Project Me

After being at the launch / vernissage on Thursday I am both inspired and envious! Why? Because he gets on and does what he does, he makes it happen – if there is one thing that I never quite seem to have grasped it is how to make things happen. I do not mean the small things that I can alone can make happen, I mean the big things that I need help and support with – though while writing this I realise that perhaps even the small things are beyond me, or out of my reach. I simply do not know how to function in the professional art and museum worlds, and for this reason Benny and Patrik Steorn’s (short) presentation of the project and how they came to know each other was very interesting and inspiring. Their ‘getting to know each other’ took several years, and resulted in what I think Nicholas Logsdail (Lisson Gallery) referred to many years ago as a ‘professional friendship’. Sitting here now, it is interesting for me to recall how each of their accounts told of them each doing what they do – a curator curating, and an artist making art – and reaching a fantastically creative meeting place where their collaboration is evidenced in a wonderful new art work. The piece itself, an artistic audio-guide to several works in the museum’s collection, resonates with many discussions that Kim and I have had over the years.

Interludes / Mellanspel

Because of my own interest in Eugène Jansson, my looking at Neil Bartlett’s performance work, and even thinking about Michael Petry’s use of myth, I am beginning to wonder about the way in which gay male artists engage with history. I cannot quite put my finger on it (and perhaps that is not what I should be attempting to do) but there is a certain tone, attitude, language that exists in these works. It is something that I want to explore further and might well do as part of developing and extending Following Eugène.

At a few minutes before 3:22pm (central European time) yesterday I put my British passport along with the printed and signed copy of my online application for Swedish citizenship in to the post.

Yesterday marked five years, to the day, since the Swedish Immigration office granted me on-going permission to live and work in Sweden based on my coming from another European Union country. Since the UK’s EU membership referendum result was announced I have been waiting for October 13 in order to make my citizenship application. My British passport will be returned to me (it is simply needed as part of the process) and unless there is a truly unforeseen problem I should be granted Swedish citizenship sometime in the next couple of months.

The immigration services here have not yet said what they are going to do about UK citizens living here once Article 50 is invoked. However the immigration service is well known for sticking to the letter of the law (even if they acknowledge that the law may be clumsy or plain wrong – they argue in such cases that it is the legislation that needs to be amended rather than them who should bend the rules. They are very clear that it would be wrong for them to take the law into their own hands). As I have read that as soon as the UK invokes Article 50 the country will no longer be a full and regular member of the European Union, I therefore assume (though have not been able to have it confirmed) that my permission to live and work here would be ‘questionable’ at best (and could be immediately revoked at worst).

I encourage all UK artists who are already (permanently) living in other European countries and who do not already have dual citizenship to investigate their options sooner rather than later. I believe that Sweden is like many other European countries in that it recognises dual nationality, as does Britain. However I am also aware that Sweden has one of the shorter qualifying period – some countries require that citizens from other lands have been resident for eight years.

While it might be somewhat re-assuring to try and believe UK politicians who propound Britain’s negotiating power and their abilities to secure the best of both worlds (being outside of the EU but retaining all the benefits), from here it seems that many European counties and EU leaders are less than enamoured with the UK and are taking a hard line – out means out. (Donald Tusk’s Brussels speech must make uncomfortable listening for those expecting something close to business as usual.)

No matter the precise details of future movement of people and/or goods between Britain and the European countries I think that it is fair to assume that it will be considerably different from that which we have gotten used to. Unlike large global corporations and established cultural/educational institutions who have personnel and HR offices geared up for assisting with appropriate visas and permissions, and finance departments that are already well versed in dealing with trade with non-EU countries, I can imagine that smaller arts organisations (and individual artists) are going to endure a long period re-adjustment and learning. I am of course concerned about how this will impact on their work and programmes as they (and we artists) are not in positions to recruit additional staff, so all of the hours spent coming to terms new ways of working will have to be drawn from existing schedules.

On a very personal note it struck me that I will most likely need to find a new European glitter supplier (rather than the wonderful Flint’s just off the Walworth Road in south London) to avoid very complicated and time consuming paperwork and tax declarations. And that I might also be forced to stop working with my friends David and Lucy for my website – which will be a very sad day indeed.

Hopefully some of my anxieties will be allayed over the coming months. No matter what happens having Sweden citizenship will enable me to vote in general elections – which considering that this is where I live, work, and pay my taxes makes good sense!

And now … it is time to go and do something practical – what a perfect way to spend the later half of a Friday afternoon!

