From Here We Derive

Possible image for promotional materials for the open work in December? Other possibilities will be added shortly.

Dyslexia Project....

Essay

Notes: Pinning down field of research

·       Arts relation to education

·       Importance of skill exchange, peers matching and reference service to educators at large

·       Internet/virtual forums as a way of connecting artists across geographical and cultural boundaries

·       Collective intelligence

·       Networking decision making

·       Distributed collaborations

·       Cultural apartheids

·       Collapsing disciplinary divides

·       Focus in the understanding of individual socializing experience

·       Bourdieu’s term ‘cultural production’

·       Distinction between artist and teacher

·       Learning to learn

·       Pedagogy not concerned with succeeding but with trying

·       How could assessments keep up with the revolutions in practise?

·       Why are you an artist?

·       Why did you need education?

·       Why are continuing?

·       Why do you rally against the system?

·       Help towards independence rather than independence being thrust our throat

·       There was an over powering sense of a vacuum in the college (bubble concept)

·        Completion and jealousy is breed

·       What you do with what you know

·       A person who asks themselves questions better not try asking others

·       To what extent has our political changes influenced our art schools

·       Recognise the social aspect of leaning and conversation, interaction with others and application of knowledge’s and integrated aspects of learning

·       Gallery as educational spaces: Room 13 art space

·       Using the very authority vested in institutions such as schools in order to work against the grain of such authorities

·       One artist is not enough: many-sided organism that has the capacity to evolve

·       Society is pre-choiced: our culture gives the illusion of choice

·       Talent – creative – attitudes

·       School community

·       Pilot programs

·       Learned therefore deserved

Virginia Woolf // 1938

BACK ONLINE!

Education!

Myself and education have never really seen eye to eye. Anyone who knows me well enough knows that much of what I know is self-taught. Admirable. Yes that maybe so, but society does not do admirable, your knowledge and understanding cannot be a result of your own, it much be accounted for by someone or something of a higher calibre with headed paper and flashy .com website.

I am not enough in that respect. Much of what I know is refusing to accept that there is only one or two ways to do something and both happen to be written by the same institution.

If I am so compelled to challenge the art school; why then do I have BA and MA after my name? maybe it’s because one has to be in the thick of it to truly understand? For me it’s not the public as a medium, it’s the art school as a medium, with the students at its core.

I was asked a question today: Is it the community of the art school that has compelled you to practise in a socially engaged way?

I can’t answer that right now, I will just have to add it to the pile! But what got my interest was ‘school community’. I and some others are trying to recreate this very thing outside of the system. For many years this has been the case for many collectives. But the art school community is unlike any other. The mix of friends, relationships, competition and intellectual copyright forms a breeding ground for much of the issues I am drawn to.

My mission then, is to reacquaint myself with the art school life style but from outside the white walls as opposed to within.

Written Conversation

The written dialog we displayed at NewRED during CoExist is fascinating me.

I would like to come up with a few ideas that focuses on our ability to communicate with one and other while you are away in Austria and I am here.

‘Communication’ has been a running theme in our collaboration projects and this gives us the opportunity to investigate this approach but one that focuses on us as a unity?

We could in corporate this idea with the dyslexia piece you had posted a few months ago maybe?

PhD: Research List.

Historical context of socially engaged practise:

• Allan Kaprow: Blurring of art and life, Happenings
• Greenburg
• 60's Europe: Arte Povera 
• Art market: Pop Art
• Claire Bishop: Artifical Hells
• Pablo Helguera: Education Book

90's:

• Relational Aesthetics
• Bourriard
• YBA
• Celebrity Artists: 

Socially engaged practise:

• Arts relationship to activism
• Arts ability to drive social change

Current:

• Artist led spaces
• collectives
• Arts funding
• Michel Gove: Bob and Roberta Smith
• Alternative Arts Schools: Nato Thompson: Pedagogy 

PhD Proposal Layout

Context:

• Intorduction 200
• Describe your own work and interests and how you have persuade them so far 300
• Need for the project: gap in the knowledge give evidence 200
• current relevant thinking: Outline theoretical underpinnings of the proposal 300
• summarise existing knowledge relevant to the project 300

Project aim or research question: express your investigation as a question, which is relevant, manageable, sustainable and original 100

Project objectives: list specific, achievable goals to the project, in terms of what it will do or provide; this should relate to what you have said in your context 100

Project Methods: explain exactly what you are proposing to do. Where appropriate identify the types of research methods you are using 1000

The value of the proposed work: state how the project will address the problem outlined in your context section, or contribute to wider research, say who will benefit 1000

Outcome with timeline: list major milestones of the project and give a realistic estimate of how long each will take to achieve, this should relate directly to your methods section and be expressed in months not weeks

PhD: Affect Collective

Initial work:

