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.

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

Wednesday 19 January 2011: Film practice, teaching and research

William Raban, Gary McQuiggin, Ayman Saey, Louis Henderson

Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 5 - Film practice, teaching and research

Four films by UAL research staff and students were played to a full house, at this special session of The Practice Exchange at the BFI. After a brief introduction about TPE by Marsha Bradfield, William Raban introduced his latest film, and the work of three of his students.

Fig. 2 William Raban introducing the films

THE ELEPHANT WITHOUT A TAIL, 2010, 7 minutes, dir. Gary McQuiggin.

CAPITAL (work in progress), 2010, 10 minute section, Dir. Louis Henderson

ABOUT NOW MMX, 2010, 27 minutes, Dir. William Raban.

ABOUT FILM MAKING, 2010, 6 minutes, Dir. Ayman Saey

Fig 3. From left to right: Louis Henderson, William Raban, Gary McQuiggin, Ayman Saey, Marsha Bradfield

The screening was followed by an hour-long discussion between the audience and the film-makers, chaired by Marsha Bradfield. Below there are some of the issues and questions that came out of it (sound recording of the discussion is available on request).

Film as auto-ethnography: William Raban said “I find myself written in the film,” alluding to the traces of his body in the film. Often created accidentally – for example, jolts of the camera operated manually, or voice-overs done in a hurry- such traces nevertheless became integral to the film, testifying to the presence of not just the subjectivity of the film-maker in constructing the film’s narrative, but to his / her embodiment in the actual texture of the film.

A throw of the dice: The role of chance in film-making. Filming as a process of gathering visual and audio material, and being responsive to what happens in the present, allowing accidents to influence the editing of the film.

Film as critique: How important is it - in the context of films that deal with political subject matter or that have a political intention – to interrogate also the film tropes being deployed? Should film-makers take to task the genres and techniques borrowed from other filmic traditions, and consider them in their full historical significance?

Image and sound: Trusting in the power of image and sound alone to convey meaning without added commentary. Whist digital manipulation of image might be rejected in film-making to preserve the authenticity of what is being represented, sound is altered with much more ease, and often used to underline meaning in a non-didactic way. The importance of sound in watching a film is how it makes a more bodily experience, as sound is actually felt in the body, especially when it is screened in purpose-build spaces.

Film as a mind map: Tracking the process of making the film as part of the film itself, though the use of time-based genre such as the chronicle or the diary. Attempting to visually map the city as a living organism, or to “track a thought” through film. The difficulty of bringing forward the complexity of thought and perception involved in our experience of the city, and how its visualisation in film resists these attempts by flattening out and bounding it to the film frame. This flatness can play into a sense of alienation, in line with a perceived revival of detachment strategies in practice, as a step towards critical distance. The importance of geometrical composition within the film frame, and camera movement in constructing additional meaning around the subject matter depicted.

“It takes two to make a film”: Film can be thought as collaborative practice in several respects. The collaboration between film-maker, camera operators, sound artists, but also the meaning created between director and audience – the film as “open-text”. Filming in the city, the chances of the film audience to literally be in the film are plausible. Does that increase the sense of “becoming a community” in the shared experience of watching the film, or does it makes us wary of being under surveillance?

Film and ethics: Film practice always works with limits, the limits of the film frame, the limits of viewpoints. The erosion of public space, new anti-terrorist laws, and child protection legislation set increasingly restrictive limits on what film-makers may record in the city. Is this a form of “censorship” and if so who or what is being removed or obscured from public view? What kind of images of the present are we creating when we accept those limitations? Film-making as research sets tight frameworks for artists to work within the demarcation of academic research ethics. Should artists challenge the boundaries of how ethics are conceptualised and applied to artistic research in academia? Should they be challenged on principle, or by artists actually raising above ethic regulators’ expectations?

Wednesday 1 December 2010: Leap into the Unknown

Jennet Thomas and Sonia Boyce

Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 4: Leap into the Unknown

Present: Sonia Boyce | Jennet Thomas | Gerard Choi | Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre | Scott Schwager | Angela Hodgson | Ope Lori | Maria Christoforatou | Keira Green | Sam Nicholson | Chris Hopkins | TK Roberts | Lucinda Evans | Simon Cunningham | Tanya Morozova | Ana Aguiar

Apologies: Samantha Epps | Aaron McPeake | Marsha Bradfield | Caroline Rabourdin | Charlotte Webb

Ana Laura introduced the session by explaining briefly the history of TPE and summarising some of the key ideas discussed in our previous seminar. (You can read the summary notes by clicking here).

Jennet Thomas:

Fig 2. The Purple Preacher - All suffering soon to end by Jennet Thomas

Jennet started by introducing her film work, and showing one of her latest pieces All Suffering Soon to End, a 30-minute film that had been exhibited as part of a larger installation exhibited as part of larger installation at Matt’s Gallery The project was partly funded by CCW, and showing it at a TPE seminar was a great opportunity to share the outcome of the project with others at CCW, and to highlight how significant it is to produce new work with University funding.