I am ten days in to a new way of working – posting a daily image on instagram. Eventually there will be 98 images in the series. Each image is a photograph of a monoprint taken directly from my body. The idea started in discussion with friends about building significance through accumulation, duration, regularity, and the like. With the first of October approaching it seemed appropriate to begin on the first of the month, and over the few days leading up to the first print it dawned on me how what started as a somewhat frivolous notion could actually be a very useful way of developing (or at the very least contributing to) the next chapter of Following Eugéne.

Each print is made with the same simple materials: water-based blue pigment, and blank postcard/correspondence card. What I have realised, with the shortening autumn days, is that I do not have any ‘white light’ at home – there is a distinct yellow tinge to the pictures taken under artificial lighting. The question is whether to do something about this or not – and this leads me to wonder about the status of these posted images: are they documenting a working process, or are they images in themselves? Or perhaps I should be wondering if there are even such distinctions to be made. If preparatory work is made public, especially without it being overtly named as such, then I guess that I should be presenting as good as picture as possible and this means getting my white balances and lighting sorted out.

I am enjoying the daily routine of making these images and look forward to seeing how things progress over the next 88 days. Since making the decision to connect this work with Following Eugéne (visually through the colour blue, and textually through the hashtags,) I have begun to think around how the next installment might be – what form it might take and what components it might include.

Last week I spent three half days setting up Brief Encounter for inclusion in Enköping’s Höstglöd culture weekend. Klas (arts development officer) had managed to get keys for what had been the restaurant/nightclub in the cinema/library complex. The venue has been empty since the council bought the previous leaseholder out of their contract in anticipation of demolishing the whole building several years ago. Demolition is no longer immanent though it is not entirely off the cards – it is just part of the frustrating situation concerning several council buildings that are too much to go in to here and now. Klas was using the space to prepare and store several of the pieces for the weekend show. It is shocking how so much space can just be left empty, Klas has ambitions to see it used as a flexible exhibition/performance/project venue, possibly even with studios and workshops (though this would require a great deal of work to optimise the somewhat limited access to natural light). Being there was a good reminder that we need to get on with our proposal to the council for support with studio provision in the town.

It is eight years since I first presented Brief Encounter, at that time it was less than a year after John’s death and the piece was very emotionally charged for me. It felt good and right to unpack it again and to realise that there was no longer the same intensity of feeling attached to it. Of course I thought about John, his illness, his life, our life, while I was securing the tracks, laying the glitter, and perhaps most of all when I began to run the model trains. I wrote the following text to accompany the piece:

Two pale blue toy locomotives circle around two circular silver tracks. Around and around they go. At a certain point the tracks come close to each other and every so often the trains approach this near point at the same time. When this happens the trains, for a few seconds, are side-by-side and very close of one another. The moment passes and each train continues on its own journey.

Imagine that the two trains represent two individuals – each on their own life’s journey; two individuals whose lives momentarily come very close to each other.

Brief Encounter was conceived shortly after the death of the artist’s partner. The piece uses playful metaphor and symbolism to explore complex issues of remembrance and grief as well as celebrating the joy that can result from even the briefest of encounters.

I do not think that I could have written that a few years ago – not such simple words, and not balancing remembrance and grief with celebration and joy.

Due to previous commitments I did not get to see the piece installed in the library, I had hoped to see it there on Sunday afternoon but by the time I get there it had already be taken away. It would have been good to see it in that space. As I cycled away it occurred to me how different the venue was from the one that the piece had been initially conceived for (a former train station), beyond the physical difference the potential differences that really struck me were the mood and atmosphere in which the audience encountered the piece. Despite not experiencing this myself (!) I can imagine that piece appeared quite differently in the bustling modern library environment rather than the calm of gallery. I am little concerned that the work might not have ‘held its own’ in such a context, and this led me to think about how I often make art for particular spaces – even if those spaces are somewhat ‘generic’, a gallery for example. I guess that I like the idea that people encounter my work a little primed for “art” rather than simply coming across it – unless I have specifically made something with that in mind. I found myself thinking about those kinds of de-compression and transitionary spaces in buildings – entrance porches, doorways, vestabules. With that particular piece (Brief Encounter) I think I want people to have a little more ‘de-compression’ than Enköping’s library provides – this has been very useful for me to come to understand and is something that I hope to be more aware of with future exhibition opportunities.

Having said all that, I received good feedback from Klas and some friends who saw the piece!

