I really enjoyed the Framework structure of the Saturday. The opportunity to hear other people’s practice and their lines of inquiry while also getting my project peer critiqued, is often missing from my working institutional practice. Generally there is little time for hearing about work in progress and reflection is often on a practical level. However by the time it got to me I was slightly nervous, as I realised how institutionalised I am. But in some ways I am grateful for the freedom that the institution has given to explore work and practices interest me and challenge preconceived notions of that institution. I also realised the cushion being part of an institution can be. I also think it influences my practice as I don’t always decide where that work is going. I also don’t necessarily have the luxury of time to explore ideas for exhibitions and themes and then present them to galleries I think would work best, as I get given exhibition time slots, the galleries to use and on occasion the theme and contexts I have to work in. But given all those ‘constraints’ I don’t feel I am any less free to take risks or work with really exciting artists and communities to curate exhibitions and programmes. The other presentations made me think hard about the way I was approaching my work but also the feedback I received on Saturday was very useful in preparing me for the research discussion on ATELIER PUBLIC that I had on the following Thursday. It gave me much more confidence about exploring difficult ethical questions about the exhibition. Sunday Although I missed a couple of the workshops the ones I was able to attend related to broken conversations I have had or reaffirmed ideas or brought about new challenges to a practice I have begun to explore. Sunday was no different. The idea of ‘extended practice’ and the explorations of the curatorial seemed to give me a framework to describe in some way where my practice is going. I was really excited by the ideas of preserving the space… the commons…. the physical space … the play space …... what is possible in constructed spaces. I heard something recently that resonated with these discussions of spaces we are creating where conversations happen - ‘What we do in creating these spaces, we create Geographies of Hope’. The stronger the framework the better the loss of control or the ‘free play’ Add Comment Reflections on the Framework Forum - participant’s show and tell presentations and Curating as 10/05/2011
Day 1 - Saturday 24 September It is always an interesting exercise to ask a group of people who appear to do the same practice what it is they are actually doing. Generally we all agree in our open discussions but to really open up, the person’s articulation, perceptions and ideas through this openness are out of the bag. This exists within any group of similar practitioners - artists, musicians etc. Our practice is a personal and self-developed thing but in this sharing, there is much self- questioning and perhaps doubt in what we are actually all doing. This is my own experience of this session. It is healthy to be challenged; this is the point of these sessions. Personally when I was challenged about my presented material and focus, whatever I thought was okay “as research” was not okay in ‘the actuality and present practice’. This created an interesting awkward moment when trying to explain research findings of issues and context, which were perceived to be focused on middle class male privileged curating ‘names’. But it did wake me up to the facts that I needed to address issues such as gender (even sexuality, nationality and age) as I sensed that these contentions did touch a nerve in the group. Therefore this opening up (expanding of perception) can cause slight turmoil but energises a deeper understanding of the real present-day issues of curatorial practice. Day 2 - Sunday 25 September The previous day’s sharing certainly bonded the group and there was a positive feeling in the room - more playful. Ellen put forward the concept of curating as an expanded practice, which is a good observation of curatorial practice - as it stretches out from the institution, extending its experience, blurring the boundaries. I am all for this form (attitude) of practice. But is this just an inevitable development that our boundaries become boring and predictable, so we start to challenge them as we have skills to change, make other things happen in other ways. Through experience of curating in whatever context, we start to use the effectiveness of the practice to become political, economic or spiritual perhaps - things that are more meaningful in life than status or power. Ellen discussed the relief of leaving the institution and surviving. Maybe we get burnt out from the relentless mill. So time out is good. But what tends to happen is that we begin to create our own ‘institutions’, and become constituted with a board of directors – over managed. The closing exercise was a great bit of playful, hypothetical curating. We all had to spend just a short time determining a proposal for curating. This creative exercise of no restrictions and open possibilities produced a brilliant range of very dynamic and interesting possibilities. Particularly about how and where the curator existed in non-institutional contexts. These helpfully illustrated current curators' ambitions of the practice to touch the everyday, be involved in local politics, develop mindful methods and creative experiences, place themselves in social services; be the host and facilitator for example. We should do them all. Iain Irving 04/10/11 Maria Fusco’s highly invigorating seminar and workshop was a personal challenge but on reflection has given my writing a new editorial rigor and awareness. I daren’t look back on my previous outputs given her fresh and feisty methodology. But the technique of a subjective narrative is a voice I recognise and have used for a few years in discussing art and culture. Crucially the message from Maria’s session is that the writer can/should adopt this subjective voice as a critical method and therefore as writers we have the mandate to discuss art things in this manner. What was also apparent is that the methods and stern focus on the detail and exactness of this voice gives this genre of art writing the gravitas to challenge and bypass the tyranny of art theory writing. This particular writing voice has been evolving in art writing for a