Performance: Lydia (comfortable)
                      Elise (uncomfortable)

Sculpture: Lydia (uncomfortable)   Aesthetically, material
                 Elise (comfortable)

Props/objects: Function

Public Spaces: Function, Simple guestures, interaction with public (engagement), changing dynamics of the space, public theatre

New References: Psycho-geography, behavioural studies, situationisim

Long Term Projects: Library Bus/space to imaginan, Frees Market



FABRICATED FUNCTIONAL SPACES VS. INTERVENTION IN PUBLIC SPACES TO QUESTION THEIR FUNCTION

Performance for Squieze

Proposal for Squieze

Bargehouse, London

July 2013

Conversation Piece (homage to Juan Munoz)

Several performers dressed in plain clothes will position themselves around the Bargehouse building and along the South Bank at a set time each day whilst Squieze is open. Between the performers will be red string and tin cans to form a basic communication devise (like the telephones you’d make as a child). The performers will listen to the city and communicate with each other as the performance evolves. There is no set response. The performers could have their ear to the ground, relay a conversation overheard in the distance or simple speak what is on their mind. The emphasis is on communication between performer, public and the city.

Affect Collective

An outsiders view

I was going through my e-mails and came across Sean's response to reading my reflective journal essay. He makes some interesting points;

For instance, Licence To Spill got me thinking, as it does you when you mention "art's role in politics". But my problem is that I am at a bit of a loss as to what premise I have to assent to in order to concede that it is definitively "art", and to be considered wholly distinct from the sort of political expression a politician might make in the house of commons or a bloke sticking a home-made political sign to his window. Is it the symbolic aspect in the act of spilling oil and feathers in front of the Tate gallery with their BP sponsorship that puts this in the "art" category? Whereas a political commentator sharing her thoughts doesn't use such symbolism, so therefore that person is not making art in their expression. But then again, the very words are symbols that encode an overall meaning of a similar kind, it's a form of expression as legitimate as any other, so then which forms of expression can we identify as "art" and which can we say are "not art"? When David Cameron last gave a speech was that art? Is he an artist? If not, why not? Is it because he didn't give the speech a title or submit it to a gallery? Is it because it's an expected part of his job? Is it because it's not something you'd want to listen to for it's artistic merit? Why was Licence to Spill firmly in the "art" camp when other similar political acts aren't considered to be? Is it because these other acts were not intended as works of art? Does the intention of the perpetrator define their "art-hood"? Am I an artist without knowing it? Is someone out there writing an essay about me?

Research Questions 2#

First question was: How can a socially engaged practice operate in an art school?

The question is negative; assuming that such a practise cannot operate in an art school which is of course not true, but the very idea of a student conducting such a practise and the issues associated, is of interest.

With lots of deliberation I do now feel my interests were about the institution and how certain specification contradicted art practise.

Second question: To what affect can a specifically designed space influence participants in a socially engaged art work?

I have a problem with using the term "socially engaged"
The question is not working hard enough for me and the ideas I have. So what I thought I would do bullet points of my ideas and we could come up with something better?

• The sorts of spaces I am interested in is spaces for action and exchange
• Project spaces
• Hans Ulrich Obrist (curator): "The instructions is the work not the object...Instructions can be interpreted in different ways like recipes"
•  How we design the space around the activity idea could comply with a set of rules?
• "RULES OF THE GAME"
• curating is a massive part of my interests and how the space/work manipulates the viewer.
• Work spaces are also of interest
• the value in collective knowledge and how to nurture that.
• the possibility of producing different formats for public space. The currency exchanged in such situations may be cultural even political, the currency of social interaction is indeed as generic as it gets.
• How does such work connect to a person? I want people to not look at it but be in it!
• Aesthetics of space are important.

Here are some ideas I have accumulated today which gets me no further to my final question but I suppose I have to start somewhere.

Claire Fontaine - Fictional Artist

http://www.clairefontaine.ws/index.html

http://www.clairefontaine.ws/pdf/jk_interview_eng.pdf

Look at this interview, it really relates to our super artist idea :)

Unity/Barrier

RJ Feedback part 1.

After reading your RJ, it’s clear that you have identified habits you have employed over the years which can sometimes be detrimental to your overall intentions. One that is a constant theme in your work is the battle between action and symbolism. Which as you noted is clearly outlined in the Pablo book. My thoughts on this aspect is that this struggle to overcome work that acts as statement while trying to be true to the action/situation that it derived from becomes a trap that I think anyone who works with this type of subject can easily fall into. It is also an issue that I have come up against while writing my PhD proposal on how to conduct a very public orientated practise within an institution.

I feel that you are continuing this trait with your final degree show work; this maybe because of the shows set-up (white cube) or that you are now on the edge of a cliff and your instinct is to move back as appose to jump. This metaphor is about the ‘risk’.