Two years ago Antonie, Karin, and I set up an artists’ association* with the idea of creating opportunities for artistic research outside of Stockholm’s art institutions. Last Friday we had our AGM. It did not take long as the we have all been too busy with our own practices, careers, lives, to do anything under the group name. However we all want to keep the possibility of doing something so the meeting enabled us to fulfil the minimum requirements and keep the association “active”. Sitting around a table in the fifth-floor cafe of the Culture House the three of us quickly began to get excited about what we could do and how our own practices/research suggested a number of projects or events that the association could run. We are meeting up again (here in Enköping) next week to take this discussion further. Speaking personally (which of course the only way to speak!) it feels like the right time for me to be more engaged again – several ideas of mine could be strengthened and given focus by approaching them through the context of the group despite my recently re-awakened caution around the concept of artistic research.

One thing that I want to pursue is the possibility of organising a panel discussion looking at what artists have for expectations of artistic research. I am going to propose the idea to Supermarket for their Talks programme at next year’s fair. Not only would this be a great way of taking the group to a wider audience but it would also give me the opportunity to investigate my own feelings in an appropriate context.

On Tuesday I am going to setting up Brief Encounter for a group show here. This afternoon I unpacked it from the box where it has been since 2008, and I am pleased to say that everything (the transformer and the two locomotives) still works. Klas (Enköping Arts Development) wants the piece to be the first thing that people see when they enter the library (the main venue for the weekend’s activities). I am both flattered and a bit anxious! Perhaps anxious is not quite the right expression – I am intrigued as to what people’s reactions will be as the ‘story’ aspect of the piece is not immediately obvious. I guess this might be why Klas has selected it, I certainly think that he is raising the stakes for the town council’s commitment to contemporary practice and I am absolutely delighted to help with that!

Today has been spent slowly catching up on things that have been on (several) to do lists.  The summer has been a fantastic mix of trips both abroad and around Sweden, having visitors, meeting old friends, and making new acquaintances.  These happy activities have been both arts based and non-arts based (if such a distinction even exists)!

Today has been the first of my three-day working weeks that I have not had something else concrete to do – most recently spending time with a visiting artist friend, and returning to Norway to de-install Play and other pieces in the Immerse show.  Since Tim is working on a number of smaller projects that do not have immanent deadlines we are testing a new way of working after the intense and nearly full-time months of the first half of the year.  Both he and I want to pursue our own projects and develop our own work so I will be working with him three days a week which gives me two days to do my own thing.  Tim wants to spend at least one day a week working on his own designs – something that he simple has not had time to do in the last year and a half.  This is fantastic for me as I want and need time for my own practice.  I know that I have missed a few opportunities simply because I have not had the time to follow them up, I also know that there things that I want to achieve that will take time and persistence – such as the collective studio – so knowing that I have time, and by that I mean “proper” time rather than a few tired hours one evening or at the weekend, is absolutely wonderful.

I am very grateful that I was able to return to Kinokino to take down Play not only because I prefer to take responsibility for packing such a tricky, tangly, dangly piece, but also because it was great to hear that the work received such a positive response from the audiences and the gallery.  It seems that people really enjoyed engaging with it both physically and conceptually – which is of course exactly how it is supposed to work.  And now I am facing an interesting question: what next to do with it.  Without wanting to sound conceited or arrogant I know that the piece is good and that people like it, so it seems a shame if it just gets left in storage yet I do not really know how to move on with it.  I guess that I could look for other exhibition venues and opportunities for it, this could be good for me as well as for the piece as it would be a new way of working.  In the past I have tended to produce for specific sites or exhibitions and have therefore side-stepped the conversations and realities necessary for putting an already existing work ‘out there’.  Taking on this new challenge feels as though it could introduce me to a different set of situations and contacts.  The piece is not immediately commercial so it would make sense to start with looking at funded spaces, installation venues, and perhaps artist-run initiatives.  To be honest I have never really understood how these spaces make their selections so perhaps it is time to meet them and learn!

Hopefully I have the opportunity to show another older work in (very) near future.  Over a weekend in early October there are going to be a number of cultural events here in Enköping on the theme of ‘People’s Stories’.  Without knowing what the exhibition venue might be I tentatively proposed showing Brief Encounter – the piece initially made specifically for Nordisk Kunst Plattform in Brusand, Norway.  Again it is another work that people appreciated but which has been out of sight and in storage for several years.  Perhaps as I begin to feel more settled I am also feeling more confident and able to see how things that I already have are able to work in new contexts.  This is very interesting and potentially very exciting, in the past the idea of re-showing work has made me anxious – worried that I was unable to come up with something new, worried that I might be seen as simply wheeling out the same old thing.  Now I see it as allowing pieces to have their own lives, to continue to function, to meet new audiences, to provoke new discussions and start new conversations.