Narrating Practice

Date: Wednesday 11th January 2012, 2-5pm

Venue: Green Room, Chelsea College of Art and Design, Millbank

Present: Deniz Akca, Elena Artigas, Dalia Baassiri, SE Barnet, Helen Couchman, Maria Christoforatou, Karl Cresser, Nerma Cridge, Cristina Figueroapalau, Rebecca Hackemann, Angela Hodgson-Teall, Maria Kheirkhah, Catherine Long, Ope Lori, Elizabeth Manchester, Aaron McPeake, Elle Reynolds, Robert, Scott Schwager, Su, Joel Yuen.

Susan Edith Barnet is in the final year of a practice based PhD at Kingston University, and is an Associate Lecturer on the Fine Art Foundation course at Central St. Martin’s. Her research looks at the experience of disorientation. In it she attempts to go somewhere else as a way of accessing the unfamiliar. She turns to the experiences of others as they are relayed to her through storytelling. As these are not her own experiences they maintain a degree of strangeness, otherness.

Recounting an experience lies in a convergence of the unconscious with memory. Telling one’s story relies on remembered experience, whether of that which has been lived and is in the moment being remembered, or which is being remembered from moments of previous telling, or of a combination of these things and others as well. There are influences that range from childhood recollections to cultural histories to the particulars of the physical body. The connection to another’s experience traverses a wide gap of both conscious and unconscious activity.

SE Barnet presented a talk given on her work at the Royal College of Art’s Edge of Our Thinking conference by the artist Anne-Marie Creamer, referring to herself in the third person. She showed transcriptions of mobile phone messages that she had exchanged with Anne-Marie Creamer before the talk, a form of narration of the various arrangements that had to be negotiated. She presented photographs taken from aeroplanes showing the landscape below, over which she had drawn in green snaking lines – a series entitled You can’t walk on water you can’t sleep on clouds. In making these and other works she was thinking about what it is to make the familiar unfamiliar.

SE Barnet always presents herself in the third person – the emails she displays are presented as part of an exchange.

In the Landmark videos, she presents open-ended scenarios around collaboration with members of the public – a form of documentation of dislocation and displacement, a movement between what is same and familiar, and what is strange.

Story of Elsewhere, which she created for her thesis exhibition, is set in public spaces. We see individuals speaking in a multi-screen video projection, in which it is not possible to see all the screens at the same time. The viewing experience is one of constant disruption as the speakers talk over one another. It is a performative act of remembering and relaying as the people describe their impressions of public monuments in another place. At the same time she presented a video showing the Eiffel tower being photographed, alongside two artist’s books.

In Story of Elsewhere there is a constant negotiation between first and third person narratives, as the subtitles translate the words of the speakers in the third person, although the words were originally spoken in the first.

Elizabeth Manchester asked about SE Barnet’s different selves – the split between SE Barnet as first and third person. How conscious, and how explicit does she feel it to be? How much is in the written part of her thesis? SE replied that the abstract of her thesis suggests a navigational approach to reading through the three written and two visual parts of her thesis, in which she uses substitute/interchangeable identities. One part is fictional – it narrates the journey of a traveler.

Scott Schwager asked about the dialogic aspects of SE’s practice. She responded that the narrative/story-telling comes from her training in film-making. Unfolding a dialogue or narrating a story come naturally to her – everything goes back to story-telling – and expresses the pleasure of engaging with narrative.

Maria Kheirkhah asked whether anything is fixed in SE’s work. SE responded that that question had been asked in her viva – her work represents a definite challenge to fixity…

Angela Hodgson-Teall asked about the notion of having a fixed artist’s identity and SE responded that in her case it comes from having had two different identities all her life – she has two birth certificates and two different names – a double identity.

Aaron McPeake brought up the issue of gender – femininity has come to be associated with multiple identities. This stimulated a general discussion around multiple identities and the notion of fluidity. SE had used Freud’s notion of the uncanny as a way to access this slipperiness in her early research – it had been an early starting point for approaching the notion of destabilization. She likes the idea of the disembodied voice of the psychoanalyst. She would like to be speaking from a hole in the ground.

http://www.sebarnet.net

http://sebarnet.wordpress.com/

Rebecca Hackemann is a second year part time PhD candidate at CCW. She received her MFA in 1996 from Stanford University, California. Her practice spans a variety of media and is inspired by theoretical concerns surrounding the position of the spectator and the structure of vision and language, both written and photographic. It consists of photo-based image text work, anamorphic drawings and most recently optical devices on pavements in neighborhoods of New York. Her recent research studies engagements with a viewing device on two pavements in New York, where they are presently anchored for the next year. Thus the work is not finished when it is installed, it consists of a process, despite having a physical form. The Urban Field Glass Project both analyses the surrounding physical location using historical photographs, and tests itself as an art/research object – it collects its own feedback.