You have also identified the field of object making that by your own admition, you have little experience with. This is not a derogatory statement but one that allows me to emphasise that sometimes inexperience can allow you to explore static objects and making with a clear mind, which is starting to show in your current making.

One of the least important but one that will be of use in the future is this idea of categorisation. Firstly you are an artist, your work can span across all ‘isims’ and types; the context you employ has no bearing on what artist you are at all, just how the work will function.

Control is another element you seem to crisis yourself for. Which I think you are right to. When you work with public and on very public subject matters it is best to create a space within the work where you can let it be. As you have experienced with the Trace performance, the public will intervene and that is something you had not factored in. the public is the most organic material an artist can work with and to understand that trying to control any given public situation will be counter-productive.

Fly posted wall: Norway

Project Idea

THE BIG FEED

Possible Changes to the sign?

BA Degree Show: Lydia

Link below might be of use to you.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/creativeinstinct/rural-artists-with-a-wide-orbit/4232856

Food for thought:

 

OBJECT IN USE.

Thoughts on Trace

The provocative natures of the trace performance lead me to question what was the work; the public or the act.

Watching the film back it’s evident that the public have played a large part of this works success while screaming "love, love... your bag has a hole in it!"

I was taken aback at the public’s eagerness to inform Lydia of the stream of glitter she was leaving behind.

I work at a local bookshop and 90% of the conversations I had with customers was regarding the dusting of glitter throughout Salisbury City. I didn’t confess that it was partly my fault, as I found it to be quite revealing; I became a fly on the wall.

CoExist: Trace Performance (full album and film will be added later)

CoExist - NewRED

CoExist - Salisbury Arts Centre

Francis Alys - The Green Line

Thinking about the glitter trace made me think about this;

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/francis-alys/francis-alys-story-deception-room-guide/francis-alys-4

Reflecting on 'Trace'

Glitter is quite ephemeral, it's easily dispersed, the act of tracing the journey between the two sites is an attempt to understand the mark the artist has and their relationship to the city the inhabit, the erasure of that mark is un undermining of that attempt

it's also about how we relate to each other, almost competing and undermining the mark the other is trying to make

its about the futility of artist gesture in a way too I guess

In conversation...

ED ‘Okay, um, when you were, where are we going to put this thing? Oh hang on, put him in there. When you’d replied, when you’d written that I did think well, just to familiarize myself, you’re saying about, the props I’ve always had a problem with, even when I was drawing them, there’s something about then that’s not quite right. Do you know what I mean?

LH ‘Um hmm’

ED ‘You know we’re very clear about our fascination about a performance prop becoming something other than.’

LH “Yeah’

ED ‘However I don’t think we’re at a point where we have enough of that’

LH ‘Yeah I agree’

ED ‘For example if we’re going to be really really kind of clear about it, I wouldn’t consider, I would consider the cling film as a prop in so much as that we use it for a specific think but it’s aesthetically consider to a point where it becomes sculpture in its own right in a space.’

LH ‘Yeah I agree’

ED ‘So it’s kind of that thing that a prop would entail as opposed to actually just, I don’t know there’s just something quite jarring about it and we haven’t got enough as well, if we had more like the gun table and your tower thing you’ve made with the girl inside, I quite liked that.’

LH ‘Okay yeah’

ED ‘I want her to walk about’

LH ‘Did you see the video? Is that where you’re?’

ED ‘I didn’t see the video, I was just scrolling down and saw Rob and got the image of the structure with the girl inside and thought.’

LH ‘It completely changes it, completely changes it.’

ED ‘ Yes and that for me becomes a prop’

LH ‘It becomes very theatrical.’

ED ‘And I really really like that, um, and its sculpture and then it becomes something else and there’s so much to be had with that but I think, yeah this kind of thing, I think we should utilize the fact that we’re coming into something new but in a huge complex situation, we haven’t been working together very long we have two very different styles, we’re both quite enthusiastic about manipulating them together and we have two very different situations and I think the prop idea is good its in there somewhere but I think there’s a wider investigation, do you know what I mean? So that’s kind of what I was concurring’

LH ‘I think what you’ve said about the shrink wrap is really interesting because there’s a picture of us from when we did the first shrink wrap thing that I really like where I’m holding one end of it and your holding the other and we’re looking at each other, I really like the potential contained within the object and what that symbolizes in terms of our relationship and what bridges the gap between it which is this thing, this prop.’

ED ‘But don’t you think that barrier wasn’t so much for other people, it was more for us.’

LH ‘ Yeah I think we learnt more about ourselves through doing it than.’

