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: