Reciprocity

Progress on the ACE application is inching forward slowly, amidst leaky pipes, boiler problems and visits from friends and family.

I met up with Gideon at Fabric (http://www.fabricculture.co.uk/) last week to go through what I have already and got some really good feedback and suggestions from him (avoid the art jargon, write simply and straightfowardly was a valuable piece of advice). I have also had some email feedback and suggested changes from my Re;view mentor Caroline Hick which has alerted me to things I’ve mised out or not explained fully enough.

Each time I discuss the application with others it feels a bit less onerous, a bit more do-able. I’m grateful for the support from Gideon and Caroline, it’s keeping me sane and motivated when I might have otherwise have gotten discouraged. I’m lucky to have a few other artists friends who have had successful R and D funding who have also offered to read my application over.

Some great news as well – Anne McNeil, director at Impressions Gallery – has agreed to be involved in the knowledge sharing part of the project – to write something for the publication and perhaps talk at one of the events. Anne is my dream photography expert, partly because of her work with Trish Morrissey (http://www.impressions-gallery.com/exhibitions/exh…) and Marjolaine Riley (http://www.impressions-gallery.com/exhibitions/exh…) at Impressions Gallery – both of whom have made great photographic work on the family – and also because of her background in community photography. Anne wrote a wonderful essay called ‘Secrets and Lies’ for the Trish Morrissey show ‘Seven Years’ – published in the catalogue which she kindly gave me a copy of recently (http://archive.balticmill.com/index.php?access=&it…)- and since then I’ve been hoping that she might be involved in my project. I’m really interested to read and hear her perspectives on the creative collaborations which will form the first part of the project and on photographic work around the family. The fact that Anne is from Glasgow, and grew up near to where Nana brought up her family, means that we have a shared cultural connection and understanding is just an extra bonus. I’m so delighted she said yes.

Right, on with this form then.

Thinking very much this morning as I walked with Betty about power, access, hierarchies and ethics.

I used my second and final Re:view meeting with artist and curator Caroline Hick last week, to talk through the family photography project in depth; nail down what I wanted to do with it, who to work with, how to frame and structure it. The key thing I want to do is to find out how people use, and make meaning from their family photographs.

I want to collaborate in an equitable, non-hierarchical way with people on their family albums. I’ve done a lot of solo work in response to my own family album, and I want now to learn from others about how they might use their own family photographs, and the possibilities for creative collaboration around this. I’m interested in learning from people with different experiences, backgrounds and cultures from me, and in hearing stories that aren’t normally heard, or told. I want to create new contexts for dialogue to take place.So I want to work with non-artists, and people who might be described as ‘marginalised’. What is the experience of someone who is a refugee, who may have no, or few family photographs? What meanings might they attach to photographs? What are the possibilities for making new images?

I always come back to this quote by writer Annette Kuhn about family photography;

‘Images of former our lives are pressed into service in a never-ending process of making, remaking, making sense of, our selves—now’

Talking to Caroline about the ways I have worked with my own archive over the last few years, and showing her some examples of collages, books, zines, photographs and drawings that have formed my practice, she suggested because personal nature of my work, working one to one might work well. That felt kind of right. I would see the process as the quiet building up of a relationship, of sharing personal and creative responses, over time, using my work as a starting point for the sharing process. Making a collaborative piece of work, which takes away that direct autobiographical link, but which is informed by personal experiences and stories. This seems pretty exciting to me.

Of course, in finding people to work with, particularly people who might be vulnerable, needs a lot of thinking about and sensitivity.

A few months ago, a five year old boy told me a secret. When I asked him what it was, he whispered in my ear

‘with great power comes great responsibility’

Whether Spiderman said this or Voltaire, it doesn’t matter. It’s true.

As an artist going out into the world to work with people, you have a responsibility to engage with them as ethically and equitably as possible.This involves continually challenging yourself, being honest, and open, considering how and what you communicate, thinking about where the power is in any situation, and sometimes asking difficult questions.

These questions, posed by Nato Thompson, for an essay in the book “Living As Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1999 – 2011” seem apt

‘When is a project working? What are it’s intentions? Who are the intended audience? When is an artist simply using the idea of social work in order to progress her career?’

With these questions in mind. I’m taking tentative, speculative steps out ‘into the field’ to try to find people who might be interested in working with me.

