I have realised over the past week, that this in not a project ‘about’ generosity, sincerity and gift. It is a project about working with people, and an investigation into the potential for a social practice.
I conceived the project initially as a fact- finding mission into theories and philosophies of generosity gift and sincerity but it hasn’t worked out like that so far.
In my first post I stated
“I plan to look at a wide range of material, from philosophical, theoretical and political texts to art and non art practices and projects which investigate these ideas”
Later in the post I gave myself a reading list (‘Lionel Trilling, Derrida, Lewis Hyde, Simone Weil’) seeing this as the start of a huge pile of reading. I imagined a significant part of the project to involve a extensive course of self study involving these and other writers and texts.
Although I have been doing a lot of reading much of the project so far has involved the participation of others. As I noted in Issue 1 of my zine ‘Reciprocity’ published in November of last year:
“Putting this zine together, I notice that so far my research has involved a lot of conversations and exchanges with other people about knowledge and ideas, opinions and practices, which
seems an apt starting point for a project about reciprocity”
I then wrote (almost apologetically)
“I would imagine Issue 2 might contain more analysis of the texts I’ve been reading” I remember feeling that for ‘Reciprocity’ to be legitimately called a ‘research’ project, it should have lots of academic and theoretical content.
I now feel my tentative comment of post #25 that ‘an open ended process of building up a series of conversations and relationships.. ‘Maybe this ..is ‘the work’ gathering certainty. Yes. The conversations and exchanges are the work.
This seems a fairly obvious conclusion to have reached, given that much of my art activity since I began practicing has been collaborative and has involved working with people – from DIY cultural activity (artist collaboration popup 2005-9, Bradford zine collective Loosely Bound, founded in 2011) to creative collaborations with visual artists musicians and writers, to curatorial projects, to working on publicly funded community art projects. And before that, 10 years working in the community, voluntary and social care sectors in Glasgow.
Am I then a ‘socially engaged artist’?
I approach terms like ‘socially engaged’ and ‘participation’ with some caution and have resisted using them to describe my own work. Their ubiquity in describing a wide range of practices including those occurring within state and market contexts, potentially dilute and appropriate genuinely transformative meanings and applications.
“.. they have, relatively recently, become over-used bywords for a type of art practice that has very little to do with actual public engagement and that falls far short of true social change… Too many times artistic projects become wrapped up in words and phrases such as ‘collective action’, ‘participation’ and ‘social change’ without actually demanding much from the participant apart from to create artwork for the artists own practice”
Ben Jones ‘Rant 49: The Art of Social Change’ Axis Webzine http://www.axisweb.org/dlForum.aspx?ESSAYID=18127
And this from the spendidly splenetic Stewart Home:
“Exemplars of ‘relational aesthetics’ like Rirkrit Tiravanija doling out food to rich collectors and dealers at art fairs and this being treated as an aesthetic development is just a joke. Twenty years before Tiravanija attempted anything like this, when Pete Horobin was creating situations in which different kinds of people could talk and eat as works of art, he picked on marginal spaces like The Basement in Newcastle and dragged people in off the street. Whatever criticisms one might make of Horobin’s art radicalism, he was at least sincere. Tiravanija’s work looks remarkably like a recuperation of Horobin’s earlier interventions since he re-enacts these pieces at swanky biennials, which defuses their potentially radical content. “
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/luv/bubonic.htm
If in doubt, compile another reading list:
“Transgression, Cooperation and Criticality in Socially Engaged Art Practice” By Andy Abbott http://andyabbott.co.uk/
“Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics” Claire Bishop
“A dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework for Littoral Art” Grant Kester
“Include Me Out” Dave Beech http://visualintosocial.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/i…
See you on the other side!