ED ‘ It wasn’t so much about ourselves, I mean obviously it was there to manipulate people around the space’

LH ‘And it did have an effect’

ED ‘It did have an effect but I think it was more about our’

LH ‘Yeah the longer lasting resonance is how we’ve understood ourselves and our working relationship, we’ve almost become, I don’t want to say bored but maybe that’s the right word, we’ve become bored of this idea of creating restrictions in a public space because that’s what we started off doing. We had that conversation about you wanting to create these immersive environments that had this affect on people, things about control, restrictions, I’d seen that thing that specially constructed thing for the Damien Hirst ‘For the love of God’ the cordoned thing and all the rest of it and it kind of stemmed from that. We’ve learnt a lot of stuff and discovered a lot of stuff that wasn’t our original intention so I think it’s good to go with that rather than being like, well this isn’t what we were supposed to be doing, not like that at all.’

ED ‘But then affect came out of that because at the time we were just collaborating and then we realized actually just from the few experiences that we had that we were going to do it. It was just really that one in the Cathedral, whatever happened at the Cathedral, that particular piece was something more than just this.’

LH ‘ Yeah and I think the stuff we did for the Event and Nick and Kjetil’s comments about the tension between installing a sculptural object and performance and the relationship between two people coming out of that, I think that’s kick started something that’s really interesting and the dialogue, this idea of fiction and I really really like idea of creating a love child/alter ego because I’ve been looking at Bob and Roberta Smith he kind of talks about Roberta Smith, because he understands it as that’s his sister, even though she’s not real obviously, and that somehow him creating that, it’s not really a pseudo, maybe it is a pseudonym, I don’t know, but by creating that and attaching that to his practicing self it somehow allows him to do things that he wouldn’t on his own.’

ED ‘It creates a distance as well. There’s something very, as soon as we started to think about collaborating, we considered using a name, changing our names and there was something in that, we weren’t quite getting it, but it always remained with me that actually I would as a solo artist look at doing that myself. Just because if I was to put someone else’s name on it, it would create immense distance for me and the troubles I have with, just something so simple as that you do have the kind of bridging, okay it’s not me, or does that make sense? You re-create yourself, and um, I think that because we’ve spoken about this whole fiction, non-fiction thing, you’ve been speaking about coming up with fake things and even the idea of it seemed quite liberating but actually you don’t have to be so frank about it, for me, having thought about this quite a lot, well at least since last night! When you mentioned a couple of the comments it just sprung back, I just took it as a situation where we could really consider ‘affect’ as opposed to us coming together. That’s why you said we’re two artists, I was like no that’s not quite right for me. I don’t know, we can’t think like that and why I think we can’t think like that, so’

LH ‘I think when I was saying: ‘two artists, two spaces, two specialisms’ I was thinking about what are the perimeters that we’re working in and how can we go beyond those, how can we explore the limitations they try to apply or set up but actually we don’t need to be defined by them at all. Which is what you’re saying.’

ED ‘Which is completely, that also stems from my experience, the experience that I’ve had with my practice in that it’s always been under the umbrella of the institute and I have a problem with that. I do and I don’t. I like the structure and the discipline that it affords me but I’m not too keen on the compromises I have to make in order to have that, and I don’t know if it’s worth it. And so when we talk about fiction it’s very hard for me to get out of my training essentially to think, oh well I can do this. That it’s not set it stone that it has to be a certain way. We’re all trained to think in a certain way or do things in a certain way and for the most part it’s for the sake of others and all told actually it’s not really worth it. And so the idea of coming together and then creating a sort of ‘super artist’ that we all aspire to be and when we spoke of doing this fiction idea, right at the beginning when we thought ‘shall we change our names?’ it all kind of seems quite liberating for me, it was a chance to not see me as being an art student, my name being on top of a form sheet, I could of take all the ideas I’ve had and just insert it into this ‘super artist’ and no one will ever know. And I think that’s also important because, it’s all stemmed from my reflections so I can’t speak for you, but when I’m at art school, the only people in my life that understand the way I am now, post training is everyone at school. But they also see me as this really string figure who helps everyone and who just gets it, yeah, I know that, but it doesn’t feel like that inside so it’s almost like my work will never match up to the person I’ve made myself out to be to others, does that make sense?’

LH ‘ Yeah it does.’

ED ‘ So my internal, where my work comes from but my external is what everyone knows me to be and expects equally from my work and I just don’t think I can deliver that. And that’s probably mental really, as opposed to’

LH ‘ That’s a huge burden.’

ED ‘Well it is, and it’s more, the reason I did it is that I really like chatting to people, I am very good at, I’ve trained myself to think about other peoples practice in a certain way, um, but I can never, all the stuff I’ve done for my practice all trouble I’ve gone through in my life has been for others, so it’s only reserved for other people and I can’t access it myself internally.’

LH ‘ Yeah that does make sense.’

