronised car radio broadcasts etc. The residential site, currently empty space could be a key site for an event of this nature. The film work/moving image work could be as a result of an artist/s commission and be made in collaboration with the residents. This idea could also extend to small DVD players on trains and could become distributed as a DVD amongst residents. Curated film clubs ( Come to my place/home cinema ) could be set up that promote mixing and interaction in the community.

• Audio/Visual

• Local radio Sheppey people have been campaigning for a local radio presence in the area for some time.•87.9 SFMSFM broadcasts from Sheerness town centre on 87.9 FM - its next broadcast will take place in August 2006. The group are seeking the advertisement of a commercial radio licence for the Swale/Sheppey area, and have been campaigning since August 2002. 87.9 SFM http://www.sfmforswale.com/ . There also suggests from the community for real consultation a strong desire for a cinema.

• Project 87.9: A living sound archive, a sonic composition of the inanimate and animate sounds on the island. The birds, the voices, oral history, the shore, the steelworks, the industry broadcasted……radio wavelengths used to trigger and orchestrate broadcast sounds at key sites along a navigation trail. Many common portable devices such as mobile phones have radio devices capturing an audience as they move/walk/drive.These could become records and documents that could inform a permanently sited sound artwork invisible to the eye,embedded into the built and natural landscape.also see www.resonancefm.com Terrestrial Networks: Live and scheduled broadcasting through radio, telephony, internet, wireless & GPS technology along transportation networks including automobile, trains, aviation and maritime. Interactive digital and sonic installations that are live and fed into devices situated by or within the route that is traversed everyday. The Physical Monuments that could become their testament could be the imagery, document and text that have come about as a result of the ephemeral projects for example Day Tripper : The signage, billboards and place names could seamlessly navigate place with content, audio with the visual. A Permanent Monument could be a Sound Mirror: An early warning structure built during and after WWI along the south and east coasts of England. Sound detecting acoustic dishes and walls could detect the sound of approaching enemy aircraft at a distance of 8 to 15 miles. Could the recreation of a set of these form a permanent audio amplifier for real spontaneous natural sound occurences and sonic compositions/recordings/radio broadcasts as well as buildings housing an archive?

J. Griffiths & Daisy Spurge wedding 1899John James Griffiths, (Shipwright, then Photographer and Stationer) b.1871, d.1949.

•CASE STUDIES:

•www.ghostship.org.uk A crewless self-navigating vessel has begun its maiden voyage from Fair Isle in Scotland to Newcastle upon Tyne to coincide with the Tall Ships Race 2005. Engineers from the University of Southampton have played a key role in developing Ghost Ship, which was conceived by artist Chris Burden as a public art project. Ghost Ship is described as a culmination of past maritime traditions and new experimental applications of technology that makes a direct reference to the regional heritage of boat building and more recent cultural shifts towards new technologies. From a technological aspect Ghost Ship brings together a variety of creative expertise and existing technologies in a unique synthesis.

•http://biomapping.net/index.htm Bio Mapping is a research project which explores new ways that we as individuals can make use of the information we can gather about our own bodies. Instead of security technologies that are designed to control our behaviour, this project envisages new tools that allows people to selectively share and interpret their own bio data. The current version of the Bio Mapping system allows people to measure their Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. By sharing this information we can construct maps that visualise where we as a community feel stressed and excited.

•http://www.fromramsgatetothechathamislands.co.uk/ On 25th May 2004, fifty bottles containing messages were released into the sea off the south-east coast of England near Ramsgate Maritime Museum, Kent. The intended destination of the bottles is The Chatham Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The islands, which are 800km east of mainland New Zealand, are the nearest inhabited land to the precise location on the opposite side of the world to Ramsgate Maritime Museum. It is anticipated that the bottles may be found several times before reaching the Chatham Islands. Each non-GPS bottle contains a message from residents of Ramsgate to the residents of The Chatham Islands, a pencil and an instruction leaflet which requests anyone finding a bottle to report to this website and record where and when the bottle was found. In addition they are requested to document their find on a form inside the bottle before returning the bottle to the sea to continue its journey.

