Wednesday 2 March 2011: Sites and Interventions

Tansy Spinks and Marina Kassianidou

In attendance: Marsha Bradfield, Maria Christoforatou, Jeffrey Dennis, Bernice Donszelmann, Marina Kassianidou, Hayley Newman, Scott Schwager, Tansy Spinks, Jim Threapleton, Amanda Hopkins

Apologies from: Angela Hodgson, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Aaron McPeake

Fig 1. Marina Kassianidou, Maria Christoforatou, Hayley Newman, Jim Threapleton, Marsha Bradfield and Tansy Spinks

In this rich discussion, we explored 'the artwork's' reach, including documentation. Where are the edges? We also considered art making as a process of mark making, understood in an expanded sense.

Tansy began by reading a 'tongue-in-cheek' statement titled 'The Problem of Wearing Two Hats'. It explored the 'practitioner's' and 'critic's' alternative headgear by playfully straddling the (inevitable [?]) split between 'research' and 'practice' in practice-based PhDs. Tansy offered several suggestions:

1. The two hats could be worn serially, 'perhaps on alternative weeks, acknowledging the head had changed shape slightly each time to accommodate each hat.'
2. The hats could be worn successively, which would mean having an endless supply of each hat. They would then build up gradually to become a kind of 'Cat-in-the-Hat style stack.'
3. Or we could consider occasional destruction; it can be terrifying but also rewarding. Destroy the hats!
   
4. Perhaps the best strategy is to throw up both hats and see where they land.

Discussion then turned to documentation. Informing, reinforcing and reinventing 'the artwork' are just some of the ways that documentation comprises it 'after the fact'. Before screening two video works, Tansy asked:'In relation to my own preoccupation with live, site-specific performance and the role of the document, I pose the questions: How to audience expectations change from being there to receiving the experience second-hand via the document? Is a performance any less valid without an audience? Is an exhibition any less valid if not many people go to it? How are perceptions change by the edit of the document, which is another part of the creative process, which can substantially alter the reading of the work? And can there be such a thing as a completely objective document?'

We then screened documentation of a violin performance Tansy did on a World Word II fort located eight nautical miles out at sea. Here she experimented with playing both the architecture and her violin (she used the word 'activator' to describe her relationship within the artwork), while also responding to her collaborator's site-specific interventions. Tansy also described the demanding process of producing this short-lived event. This raised questions around why the challenge of getting to the site and marking the artwork wasn't included in the document? Also, what are the possibilities of revisiting documentation and/or performance sites after the fact? It was observed there is substantial research around 'being there' and not 'not being' there in performance studies. So perhaps there are ways of translating these alternative states of encounter, ways that acknowledge a document as Other to 'the original'. There is always loss when it comes to recording performance. So what does one do with this inevitability? Perhaps it's about enabling a different kind of experience--Other to not being there. We need to move beyond 'lack' in performance documentation. We might also thinking about the document as variously sited: in an online/offline portfolio as well as different presentation contexts.

Fig 2. Bernice Donszelmann, Amanda Hopkins, Marina Kassianidou

and Maria Christoforatou

Marina's painting-based research considers the interplay among mark, surface and material. The synthesised studio notes comprising her presentation explored the making and the viewing of her drawings, paintings and installations. Elaborating the process of making as research, these notes concerned destabilising binaries, including subject and object, visibility and invisibility, intentional and accidental and same and different. In contrast to modernist assumptions, where the mark enjoys privileged status over the surface (no pun intended), Marina marks in ways that complicate an artwork's figure-ground relations as well as their sitedness within a specific context. These marks are often 'lost' on the surface. As careful representations, they can be confused with 'naturally occurring' marks. Simulation provides one way of thinking about Marina's approach. Her marks often 'pass' for wear and tear, marks that are often 'undesirable'--stains, scratches bangs and other evidence of time and movement. There is something obsessive about recreating marks that may look accidental.'What is achieved in the artwork is a continuation between these two types of marks, leading to moments when they appear to conflate.'

As beautiful as they are beguiling, Marina's drawings, paintings and installations raise questions around what constitutes 'the artist's response'--in what ways does he or she add value to something? This research also ask us to consider where our attention (as 'viewers') should be focused...

Resources:

• Tansy recommended we look at James Elkins's Why Art Cannot Be Taught

Cross References:

• Regarding wearing hats - see Adrian Piper's 1996 text On Wearing Three Hats
• Regarding adding value - see the work of Susan Collis

Questions to take forward:

• What's the difference between 'practice-led' and 'practice-based' PhDs?
• What would it mean to take seriously the idea of working in an ever-expanding context? What impact would this have the borders of the artwork?
• How can we not engage with 'the audience' when it comes to performance? Is this possible?
• Where is the 'value' in the artwork (as research)?

Wednesday 2 February 2011: Practice Makes Practice

Elisa Aalusa: Sketchbooks, and a workshop on practice by TPE.


Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 6 - Practice Makes Practice

In attendance: Elisa Alaluusua, Marsha Bradfield, Robert Luzar, Aaron McPeake, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Angela Hodgson, Sam Burford, Ian Brown, Kimathi Donkor.

Apologies: Scott Schwager, Ken Wilder.

