Week 11: 26th November – 2nd December
The stack of books I’m reading is slowly piling up as I dip in and out of each of them, so I decided to focus on just one for now, to make some headway into pinning down some evidence for my research. The one I chose this week was Art and Agency by Alfred Gell, which, at least for the moment, seems to be the cornerstone for ideas relating to how the work of art functions.
In essence, the idea of agency evokes the work of art as a conduit for social interaction. Specifically, Gell makes reference to the ‘art nexus’, a table of shifting relations between maker, object, idea and viewer. Gell categorises these as artist, index, prototype and recipient respectively, and positions each as agent or patient, depending on whether they are currently acting, or being acted upon.
Anthenticity
My thoughts at the time of reading, were around the relationship between the index and the prototype, in other words, the art that I’m creating and the thing that it refers to. This was also contextualised by my knowledge and understanding of other artists work, who I believed to be challenging cultural discourse through producing artworks that represented ‘authentic’ voices.
However, I found my preconceptions of authenticity troubling. For example, how do we define authentic? If I was to go on holiday, I would want to experience the ‘real’ place I was visiting, but what if that ‘real’ place didn’t match the idea that I had in my head? Would that make it less authentic? I decided to open the idea up to Twitter, who were only too happy to oblige with input into the nature of authenticity in relation to cultural experience. By the end of it I still didn’t really have the answer, but it had created an interesting debate and much food for thought about how I might go about tackling this problem in future.
Barter
Another element of the agency of the art object is personified in the gift exchange, a factor in many cultural rituals. Lewis Hyde’s The Gift is a seminal work on this topic, and of particular pertinence to discussions I’d been having with artists Debi Holbrook and Jean McEwan. Jean’s own Reciprocity blog aims to investigate this phenomenon in more detail, so we decided to discuss the possibility of organising a barter project, within the context of art practice.
An academic aside: Although this project is actually separate to my main research topic, it can be documented and submitted as part of my overall thesis, therefore any exhibitions or projects participated in, can support final outcomes. That said, I do need to be careful about getting distracted from my core premise.
Bristol bound
Another project I’m involved in, and perhaps the catalyst for my current academic career, is Artist Book Collective. This consists of an international online group of artist book makers, which I created back in 2008 in order to curate real world book art exhibitions. These exhibitions have ranged from mail art collaborations to site-specific installation, and currently, a touring show. It is this show, ‘Bound’ which is now on site in the Bower Ashton Library at the University of West England, courtesy of Sarah Bodman, Senior Research Fellow for Artists’ Books at the Centre for Fine Print Research. This is also the reason that, last Thursday, I hot-footed it down to Bristol, laden down with artworks.
Actually, I’ve been meaning to visit Bristol ever since I heard about Sarah’s project through the Book Arts Newsletter which she also edits. When I arrived, I was greeted by Angie, a fellow PhD Student, also researching artist books. She showed me round the library and book collection, and I was really impressed by how accessible the works were for students and the public. Artist books that had been collected by the University were housed within plastic wallets inside coloured filing cabinets, and looked inviting, while still maintaining the element of organisation. Even books from Sarah’s own collection were available for students to browse, and it gave some new ideas about how I might approach creating an archive of my own.
