Summer of Love (collaboration/participation/socially-engaged practice)

Participation. Documents of Contemporary Art. Edited by Claire Bishop, 2006.

Viewers as producers

A book about the social dimension of participation, rather than the activation of individual viewer in interactive or installation art. Reviews the history of practices since ’60s that appropriate social forms as a way to bring art closer to everyday life: samba dancing (Helio Oiticica) funk (Adrian Piper), drinking beer (Tom Maroni), discussing philosophy (Ian Wilson) or politics (Joseph Beuys), organising a garage sale (Martha Rosler). They differ from performance art, in that they strive to collapse the distinction between performer and audience, professional and amateur, production and reception. The emphasis is on collaboration and the collective dimension of social experience.

Precursor, Paris Dada-season of April 1921; a series of manifestations that sought to involve the city’s public, eg mock trial of anarchist author – where public were invited to sit on jury. Soviet mass spectacles that sublated individualism into propagandistic displays of collectivity. Authored tradition that seeks to provoke participants, and a de-authored lineage that aims to embrace collective creativity. One is disruptive and interventionist and the other constructive and ameliorative.

Walter Benjamin (1934ish) maintained that a work of art should actively intervene in and provide a model for allowing viewers to be involved in the process of production: ‘this apparatus is better, the more consumers it is able to turn into producers – that is, the more readers of spectators into collaborators’. Brechtian theatre abandons long complex plots in favour of ‘situations’ that interrupt the narrative through a disruptive element, eg song. Through montage and juxtaposition, audiences were led to break their identification with the protagonists on stage and be incited to critical distance – relies on critical thinking. Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty sought to reduce the distance between actors and spectators – physical involvement is considered an essential precursor to social change.

Today’s agendas: activation, authorship, community.

Activation: desire to create an active subject, one who will be empowered by the experience of physical or symbolic participation – able to determine their own social and political reality.

Authorship: the gesture of ceding some or all authorial control is conventionally regarded as more egalitarian and democratic than the creation of a work by a single artist. Shared production is also seen to entail the aesthetic benefits of greater risk and unpredictability -a non-hierarchical social model.

Community: community and collective responsibility in crisis. Alienating and isolating effects of capitalism.

Guy Debord (Situationist International). The spectacle – a social relationship between people mediated by images – is pacifying and divisive, uniting us only through our separation from one another – the opposite of dialogue. ‘Situations’ were a logical development of Brechtian theatre, except the audience function disappears altogether, in a new category of ‘viveur’ (one who lives). Rather than awakening critical consciousness (Brechtian model), ‘constructed situations’ aimed to produce a new social relationships and thus new social realities.

Nicholas Bourriaud (1998) Relational aesthetics.

Jacques Ranciere (2004) Problems and transformations in critical art. Art no longer wants to respond to the excess of commodities and signs but to a lack of connections. Argues that the opposition of active and passive is riddled with presuppositions about looking and knowing, watching and acting, appearance and reality. The binary active/passive always ends up dividing a population into those with capacity on one side, and those with incapacity on the other. Ranciere argues that emancipation should presuppose equality: the assumption that everyone has the same capacity for intelligent response to a book or play or work of art. Rather than suppressing this mediating object in favour of communitarian immediacy.

Calls for spectators that are active as interpreters. – we are all equally capable of inventing our own translations – inviting all to appropriate works for ourselves and make our own meanings.



South London Gallery. Pursuit of perfection: the politics of sport

www.southlondongallery.org

Wellcome Collection. Superhuman: exploring human enhancement from 600BCE to 2050.

www.wellcomecollection.org

I’m not really interested in sport itself, but found both these shows fascinating – possibly influenced by the fact that I’m inhaling Olympic mania with every breath at the moment.

Visited SLG first and loved the overpowering sense impression, experiencing the relationship between the work and the space around it. The show goes beyond the gallery to the recently gutted Southwark Old Town Hall, and extends to a range of local settings as part of ‘SLG Local’. The town hall is a beautiful sturdy municipal building. John Gerrard’s work, ‘Exercise’ (Djibouti) 2012 works conceptually (a former site of power) and physically/emotionally in a former council chamber. The comfy leather seats are arranged in a series of semi-circles, each seat with its own set of voting buttons: Yes, No, Abstain (perhaps there’s a mini-bar under the seat panel). A central floor-to-ceiling screen shows red and blue teams of super-fit runners tirelessly running figures-of-eight in the expansive and gruelling desert sun (thirst-quenching refreshments provided). The mesmerising endurance and sense of team commitment is tangible, alongside an odd sense of endless and timeless time. Another room has a domestic feel with wallpaper, showing Lucy Gunning’s video, ‘The Footballers’ (1996). Two women in white coats tackling a football in an empty gallery space.