•http://www.designboom.com/snapshots/venezia/avl.html Atelier Van Lieshout 'a-portable' is a refurbished shipping container that functions as a mobile gynaecological clinic.'a-portable' is a concrete solution to a world health problem and will provoke legislative change through media attention and activist pressure.What is art?What can art do? Atelier van Lieshout's architectural structures and mechanisms for living suggest alternative ways of thinking, working and playing. AVL is fronted by Joep van Lieshout and consists of a group of artists and specialists who make work collectively. They are based in Rotterdam where they have established AVL-Ville, a free-state situated over two sites in the harbour area where art, community and sanctuary mix imperceptibly.

•http://www.somewhere.org.uk/bata-ville Bata-ville is a bittersweet record of a coach trip to the origins of the Bata shoe empire in Zlin in the Czech Republic. Against the backdrop of regeneration in their local communities, former employees of the now-closed UK shoe factories in East Tilbury (Essex) and Maryport (Cumbria) are led on a journey that begins as a free holiday but soon becomes an opportunity for a collective imagining of what entrepreneur Tomas Bata's maxim "We are not afraid of the future" means for them in 21st century Britain. Inspired by the contrast between the idealism of Bata and the more recent industrial decline of East Tilbury and Maryport, host / directors Pope & Guthrie lead this unorthodox coach party on a journey through Bata's legacy.

•http://www.bbc.co.uk/essex/going_out/visual_arts/signs_in_landscape/index.shtml The seventeen-mile route, View Finder : Signs in the Landscape, features specially designed permanent signs, which have been installed around the route to encourage people to look at the views of the Colchester sky line.Designed to look like road traffic signs and created by Colchester artist Michael Goodey, the permanent signs all show the Colchester’s Victorian Town Hall and the Jumbo water tower. They will remain in place around the town for years to come. To launch the cycle route and the signs Michael will lead three parties of cyclists around both the full route and a shorter four-mile version. Inspired by Colchester’s distinctive skyline - the Town Hall spire and Jumbo water tower - we are invited to travel around the circumference enjoying views of them. At ten locations we come across signs depicting the view.

•http://www.superchannel.org/Home/Profile/Channels/SPIN Tenantspin is a live interactive channel produced by High Rise tenants in Liverpool, UK, aiming to promote resident participation in regeneration and social housing issues through constructive debate and shared experience. It is a collaboration between FACT, Arena Housing and high-rise residents, primarily from the Sefton Park area of south Liverpool.  tenantspin is currently receiving funding from Mersey Broadband through North West Development Agency.

•http://www.showhome.org.uk/ Land use, building style and lifestyle.Show Home is a temporary public art project by Nathan Coley,curated by Locus+ and comissioned by North Tyneside Council as part ofhe Art on the Riverside programme.  Expecting the unexpected. Show Home is a vehicle for looking at the rapidly evolving urban environment – in this case North Shields on Tyneside – through a disquietingly unexpected intervention. This comes in the form of the white walled, slate tile roofed Show Home, a three-sided structure which will appear in three separate locations for one day each. Show Home, fabricated by professional stage set builders, will materialise at Royal Quays Marina (an economic regeneration project), a school playing field and a residential care housing development.“The point is to think not only about Show Home but to consider the evolution of the buildings, structures and landscape that surround it,” says the artist. It is also a telling window into our aspirations and desires – and our vulnerabilities and vanities. All these foibles are played upon in the selling (and buying) of property.

http://www.mediamatic.net/article-5799-en.html?q_person= Portrait Collector Rebecca Gomperts and Willem Velthoven 2003 - detail of installation in Thessaloniki. Portrait Collector is a network of Internet kiosks in which people who have had an abortion can photograph themselves. The portraits are compiled on a central web-server in Amsterdam on which, over the years, a very large collection will come into being. The purpose of this network is to make it clear, in an expressive manner, that abortion occurs much more often than is imagined.