Presentation by Elisa Aalusa: Sketchbooks

Elisa introduced her presentation with an interactive activity, when we were handed some anonymous sketchbooks and provocatively asked to decided which ones were “good” and which “bad”. This prompted a discussion on the motivations and uses of sketchbooks, that set the tone for Elisa to move on to present her work / research using video interviews with professional artists who use sketchbooks as an important element in their practice, comparatively with observation of art students sketchbooks. From these, she makes drawings that gradually evolve from visual compositions copied from the original sketchbooks sources, to more autonomous drawings focused on mark making.

Fig 2. Elisa Alaluusua, Robert Luzar, Angela Hodgson and Marsha Bradfield.

Fig 3. Notes on "good and bad" sketchbooks.

These are the key points arising from Elisa presentation and the discussion:

Practice as repetitive, as iterative, doing and doing and doing again. In this iterative process there is a tension between repeating (or copying) what was previously thought of as successful whist at the same time deviating from it, and following through by navigating what “feels right” and what doesn’t.

How do we judge practice? How much information do we need about the context in which the wider practice takes place, to be able to make value judgments on the quality of individual art works. What kind of frameworks do we bring to bear when we attempt to judge practice? Practice is entangled in hierarchies of production and reception. In production, there is a sense that some aspects of practice - some media or formats - especially those associated with process might command less attention than others. At reception point, to what extent the status of the artist – as student, professional, amateur – conditions the way we might read and interpret the outcomes of the practice.

Practice as aspirational, with artists articulating their desired position in the art landscape through literal and implied links to other artists’ practices.

Practice as responding to institutional demands or expectations. To what extent do art institutions determine the form our practice takes? Whilst in art school students are clearly instructed to practice in a variety of ways and assessed on their ability to do so, can we honestly say that so-called professional artists are any less “instructed” by the institutions of art needs and their demands – from the auction house to the public commissioning body? A hypothetical scenario: If the art world disappeared overnight, what kind of work will you be doing tomorrow?

Practice as embodiment. As an artist, where are you in the work? What are the marks or traces of your body and / or your subjectivity? Does it operate through absence or presence?


A Workshop on Practice – Part One

At TPE 5, our previous session at the BFI – see notes in blog – someone in the audience made the point that despite its supposed focus on practice, there seemed to be a lot of talk about research. This is an issue that we as facilitators of TPE, had discussed many times at our post-seminars debrief meetings. How could we maintain the focus on discussing practice, when the very nature of being engaged in practice-based research prompted us all the time to think “research”.

We also realised that there was another obstacle to talk about practice that perhaps had to do with the difficulty to articulate what practice means, both in a general sense, and in the particular instances of our own work. We were keen to take on this challenge, and decided to use one half of the next TPE to do a workshop on “practice”.

These are the summary the notes. We are hoping to do a follow up workshop at a later date in the academic year, to dig a little big dipper into our ideas on practice. Many thanks to everyone that took part in the workshop and contributed their ideas, questions and insights.

Fig 4. Verbs of practice.

Exercise 1: Write up three verbs that define or describe your practice. Stick them up on the wall next to each others' list. Read them aloud to the group.

Drawing / Writing / Talking
Observe / Compose / Engaging
Talking / Editing / Emailing
Oscillating / Modelling / Provoking
Falling / Pointing / Smudging
Looking / Talking / Listening
Draw/ Ponder / Struggle
Materialising / Transforming / Reflecting
Writing / Mark-making / Walking
Thinking / Discussing / Living
Casting / Filming / Installing
Thinking / Printing / Discarding

Fig 5. Sam Burford and Elisa Alaluusua introducing their practice to each other.

Exercise 2: In pairs, introduce your practice to your partner, taking no longer than 4 minutes each. Then present your partner’s practice to the group.

Points raised:

• Practice is bigger than yourself, how can you define it and what is the point, especially if we are not sure what is it that we are doing (transition moments, moments of confusion).
• Scope of practice. Practice involves a wider understanding of art making that also contains the context. Could we perhaps be able to define practice by “talking around” it?
• Social realism. We are accountable to others, to “the public” and part of this, is to define and articulate the intentions of our practice. Who is the audience for our attempts to define or articulate notions of practice?
• To arrive at a definition of practice can be terrifying, it can feel like fixing it. Accepting the fact that it is an ongoing process, that you need to articulate and re-articulate your “statement of practice” continuously. Looking at the history of our “statements of practice” can reveal how much we have moved on, but also what is the sediment. It is easier to practice, than to “declare practice”. This seems to be related to the fixedness of language.

Fig 6. How can we begin to define practice?

Exercise 3: Have a go and try to write in a sentence a general definition of practice.

Here are some of the suggestions:

• A singular model and way(s) of working.
• Practice is a way of working that elucidates and manages meaning and causation in a contained environment.
• Embodied thinking in the hope of response.
• Practice is a range of activities, including thought, that you use to create meaning.
• Doing stuff in order to reflect one’s interest which also provides for the opportunity to escape from one’s interests.
• A process that produces.
• Stuff you do: it’s a verb thing, active, ongoing, changing, processing, organising, in effect more than just a sentence.
• Practice is the work we do, considered in its context.

The date for Part 2 of the workshop will be announced in due course. If you would like to be invited, please email us at thepracticeexchange@gmail.com