Emma Smith – collaboration (part 1)
Emma Smith is an artist whose work I came across earlier this year when I was doing internet research about public art in and around Cambridge area. Emma did a project, creating a permanent game for the village of Waterbeach. ‘In Hear it and Say’reminded me a little of some projects I have done appropriating forms of public signage or locating texts around a particular building or site, but is more ambitious than my work and the interaction people have with Emma’s work is much more explicit. Looking further into Emma’s work I was interested in how she collaborates with others
The Waterbeach project was funded by Cambridge District Council through the 106 agreement. Emma was appointed after applying to an open call and then being interviewed by a group of residents from Waterbeach. She said it was an interesting experience, doing a presentation and then answering questions from a large group of residents but it was nice to know that they had selected her. Sometimes public/participatory work is imposed on people who don’t want you to work with them. She knew the village wanted this. So although the normal power relationshions to be negotiated in any collaborative practice were still there and people have different agendas, there was a general good will for the project.
She worked with a steering group from the community and also with the local council. The project happened over 2 years and was an open ended residency although there was some stipulation for an object based outcome. It was informal but organised, she sent them plans and evaluation every 2 months and there was a collective meeting every 2 months.
Through the project she had different groups and configurations of people that she was working with. Activities included ‘events’ that were drop in and advertised and then meetings with those she wanted to work with more closely. Often the former were a strategy for obtaining the latter (rather than workshops for example), a way to find people and to understand who was in the village. Making such collaborative relationships is also a way to enable something different/more than one can do alone. Different people bring skills and different levels of investment.
Emma does not see ‘collaboration’ as needing to mean equal, social practice has hierarchies. She is concerned that the idea of the artist facilitating people to do things can become patronising and divisive by placing the artist as separate from community. This is also how she feels about educational engagement that is run alongside exhibitions. There is an idea of people being in position of a state of lack that art makes better. This idea of an empowerment process is top down and can actually obscure where power lies, making it less clear. Artists bring their experience as professionals and this should be valued and recognised. With her projects, the final artwork is authored by her as the person who takes responsibility for the work. She works with people with knowledge/skills that she doesn’t have and in bringing those she does have collaboration becomes something more than what any party could do on their own.
…continued in the next post