http://www.somewhere.org.uk/knockoutinfo "One Never Knows" - Pearly Kings & Queens motto It's A Knockout is a site-specific live event which responds to the society in which the commission takes place. In its first incarnation in London's East End, we set up a live performance in the form of a public competition which would make explicit some of the influences at work in that area historically and now. With its influx of artists and tradition of Pearlies and markets, we made those three groups our teams and invited applications for the event. We then asked the teams to pick a charity that the money raised from the crowd on the day could go to. During our research we found out that the original TV 'It's a Knockout' props were doing the rounds of management training / team-building events, so we hired them in and compered the games in our Tudor costumes - a homage to the disasterous Royal Family It's a Knockout (a ill-thought out charity event often cited as the beginning of the English monarchy's end). These gave the event a great live presence - a kind of music hall vaudeville charater that was very East End - and we got a huge crowd.

http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/archive/reports/a13artscape.html  A strategy for the margins and edges of the A13 trunk road corridor through the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham: to choreograph serial and individual objects in space and produce a unified temporal experience – a perpetual rhythmic form whose movements are all of a piece; the vehicle windscreen to perform as a moving proscenium within which the changing composition is constantly framed. Arterial is a journey through interlinking, imaginative landscape on a grand scale, with ideas, themes and connections set up to fire your curiosity and make a whole new road experience. Tom de Paor – lead artist/architect

http://www.wandletrail.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album04 http://cityark.medway.gov.uk/. Canterbury City Council's motivation for redeveloping Horsebridge and Brownings Yard in Whitstable, Kent, was to achieve economic regeneration of the area. The development includes a community centre, a restaurant and shops and residential units. An extensive public art programme was an essential element of the redevelopment with the support of a major award from Arts and Business. History Wall by Andrew Sabin, Richard Bradbury, Stefan Shankland and Doug Brown. The History Wall was a steel mesh housing filled with carefully layered and tightly packed materials which had been rescued for a short while from the demolition crew. For three months from July to September 2002, it formed part of the perimeter wall of the construction site.T his temporary onsite construction was an intervention in the hoardings around the site and continued until the end of the construction phase. It aimed to encourage interest in the building process by opening up a set of strategic views of the development site. Hard-wearing Perspex windows in green, red and blue, protected by steel mesh, turn the day to day view of the site into a spectacle, and were lit behind so that at night they appeared as coloured windows hanging in space through which the site could be seen.

http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/past/past_frame_04.htm FRANCIS ALYSSeven WalksA journey implies a destination, so many miles to be consumed, while a walk is its own measure, complete at every point along the way.Francis Alÿsrancis Alÿs walks a lot. He walks the streets of the world's largest metropolis, Mexico City, where he has made his home for the past 15 years. He has also walked the streets of Copenhagen, Sao Paulo, Jerusalem and London. Observing and intervening in this huge open-air studio, Alÿs maps the city, staging elusive scenarios and making poetic films and animations. His work can be as monumental as moving an immense sand dune (a project he undertook with a thousand people in Lima), as ephemeral as sending a postcard or as subtly humorous as having a peacock take his place at an important gathering of his peers. Francis Alÿs trained as an architect. Following a period of study in Venice he decided both to leave Europe and to discontinue his work as an architect.

http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/future.htm WENDY EWALDTowards a Promised Land- Wendy EwaldSea Wall,

Margate from 9 July 2005 the white cliffs of Margate are the setting for the beginning of Towards a Promised Land, Artangel’s new commission by renowned photographer, Wendy Ewald, in collaboration with Creative Partnerships, Kent.Towards a Promised Land has involved twenty-two children and young people who arrived on the Isle of Thanet from both near and far. Some of them come from places affected by war, poverty or political strife; others have been affected by domestic upheaval. Working with Wendy Ewald, the children have learned, through photography, to explore their imaginations and express different experiences of relocation and the search for a better life.wald has taken portraits of the children in locations of their choosing around Margate and photographed the belongings they brought with them on their journeys. These portraits, capturing the children at turning points in their lives, will be displayed as huge photographic banners in locations around Margate. Margate’s Sea Wall is the first of these locations, where, from 9 July the portraits of Uryi, Zaakiyah. Ashlea, Rabbie and Ali Reza can be seen between Margate Harbour and Palm Bay. Over the past year Wendy Ewald has developed Towards a Promised Land photographing and interviewing the children as well as teaching them how to take their own photographs.