Rebecca’s theoretical aim is to use psychoanalysis as a methodology in her thesis and furthermore bring the complicated nexus of disciplines that converge in the public and the contested definitions concerning place/space/site in the public realm into a new focus through psychoanalytic theory. Rebecca would also like to discuss the relationship between practice and research for her upcoming presentation at CAA in Los Angeles in February www.rebeccahackemann.com http://tinyurl.com/7fn2hae

Rebecca Hackemann presented very briefly her trajectory from her early training as a photographer, to what she is doing now in her practice-led research. She presented stereoscopic viewing boxes in which she controlled the viewer, forcing him or her to look through two peep-holes to see close-up photographs of parts of the body. This work was influenced by theoretical concerns, texts such as Thinking Photography, edited by Victor Burgin that she had encountered on her BA at. In 2007/8 she showed anamorphic drawings on the walls of Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta and Hunter College Times Square Gallery, New York. To see these the viewer had to stand on an ‘x’. The Looking Glass House shows an anamorphic house with Alice coming out.

Rebecca’s PhD is concerned with new role public art might play– focusing on permanent public art in places where you don’t normally expect to see it. She unexpectedly got a grant and had to act quickly – there was a deadline by which she had to spend the money and execute her project. Her starting point was to challenge the public art cliché – enlarged studio art, extended, made more durable and then put outside without consideration of place or any attempt to engage with the community around it. A theorist Miwon Kwon, analyses projects that claim to be engaging with the community. Rebecca wanted to put up work that is not finished, which attracts respondents after it is installed. She spent a few months working with people, asking them what they would like to see in the two spots that she had selected. She chose two spots in areas that were not visited by tourists, dead spaces, places where there is not much to see. For example a street next to a fly-over, with a long stretch of metal fence, behind which is a triangle shaped left over urban space. On these pavements she installed metal viewing boxes on poles that invited the viewer to look inside through peepholes like the ones on her stereoscopic boxes from previously. The viewer sees a rotation of images selected by the public – as well as two historical images of the sites that appear in 3-d. At the same time as rotating images, the boxes solicit data from the viewers who can respond/give feedback through an app accessible using a ] QR code on the back of the box and a weblink. She also sent out a questionnaire online. The questionnaire asks them how they have found the experience of seeing something in a non-tourist area, and then whether they have ever visited a piece of public art – for example the Anish Kapoor piece at the Rockefeller Centre a tourist spot. Everyone answers no to this – they are all non art-world people.

This is art that creates data – an alternative to grafitti. It has a fluidity – through Rebecca’s taking herself out as an image-maker and decision-maker. Rebecca did not create any of the images that play in the slide-show; she described the process of soliciting images from the public, before asking a panel of people to make a selection. She transferred these to slide by photographing them in order to create the final work.

Maria Kheirkhah asked about the physical object – the viewing mechanism – what is the place of the documentation of the process of making it in Rebecca’s thesis. Rebecca answered that the process is irrelevant. For her, the piece takes the place of an analyst - it is the one who asks questions. It reveals the context that it sits within. The data will be original research in her thesis. This installation in New York is the pilot work for a bigger piece of work, as yet undetermined. With this project she has been investigating how people really react to public art – it is a model for engaging afterwards – to use the information in future work. She wants to ask: what new roles can public art play in the public realm? How do people react to it? Can the methodology of psychoanalysis open the whole picture?

Scott Schwager asked a technical question about using the QR code app – only younger people have this generally, so would this not be problematic in terms of data? Perhaps there is a need for multiple ways to gather data – through surveys in documents/questionnaires?

What about the sculptural aspects of the piece? What about the work as a piece of sculpture?

Rebecca answered that the questionnaire was also asked as an e-mail and using SurveyMonkey. She is going to conduct interviews as well. Scott asked if this was not too much data, or data from too many sources to manage, to which Rebecca asked – is this not what we are supposed to be able to do well in a PhD – synthesise data. To her the object is not designed to read as an aesthetic object.

As Rebecca’s psychoanalytical methodology is Lacanian, Angela Hodgson-Teall asked about Lacan’s notions of power and the worker in relation to Rebecca’s project. Rebecca says that she is thinking about architecture as subject – the real, the imaginary, the symbolic are all intertwined in it – also many disciplines are involved, such as sociology, urban planning and social geography. She is working as a sounding board, reactivating existing work – public sculptures that people walk past without noticing at the same time as finding out what part public works can play in people’s lives.

Maria mentioned that the topic of (permanent) public art and audience seems very broad and so did Scott. Rebecca agreed, but feels she is narrowing down particular areas of concern (gaps!) and that psychoanalysis is not a seperate discipline to bring into the research (making it bigger), but is rather a method and research position that can bring all these disciplines that impinge on public art together to unlock new paradigms for public art theory and practice.