The film was inspired by an evangelical pamphlet put through Jennet’s door. She’s very interested in religion though she’s an atheist. Jennet is fascinated by the schizophrenia of Jehovah Witness texts. Working from the impossibility of improving such “cultural artefacts,” she developed a story mixing mythologies from religion and popular culture, around the idea of the stranger that calls at your door. She created a character that is a hybrid of an evangelical creature and a super hero (Purple Man from Marvel Comics whose superpower is that of persuasion). A close friend of Jennet’s plays this role in the film. Shot at her parents’ house, the film tells the story of an innocent couple whom the strange visitor drags into a strange world. Contemporary hip hop/dance music overlay’s the protagonist’s (purple preacher’s) monologue; he proselytises on inclusive global values, hunger, earthquakes and terrorism. Jennet’s film connects the idea of the stranger coming into your house “to instruct you” with the trope of the reality-TV expert telling you how to decorate / improve / organise your home and life. Two Adam and Eve-like dolls evolve into life-size living figures over the course of the film. As they transform, the preacher chants: “Who has the right to rule, whose rule is right?”.

Fig 3. Parents as actors - All suffering soon to end by Jennet Thomas

Discussing her practice, Jennet spoke about the boundaries between life and practice being very thin. Practice is affective. It's an opportunity to spend time with people one loves, one cares about, and who one knows well. So Jeannet creates characters that she believes her friends will enjoy playing. Her artwork also explores paranormal experience in everyday and the ways in which the hidden is revealed.

Jennet's projects typically begin with a found object (found text) and are thus very different from the way traditional film-making works. The importance of making / building props, of constructing characters through performance is explored in her work. Using looping, her films think about what it means or what happens when you tell something twice. What determines the duration of the film? Is it the found material that sets the time limits? How do you work with time?

Where does collaboration reside in the production of films? Is the site of collaboration in the concept of the work or in the making? How does crediting / billing reflect the actual dynamics of collaboration. Sometimes collaboration comes out of a technical need. You need help if you want to construct fairly complex fictional scenarios. The benefit of collaborating in constructing a fictional situation includes having more people to take control of the fictional space, a director, a camera person, lightning, actors. With more people involved you can do more, but you have less control over what happens. One can really do extraordinary things with just two people (vs. a larger group or one).

You can find out more about Jennet Thomas work in the following websites:

Video Data bank - Go to Artists index and look under T for Thomas
http://www.vdb.org

http://www.wemakeourowntv.com

http://www.peeruk.org/projects/thomas/jennet-thomas.html

http://www.mattsgallery.org/artists/thomas/exhibition-1.php

Fig 4. Ope Lori,Maria Christoforatou, Scott Schwager.

Sonia Boyce:

Sonia’s work often happens in response to an invitation or commission from an institution. Her ability to engage with specific communities has been an important basis for being commissioned in the past. She frequently works in collaboration, as was the case of Oh Adelaide, which was created with sound artist Ain Bailey. (We had an opportunity to view the Oh Adelaide exhibition before the seminar).

Sonia thinks about participation and collaboration in an expanded sense: her work involves draws on other people’s knowledge and expertise. She provides a framework for people to share their knowledge with the view of feeding her projects with new information and understanding. In this way, she is a kind of conduit knowledge sharing and transfer. How does knowledge find expression in a document / a collection / an archive? As cultural artefacts, expressions of knowledge can be put into circulation for the benefit of others.

Sonia showed us part of Documenting a project by Sonia Boyce, where she discusses her process of working with collaborators in For you, you only, a project made in Oxford. For this project, Sonia collaborated with an early renaissance choir and a contemporary sound artist. She is interviewed about her practice and explains that she likes inviting people to do something they already know how to do. Collaboration often entails working with differences. As the artist facilitating the collaboration, bringing others in and asking / letting them get on with it creates tension around Sonia’s role. What role, for instance, does she play as a non-musician in a film about music? There is a dual-position of being a director and not being a director at the same time. Her role was not clear until the end of the film, when she struggles with the final outcome and eventually makes a decision. Someone in the TPE seminar observed the following about the film: The physical layout of the film set, the position of the performers and of Sonia as the director – these aspects intimated and/or reproducing the dynamics of the collaboration process in a provocative way.

Sonia introduced a very recent film she made in Cordoba, Argentina, during a one month residency that was part of AFUERA, a large art in public spaces project, curated by Gerardo Mosquera. Her original proposal was to work with a choir in a busy public space, the central bus station. Singers would start singing in different spaces / times for an unaware audience. Once in Cordoba, however, she realised it would be really difficult to organise this kind of performance in such short time. Deciding to conduct further research, Sonia visited the Museo de la Memoria (Museum of Memory) located in a former clandestine detention centre and learned more about Cordoba. In this relatively small city, 45,000 people had been killed or disappeared during ten years of military dictatorship. Sonia was gripped by this horror and felt compelled to produce an artwork that responded to the legacy of this disappearance. She proposed to a local choirmaster that he bring his choir to the Museum to sing to the building, to the photographs of the dead and disappeared. Sonia also invited the public to come along on the day of filming and take part. It was a risky proposition; she had no idea who would turn up or how they would react to the situation she had set up. She had to work very quickly, and make decisions on the spot. The film was edited in just a few days and was shown as part of the festival.

