I initially applied to the a-n Travel Bursary fund to undertake further work and research for a project called The Shadow Archive, which I had begun as an investigation into self-organised art spaces. However, during the year in which I had planned to undertake the research, I became aware of several similar initiatives popping up that were seeking to map the landscape of artist-led activity in the UK. I got half way through my planned research with this bursary before losing heart somewhat in terms of the usefulness of my work given the apparent renewed interest in the subject. I therefore took a step back and sought to revisit the genesis of the project, which was an ongoing interest and belief in sites of utopian thinking. Delving further into these ideas, the project changed direction and I developed a framework for research called The Future is Collective Project, which I used the second half of my bursary money to take to different artist-led venues in the UK. This initial post will elaborate on the ideas behind the Shadow Archive and further posts will include the research and encounters that the a-n Travel Bursary has enabled, as well as the change in focus of the work and the travelling meetings of The Future is a Collective Project.
The Shadow Archive
At the fore of the project was the notion that current forms of self organisation by artists are in many cases both collaborative art practices and strategies and tactics for survival. Practices that are self-organised around a physical space can be understood as using art as a means for exploration, connection and shelter in an increasingly alienating and precarious world. Equally, they can be seen as a move away from the dominant idea of art as something that is authored and performative and towards an art that is usable [see: Wright, Stephen 2014: Towards a Lexicon of Usership, Eindhoven, NL: Van Abbemuseum, p.8].
Occupying a physical space offers a place to experiment, collaborate, generate income, and share ideas. It also provides a legitimacy to the work of non-represented artists and independent curators through having a name, place and website via which to approach institutions. With access to institutional support, funding, studios, and each other becoming increasingly scarce resources, artists are driven by necessity to create these situations for themselves. These spaces provide the nourishing conditions from whence come the ‘emerging artists’ and ideas that then enter the art market or established gallery circuit. But aside from feeding into the dominant art world, these self-organised art worlds hold other potentials. It is dissatisfaction that drives necessity and necessity that drives innovation.
One of the lines of enquiry that underpinned The Shadow Archive was: Do the spaces and communities created by and for artists harbour new potentials for art and for living?
The project’s name references the concept of a shadow cabinet that supports the ruling government in opposition. It also pays homage to Greogry Sholette’s associated idea of ‘dark matter’ [see: Sholette, Gregory 2011: Dark Matter, Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture,London, UK: Pluto Press] that includes the informally organised artistic production that props up the dominant art world. However, the majority of those artists will not achieve ‘art world success’ and, as Sholette suggests, the inability to be “usefully productive”, in terms of earning an income for work produced, causes new means and tactics of survival to emerge, which hold the potential to create new narratives. In Stephen Wright’s terms, in his Lexicon of Usership, these “art-sustaining environments” are where art is used, rather than consumed. As he suggests; “usership represents a radical challenge to at least three stalwart conceptual institutions in contemporary culture: spectatorship, expert culture, and ownership.”As these are also the tenets of the status quo in our neoliberal, proprietary, and profit driven society, the potential for a usable art is huge.
The Shadow Archive was seeking to create a method for the subjective representation of the multifarious outputs, ideas and practices that constitute the spaces in its collection. In order to do this, each space was invited to submit videos, images, sound files and/or documents that they feel represent them, or that represent them in a way in which they wish to be seen. The Shadow Archive sought to do justice to the spaces in its care and provide an engaging platform that will encourage exploration and research.
Due to the nature of self-organising and acquiring and keeping space, many endeavours into running spaces are short-lived and therefore go undocumented. As artists move on or rents rise, sustaining a space becomes difficult. However, this temporality is not to be regarded as a failure; nothing is permanent and valuable ideas and work can happen in short spaces of time. In the original sense of the word ‘curate’, The intentions of the Shadow Archive was to provide a means to care for and communicate the ideas and particulars behind these spaces. Its aims were to provide a platform through which self-organised art spaces can network and make their operations available to view for users of the website. If there is a shift in what constitutes art and how it is being used, and if that shift holds a potentiality for a better, and ultimately more supportive environment for artists, then connecting the dots can create a critical mass. And if necessity is creating innovations then sharing those will enable them to be used and built upon. As the archive is populated, it will also begin to be activated; the efficacy of these propositions will become apparent but they may also become self-fulfilling prophecies as The Shadow Archive becomes a platform through which to share and reveal.
