I’m trying to focus on visiting exhibitions that are more relevant to my research interests at the moment, so the reference library-cum-conceptual art installation currently on show at &Model Gallery in Leeds seemed the perfect place to start.
&Model was developed by co-directors, Chris Bloor, James Chinneck and Derek Horton to create more opportunities for showing and selling contemporary visual art in the city by local and international talent. Speaking to Simon Zimmerman in The City Talking, they describe their links with RTTA (Regeneration Through The Arts) as a not-for-profit organisation, and how they are interested in developing a commercial art enterprise for Leeds, whilst still maintaining opportunities for artists to explore more conceptual lines of enquiry.
Pretty Brutal Library
The current exhibition definitely falls into the latter camp, as it focuses completely on words, with each interpretive text emblazoned across the wall in big letters above more discreet wall-mounted artist books. The 10 books included in the library are available for audiences to take and read in the gallery, and succeed in creating an immersive experience, both through their surroundings and in the process of reading the books.
The books, which explore the relationship between text and speech, range from phonetic re-presentations of art history classics, through to texts written to induce stuttering. As it explains in the gallery information: ‘Each book confronts the old and new forces that function under the surface of language to objectify speaking and the spoken, be it for better or for worse. Each book has been authored by someone who has taken the double risk of calling that exploration poetic and making it public in print.’
Of the Subcontract
The project, initiated by Nick Thurston, also features his book ‘Of the Subcontract or Principles of Poetic Right’, a collection of poems about computational capitalism, which incorporates two specially commissioned essays by Mackenzie Wark and Darren Wershler. On approaching this work. I purposefully decided to avoid reading any contextual information, which while confusing in parts, allowed me a sense of experiencing the work before intellectualising it.
The poems created a jarring sensation when reading, as each voice differed from the last one, and also from my expectations as a reader, creating a sensation of reflecting my own reading process back at me. Upon further reading, it was explained that the poems were generated through Amazon Mechanical Turk, a web service which “offers access to a virtual community of workers” where tasks can be distributed online to be completed by users for a predetermined fee. Nick writes: “Of the Subcontract reverses out of the database-driven digital world of new labour pools into poetry’s black box: the book. It reduces the poetic imagination to exploited labour and, equally, elevates artificial artificial intelligence to the status of the poetic.”
The politics of labour
Despite my interest in these types of work, it raises certain ethical questions about the use of these methods, akin to other works which deal with models of labour and capitalism. In particular, the works of Santiago Sierra, who often uses marginalised or itinerant labour to highlight capitalist constructs and power exchanges. For example, is the process of implicating workers in the production of artwork which highlights their exploitation any better than the systems themselves?
However, this question also presumes an intention on the part of the artist to rectify the situation, as opposed to reflecting our own complicities in these practices through the products and services that we buy. Nevertheless, as Rani Molla discusses in her article on the Gravity and Grace exhibition by El Anatsui, although these abstractions reflect wider societal concerns, it is important to remember that they are also representative of real individuals and their labour. In relation to my own work, these issues also serve as timely reminders to my questions around appropriation and attribution of cultural artefacts.
NB. Opening times of Pretty Brutal Library have been extended to 14th September
Related links:
http://www.hannahfestival.com/2013/07/13/this-woman-noticed-me-mai-lin-li-future-libraries
http://www.corridor8.co.uk/online/review-nick-thurston-pretty-brutal-library-model-gallery-leeds/
http://www.hnf.de/en/museum/the-mechanization-of-information-technology/early-automatons-miracles-of-technology/wolfgang-von-kempelens-chess-turk.html