ED ‘ So to recreate someone else and it seems so stupid that I would have to go to that extent but it almost seems right.’

LH ‘ Yeah it almost seems like you’re saying that the things that you’ve been through in your life, things that you’ve resolved and achieved you feel that the only people that reap the benefit of that is others not yourself because you don’t feel like it’s an internal reality for you and you create this fictional person, this fictional artist that can be the recipient of that rather than somebody else, it’s kind of allowing yourself to receive that good but it has to be outside of yourself in order for you to do that.’

ED ‘I don’t like other people being upset or angry or in a frustrating situation because I know from experience that I deal with that every day of my life and I also have to gain some trust from others, and I can’t let them see what I have to go through every day, professional, personal, you know it’s all one thing to me in my head. I don’t understand myself, I don’t understand my work, I don’t have any relationship with it, I can’t blame it solely on the institute but that’s the only experience I have so therefore it’s their fault, it’s just trying to find a space for me where I can actually get out the things that I want to properly. So I have created, I don’t know who’s the fiction and who’s the non-fiction.’

LH ‘ That’s when it becomes really interesting.’

ED ‘Myself sitting in front of you, who is the fiction and who is the non-fiction? And I don’t know if the girl who everyone sees at college who sits in their space and grills them about their work and their personal life, whether that’s her either?’

LH ‘ That makes complete sense and it’s interesting what you said that, when Suneal said about, um, your frustrations with the institutions and how that reflects in your work, that it goes deeper than that, and at the time I was like ‘where’s he getting that from?’ but actually sitting here are hearing you say all this stuff, it makes sense. It makes complete sense.’

ED ‘It’s not so much about the institute at all.’

LH ‘It’s about what it represents’

ED ‘It’s an internal institute essentially.’

LH ‘Yeah’

ED ‘All my experience, most of my personal input has been housed within an art school and so that’s the only template that I really have, and everything I’ve created at NewRED I’ve hated, without a shadow of a doubt. I’ve hated it, right. Everything I’ve created at college, I’ve hated it equally but I’ve been able to go, okay, and the only real piece that stands in my mind about this kind of ‘okayness’ essentially was ‘four quarters’ where I got so fed up with playing the fucking game that I just thought: what have you done for the last three years of your education no matter where you are? It’s grill other people and do they listen, sometimes, sometimes they don’t so what you going to do? And it was so simple, I was like, I’m just going to create a room where everything seems very harmless and quite fun but it’s not, it does, that piece housed quite a lot of what I’m about, just the action of it, seeping through to others. Although aesthetically I wasn’t pleased with the placement it needed to be in the middle of the room like a shrine. And I’m not even convinced that it needed the walls, actually. And that’s something I’d like to do at some point is actually make a room full of glitter or make a glitter space, but without the walls.’

LH ‘ When I popped in to get the fabric I saw, I went and looked at Keith, Tanya and Harvey’s show in the gallery and then you know the walkway between the rotunda that he blocked up, I was thinking about just filling that space with balloons and making it inaccessible, obviously you’d see it from the outside. I think it’s a really interesting space.’

ED ‘I really like that space.’

LH ‘It really needs to be used somehow, I don’t know what that has to do with what we were just saying but I was just thinking it.’

ED ‘That reminds me on a very small tiny miniscule scale, emphasize the smallness, of the china wall piece that Marina Abramovic and her fella did, yeah, where they started at each end and met, that space if it was filled with balloons, that two people would chop their way through the balloons towards each other and they would somehow meet in the middle.’

LH ‘Obviously you’ve got the Martin Creed reference but it also makes me think about Fun House, and yeah’

ED ‘There’s a certain humour to be had in that ‘

LH ‘I think as well people, the rotunda’s a really interesting space and that walkway bit, if you were to treat it at as a performance, we’d have to make a wall or door at the end because there’s doors going into the rotunda but in the corridor there’s no other door sealing it off to make it completely enclosed’

ED ‘Oh what you would do is, you’d start at the rotunda filling the balloons up’

LH ‘What do the whole rotunda and the walk way?!’

ED ‘No, just the walkway, you’d fill it up and have a netting or something at the end’

LH ‘True, yeah because people would only be able to watch it from outside, down on the grass bit, it would be quite an interesting thing to do actually, maybe we should do it. Having to burst the balloons to get to each other, it’s kind of interesting, it would be a staged set performance.’

ED ‘I really like that idea, it’s very good. I’ll do a drawing.’

LH ‘Maybe that’s something we could think about. What was I going to say? So in terms of how we’re going to approach this for CoEXIST, how are we going to, like when I was writing that stuff last night I was thinking about the relationship, our relationship, the working relationship and what has come out of what we’ve done and what we’ve spoken about, it feels really rich and there’s so much to explore within that and we did talk about using the big red fabric barriers in a kind of performative way, we were thinking about the high street, weren’t we about creating’

ED ‘Reminds me of Kimvi’

LH ‘Oh yeah’

ED ‘And Dixon, her performances are so beautiful, have you ever seen them?’

LH ‘I saw, what did I see of her’s? I saw, was it in the degree show, she had her head’

ED ‘She rolled’

LH ‘No I didn’t see that, I saw’

ED ‘Head in a bucket with water and a microphone, that was the interim show, and then she got a huge roll of photographic paper, and she was like I’ve got to use this, and I said well you could do huge body prints, what she came up with was, she had it in the roll she led on it with loads of huge lights on her so she would sweat and she would gradually roll’

LH ‘Was she naked?’

ED ‘No she was in a dress, but she would gradually roll and what you got after about an hour was a full print of her body, it’s just ridiculous, I love all of her performances. Um, let me show you, Facebook. What was I doing? Oh yeah, Dixon! This was one of my favourites, she was floating and then the tide came in and she just plonked on the thing, I know’

LH ‘Seems like there’s a lot about’

ED ‘There’s another one, here it is’

LH ‘That’s gorgeous, where’s that?’

ED ‘I can’t remember where that is, is that not amazing? It makes you want to cry doesn’t it’

LH ‘What is that candles? Was that a performance?’

ED ‘Yeah’

LH ‘Seems like there’s a lot’

ED ‘There it is’

LH ‘Wow!’

ED ‘There’s some close up ones somewhere’

LH ‘It’s really interesting, it seems to be a lot about, she’s very beautiful’

ED ‘I know she is’

LH ‘It seems a lot about the physical limitations or exertions of the body, stunning. I saw the one she did where she had loads of shoes on’

ED ‘What on the stage?’

LH ‘Yeah, that’s cool, they did that at women’s day didn’t they and they had the ting outside the, what do you call it, Barge house. I love her hair. The least important thing in relation to what we’re talking about.’

ED ‘She’s very interesting, she just plonks herself places’

LH ‘Yeah I saw an image where, you know outside the canteen where they sometimes have sales, underneath the stairs, doubled over doing something’

ED ‘I just think she’s brilliant, typical art student, she’s very good, she’ll be doing a lot of stuff soon. I don’t know why she does it. I’ve got loads of pictures of her knees because she used to dress up her knees’

LH ‘Oh I think I remember you telling me this’

ED ‘She used to accessorize her knees and I just became obsessed with her knees and she loved the fact that I was obsessed with her knees and I used to take photographs of her everyday with her different knees on, honestly’

LH ‘Very awkward positions, very unnatural’

ED ‘Manifesto’

LH ‘That’s the light show isn’t it?’

ED ‘No’

LH ‘What’s this is she holding something?’

ED ‘Her performances nine times out of ten are quite destructive, but they’re quite poetic’

LH ‘Poetically destructive’

ED ‘She’s get large quantities of stuff and she’s start off really small, and then they would just go out of control, and you don’t know what the point is of where they were quite controlled to the point where they were really out of control, she’d end up like this and you’d blink and she’d end up with little black bits on her fingers and you just don’t know, it wasn’t like a mental burst it was just over a period of time, just end up like that. She’s very good, she’s going to be very very famous indeed.’

LH ‘So’

ED ‘So, yeah, what are we going to do? That’s the dilemma, the problem we have is that the ideas we have are so ephemeral, do you know what I mean?’

LH ‘Yeah yeah yeah, how do we realise this in a given space at a given time. So we have, so the show runs for a month in both spaces simultaneously?’

ED ‘Yeah’

LH ‘This twenty four hour project is that something that NewRED are doing? Are we, what’s the date of that?’

ED ‘I can’t remember, I’ll be seeing David later, he’s got the dates, I’ll write them down’

LH ‘Okay cool, so, what have we established? We like this idea, we’re interested in this idea of fiction, we’re interested in our relationship and the parameters of a working relationship and how we can go beyond those, this idea of creating a super artist, our ‘love child’ because the idea originally was this archive of props and blurring the lines between fiction and reality in terms of this archive and presenting props in a way that blurred the line between ‘are they just props or are they sculptural objects?’ which I think still’s interesting but now that we have the two spaces thinking about this idea of presenting the process as well as the finished product, if this is what we’re thinking of it like, which I don’t think really applies to us’

ED ‘I don’t think it really applies to us’

LH ‘I don’t think it does’

ED ‘But I think that’s interesting’

LH ‘Yeah because we’re working so differently to the others, the other artists in the show’

ED ‘No, I honestly don’t think it’s going to apply to us, the show at NewRED, we’ll go down there in a minute and you can see the space and see what the others are doing, but it is literally like a process show, sketches, drawings, working out, mini maquettes you know. Are’s don’t really apply and I think we should swop the two’

LH ‘So have?’

