It is nearing the end of May and I am currently taking stock for a short time on the month as it is shaping up. The good news is that I have a mentor interested in developing my practice! The mentor is none other than Sylvia Rimat. Sylvia is a supported artist of The Basement in Brighton and Director and Co-Producer of You & Your Work Festival in Bristol, which looks like well worth seeing. (I am listenting to the sound of ideas forming, thanks Alan Dunn). The plan is for Sylvia to guide the progress of one of my performances which will be shown somewhere, although I have yet to find the venue or the funding. This will hopefully become clearer after a talk with Fiona Baxter from Farnham Maltings. I am obviously very excited. I am also interested in involving some form of digital interactivity in the work. But this might or might not happen.
Last thursday I went to a crit outside the uni as one of the Q-art seminars. Annabel Tilly was there. And presenting. I went first, showed my video An Anthology over a hastily put together PA which distorted on the lower frequencies. Everyone seemed to think the bad sound was part of the work. Thing is I had the perfect set of speakers/projector combo lent to me short notice. Oh well. The speakers I did use belonged to a very interesting Goldsmiths grad named Rachel who calmly talked through her piece (using my speakers of course) and her upcoming show. Unfortunately I had spent so much time packing away all my equipment and swallowing my pride that everyone had bolted by the time I was ready to leave. No business cards handed out there. But I did go away with some ideas of how to get people to participate in other works. I am eager to try these ideas out in future projects.
I was dicussing this with a uni friend and she told me that I was too selfless. However I am not sure that the cut throat competitive first-come-first-serve method of organising is that effective overall. I have been in exhibition scenarios like that before, my third year studio spaces were chosen like that and to be honest it left me feeling a little cold. Not enjoyable at all. I would rather assist. I think there is this drive in some people to strive and make work and get very worked up about ideas and values along the way. I have met ‘artists’ clearly in it for the fashion with nothing much to give except attitude and they spread this pressure of appearance over the whole experience which no one benefits from. Surely artists face enough pressure from people in our society who see little value in our life choices no?
We also discussed the idea of charging people for tutorials with more successful artists. We came to the thought that those who are in need of advice are not usually in the position to afford these sessions. It is a productive idea of course and worthy of merit. However it still propagates the idea that art is a game for people who have money to spare. It also sends out perhaps unrealistic expectations on the session and the artist resquested to offer advice. I can imagine the worst case scenario of ‘I just spent x amount of money on that and wanted more’ occuring in these situations. Perhaps the answer to this is to offer bursary schemes for those in financial difficulty so that those people less inclined to attend from lack of funds will be able to go. I know that a-n does this with a number of events, perhaps institutions could also provide this. It might be difficult in terms of funding of course, but it could have a other benefits like higher attendance and incusion of groups not usually exposed to the arts which would assist with future funding applications.
