Reciprocity

A couple of days ago I received an email from Irna Qureshi, a Bradford-based anthropologist and oral historian (http://bollywoodinbritain.wordpress.com/). I had contacted her asking her if I could interview her about her experience and practice of generosity in her work. She since read my blog (including my last post) and this is part of her response:

“The last para of your blog in particular resonated with me very strongly:

“Partly as a result of this I have begun to perceive this project less as ‘research’ – which implies a one-sided seeking out of information – and more as an open ended process of building up a series of conversations and relationships. Maybe this is ‘the work’.”

I’ve actually just emailed your blog – with that final point highlighted – to a colleague of mine at Sheffield Uni. We’re just in the process of submitting a funding bid for a collaborative project and as ethnographers, we’ve been talking about doing research more intuitively and finding ways for the interviewees to lead the research, precisely so that it is an open ended process rather than the usual one-sided seeking of information (I’m quoting YOU back to YOU!). And the notion of reciprocity sums this up perfectly actually. Research should be reciprocal but it rarely is. We as the researchers always determine what’s worthy of research, what’s of value, what’s worth archiving, rarely the person that’s being researched. And these are precisely the questions that (my colleague and) I want to explore in this new project. “

I had written the last comment of my blog as a thought, a hunch still forming, but
these comments from Irna have confirmed for me that the dialogic, open, reciprocal aspects of the project are of central importance.
I have been thinking since about how knowledge can be shaped, edited, controlled by the researcher/artist. The potential for hierarchy, power, ‘bestowal’ – the shadow sides of ‘generosity’ in the process of recording, editing, collating, presenting of information. I want to work collaboratively, democratically, collectively on this project, and for the various kinds of engagement I’ve had with people, online and in real life, to be an ongoing dialogue, which is open to all to shape and change.

But how to document, collate, present a wide range of exchanges taking place in different contexts – via interventions, informal conversations in real life, and online via social media/email/blog comments – in a way that allows for a democratic continuation of conversation, an ‘open ended process’ in which all participants feel equal ownership of?

As a kind of experiment in testing out ongoing participation/dialogue, I am planning on contacting all participants in my Generosity Advent Calendar to invite them to contribute to issue 2 of ‘Reciprocity’, my zine series for the project. I will be interested to see how many people are interested in a continuing conversation.

I’m also asking myself another question, which is a contrary impulse to the above.
Is it necessary or desirable to document everything? Does this kill the ‘gift’ of the spontaneous exchange? Does an encounter only have value if it is recorded? Does the documenting of an action, or an encounter, just serve to legitimatise and reframe it as ‘art’?

I feel a growing resistance to documentation, and an attraction to the ephemeral encounter. Just let it be, don’t record the life out of it. Don’t try to control it.

I’m thinking, as an example, of a series of conversations I’ve begun to have with Leeds-based artists Louise Atkinson (http://louiseatkinsonblog.blogspot.com) and Debi Holbrook (http://debiholbrookartist.wordpress.com/) We have met twice so far, with a loose intention to discuss ideas of barter, exchange and gift, areas of common interest. Our discussions have been delightfully exploratory and wide-ranging, swooping around many thoughts and ideas. It was a great pleasure to have this kind of open ended conversation. At our last meeting, at an exhibition private view at Leeds College of Art , then over a bottle of wine in the pub, we talked about what we wanted to happen or achieve with these conversations, and if we wanted to document them. We didn’t know, but agreed we wanted to meet up and talk again.

Hardly know where to start with where my lookings findings and doings have taken me since my last post.

There’s just so stuff – from actions, conversations. thinking, reading – swimming about in my brain, still being processed- which is still foggy from seasonal intertia and too many cherry liqueurs – documenting it seems a gargantuan task.

So maybe I’ll just start and see where I get to.

Firstly, the Generosity Advent Calendar. From 1-25th December I emailed a daily quote/thought/image on gift/generosity to a mailing list of people who signed up for the project. I had 23ish participants, one who opted out midway. I decided not to document the content of the Advent Calendar elsewhere – here, for example, to keep the integrity, the excusivity, the committment of the project- you sign up, you take part – and also I’ve become much more interested in undocumented, ephemeral projects. (via my reading on artists like Ben Kinmont and others in ‘What We Want is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art”)

The content was unplanned – I decided to try to to seek new thoughts and knowledge each day so that it was a living project and not some dead, planned out list of quotes, autosent. And it did feel like a dialogue, a performance of sorts. I was keenly aware of presence of my recipients. The project led to some interesting and spontaneous responses and exchanges. Sophie Cullinan, another a-n blogger who I met here on artists talking, sent me a daily image in return for my email. We now plan to collaborate on putting our content together in a zine. My offer of a free zine from my personal collection to participants as a thanks for taking part in the project met with some reciprocal offers. A small and lovely painting arrived through the post from one artist and another artist has promised me a copy of her first zine which she is working on now. My final email, sent out on 25th December, was

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Simone Weil
Many thanks for your kind attention, and have a great holiday!

I got this response from one participant

‘The reason I’m writing now, although I’ve thought of writing to you before, is that of all 10 gifts I’ve received via this project, your final gift – that of thanks, is the only one which has elicited a reply from me! Being told that I have given you something affects me more, pleases me more than receiving gifts from you’

This I think is so interesting – as it communicates on obligation, reciprocity and bestowal which are intrinsic to any practice of gift. All of the above communications and exchanges have felt valuable and meaningful, especially as people took the time to connect over the busy festive period.

Partly as a result of this I have begun to perceive this project less as ‘research’ – which implies a one-sided seeking out of information – and more as an open ended process of building up a series of conversations and relationships. Maybe this is ‘the work’.