The main SLG gallery, showing Aleksandra Mir’s ‘Triumph’ (2009), is a garish spectacle of 2,529 personal trophies, piled high and clustered around plinths. Cheap, mass-produced tack with heavy symbolic significance, spanning 40 years of different designs. Reminded me of Indian wedding shops in East London; cheap gold overload, a mockery of original intentions. Mir collected these trophies over a year in Sicily, advertising in the local press and offering a token 5 euros: people were clearly happy to part with these symbols of a once-victorious moment. Playful responses to football are shown in the upstairs galleries.

The Wellcome show is more philosophical than some of their previous over-literal interpretations of ideas. The artworks and objects are given the space and context to communicate for themselves, allowing for complexity and without being killed by over-wordy explanations. The show asks questions and presents ideas about the moral and social implications of human enhancement technology; interweaving artists, scientists, ethicists, philosophers and policy-makers. Ideas include: immortality; the use of cognitive-enhancing drugs to boost brainpower in healthy people; the impact of human enhancement on competitive sport; the wider benefits to society of becoming ‘better’ people. Questioning whether we should always strive to be as ‘normal’ as possible, it presents the aftermath of the Thalidomide disaster, which left thousands of children born with shortened limbs. The government responded technologically, providing artificial arms and legs. But the children largely rejected these and preferred adaptation – learning to use their bodies in a ways that might seem unusual to the able-bodied. Rebecca Horn’s finger extensions from the performance ‘Scratching Both Walls at Once’ (1974-5) are displayed in a cabinet nearby. Horn comments that she felt a tangible sense of her body’s limits being extended when demonstrating these enhancements.

Matthew Barney’s Cremaster series is shown, with model Aimee Mullins (a paralympian) in roles with different prosthetic legs. Challenging society’s assumptions about disability, she says ‘…it’s no longer about overcoming deficiency. It’s a conversation about augmentation; …about potential. A prosthetic limb does not need to replace loss anymore. It can stand for a symbol that the wearer has the power to create whatever it is that they want to create in that space, …architects of their own identities.’ A disturbing performance by Regina Jose Galdino, ‘Cut Through The Line’ (2005) shows a surgeon directly ‘marking up’ the body of a naked model standing on a lawn; illustrating the ‘improvements’ he would make.

So perhaps art and sport can mix.



Blog effect

Writing and thinking about this blog has given me new energy and a liberating sense of potential. My art practice feels a bit ropey at the moment, so I’m hoping to address that too …soon maybe. But I’m in a list mood, so here’s a list of all the good things about doing a project blog:

Feels like I’m part of the art universe.

Keeps me thinking critically.

Reading other blogs opens me up to new ways.

A good excuse to see shows – when I have endless job applications to do.

I’m more purposeful when I go to shows – and feel more confident talking about ideas I’m interested in. Finding my voice and writing style.

Evidence that I’m still an artist – even though I’m not making significant work at the moment.

Feels good to have a space in my life that is open and exploratory – no planned endpoint or direction. Doing something just because I want to do it.



SpaceStation65: www.spacestationsixtyfive.com

The show, No Now!, invited the public to bring along work to be hung on the opening night (107 submissions). Fifteen artists were invited to contribute; an opportunity for the gallery to bring together artists they already work with, alongside some fairly new names. Celebrating 10 years, this show got top marks for my three words: hierarchy, access, equality. The standard of all work was very high and spaciously curated. Great to spend some time here and chat to folks. Felt honoured that my drawing was placed above a drawing by Mary Yacoob and near a Saskia Wolbers print.

Performances on Saturday afternoon.

Charlotte Young’s artist statement: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v8DbLWAXvU

A refreshing take the artist’s plight. Makes me smile every time.

Lee Campbell: http://leecampbellartist.blogspot.co.uk/

Great website. Informed nonsense-playing.



Tate Tanks Summer School: discursive exercises (open discussion)

With Five Years – worked with Tate since 2000

Other speakers from: Amateurist Network, http://amateuristnetwork.wordpress.com/

Communist Gallery

The Tate London Schools and Teachers Team worked with Five Years (Edward Dorrian) to explore possibilities for teaching and learning. Open invitation to propose an ‘activity’ for the school (about 30 participants) – all proposals accepted (published as a limited edition; an archive of ideas and working text). ‘The museum as the site of this event and the role of the participants are opened up for more than mere spectacle or a moment of playful participation, but as an occasion of learning.’

I’m not sure this worked as a ticketed public event. Exchange score = 0.5. Quietly relieved that I didn’t go into teaching. Best bit was Edwina Ashton’s cute cats pussying about the space while the presentation was in full flow – a mildly subversive distraction that worked brilliantly, considering the institution (school/gallery).