ED ‘Have props, working with props in the NewRED show, thinking about it as a template so we can move forward. If we stay like this we’re not going to get very far!’

LH ‘Agreed!’

ED ‘So, if we were to have; NewRED – props, just imagine, on the floating shelves there’ll be a fifteenth century clock next to some clingfilm. You know how it goes, um, and then in the Arts Centre show, something very different in which I haven’t got that far.’

LH ‘I think, what we both, what seems relatively clear is this idea that it’s going to be resolved through the space at NewRED and us being in the space together trying stuff out, obviously the shows are running simultaneously but we have access to NewRED in advance don’t we?’

ED ‘Yeah’

LH ‘But we don’t with the Arts Centre?’

ED ‘No’

LH ‘So, do we set some kind of parameters in place for example so we, every Wednesday we spend a day at NewRED, we bring some stuff down we try some stuff out, we play around, we document it, we record our conversations. We can still play around with the fabric and our bodies in the space and try all that out, video that or record that or whatever. And then we have all these things.’

ED ‘Yeah I think that’s the way forward, I think that if we just start at NewRED and we can just scrounge around.’

LH ‘Okay and I think that would be good for us because what we’ve always done is’

ED ‘Gone straight for the turkey’

LH ‘But we’ve always gone, okay this is our idea lets go and do it, we haven’t actually played enough together I don’t think’

ED ‘Yeah and I think that’s important’

LH ‘So what’s….the other thing I was thinking, Jake and Dinos Chapman had a show at White Cube a while ago where, obviously they’ve been working together for years, they have a really good working relationship’

ED ‘Yeah they do’

LH ‘But for that particular show they agreed to work separately, not discuss what they were doing and then the show was bringing those things together’

ED ‘Five Years did the same thing, five artists, they would bring stuff along, props. Marc Hulson brought along old school chairs, um, someone else brought along a green light bulb. You know, collate it together’

LH ‘But I wonder how, because obviously, we’re not going to be able to spend masses of amounts of time together in the space to be working on this stuff but um, the time that we’re apart we can still be working on’

ED ‘We need the blogging, we need to really be quite disciplined with the blog, we going to have to be really disciplined with ourselves, because that is going to be our saving grace essentially. And that will provide us with some, pass me that thingy…yeah, what are you doing?’

LH ‘Sorry, dropping things!’  

ED ‘Um, yeah so I think that will be good, if we just get on with the blog thing, drawings, photographs. Scan them in, upload them.’

LH ‘We can both be working on this idea of creating this ‘super artist’ can’t we, you think?’

ED ‘Yeah’

LH ‘We don’t need to be together to be doing that, do we?’

ED ‘No, because, in order to create the artist we need to have, it could be really quite playful in that we could dictate what he or she wore, and the things they liked or disliked, everything from, the light side of the bed, the right side of the bed just to get a flavour of the sort of person this artist is’

LH ‘And almost like this mother/father relationship where, the mother has a specific relationship with her child just as a father has a specific relationship with his child’

ED ‘And I think for both of us it comes from quite intimate spaces, that we probably couldn’t necessarily do on our own, together sorry. Actually, memorial museum, do you want to pass me that book’

LH ‘Oh sorry’

ED ‘That’s alright’

LH ‘So, we have one, two’

ED ‘Memorial museum is a very good book to think aesthetically, where to start just because it’s got some really good pictures and um, the surviving object. I knew you’d like that! They do weird shit’

LH ‘Yeah we both have an interest in museums and stuff’

ED ‘Gone in, done wall drawings and barricaded them off. I’m doing another book as you know, so I’ve started that today, um’

LH ‘What a stud!’

ED ‘Honestly he gets so angry at me, and then I tell him: I love you and then I pull the camera out when he was having a bath and he was like: not again babe’

LH ‘That’s really funny’

ED ‘Yeah shouting at me, hello? Haha DOOR!’

LH ‘I’m just thinking’

ED ‘Yeah’

LH ‘That not including, well, we’ve got about three and a half weeks until the show opens. Um, so I’m wondering’

ED ‘Oh by the way we’re doing the interim show together’

LH ‘We are? When’s the interim show?’

ED ‘The interim show is the 21^st, no the 7^th May’

LH ‘Lets do the balloon rotunda thing, as part of that’

ED ‘Yeah we’ll do that then’

LH ‘Obviously that can be a one off performance thing and if you want to do your gun table as well, but leave that up to you, or whether you just want to do that performance. I don’t know, 7^th May. In theory, so tomorrow I’m going up to stay with my parents for a few days but I’ll be back on friday’

ED ‘Rude’

LH ‘Yeah sorry I have to’

ED ‘Right okay, where’s my thing, oh it’s over there. That’s what it came out like, see. Mum want’s me to do a chocolate gun’

LH ‘Ha, that’s hilarious! That’s the magazine is it?’

