Making art politically

Some books of mine relevant to this residency:

Armstrong, N. & Tennenhouse, L. eds., 1989. The Violence of Representation – Literature and the history of violence. London: Routledge.

Art Review, Issue 23, June 2008 – Thomas Hirschhorn Supplement

Barthes, R., 2000. Camera Lucida. London: Vintage.

Berger, J., 2007. Hold Everything Dear. London: Verso.

Bhabha, H.,1994. The Location of Culture. Abingdon: Routledge.

Chomsky, N., 2007. Hegemony or Survival. London: Penguin.

Costello, D. & Willsdon, D., 2008. The Life and Death of Images. London: Tate.

Coulter-Smith, G. & Owen, M. eds., 2005. Art in the Age of Terrorism. London: Paul Holberton Publishing.

Derrida, J., 1995. The Gift of Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, M., 2001. Fearless Speech. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).

Gray, J., 2004. Heresies. London: Granta.

Hyde, L., 2006. The Gift. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.

Kraus, C. & Lotringer, S. eds., 2001. Hatred of Capitalism. Los Angeles, California: Semiotext(e).

Kristeva, J., 1989. Black Sun – Depression and Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press.

Rancière, J., 2007. On the Shores of Politics. London: Verso.

Rancière, J., 2007. The Future of the Image. London: Verso.

Rancière, J., 1991. The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Rose, G., 1997. Mourning Becomes the Law – Philosophy and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sauermann, B., 2003. 2/15 – The Day the World Said No to War. New York, NY: Hello.

Scarry, E., 1985. The Body in Pain – The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: OUP.

Sebald, W.G., 2003. On the Natural History of Destruction. London: Penguin.

Sontag, S., 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. London: Penguin.

Woolf, Virginia., 1943. Three Guineas. London: The Hogarth Press.

Zizek, S., 2008. Violence. London: Profile Books.

Some striking differences of opinion:

"I think that "Where do I stand? What do I want?" is the essential question for an artist. I want to answer this question myself first. But I want this also to be a challenge to any other artist, in order to know: "Where does he/she stand? What does he/she want?" Because, when confronted with an artwork, I always ask myself if the artist is answering this question, and it is essential that the response come through the artwork directly. This is what art can establish – a direct dialog, one to one."

Hirschhorn, Art Review Supplement, June 2008

"I steer clear of definitions. I don't know what I want. I am inconsistent, noncommittal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty. Other qualities may be conducive to achievement, publicity, success; but they are all outworn – as outworn as ideologies, opinions, concepts and names for things."

Gerhard Richter, 1966, quoted in Guardian 20/09/08

"I believe in Art, I believe in Art because it's Art. I have faith in Art and I believe in the power of Art. Faith in Art and passion are essential as an artist, there is no doubt. But Art does not change your life when you stay passive, Art changes your life when you have the courage to be active yourself. Active in thinking. Art has the ability to create its own space, its own reality, its own truth. Doing Art is not utopian, doing Art is not dreaming or escaping reality. Art creates the condition to confront the other, directly, without communication, mediation or explanation. I am not doing my artwork for an ideal world – but I want to do my artwork in this non-transparent, in this violent, in this complex, and in this chaotic world we are living in. I am part of it and I want this to be obvious in my work. There is no ideal world and there is no ideal artwork."

Hirschhorn, Art Review Supplement, June 2008

"I believe in nothing … I consider belief of every kind, from astrology to every elevated religion and all great ideologies, to be superfluous and mortally dangerous [ … ] We no longer need such things. We ought to work out different strategies against misery and injustice, war and catastrophes."

Gerhard Richter, 'Notes' 1964, quoted in Guardian 20/09/08

This is a photograph of a photograph of Thérèse Fatallah, my Grandmother, on her Iraqi pass papers of 1925. As I write that a hole opens up in my heart. Voices and questions sound in my head: I have no right to show her to you. It is not safe to show her to you. What am I trying to say anyway by showing her to you? What kind of cultural claims am I pretending to stake by showing her to you?

The link between her and me is thread thin. She died in 1999. She was my Grandmother. How can I validate the necessary papers in my mind to make it allowable to contemplate that she might have mattered to me? That her having existed matters still?

