Reciprocity

Thinking about how to record and apply the reading, conversations, ideas and reflections on generosity over the past weeks.

It all seems a bit of a tangle at the moment, swimming around in my head, waiting for some order. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by this. There is so much ‘stuff’ which seems relevant I hardly know where to begin. Part of the problem is that I haven’t been documenting as I’ve been going along because my focus over the past weeks has been putting Issue 1 of my zine ‘Reciprocity’ together in time for Leeds Zine Fair last weekend.

I decided to publish my research via a zine series as well as this blog for several reasons. Zines form a key part of my practice, and I am using them much more these days to document work – as adhoc self-published sketchbooks – and finding this an interesting means to record my practice. Publishing in this (print) way also opens up new potential conversations with a wider range of people. People who frequent zine fairs or buy zines online are a diverse bunch with a wide cross section of social/political/personal/niche interests – zines, after all, can be and are about anything – and I’m interested in engaging, particularly with this Reciprocity project, with the widest ‘audience’ possible. I also like the idea of this research having a physical, and aesthetic manifestation, and the discipline of committing my findings to a regular publication, which I hope will find an interested readership.

The process of making Issue 1 in such a short space of time ( 2 weeks) has concentrated my research activities on formats/features which are vernacular to zines: interviews (which I carried out via email with artist Kate Murdoch and Papergirl Leeds founder Laura Jordan) personal stories (of giving and receiving, collected via open call from my Facebook and Twitter accounts) a contributed article (“Gift Economy: The Price Paid for Free Culture’ by artist Andy Abbott) quotes, as well as selected excerpts from this blog.

Leafing through the zine, after a week ,with a more detached view of the material, what speaks to me most is the ambivalences , complexities and uncertainties expressed about giving and exchange. This is particularly from the personal stories people have contributed – many of these anecdotes involve an unsatisfactory or negative experience of giving, in which gift is utilised or interpreted in a less than positive way. Some of these accounts are comic, some more unsettling. One account tells of a book token to a step brother as a revenge strategy (‘If I really wanted to f*** him up, it would have to be genuinely nice’) another of a mother ‘s consternation on given a vacuum cleaner for Christmas by her uncomprehending husband.

These kind of ambivalences fascinate me. Lewis Hyde in ‘The Gift’ – (a key text for me in the last weeks) talks about giving and gift as a means of achieving personal change and spiritual/social cohesion;

‘it is when someone’s gifts stir us that we are brought close, and what moves us, beyond the gift itself, is the promise (or the fact) of transformation, friendship, and love’

While I am uplifted and inspired by Hyde’s gift utopias, I also am attracted to the doubts and the questions around the realities of generosity, particularly as a cultural statement/ art practice. Reading ‘What We Want is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art’ (Edited Ted Purves, SUNY, 2005) has illuminated many contemporary generosity projects and discussions around them.

This week I hope to sort and sift through the muddle of generosity material in my head and begin to make some kind of sense of it by unravelling it here. Linearity is unlikely!

Meanwhile I’m very interested in hearing about where generosity/exchange/reciprocity fits into the experiences practices of other artists – and I would welcome your comments!

More information about, and to purchase Issue 1 of ‘Reciprocity’ zine here http://jeanmcewan.com/2012/11/05/reciprocity-1/

‘Unwilled Reception’: Poetic thoughts from Lewis Hyde and John Berger on creative expression as gift, the artist as ‘receiver’.

“An essential portion of any artist’s labour is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made. It must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn…We are sojouners with our gifts, not their owners: even our creations – especially our creations – do not belong to us”

Lewis Hyde, ‘The Gift'( Random House 1983)

John Berger on a Van Gogh drawing made in 1888:

“the lack of contours around his identity allowed him to be extraordinarily open, allowed him to become permeated by what he was looking at. Or is that wrong? Maybe the lack of contours allowed him to lend himself, to leave and enter and permeate the other. Perhaps both processes occurred – once again as in love”

From ‘Shape of a Pocket’ (Bloomsbury 2001)

The permeability of the artist, universal energy, all things are one?

An opposition of the instinctual vs the analytical in making artwork?

Can generosity be a reciprocal practice?

Artist interview with Kate Murdoch (part three, continued from yesterday)

Kate Murdoch is a London based artist whose work reflects a fascination with the passage of time and the contrast between the permanence of objects and the fragility of human existence.
Her participatory project 10×10 was originally created in response to a call for art around the theme of trade and currency for the tenth anniversary of Deptford X in 2008, and has since been recreated for Lewisham College, Herne Bay Museum & Gallery Whitstable 2010 Biennale Satelite Programme and more recently, for Coastal Currents in Hastings.
10 x 10 is an everchanging display of 100 objects. Wherever it goes, people are asked to take one item and leave something in its place.
The only rules are:

• One swap per person

• The item must fit in the display space (14.5cm x 14.5cm)

10 x 10 asks:
What is an object worth to you?
How much do you want it and what are you prepared to give in return?