•http://www.wessextrains.co.uk/thesidings/index.php?sub_subnavID=289 Wessex Trains will host the three artists 'in residence' on train journeys across Somerset during September and October 2005.Wessex Trains and Somerset Art Weeks (SAW) are working together on this exciting new project called 'Moving On'. The 'Moving On' project is being funded by Wessex Trains, Arts & Business and Ace Grants for the Arts.The artists will be travelling on the Bristol-Taunton and Bristol-Weymouth lines. The project is based in Bridgwater, with the co-operation of Bridgwater Arts Centre.

•"TOKYO ART JUNGLE" . Tokyo International Forum 5th Anniversary TOKYO ART JUNGLE TRAIN As a pre-event for the exhibition, from August 1~15th I curated and produced the TOKYO ART JUNGLE TRAIN: an 11-car train from the world's busiest train line--the East Japan Rail Yamanote line--running in normal service daily from 05:00 until 25:00 (schedule varying from day to day). Eight artists and artist groups from the Tokyo Art Jungle used the train as an installation space, utilizing areas normally used for advertising as well as those without precedent in Japan (e.g., floors and ceilings). This work was easily one of the most public "public art" projects ever staged in Tokyo, bringing contemporary art to well over a million people during its run.

http://www.klein-dytham.com/architecture/billboard_building.php Billboard Building Moto Azabu, Tokyo 07.2005Tokyo is filled with tiny buildings on awkward sites – what fellow Tokyo-based architect Yoshiharu Tsukamoto has called “pet architecture”. These are wedged onto tiny slivers of land left over from the slicing and dicing of land by urban planning and property development processes. This building is our very own example of pet architecture.The building is tiny. It’s a 11m long, two-storey high wedge, 2.5m wide at one end and tapering to just 600mm at the other. Although small, it has a prominent position facing a well-trafficked road. Being nearly all front, we let it be what it so obviously wanted to be – an inhabitable billboard.Façade becomes image – image becomes façade. Suddenly the possibilities multiplied. We might have been hired to build a building, but now we could pretend to plant trees! We used a strong, simple image of a bamboo grove stenciled in white onto the glass façade, and painted the back wall bright green. By day, the graphic becomes a striking and simple form of sun-shading; by night green light dapples over the intersection – a luminous bamboo plantation in the heart of the metropolis.

http://www.cafegalleryprojects.com/html/Pastoff-siteprojects.html Trace is the culmination of a two-year initiative conceived and managed by artist Alison Marchant. The work reveals the otherwise hidden and displaced identities of industrial female workers.The research phase of this project began at Southwark Local History Library in Borough High Street, where Marchant discovered that the current Neckinger Mills building, formerly Bevingtons & Sons Ltd, produced light leathers for shoes and fancy goods. Women have always worked in finishing the skins and lime painting, and it was said that the fish oil used in the glazing process enhanced a beauty in the Bermondsey women’s hair and skin. Bevingtons Neckinger mills opened in 1801 and continued production until 1981.Viewed from the street by day or night, changing in the differing quality of light, Trace is a 24 hour project. Its visibility relies on the meeting of the viewer's gaze prompted by publicity or simply a chance encounter. Editing the material at Resonance FM's studios, the artist developed the audio piece into a radio programme in collaboration with Life & Living Producer Mick Hobbs. Within the recorded voices lie the complex descriptions of the laborious, the sensuous and the notion of the labourer as artist. This process also signifies an echo or delay, filtering across London ‘on air’ and back into Neckinger Mills as radio transmissions.The quality of the changing light renders the photograph ghostly but ever present and watchful. This fluctuation between visible and invisible, fading and emergence, like the action of pressing a camera shutter, signifies the passing of time and the filmic photographic process - the archive and the process of research where one retrieves information and shelves it again.