Rebecca passed out a questionnaire to everyone. It asks us about our own practice and what role it plays within our research. It is for her talk at the impending College Art Association Conference. The questionnaire is available here www.rebeccahackemann.com/Research/CAATalkHackemann.pdf

Entropy and fluidity in Afghanistan

William Cobbing and Carlos Noronha Feio

Date: Wednesday 7th December 2011, 2-4pm

Venue: Green Room, Chelsea College of Art and Design, Millbank

William Cobbing, Bamiyan Mirror, 2009

William Cobbing completed his PhD by Practice at Middlesex University in 2010. He is a Senior Lecturer in BA Fine Art: Sculpture at Wimbledon and is supervising a CCW PhD.

Starting from a sculptural sensibility, Cobbing’s art encompasses video, installation and performance. People are often depicted in fusion with their architectural surroundings, as extensions of the plumbing, or buried under layers of clay or concrete from which they absurdly struggle to extricate themselves. Human limbs appear trapped in buildings, suggesting a process of entropy through which their materiality is dispersed, the boundaries between the body and the landscape are blurred and meaning is disrupted. Cobbing will present Bamiyan Mirror, a recent series of photographs of the destroyed Buddha niches in Afghanistan, their ghostly shadows reflected in a mirror. The series will be exhibited in Scope: New Photographic Practices at Beijing University, November 2011.

http://www.artsandecology.org.uk/magazine/features/william-cobbing--bamiyan-mirror-series

Carlos Noronha Feio The End (Birth and Fertility, Good News), 2008

Carlos Noronha Feio is in the first year of a full-time PhD by Practice at the RCA. His practice includes actions, performance, video, drawing, painting, photography and installation as research into cultural, local and global identity. He frequently adopts culturally significant images, locations and symbols as a form of creative interference with meaning, demonstrating the almost arbitrary nature in which cultural significance may be adopted or interpreted. Improvisation, repetition and conflicting juxtapositions are used to explore issues of communicating with otherness and the inherent fluidity of meaning. Noronha Feio will present A A and Away, a series of rugs he has been producing for the last five years that create bridges between Afghan war rugs and traditional rugs from Portugal. Illustrating perceptions of difference between the cultures of two politically and geographically disparate places, the rugs call attention to the two countries’ common past.

www.carlosnoronhafeio.co.uk

www.the-mews.org

Liminality and the power of race

Lee Campbell and Ope Lori

Date: Wednesday 2^nd November 2011, 2-4pm

Venue: Green Room, Chelsea College of Art and Design, Millbank

In attendance: Deniz Akca, Susan Barnett, Lee Campbell, Maria Christoforatou, Ali Goodyear, Maria Kheirkah, Catherine Long, Ope Lori, Robert Luzar, Keivan Sarrafan,Trish Scott,Charlotte Webb

Apologies: Ann Course, Elizabeth Manchester

Lee Campbell is an Associate Lecturer in Theatre Studies at Wimbledon and a visiting artist at CSM, undertaking research at Loughborough University supervised by Dr. Gillian Whiteley and FREEE collective’s Mel Jordan. His practice-based MPhil/PhD entitled ‘How to make a witness’, deploys theatricality within the extended white cube and interrogates performance art’s capacity for absence and presence, embodiment and liminality. By staging public performance-art spectacles that shift the status of all participants, protagonists and audiences alike to witnesses, he attempts to understand how the role of the witness has a responsibility in producing evidence of what the event was. www.leecampbellartist.blogspot.com

Lee presented an overview of his research, titled ‘How to Make a Witness’. His project engages current debates on the documentation of live performance by shifting the status of the protagonist and audience to that of ‘witness’. He listed 8 key concepts, or ‘keywords’ (after Raymond Wiliams) in his project:

1) liminality 2) location 3) temporality 4) ‘theatrical persona’ 5) liveness

6) reflexivity 7) witness 8) recording)

These key concepts, taken from the critical framework of performance art, are deployed as methods or ‘survival tactics’ in his research, and the research process is understood as a bricolage of these tactics. Lee emphasised how useful the PhD has been for clarifying and establishing his relationship to the terms on which he bases his works and hypotheses.

He considers the research process to be ‘liminal’ – a transition state between two points. For Lee, research is like the time-based medium of performance itself, unfolding in real time and subject to change.

He talked about cultural theorist Peggy Phelan’s take on the issue of documentation– she’s anti- performance documentation, and thinks the ontology of the performance itself is paramount. He also noted her account of performance art itself as a liminal phenomenon, situated somewhere between theatre and fine art. This gives rise to questions about where performance art should be located.

Responding to a quote by Tim Etchells, Lee distinguished between the terms ‘spectator’ and ‘witness’. Witnessing can take 2 forms of engagement, either by chance or choice. When an audience knows what they’re going to see, their experience of the performance is pre-conditioned.