ED ‘Yes’

LH ‘Yeah I see what you mean’

ED ‘Yeah so I’m just going to make it with wadding. Um’

LH ‘You could use the 3D printer. So much political implications of printing a gun but’

ED ‘I love it’

LH ‘But that’s what the discussion is, other than that and human organs and tissue but that’s what it’s going to lead onto, that you print weapons. I can sort of get my head around how you print a gun but that you can print a kidney that just blows my mind. A kidney that could be put in someones body and work, that just seems insane’

ED ‘Yeah that could be done’

LH ‘But it seems insane, utterly insane’

ED ‘Do you know what makes me, blows my mind? Telephones’

LH ‘Haha, oh my word!’

ED ‘It fucking does, every time I’m on the phone. Hello?! Every time. Right so where are we?’

LH ‘So today is the 25^th, so we’re in easter’

ED ‘Okay. Here.’

LH ‘And then we have CoEXIST opening on the 18^th? 18^th April, which is the Thursday, there, is that right? I guess we can double check this with David’

ED ‘And then we’ve got the interim show’

LH ‘On the 7^th you said, after the bank holiday’

ED ‘The 5^th, on the Friday’

LH ‘Oh it’s on the 5^th’

ED ‘No sorry the Tuesday, the 7^th’

LH ‘So we have, I’m away from tomorrow evening until Friday, I’m going to be busy over the weekend because I have to help, the flat that I was living in, the tenancy’s coming to an end so I have to make sure all my stuff, because I still have some stuff there that I have to move out, it needs to be cleaned and all the rest of it.’

ED ‘Are you moving then?’

LH ‘No I’ve already moved out, I’m lodging with someone in the same village Bishops Waltham but the tenancy, I moved in with my friend Kerrie, signed a tenancy for a year but I’ve moved out a bit early because I couldn’t afford to stay, the tenacy comes to an end on the 4^th April so a friend of mine took the, my room, short term just to, so Kerrie could afford to stay there she didn’t have to pay rent all on her own. But all my furniture’s still there, all my kitchen stuff, they’ve just been using it, I have no need for it. But I need to get all that stuff out, make sure it’s all clean, the carpets are cleaned, holes filled where we’ve had pictures up etc so I need to make sure that’s all done. But I’m just thinking, next week, because what days are good for you? When do you not work in the day?’

ED ‘Not it’s just this week, I was meant to work today and then Alex wanted to work and I’m like good because I’m just literally just shattered and all I want to do is get on with this. Um, where’s my diary. I work from one till five on a Wednesday’

LH ‘So Wednesday’s are not good, unless, well I don’t know, I was thinking if we did a day each week but maybe that’s not realistic, maybe if we did half a day or two half days. What do you think?’

ED ‘I think whatever’

LH ‘It doesn’t necessarily need to be the same day each week as long as we’re doing something every week. So next week you’ll be working on the Wednesday?’

ED ‘Hmhmm’

LH ‘What about the Thursday?”

ED ‘Sorry I get people to write contacts down on brown paper bags, I have literally thousands and thousands of brown paper bags. I don’t think I’ve written then down anywhere. What day are we?’

LH ‘Today is the 25^th, Monday 25^th So we’re looking at next week, Monday would the 3^rd’ 

ED ‘Yeah okay’

LH ‘I could do the Tuesday the 2^nd’

ED ‘You know it doesn’t matter, put me down for whatever, and then I’ll giggle it around at work’

LH ‘Okay shall we say the Tuesday then? Try and send like a day down at NewRED doing some stuff’

ED ‘Yeah, and then we can rearrange then’

LH ‘Cool, and then in between, obviously we’ll go down now, from now until then we can still be doing the blog stuff, various bits and bobs’

ED ‘Yeah just send me what you want putting on the blog’

LH ‘So the blog is set up under your Elise Darlow at gmail, rather our affect collective gmail, email account’

ED ‘Yeah’

LH ‘Okay that’s what I did wrong then, that’s why I couldn’t’

ED ‘No it’s not because I’d of had to go through the whole process again of setting it up and I already had a blog account. I’ll just have a quick cigarette. Get that bag, get my camera with me and things. I’ve got to sort this studio out look at it’

LH ‘It’s a nice space though’

ED ‘It’s a nightmare’

LH ‘You need some more shelves to get stuff off the floor’

ED ‘Yeah I’m going to get, well it’s just a case of sorting through it, is the problem. I want to get all that out. Is there any other object that we need?’

LH ‘Where’s the shrink wrap? In here? We should take that’

 

ED ‘This we need as well actually. Charles Ray’