Another quote, from the same book, from artist Rick Lowe

“Oftentimes as an artist, you’re trespassing into different zones…. Oftentimes… I know nothing. I have to force myself and find courage to trespass… Artists can license ourselves to explore in any way imaginable. The challenge is having the courage to carry that through.”

Full interview here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-sholette/act…

Nana’s anniversary yesterday.

Jeanie Bennie Porter Thain: a strong, funny, loving, creative, determined, wise woman, a year gone.

I still sorely miss her presence in the world and in my life – her letters, her stories, always surprising, making me laugh. But I feel her influence everyday, and I’m proud to be named after her.
I think she would be happy that her photographic archive has been the catalyst for a project which is pushing me out of my comfort zone – to find ways of connecting with new and unknown others, and to hear their stories of other families. Family was everything to Nana, the thing she valued most in her life.

The project is changing..

Away from personal, autobiographical concerns

From the’ I’ to the ‘we’

I’m going

Out the door
Into the field

Time to stop talking to myself,
and find others to tell me their stories

Time to take some risks.

Thank you Nana.

Preparing for my second Re;view meeting with Caroline Hick tomorrow. Going to use the session to concentrate on talking about the family photography project and it’s potential for a collaborative research project, combining and sharing ordinary and expert forms of knowledge.

In readiness for this and for the ACE application, trying to capture and pin down my ideas – doing it in physical form makes it more manageable and interesting. Then I can see it all instead of looking at jumbles of text on various computer documents, which can be dispiriting.

Some of the stuff that’s been feeding my brain over the past few days:

A treat, received through the post yesterday from artist Lyndsey Perth ‘A sense of Someplace’ – ‘publication of photomontages created during artist and photographer Lindsay Perth’s residency with NHS Forth Valley from 2011 until 2013. These montages are the results of a collaboration between the artist and clients of Clackmannanshire Community Healthcare Centre’s Mental Health Resource in Sauchie and members of mental health support organisation Reach Out With Arts in Mind, in Alloa.’

I showed Lyndsey’s work in 2010 at PS. I Love You, an arts programme I curated at Bradford Playhouse, and through following her on Twitter found out about A Sense Of Someplace publication. I suggested a swap: I sent her some of my zines and got this in return. I’m deeply impressed by the cinematic beauty of the images, which are found slides, selected and put together physically by Lyndsey and the group. Also the accompanying text, fragments from fictional sources meaningful to contributors, adds an intriguing and often ambiguous poetic layer to the narrative. The accompanying essays by Lyndsey herself, Malcom Dickson from Street LevelPhotoworks , contributors Susannah and Mary, and Art Psychotherapist Alison Brough, discuss the processes and the potential meanings in an accessable, and direct way, giving an insight into the progress and journey of the project.

A wonderful project – have a look at the website, and be wowed.

http://www.lippi.org/a-sense-of-someplace/

I’m interested in Lyndsey’s practice in working with found images and narrative – I think there’s a lot of common ground in our practices, indidividual and collaborative – we’ve agreed it would be good to keep in touch She is based in Edinburgh – hopefully next time I’m up visiting family in Glasgow we can meet up.

Also looking at:

1. This project by artist Emma Smith http://www.emma-smith.com/www.emma-smith.com/Arnolfini.html.

I heard about Emma’s work through talking to fellow Re:view recipient Amelia Crouch this week when we met up with along with a few other artists in Bradford. Emma is one of the artists Amelia is talking to about her practice as part of her bursary. I am interested in Emma’s situating of her practice as research, as this something I am currently thinking about.

2. ‘Photography Changes Everything’ – a book suggested by Lyndsey on Twitter about the different uses and meanings of photography, ‘how it shapes and changes every aspect of our experience of and in the world’, written as an ‘interdisciplinary dialogue’ between artists, writers, inventors, public figures and everyday folk. I treated myself as I just got paid. Enjoying thewide range of voices and perspectives, and particularly the inclusion of ‘ordinary’ forms of knowledge and experience. Here’s the online version http://click.si.edu/

This contribution, which is a story of one man’s reading of a family photograph taken when he was a child, is particularly interesting –

http://click.si.edu/VisitorStory.aspx?story=385

what do we make our family photographs mean? How do they support our narratives of ourselves?