A photograph of a dead Iraqi.

The previous sentence rings obscene. What does the space between sentimentality and offence measure? Where is the language to find the correct questions to be asking?

Of what am I so afraid?

I have had a response to my rather sad plea last night for someone to tell me if they were actually reading this. Not that I think that people ought to be reading it but just because it helps me to know that there is someone out there. Not only did you say hello but you even let me know who you are. So, thanks for that.

I have been thinking a great deal lately about art practice and about how artists are employed 'as artists'. I suppose it's inevitable that I should think about this a lot, given that I have jobs teaching, advising other artists, facilitating other people's creativity, mentoring, leading gallery education workshops etc. I get paid for being an artist doing activities where I am not actually making art. Because my practice has often had a strong strand of working with others in it, this has sort of merged with those other paid activities in my perception of what I am as an artist. These days, I often think quite simply that in order to call myself an artist I ought to be making art and my idea of what that is seems to have become rather conventional in many respects. I am rather suspicious of this move, thinking that there are unconscious strings coming at me from the direction of the Art Market, pulling gently on my motivations and desires and skewing them. I suppose this is inevitable.

This evening I got out my peace banner (that you can see in the only picture on my blog) from its plastic storage wrapping. I've not looked at it since 2003. I'm making a piece of work for a show in London at Hold and Freight which references this earlier work. I was surprised when I unfolded it at how colourful it is. At the time I made it I was trying to depict something positive and all I could think of was flowers and idyllic rural landscape so that's what I've shown. It looks so naive and hopeless. It embarrasses me. But I don't mind that. In many ways it seems like the polar opposite of Hirschhorn's banner. It's more modest too in its dimensions . . . which isn't surprising. I took it on the march in Feb 2003 and it caught people's attention. One person told me it ought to win the Turner Prize and I remember just thinking "that's not the point, it's supposed to stop the war". Lovely idea that, that one could make a piece of work that would stop a war. Hideously grandiose, naturally, but says something still about the potency of objects, or at least about the potency we attribute to them.

(Text for text panels in exhibition of Hirschhorn's work):

I have taken a keen interest in Hirschhorn’s work since seeing his Bataille Monument at Documenta XI in 2002. What excited me was how Hirschhorn had involved people living in a particular part of Kassel to such an extent in the project that it became theirs, whilst still remaining his work. I also really liked the idea of introducing a thinker’s work to people in such a way that they might get as excited about those ideas as one does oneself. I imagined trying to achieve that in this country. Would it be possible?

When I was told about ‘The Incommensurable Banner’ and saw some images of it, I was instantly enthusiastic because I made connections between what the banner shows and the lack of imagery of the destruction of bodies in the media coverage of our war against Iraq. And the provenance of the images being largely unknown opens the work out so that it is not just about the imagery of war. The work raises many questions about where one positions oneself, literally, in terms of where you stand in relation to it and also politically by being encouraged to think hard about what it gives us to consider. Aesthetically and ethically too, there is so much that can be discussed in relation to this work.

I have been given the opportunity to approach this residency first and foremost as an artist rather than as a facilitator or gallery educator, work which I have a lot of experience of. One of my challenges will be to rethink my working relationship as an artist to others engaging in a dialogue with myself via a blog, with anyone who wants to get into contact with me via the blog or by email and with Hirschhorn via the work and through readings of his ideas about what he is trying to do as an artist.

I have instigated an ongoing gallery project to make a banner showing a collection of images that anybody can contribute to. Words to go with those images can also be considered. In addition to this, there are ways to contribute your responses to the work and I, together with yourselves and Fabrica volunteers and staff will be thinking about what to do with these responses. Where do they belong?

Alongside this I will be inviting people from different disciplines (eg a philosopher and a poet) to view Hirschhorn’s work and contribute a personal response informed by their particular specialisms. All of these activities will inform and contribute to my own responses to the residency and to the work on show.

Where that may lead has to remain open for now…

(end of text panel text)

I know you want some images. But both my cameras are broken at the moment. I'll try and find some soon to liven this up a bit , I promise.