JM: Since doing the project has this widened your interest in gift exchanges/alternative economies eg Lets schemes, Timebanks, barter schemes etc?

KM: To be honest, while I’m vaguely aware of them I haven’t done any real research into them, though as I’ve said, I was a great supporter of the green dollar scheme in Ithaca, New York. Time permitting, I’d like to find out more about other barter schemes. I’m a great believer in strengthening communities and saw first hand in Ithaca how committed people became to living a life that wasn’t necessarily dominated by money. People reviewed the ways they lived their lives, lived less selfishly and the division between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ lessened.

JM: What have you learned about generosity through doing the project? Your own and that of others.

KM:That people on the whole, unless they’re severely emotionally damaged, have an innate spirit of generosity. That’s something to be celebrated as far as I’m concerned, especially in these recent times of the media representing everything as being doom and gloom. If 10×10 represents an accurate ‘comment on humanity’ as my friend described it, then I would say that humanity has come out of it pretty well. In terms of my own generosity, I’ve been so pleased by the way 10×0 has moved on over the past five years, so moved by some of the stories people have been prepared to share and so grateful to those that have participated that I feel totally committed to the project. My own generosity I feel lies in my commitment to the project and taking the time to record and document each exchange event is my way of expressing my gratitude to those who have taken part. I’m not able to mention every single exchange but I’m grateful to all the 10×10 participants. It’s the audience after all, who essentially move the project on and make it work.

Many thanks to Kate for taking the time to answer my questions and contribute to my research. I ‘met’ Kate virtually, here on a-n and found out about 10×10 via her blog, ‘Keeping it Going’ which can be found at www.a-n.co.uk/p/2295372/

To find out more about 10×10, visit Kate’s website at http://www.katemurdochartist.com/ten_by_ten.html

This interview is published in full in Issue 1 of my new zine series ‘Reciprocity’ which documents, alongside with this blog, my research findings into ideas of generosity, sincerity and gift. For more information and to purchase the zine for £3 plus postage, visit http://jeanmcewan.com/2012/11/05/reciprocity-1/

Can generosity be a reciprocal practice?

Artist interview with Kate Murdoch (part two, continued from yesterday)

JM: Having done the project in several locations and contexts now, have you observed any differences in how people of different ages, background of responded to or participated in the project?
KM: In terms of age, yes. The children who have participated on the whole have a much more immediate response to what they’d like to take while adults have tended to take a more considered approach. I suspect the children’s decisions are based more on the object’s visual impact than any kind of emotional response. Other differences I’ve noticed are in the objects themselves. I’ve always been interested in how the things we surround ourselves with, the clothes we wear and so on say so much about our place in society, both socially and politically. I’ve noticed some real class distinctions reflected in the objects brought to the cabinet and equally as fascinating to me is what people choose to take. I’m also interested in the feminine/masculine impact on exchanges.

JM: From what you have observed, did people factor in or consider monetary value of the objects in their exchange decisions?
KM:In one or two cases, maybe but on the whole no, I don’t think so. I remember a student leaving 20p for a vase he said he was going to give his Mum for Mother’s Day; he behaved in a slightly cocky manner as he made the exchange and spoke out loud about getting a real bargain. Interestingly, the group of friends with him were quite verbal in expressing their indignation and disapproval of what he’d done, accusing him of ‘taking the piss.’ On the whole, though and certainly, as far as the many conversations I’ve had with people about the things they’ve left in exchange, the narrative has been very much about the emotional rather than the monetary value of the objects.

JM: In the video for the Lewisham College project, 6 items were taken without being replaced by other objects. Is this the only example of people ‘breaking the rules’? Have you changed anything about the project since this experience?
KM: The only thing that’s been altered since starting the project is the addition of a perspex cover to the cabinet, taken down when the exchanges take place. The screen came about because the curators at Herne Bay museum insisted the objects were made safe in their hands. I was averse to the idea of it at first but the perspex totally transforms the objects, giving them a more museum-like appearance. As my position has changed more into being a curator of the objects rather than the owner, the perspex screen then seems more appropriate.

The final part of this interview will be published in this blog tomorrow.

Many thanks to Kate for taking the time to answer my questions and contribute to my research. I ‘met’ Kate virtually, here on a-n and found out about 10×10 via her blog, ‘Keeping it Going’ which can be found at www.a-n.co.uk/p/2295372

To find out more about 10×10, visit Kate’s website at http://www.katemurdochartist.com/ten_by_ten.html

This interview is published in full in Issue 1 of my new zine series ‘Reciprocity’ which documents, alongside with this blog, my research findings into ideas of generosity, sincerity and gift. For more information and to purchase the zine for £3 plus postage, visit http://jeanmcewan.com/2012/11/05/reciprocity-1/