3. ‘The Last Picture Show’ by Marjolaine Ryley: an ‘artist initiated research project… looking at photographic family archives and the way these are changing with the possibilities offered by a variety of new media technologies, examining the inevitable shifts that this has created’

http://www.thelastpictureshow.org/Home/homept2.htm

I’m interested in how her research grew out of her own practice and autobiography, and how she has navigated this transition

Here is more about Marjolaine’s practice http://www.marjolaineryley.co.uk/HTML/frameset-news.html

4. Val Williams: ‘Ghost Worlds: Photography and the Family’ article http://www.exitmedia.net/prueba/eng/articulo.php?id=158

‘I’m interested in the relationship between the I and the we’

I knew, before we met, from our exchanges on Twitter and also from the fact that Caroline Hick (one of my Re:view artists) recommended that we talk, that Lisa Cumming and I would find much in common. Lisa was every bit as warm and interesting in real life as I had found her in our online interactions , but it was in this simple sentence that I knew I had really found a kindred spirit.

Lisa is a Community Associate, part of the Programme for a Peaceful City, Department of Peace Studies, School of Social and International Studies at the University of Bradford http://www.brad.ac.uk/ssis/ppc/

I heard about her at the beginning of the year from mutual friends and fellow Wur bloggers Georgia and Ivan Mack. Following her on Twitter I was very interested in her tweets on listening conversations, conflict & nonviolent change. (https://twitter.com/LisaDialogue)

Back in March she tweeted that she had gone to a talk given by Cory Doctorow on digital freedom and copyleft at the 1 in 12 Club in March, an event I had wanted to go to but couldn’t. I (slightly cheekily) DMd her to ask if she would be interested in writing a guest post for Wurblog, which she kindly did http://wurblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/cory-doctorow-can-technology-save-the-city-guest-post-by-lisa-cummings/ and which I turned into a free zine which was distributed at Bradford Baked Zines popup shop in May (http://bradfordbakedzines.wordpress.com/)

Following another Twitter exchange about DIY culture and social change last month, (part of a larger conversation Storyfied here http://storify.com/JeanMcEwan/underground-culture-… ) we arranged to meet for coffee, which we did this week at the National Media Museum.

What a great blether we had, as my Nana would say. In two and a half hours we talked about many things – our shared Scottish roots (Lisa’s family are from near Glasgow) my family photography project, Lisa’s work at Peace Studies including an upcoming course CommUNIty for people interested in social change in Bradford, collaboration, co-production of knowledge, power and access, and also asking ourselves the big questions:

What is my role in society?

How can I make change?

How do I/we deal with conflict, personal and social?

It was good to find out that Lisa was still searching for the answers to these questions too!

Lisa talked about her own interest, and that of her colleagues in Peace Studies, in working with creative approaches to these questions. Lisa’s keys interests are in listening dialogue and in conflict transformation. She talked about how powerful she had found the Change Spaces collaboration at the University, facilitated by Caroline Hick http://www.brad.ac.uk/gallery/whats-on/spring-summ… (which I blogged about here this week) which involved making rope as a means of addressing the questions above.

We talked about the possibilities of creative collaborations with Peace Studies, and Lisa is going to look into possible funding from Connected Communities – a possible funding source Caroline had suggested I investigate.

We also talked about of gift circles. I described how Ivan and Georgia Mack and I had done it for the first time at the DIY conference in May at the 1 in 12 Club http://www.brad.ac.uk/music/whats-on-workshops/ and Lisa is very interested in us doing it at the commUNIty course in the coming months. Lisa is also very interested in using zines within the commUNIty course as a means for participants to communicate about their own activism work and projects in Bradford- and it excites me to thinking of making zines with a different kind of group- outwith the DIY community- people who might see, or use them in a different way.

Chatting further about Wur blog, Lisa said she would be interested in writing another post (hurrah!) – this time about her experience of the Change Spaces collaboration. I’d be really interested in reading her thoughts. She also thought some of her colleagues in Peace Studies may be interested in writing for the blog. This would be amazing- to gain and expand on other perspectives and experiences on gift and generosity.

We agreed, having so much common ground, and so many potential projects we could work on together, that we would have to meet again. I’m already looking forward to it.