Being an Artist

December is nearly over.

What have I accomplished in these past few months?!

I have managed to move into a lovely house, then break both arms, lose my job and find myself broke (in more ways than one), realise a lot about collaborations, get back into eye2spy collective, apply for residencies, get rejected, apply for jobs, get rejected.

2012 – YOU WILL BE MY YEAR.

I mean, I think I need to step up my game, but then what have I been doing this whole time? So many people I know are in the same boat. We are looking for jobs in what we want to do. Are we ever going to get them?

Rosalind Davis said on the live Q&A: Quiz the proffesional artists, that maybe I should just stick to a job that has nothing to do with art, so that I can then come home and focus on my art seperately.

I don’t want to.

I want a job that I want. And I want a job that I enjoy. And I want a job.

I don’t think we have to struggle and work hard to survive – why? Why can’t we get the job we dream of, live the life we dream of, be happy.

I’m going to try and prove that we can.

With, the new job experiment.

This is going to be an experiment in which I believe that I will have a job by the 9th Jan – a job that I want.

If you focus and visualise yourself in this new job of yours, happy and it being easy, maybe just maybe it will actually happen.

Follow the #newjobexperiment #9thjan on twitter to see how I’m getting on.

So far, I haven’t really visualised enough. But from today onwards it is going on my wish board and being written in my notebook and I am telling everyone that I will have a job on 9thjan.

We will see if the experiment works soon enough.

– Do you think I should be applying for jobs as well? I guess I better – it won’t magically happen…..?

Here is a short piece to explain how myself and BRISTOL DIVING SCHOOL feel towards collectives.

Collaborations are the way forward – they are the future.

Many artists have become more and more interested in creating something for the majority rather than the individual, in that there is a desire to create not just a single piece of work but rather a larger project based art form.

In many respects moving away from the making of art objects and moving towards exploring the relationship between ‘real’ life and ‘art’ life.

Space. Project. Art. Collective.

Artist led spaces, independent art schools, collectives – more and more are appearing – could this be the future of art?
Now is the time to send out our collective response. We, artists have always been innovative, proven by our advantageous use of technology. The internet, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs – these are our new art platforms.
Recognising this new long-standing relationship we have as humans, to technology, forcing technological boundaries to merge and create a new art form. One that is not simply to make art but to live as art, to write as art, to communicate becomes art. We live in a technological utopia that serves to remind us of who we are and what we want to achieve in this world.

No longer needing a space, or an individual piece of art, collectives have become rather nomadic in their practice, assuming that it will not be possible to stay in one space for a specific length of time; they decide that in fact they don’t want to anyway.

Collectives gather our ideas, our inspiration, our hopes and dreams and even our fears and let us share them, let us create something even bigger, even better than what it could have been if it were just one solitary mind. We are one. We become one entity of creativity. Hence there is no need for a specific space or home, we can make anywhere home. As an artist and an individual, you are full of questions, full of ideas and wanting to be heard, yet sometimes, just haven’t quite found your voice, or the right platform to do this. Being part of a collective means you can have that chance, it becomes a collection of like minded individuals all striving towards a similar goal, all willing to help each other get there. For, without contacts, without each other, without other creative minds there is no art scene, there is no way of networking.

A collective becomes less about the ego or the individual art making and more about the experience and what can be offered.

In this time of recession and general lack of knowledge or care for the arts outside of the art world, we, artists and creatives need to stick together. We need to send out a collective response, become unified in our creativity and help each other.

This is not the time for selfishness or arrogance. No one cares anymore; no one is going to progress if that attitude exists. Now is the time for a collective consciousness, to develop as one.

Lets talk a bit about BRISTOL DIVING SCHOOL and Artist Led Activity.

As part of the British Art Show 7, Project Space 11 (an artist led project based in Plymouth) asked for collectives to participate in a live discussion at the finale symposium.

We decided that we wanted to participate and myself and another fellow BDSer travelled to Plymouth on Friday for our two day discussion on the future of Artist led activity and its sustainability.