For Lee, protagonist and audience are observing each other in the performance. He talked about the responsibility of the audience to provide ‘evidence’ of what occurred in the performance, thus making them responsible for how a performance lives on.

There was substantial discussion about forms of documentation: Lee talked about the materiality of the record in relation to a series of works ‘paintings of a performance nobody saw’. He talked about a drawing’s capacity to be a recorder – to be a witness, describing drawing as a liminal, non-traditional form of recording a performance. The idea of ‘over-recording’ came up – the idea that documentation takes over! Performative writing – the ability of text to account for an event, vs ability of image to account for an event.

We discussed the idea of the theatrical persona, and what kind of license that gives the performer.

Ope Lori is a third-year full-time researcher based at Chelsea. Taking the form of video, performance and photography, Ope’s research looks at the power relations between female bodies of different races when they are viewed in juxtaposition to one another, and how gender roles are negotiated between inter-racial female couples. Her work investigates signs of visual difference associated with masculinity and femininity that are carried by skin colour through myths, stereotypes and representations of black and white women in films, specifically in lesbian narratives. Focusing on the transformative power of the ideologically-informed gaze, Ope’s presentation will illustrate the ways in which her practice has led her research. www.opelori.com

Ope began her presentation by contextualising herself, stating “I speak from the position of being a black, lesbian, second generation, middle class woman, living in London.” She then went on to show a series of videos to demonstrate the ways she has dealt with and started to define her research question within her practice.

In her videos she juxtaposes women of different skin colour, surveying their colour, poses and gazes through the lens of her camera, and investigating the power relationships between them. She is interested in the power of the image to seduce the viewer, in the performance of the stereotyped and the way two bodies inform each other's identity.

Ope presented a video piece in which two women use a gun as a prop, pointing it at each other in turn. The gun is then pointed directly at the camera, creating a tension between the audience and protagonists, and shifting the dynamics between the viewer and the viewed.

For another video piece, Ope was prompted by stereotypical media images of black males in relation to gun crimes in 2009. She was interested in how these images and broader media narratives impacted the public imagination and in whether they may have been projected onto her. Did such images or narratives have an effect on the way she was characterised as the dominant figure in her relationship with her girlfriend?

Ope talked about her idea of the “pre image” which she described as follows: “A pre image is an image of a further image to come, an image used as a catalyst for another creation...one has to consider how they got to make the image in the first instance”.

She talked about the difficulty of being tempted to stray from her central question which is: “How Can Imaging Undo Stereotypical Representations of Skin Color and Gender in the Female body, Between Black and White Women?”

In revisiting this question during her research, she started to dig into lesbian screen narratives, as an arena where the staging of power dynamics can easily be seen in interracial couples. This started a visual investigation into the ways she could adopt processes of re-visualisation and recoding in order to break up power relations, race, sexuality and gender assumptions/stereotypes.

She then started articulating this visually through her video, 'Man’s Greatest Tragedy/ Who’s The Fairest' by making visible the codes of juxtaposition, colour and non conventional communication. She asked once more, how can the black woman be given feminine status when next to the white woman?

Ope said "One of the reasons into this way of seeing, is, as suggested by Bell Hooks, due to the impact of slavery and imperialism, where black women were seen as surrogate men, due to doing labouring work as well as domestic duties".

Ope drew several references to films such as ‘She Must be Seeing Things’, ‘The Watermelon Woman', ‘The Women’ and Sally Potter's ‘Gold Diggers’ as well as the analytical writings of Frantz Fanon for whom the mark of blackness was equated to masculinity. Fanon's book - 'White Skin/Black Mask' has been a useful resource.

Several questions were put to Ope regarding her desire to reposition the black women on the map as the object of the gaze, in making her spectacle and in giving her feminine status when next to the white woman.

In particular, how might her work be read within feminist discourses, and how will she navigate the pitfalls of objectification and rarification in her own forms of representation?

She was also asked about the importance of using her own body in her videos and whether this was a phenomenological consideration in her work. A discussion about the personal situatedness of practice led research followed.

Welcome to TPE 2011-12!

Icons and symbols – image and text

Maria Christoforatou and Elizabeth Manchester

Date: Wednesday 5th October 2011, 2-4pm

Venue: Green Room, Chelsea College of Art and Design, Millbank

In attendance: Maria Kheirkhah, Elizabeth Manchester, Charlotte Webb, Maria Christoforatu, Deniz Acka, Jim Threapleton, Ope Lori, Angela Hodgson, Lee Campbell, Scott Schwager, Aaron McPeake, Nerma Cridge, AN other, AN other, AN other*

*There were 4 people whose names we omitted to take (as we were so carried away with the scintillating discussion!) Please let us know who you are! You can post a comment here or email thepracticeexchange@gmail.com

Maria Christoforatou is a third-year full-time researcher based at Wimbledon. Her practice-based PhD focuses on the conceptual space between the notion of 'house/home' in the English language, and the umbrella term 'spiti' in Greek, employing a mixture of textual analysis and experimental art-making. Her research dialogues between a mapping of personal history through experience and fantasies, and an examination of the differences between Greek and English architecture and its effects on the works of Greek and English-speaking artists. It investigates the relationships between symbolic and iconic meanings and the processes of creating and destroying. In her practice, logical truth is often confronted by the absurd.




















