… continued from last post:
A week in reciprocity, part two:
7. Vantage Art Prize (..continued).. There was a huge breadth of work, including live art, sculpture, painting, video, print and photography, shown on three floors of an unused office building. My personal highlight was ‘What is Left? () a participatory photography project being made by Leeds based performance artist Ellie Harrison, Manchester-based artist Roshana Rubin Mayhew and 50 members of the public. Working with individuals, community groups and bereavement charities, Ellie and Roshana are generating 50 portraits, corresponding texts and audio recordings exploring experiences of grief and mourning. Some of these portraits with audio were shown as part of Vantage. This project is part of a wider work called The Grief Series, a sequence of seven projects by Ellie using a seven stage Grief Model from popular psychology as a starting point. ( ) I experienced one piece (Ellie’s own) and found the audio of her talking about her mother hugely affecting. I found the work generous in its honesty and very cathartic to experience as it has moved me on in my own process of mourning.
8. Ongoing reading of Charles Eisenstein’s ‘Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition’ (read it here online for free ). I found out about this book via Alinah Azedeh’s excellent a-n blog ‘Burning The Books’ www.a-n.co.uk/p/2831785 and I’m so glad, as it has made me think, learn and re-asses my relationship to and knowledge of money. It’s been mind-altering. Here’s a quote from Chapter 14 ‘Relearning Gift Culture’
“To fully receive is to willingly put yourself in a position of obligation, either to the giver or to society at large. Gratitude and obligation go hand in hand, they are two sides of the same coin. Obligation is obligation to do what? It is to give without ‘compensation’. Gratitude is what? It is the desire to give, again without compensation, borne of the realisation of having received. In the age of the separate self, we have split the two, but originally they are one: obligation is a desire that comes from within and is only secondarily enforced from without. Clearly then, reluctance to receive is actually reluctance to give. We think that we are being noble, self-sacrificing, or unselfish if we prefer to give rather than to receive. We are being nothing of the sort. The generous person gives and receives with an equally open hand”
9. Progress on the multi-author blog on generosity/reciprocity is going well. The majority of people I have asked to contribute have said yes, either to being a regular author, or to guest posting. People have been really positive about the idea, which has been so encouraging, in particular fellow a-n blogger Kate Murdoch (www.a-n.co.uk/p/1689794/) who has been really generous from the outset with her time and support of all my reciprocity doings. I feel very fortunate to have made such good connections on a-n with artists such as Kate whose work I greatly respect and which feeds my own. The plan is to launch the blog on Friday 1st March.. more to follow!
10. A stunning A1 edition, sent to me from artist Alex Hetherington from ‘Modern Edinburgh Film School’, a research and production project which includes curated screenings, film essays, a group show and participatory forms, a published zine Edinburgh Homosexual, texts and editions: A Party for Young Artists. I am a great fan of Alex’s work () and I have had the pleasure of showing his work at a number of projects/exhibitions I have curated over the past 6 years or so. Although we have only met once briefly in real life in all my communications with him I have found him to be one of the most reciprocal and generous artists I have encountered. And his work is stunning. Lucky, lucky, lucky me.
‘Modern Edinburgh Film School Wallpaper’ prints are available from:
http://modernedinburghfilmschool.bigcartel.com/product/modern-edinburgh-film-school-wallpaper