After an eight hour long discussion on the first day we all came to the conclusion that in fact, we didn’t necessarily want to talk about the future, but to talk about NOW – especially as artist led projects have such distinct life spans.

The group consisted of individuals representing Project Space 11 (Plymouth), Transmission Gallery (Glasgow), Trade Gallery (Nottingham), James Taylor Gallery (London), Come to Ours (Plymouth) and Sovay Berriman. We talked through topics such as, selfishness/selflessness, funding, drive, audience and community, regionality, relationships with institutions – All which we had very similar views and concerns with.

The micro residency and final live discussion was of great importance for us all, I know that for BDS it helped us realise that we are not alone and that what we are doing is important and worth while. It is also fair to say that, as artists we see things differently, beyond the financial wants, to the larger, more important needs – togetherness.

http://www.plymouthartscentre.org/eventsandeducati…

http://www.kurator.org/research/reclaiming-critica…

http://via-via-via-via.tumblr.com/

BDS would like to take this opportunity to thank all that were involved in the finale symposium this weekend, but also to thank all those who support us – especially those supporting from a far.

I would like to briefly talk about artist archive-thinking.

The archive, place of history, memories and time. The sheer materiality of the archive, the physicality of it whilst it is waiting to be ordered, when it becomes a sea of documents.

The archive localises and protects documents, but it also imprisons them. Locks them in a specific space, allowing the process of archiving and then finding or viewing it a somewhat emotional experience.

This experience is more often than not a linear movement, a walk down an aisle of a library, or a bookshop. It becomes physical, emotional and ordered.

What is the emotional impact of the archive?

Do we appreciate this impact and does it become more present when it is an individual more personal experience? For example, when we enter a city’s archives -generally in a large vault, or hidden room -where you have to be escorted and the keepers of this archive wheel out the documents on rather magnificent sized tables. Does archiving become more about the experience than the document? You feel you are the voyager on a strange and important meeting, a moment in time that perhaps you were not supposed to be a part of.

Yet, here you are. Witnessing this; this spectacle before you, this memory.

Should we keep these moments hidden away, archived, like the dead sea; waiting for the person to come and make use of them, uncover their lost pages and store them in their memories before having to come back again to re-read what has been forgotten. Or, should we erase all physicality.

Should an individual book be for the individual. Or for the collective human race.

Sometimes, we become trapped by the history of these archives, by their past their meaning their hidden secrets. Are they supposed to be revealed? Are we supposed to store them or live them?

Should we have the ‘library of life’ available to all – or is it already available, metaphysically, in our subconsious.

“Documents become available at a certain time” as Walter Benjamin stated.

Thanks to Picture this and Ruadhri Ryan for introducing me to the book ‘Ghosting: The role of the Archive within Contemporary Artists’ Film and Video’ – Inspiring me to think more and write about the archive.

Today, I have been invigilating at Picture This, in Bristol. We have just had a talk by Maryam Jafri on her piece ‘Avalon’.

The film ‘Avalon’ features an entrepeuner known as F.R in an Asian country, who was given $700 USD by his father in order to ‘make something of himself’. With this F.R invested in a multi million dollar clandestine company that secretly exports fetish wear.

The women who work in this factory, not only do not know what they are actually making these products for, but they think they are body bags for US military in Iraq and props for circus animals.

The choice of factory and products relied upon the themes of gender, sexuality, the unconscious, desire and mainly the workers -abused by the service providers.

The range of different characters and relationships explains and gives a difficult and thorough view of the moral implications involved in this factory setting. At first glance the entrepeneur and the consumer are judged, however you soon realise that the workers may be better off not knowing..? These complex relationships and the civil liberties concerning their rights and visibility is one of the main key elements to this part documentary, part staged performance.

Is it best that these women, are kept in the dark – not living in shame of what they are making?

This somewhat journalistic approach to film making, engulfed with huge amounts of field work and research that has been carried out, seems highly appropriate in order to produce the staged shots.

Real or unreal, the film allows the subconscious to reveal many political feelings and opens the mind to reflection of these.