In this session, Maria presented an outline of her thesis as she is planning to present it at her confirmation, introducing its central tenet – the relationship between the differing English terms ‘house/home’ and the singular ‘spiti’ in Greek and the difficulty of cross-translating. A concurrent theme is house fires, which she has experienced in person – she feels that the scars from these experiences have been hard-wired into her and her subjective experience is part of her research. She listed contemporary artists working with the notions of the house or home, and outlined her methodological tools for analyzing texts about these – Paul Ryan’s TAG system, derived from the semiotic theories of C S Peirce. She is also using Grant McCracken’s interview analysis technique to analyse these texts.

Her hypothesis is that there are different interpretations in the different cultures. From a more general look at artists working with this theme, she is focusing on specific Greek and English artists to highlight the cultural differences. She is looking at the materials that a house is made of and questioning how we feel/experience them, and how they contribute to our sense of house and home. What particular effects might wood have for example? What precisely contributes to the cultural differences – and how far does climate have an effect? How would Rachel Whiteread’s House be seen in Greece? The Greek term ‘spiti’ also refers to hotels, guest houses and hospitality more generally, while ‘katoikia’ refers to residences and architectural habitations. Who lives in what kind of house and how does this affect their sense of self?

Maria showed images of Lead Houses made by the Greek artist Nikos Tranos in 1989, Derek Jarman’s house at Dungeness in Kent (made of wood), Rachel Whiteread’s plaster cast of the inside of a house (1993) and Donald Rodney’s In the House of my Father, a miniature model of a house made from the artist’s (black) skin (1996-7). Images of her work include watercolours, drawings, photographs of a pink dolls’ house with which a performer is interacting, and a small model of a house made of white card
























In the following discussion, Elizabeth invited Maria to tell us more about her practice in relation to her thesis. Maria feels it is all very experimental at this stage. Watercolour is a new medium for her, producing beautiful semi-abstracted images. We talked about how Maria chooses which medium to use.

Deniz Akca asked whether Maria is only focusing on contemporary Greek houses – which tend to be stone/concrete blocks - or whether she is also looking at historical houses in Greece.
Lee Campbell introduced the issue of liminality, which is the focus of his own research...
Elizabeth asked whether Maria was interested in the interior of the house, or whether she is only looking at the house/home as a symbol. Maria explained that her research stems from an assignment on her BA, when they were asked to select one from a set of icons/symbols drawn by Magritte to work with. She chose the drawing of a house. She is beginning to think about the inside of the house and has started to paint the walls of the rooms of her doll’s house different colours.

Elizabeth Manchester is a second-year part-time researcher based at Chelsea, looking at subjective feminine experience in relation to the body. In particular, her practice engages with the place of the vagina in the realm of language and the symbolic. Enmeshed in mortality, multiplicity and materiality, her work responds to the call of Hélène Cixous in the 1970s for women to speak from their bodies. In this presentation she will focus on the grid as an organisational structure, in terms of hierarchies, narrative sequences and internal compartments (such as the rooms of a doll's house).

Elizabeth presented a series of works spanning from her time as a BA student at Goldsmiths until the present year. The presentation had a strong narrative/ autobiographical element, which described how the works she was making as a BA student related to her emotional and psychological states at the time.

Many of the works shown comprised multiple images of Elizabeth’s body in series, presented in grid formats. She spoke about feminine identity and the masquerade – as a student she had an issue with the idea of feminine identity being solely about the way we project and present ourselves.

The grid as an organising structure or principle was a key theme in the presentation. As a student, her playful use of the grid was in part a reaction to conceptual minimalism at Goldsmiths. She spoke about a key moment when she discovered Sol LeWitt referring to logic as always being balanced or disrupted by intuition – she was liberated by the possibility that there was a space for something playful and subjective within a logical (male?) structure.

Evolution III 2004

On the one hand, the grid allowed Elizabeth to understand what she was doing, but on the other, it opened up the possibility for subverting narrative sequences. In Pumpkin Performance, a series of images of the artist squatting on a kitchen table were organised out of sequence so that the clock in the background depicts time going backwards. The theme of narrative is still present in Elizabeth’s research, and we discussed the role it might play in the construction of her PhD thesis.

Elizabeth’s current research is looking at the deformity of the vagina in Duchamp’s Étant donnés. She showed work by several other artists who present vaginas in grid formats. She is currently questioning why vaginas may be presented in this kind of format.