Sonia’s unscripted film relies on improvisation, with the narrative taking shape through post-production editing. If storyboarding helped the artist anticipate some of the demands of filming on site, clear instructions to the film crew made the shoot more cohesive.

You can watch Sonia Boyce's video Gather: Justicia on youtube

Themes and questions to take forward:

Different types of collaboration. Collaborating as realising your vision alongside someone with a similar investment in art practice versus collaborating with someone who shares your world-view but a very different skill set. What cultural capital is generated in collaboration and how do the different people involved access and use it? Crediting, authorship and ownership are all complex issues that reflect on who benefits from collaboration, and how.

Artists making films without having trained as filmmakers. Should they train, or is there some value in that lack of “expertise”? Using the medium in a different way, perhaps in a more material way, more visual than narrative, with more work done in postproduction than in early stages of scripting.

The discomfort in the power relationships the camera produces, who is looking and who is being looked at. The importance of trust among collaborators / participants. An interest in “affective” practice, where people are in the film because they want to be there, and because they are doing something they are comfortable with or they are good at doing.

Wednesday 3 November 2010: The Other Side of the Other

Caroline Rabourdin and Angela Hodgson

Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 3: The Other Side of the Other

Present: Marsha Bradfield | Ian Brown | Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre | Scott Schwager | Aaron McPeake | Angela Hodgson | Caroline Rabourdin | Bernice Donszelmann | Pamela Kember | Ben Fitton | Tsuyoshi Amano | Sharon Rhodes

Apologies: Samantha Epps, Malcolm Quinn, Brandon Prendeville

Fig 2. Ian Brown, Caroline Rabourdin, Angela Hodgson, Pamela Kember

Scott introduces the seminar, with thanks to Angela and Caroline for coming to present their practice. Scott reviews themes from the previous TPE Pilot seminar (see notes on the blog), followed by a quick round of introductions.

Fig 3. Aaron McPeake, Sharon Rhodes

Caroline Rabourdin:

* Presented a text-based piece entitled "Translations of a Dandelion" (to appear soon in a publication by The Dandelion Network at Birkbeck College), as well as some research-in-process, coming out of this work. The work references the dandelion as the emblem for Larousse Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, and the different meanings and uses of the word dandelion in French and English.

* Metaphors for knowledge production and dissemination borrowed from nature: roots, dispersal of seeds. Singular versus multiple roots for knowledge as explored in the work of Deleuze. The dandelion as a weed, knowledge spreading without control, knowledge as something subversive that might grow where it is not expected.

* Translation as a vector, always directional, bringing into doubt the notion of origin. The need for some form of "third text" (Ricoeur) that mediates between the text to be translated and the translation, somehow explaining why and how the translation takes place.

* The relationship between text and image, how they "translate" into each other. For artists that work with the textual / discursive, what kind of translations happen between the practice itself and the writing of a doctoral thesis?

Fig 4. Ian Brown, Scott Schwager, Angela Hodgson, Pamela Kember

Angela Hodgson:

* Presented a cross-section of constituent elements of her practice and research as both an artist and medical doctor: hypothesis, individual practice, participatory events, all focusing on the use of drawing as a way of exploring empathy within the context of a hospital / medical setting.

* Narratives emerging through the practice, the stories and experiences of the participants (namely other staff), things happening in the background. Improvisation as a way of responding to context, and allowing for free associations to emerge.

* Difference in scope and depth in science and in art, as forms of knowledge. Sympathy and empathy as constitutive of the relationship between doctor / artist and patient / audience. Measuring empathy? The problematics of the "empathy quotient".

Fig 5. Aaron McPeake, Bernice Donszelmann

Themes and questions to take forward:

*Artists also trained or experienced in a other disciplines - interdisciplinarity - in this case architecture (Caroline) and medicine (Angela). How to map the influences, overlaps and dissonances and in what direction such mapping occurs.

* The cultural specificity of epistemological paradigms, and how they influence the way in which as researchers we might attempt to describe the knowledge emerging from our practices.

*Presenting practice as a form of thinking aloud; creative production on-the-spot, in the TPE sessions. Performativity without being a performance.

* Searching for resolution, seeking a narrative that others can read, the role of the audience / reader. Is he/she present at the onset of practice or comes in as an afterthought? What happens when the researcher becomes the primary audience for his or her research?

* And/or - Relations between verbal and visual (and other) languages in art research - in the thesis and beyond. For example, Roland Barthes' discussion of image/text relations, his "third meaning" (the first on the information level, the second on the symbolic level) which he links to filmic and photographic images, but can possibly be applied in terms of the emblematic reading of certain visual/verbal devices - suggesting that this remains an "obtuse" sense or meaning to use his term, where meaning resides neither in the image or in the text alone. It is instead produced across or through both.