A rich discussion followed the presentation:

Lee Campbell was interested in Elizabeth’s use of playfulness and absurdity – he suggested Mikhail Bahktin’s notion of carnivalisation, and Adrian Howes’ work may be interesting to look at.

The issue of documentation and trace in relation to the performative aspects of the work was discussed. Lee referred to Jordan McKenzie, who uses his body as a medium, and his sperm as a record of the performance.

We talked about the photograph as an imprint of light and dark – for Elizabeth it’s about touch, gesture, and the photograph as a trace of a life – that’s why immediacy and making relatively unstaged images is important for her. How will she negotiate this in relation to the staged tableau of Étant donnés. Could there be a spontaneous remake of the work!?

The question of the photographic series as 'textual' was raised – the notion of the language that comes from the body as an issue for Elizabeth’s research. We talked about the textual in relation to the imprint - it being related to touch, gesture and trace - the record of the contact of (part of) a body with paper or another material. for Elizabeth the photograph is intimately related to the imprint - it is an imprint of light, a record of a moment. she also described related body prints she had made in which breasts produce eyes and stomachs make large open mouth-like shapes, perhaps suggesting a pre-verbal language in psychoanalytic terms...

Maria asked how the narration of Elizabeth’s body in the context of her own work relates to a broader cultural representation of female bodies (as beautiful objects?) The notion of the gaze as gendered (or not) was also discussed.

Wednesday 6 July 2011: Identity and Place

Amanda Hopkins and Katie Pratt


Fig. 1 The Practice Exchange 11 – Identity and Place

In attendance: Katie Pratt, Charlotte Webb, Rosalind Fowler, Scott Schwager, Marsha Bradfield, Amanda Hopkins, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Elizabeth Manchester, Maria Kheirkhah.

This was the last session of the 2010-2011 season of TPE. We introduced it with a brief reflection on the overarching themes coming out of presentations by over 20 practitioners. Whilst a more detailed analysis of what was shared and learnt at TPE 2010-2011 will take some time to put together (watch this space!), two key issues that seemed to stand out were:

• The complexity and diversity of individual approaches to practice seems to run against any effort to come up with a clear and robust definition of practice, and of what are – if any – the constitutive elements of it. While most practitioners are perfectly able to “practice” without such definitions, it became apparent that when it came to the task of articulating and sharing practice through other means (such as presentations, written statements) a conceptual framework to do so might be useful.

• Artists and designers often marshal ideas, methods and sources from other areas of knowledge, in order to substantiate and enrich their practice. All these come with certain baggage. How do we negotiate and pay attention to this baggage without being hindered by it? This question is specially poignant when artists enter the realm of “practice-based research”.


Fig. 2 The Practice Exchange 11 – Katie Pratt and Amanda Hopkins

Amanda Hopkins

Amanda introduced her presentation by talking briefly about her work teaching architecture students, and how this experience has both reflected and deepened her interest in place. Broadly speaking her practice deals with the idea of place and how people connect to it. In particular she thinks of place as “land” and is interested in the way that people use land and give it an identity that transforms it into a place.


Fig. 3 Scott Schwagger, Katie Pratt, Amanda Hopkins, Marsha Bradfield

Amanda presented 3 pieces of work, the last one in progress, all connected with public places. Through the discussion of the methods and outcomes of these projects, she touched upon the following:

• The ability of art to render visible that which cannot be seen, for example through framing devices, by connecting places and times through the actual physical presence of the artist or the audience, or by gathering material through long periods of time that would not be immediately evident. How much of what is unseen, of what the practices brings into focus is actually part of the place, and how much comes from “the narrative in your head”? When we work in places tat we know intimately, how might we be able to surprise ourselves and to spot the unseen? Is it possible to regain a sense of ‘unfamiliarity’ (what is sometimes described of as ‘critical distance’)?

• The audience following on the artists steps, recreating certain journeys or experiences. What are the connections between the places where the source material for the work comes from, and where the work is finally displayed? How we make decisions about this? Paying attention to the presentation / display formats already deployed in the “research site” can be useful to take advantage of audience viewing or “reading” habits, but also can be the starting point for works that challenge the assumptions and expectations people have of certain places.

• An interest in the working methods of scientists and how by collaborating with them, everybody is allowed to “see more” and to push their practice into new uses.


Fig. 4 Rosalind Fowler, Charlotte Webb, Maria Kheirkhah, Elizabeth Manchester

Katie Pratt

Katie started her presentation by commending TPE as a necessary space within the institution, providing Lecturers such as herself and Amanda with an interface between teaching and practice.

Her initial response to Amanda’s suggested title for this session (Place and Identity) was to think that neither of these words really applied to her practice. However, on closer inspection she found useful to examine her practice through these terms, and to consider them beyond the trite meanings that they sometimes acquire by being overused in art discourses. In fact, all practices involve an examination of place and identity to certain degree.


Fig. 5 Charlotte Webb, Scott Schwagger, Katie Pratt

During her presentation, Katie outlined some of the main concerns of her practice as an abstract painter:

• An interest in systems and regularities, in processes of classification and naming and what forms of inclusion and exclusion they perform. “Typecasting” operates through describing characteristics but it is always doomed to failure, the impossibility of finding a “pure specimen”. How this connects with resisting the impulse to define the painting, and in particular to resist the drive to find “figurative” references in abstract painting (“Is it a city? Is it a landscape?”). Her work is explicitly abstract but paintings sometimes are made in response to a visual impulse of something witnessed, it is important to embed experience in practice. She does not like to reveal the particular visual impulses behind individual works, but these are sometimes referenced in the titles.

• The need for analogies when working with abstract painting, of having an external reference or indexical parameters to make the work more interesting. The work is not “purely decorative”, it is important that the viewer encounters and understands that there is a system or discourse being articulated through the paintings, that goes beyond pure expression. For example, she often uses analogies from social or political phenomena to organize and “build” her paintings. She would not dismiss notions of “taste” or “visual pleasure” when considering the viewer experience, but ultimately, her own investment in the work is connected with working on concrete ideas through the materiality of painting. She does not feel the need to prescribe what viewers might see in her work, but it is pleased if they are able to find analogies to personal and social experiences.


Fig. 6 Katie Pratt's slide presentation

Themes and questions to take forward:

Practice as vision: The importance of thinking about fields of vision, about considering how people notice things. How the position of the viewer can work in conjunction with the location or the scale of the work to foster different experiences, for example being drawn into a focal point, seeing something sideways or being able to see the “invisible”.

Practice as method: The need to find a structuring device for practice, in particular methods that employ a degree of automatism can be useful to remove expressionistic excesses, or to temper the artist “gesture”. Developing a method is a form of decision making, setting yourself rules as to when and where to start from, how to proceed and when to stop. Creating rules and methods to guide practice is also connected with the need to “making a date with practice”. It is a way of creating a clearly demarcated time and space for practice, a reflective and contemplative space protected from the hectic pace of teaching and raising a family. A fixed set of rules to work grounds you and avoids you “floating” but at the same time – perhaps paradoxically – allows you to freely loose yourself into the work.

01 June 2011: Vincenzo Di Maria and TPE's Bohmian dialogue

Title: Socially Responsive Practice in Art & Design

Date: Wednesday, 1 June 2011, 2-4 pm

Venue: Green Room, Chelsea College of Art and Design. Millbank, SW1P


Fig 1 - Water Design Challenge 2010 – co-designing solutions in response to water wastage.

It is our pleasure to announce this special session of the Practice Exchange. In the first half Vincenzo Di Maria will discuss his dynamic approach to people-centred design informed by recent examples of his research. In the second half, Marsha Bradfield and Scott Schwager will facilitate a 'Bohmian dialogue' based on the theory and practice of physicist David Bohm. This open-ended dialogue exemplifies the discursive art practice that Marsha and Scott have been developing together since March 2010.

Vincenzo Di Maria is a multidisciplinary designer based between London and Lisbon. His work focuses on social innovation and sustainable development, with a holistic approach to industrial design from products to services. He uses creative techniques and people-centred design approach with an added touch of playfulness.

Vincenzo has been working and is currently freelancing as design researcher for Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins Innovation, University of the Arts London, where he has developed a range of skills and experiences in the field of Socially Responsive Design and Social Innovation.

Vincenzo is co-founder and director of Common Ground, a start up socially responsive design & innovation agency. Common Ground works with companies, organisations and communities to co-create new products, services and strategies that generate positive social change.

www.designagainstcrime.com/methodology-resources/socially-responsive-design/

www.gotocommonground.com

www.vdmdesign.net

Twitter: @cmngrd

Marsha Bradfield is an artist, educator, curator, writer and researcher. Across these practices, she investigates dialogic ways of working that elaborate the contingencies through which "things" take shape. Her recent research explores decision making in reality TV-style "game docs" and Web 2.0 platforms (blogs, wikis, social networking sites and so on). Marsha is presently in the fourth year of her PhD at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. Her project is titled "Utterance and Authorship in Dialogic Art." Marsha received her BA in History and Art History from the University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada and her BFA from the Emily Carr Institute.

www.criticalpracticechelsea.org/wiki/index.php?title=User:Marsha

Scott Schwager is an artist based in London. His practice explores a range of ideas and media including installation, intervention, drawing and painting, dialogue, and text. He draws inspiration from contemporary politics, abstract expressionism, nudes, and religious custom. His recent work questions secrecy and publicness in action, authorship, and exhibition. His recent exhibitions, presentations, and collaborations include The Role of Art, Courtyard Theatre, London; My Secret Gallery, Paris; Bonhams auction, London; ‘1916’, The Triangle Space, London; Parade, London; Barcamp, KNOT, Berlin; and www.zerostretch.org. He is an active member of Critical Practice. In 2009, he founded ACE & LION GALLERY for collaborative exhibitions and projects in central London. He hosts The Arts Club Monday Talk, featuring speakers on art, design, writing, and culture. He received his BA Hons Painting from Camberwell College; MSc from London Business School; and BA, Political Science, from Williams College. His research for a PhD at CCW, University of the Arts London, is on two-person collaboration in fine art.

www.scottschwager.com

Wednesday 18 May 2011: Spatial Resonance

Ken Wilder and Aaron McPeake


Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 9: Spatial Resonance

In Attendance: Marsha Bradfield, Maria Kheirkhah, Ana Laura Lopex de la Torre, Aaron McPeake, Elizabeth Manchester, Hayley Newman, Caroline Rabourdin, Scott Schwager, Jim Threapleton, Charlotte Webb, Ken Wilder

In this session, Marsha set the context introducing the session through carrying forward the emphasis on the body and proximity from the previous session. In the sound and visually rich discussion that followed, we explored how one ‘fills in’ missing information in making and in viewing work. How one discusses their work, particularly video, impacts reception, critical dialogue and future practice. We also discussed the body, shadows and scale, positioning, and absence in relation to cultural and religious custom, precedence and audience expectation; as well as the space around practice and pieces within it.


Fig 2. Ken Wilder, Aaron McPeake, Jim Threapleton, Caroline Rabourdin

Ken Wilder

Ken began highlighting the importance of proximity, the body and distance from the viewer. Showing a piece from 2003-2004, Milky Beuys, Ken conveyed how the screen becomes problematised as a material substance rather than plane and the decision to shoot in black and white, based on a blankness (absense).

Ken’s practice shifted away from (his study of architecture) through which figures importance increased in place of structures, whereby objects became supportive. What is the relation between the body and space? How does the viewer’s relationship with the figure change with distance and filters, such as glazing.

Most of Ken’s projections pieces are designed for spaces that are not blocked out and in this situation the environment appears as part of the piece. Video of a static figure breathing raised questions for the audience that a photograph would not. Is this because of the viewer’s expectations and surprise or because video allows them to get closer to the figure?


Fig 3. Caroline Rabourdin, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Charlotte Webb, Marsha Bradfield

Aaron McPeake

Aaron’s practice emerges from his earlier experience as a stage light designer and is a response to his going blind. A projection of brail shows the frustration of not seeing. Rather than the work is not driven by an interest in a lack or loss of vision this is what comes up.

The shadow can represent a lot of thing and Aaron uses it as a deliberate devise in his practice. Fluser’s comment that he doesn’t photograph what he sees but what he does not see is a useful metaphor for Aaron as he somewhat guesses what he’s photographing and finds out afterwards what’s there.

Aaron explained how the assumption of blindness as a darkness while the most common form is white blind highlighted the degree of imagination in conceptions including of conditions and within representation. If our visual interpretation relies on assumptions, how might our interpretation of what we believe we’ve seen change with these assumptions?

While Ken had described his shift in emphasis from object to figure, Aaron described his move into casting, as grieving method involving personal history. A bell tells time; it announces. Ken has expanded his universe with sound even while his vision is curtailed. In this light, what is the relationship between vision and sound?

Aaron posited that the role of our brain in the senses is extremely strong such that how your brain tells you something constructs how you see it. We color and fill in using our imagination.

There was a kind of alchemy in both the practices of Ken and Aaron. Both consider the viewer to a degree as the other, which for Aaron has a double meaning as he realizes he is ‘the other.’ The viewer signifies things that he remembers. The distance and lens of the viewer for Ken shape decisions on and how he talks about his practice. For each, the bell is memorable in another’s film. It has a sense of innocence and magic.


Fig 4. Hayley Newman, Ken Wilder, Aaron McPeake, Caroline Rabourdin, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Jim Threapleton

Themes and questions to take forward:

Speaking about work: How one speaks to and about work, particularly video, shapes the viewers reception of the work as well as setting the context for subsequent critical engagement such as writing, dialogue, and potential other video. The ways of responding to one’s own work can open it up to others without over-determining its interpretation. The “figure" and how it figures into Ken Wilder’s practice and how he speaks about it provokes further thought which follows into Ken Wilder’s work.

“Filling in” missing information: “Filling in” missing data, such as sound in relation to shadows, creates the possibility for interests outside the audio visual language that is articulated. Research plays a large part in this. The comments re the sound in relation to the shadows and the Gestalt of "filling in" was especially interesting. For sure, "projection" will be a key theme, as it seems salient across the work of both Ken and Aaron.