while. Influences on my own work are the catalogue for the seminal Jan Hoet curated exhibition Chambre d’Amis in Ghent (1986) which layers the publication with selected historical factual and fictional texts with documentation of the artworks; the Private View catalogue (1996) for the exhibition of contemporary artworks in the Bowes Museum, County Durham which has a great text by the curator Penelope Curtis which plays with the concept of the imaginary exhibition and the catalogue for artist Mike Nelson’s A Forgotten Kingdom (2001) which is designed like some pulp fiction novel dovetailing his own artwork with sections from choice fiction. And, if I can mention some of my curated projects - The House in the Woods with Janice Galloway and The Blue Chamber with Duncan McLean - employed the creative writer to give an interpretation to the exhibition either as a commissioned piece or republished text. But these texts have a purpose in this context. They give extended interpretation to a specific curated project. Taking such writing out of this context is interesting but may as Maria pointed out in a recent Art Monthly critique, produce hostility and confusion of its intention and integrity. Maria’s own work can stand alone in its own publication as does Chris Kraus’s writing. But it can be an easy target as illustrated in Kraus’s recent book Where Art Belongs (2011), which is a collection of sectioned short stories narrating the ups and downs of the LA artworld, as the text on the short lived Tiny Creatures gallery reads like some sort of horrible trendy Brett Easton Ellis tribute act. Not so groovy. Iain Irving Iain is a lecturer at Grays School of Art, Aberdeen and currently working on a PhD to produce a definition of independent curatorial practice. www.iainirving.co.uk This was the workshop I was most unsure of. I have over the development of my curatorial practice had an uncomfortable relationship with writing. Understanding it's importance but never fully able to commit myself to it in any other way than the completion of funding applications and press releases. This was a concern that seemed to be shared by a few of the other participants. The workshop started with Maria presenting a version of her essay 'Say who I am. Or a Broad Private Wink'*. With a call to inductive process in opposition to the traditional idea of deductive criticism. Instead of attempting to create a fixed relation to the 'art object' she suggested that the role of the critic should be to work within the contradictions and problematics that the 'art object' throws up. Following on from this we where given 2 options of how we wanted to proceed with the day. Either a practical workshop or a continuation of more theoretically based discussion on the role of art criticism. I voted for the 2nd option but was overwhelmingly disagreed with. In hindsight I am glad it went against me. The workshop took the participants through how the use of different tenses and persons in writing alters the way a text is read. Working with a material selected from a visit to Hans Schabus' exhibition 'Remains of the Day'** we were set a number of exercises starting on ones own and building to a choral text working in 2 collaborative groups. At the end of each writing exercise we then had the uncomfortable experience of reading out the texts to the group and the discussing what the different registers did to the tone of the writing. The event as a whole cast light on a number of issues I have been thinking through on the interrelations between curating, writing and editing and how subjective voices emerge within all of them. Echoing some of Jans points in the first workshop there was an idea that working with art needs to shift from the readily assigned roles of the artist as the dominant voice with the curator/critic attempting to disentangle in a pure act of interpretation to a position in which everyone adds further subjective layers in the process further complicating our relationship to art. The workshop was helpful even though I am a long way away from coming to terms with my relationship to art writing although maybe this is the point? Benjamin Fallon 13.09.11 -- * published in judgment and contemporary art criticism edited by J.Khonsray and M.O'Brien for Artspeak/Fillip Editions. ** http://www.collectivegallery.net/present.html Maria Fusco writing workshop, By Amy Fung 09/12/2011
Coming to the end of this inaugural arts writing gig at Deveron Arts, I am more unsure than ever as to what it is I am actually writing. I know I write, but I know little else. I have no idea what it is I am writing, just that I am definitely writing it. Working on the border of cultural commentaries and creative non-fiction, I am tired of looking, if not legitimating what it is I write, rather, I continue to read the writings that have influenced me as a reader and inevitably as a writer. A small handful of these voices appear on my current reading selection for the Art Reader Network (http://www.artreadernetwork.com) including Gertrude Stein, Deleuze and Guattari, and Serge Deney, all of whom were specters to my experience of Maria Fusco’s writing workshop yesterday. Reconfiguring the value and limitations of arts writing as a creative practice that runs alongside, across, in and through the works of visual art our words accompany, Fusco’s approach to arts writing meets at the nexus of experimental poetics, post-structuralist theory, and the sculpting of subjectivity. Shifting art objects, and the history of art itself, as bricks, rather than the keystone, in the arch of understanding and rendering, Fusco pushes us into a minefield of subjective interpretations starting from the first person position of (art) objects. Encouraging us basically to “re-caress the art object” - to write and read the object simultaneously - Fusco’s series of writing exercises led us further down the constructive path of subjective reimaginings, and hopefully hit home that writing is a practice that employs creative skill. A quiet, but nevertheless startling realization came during the collaborative exercises, when we had to do pronoun hurdles in small groups, and I was reminded for the first time in a very long time that writing and editing are acquired skills that not many people have grasped. As somebody who compulsively writes and edits, I unfortunately forget before eventually remembering that writing remains one of the most undervalued skills in terms of appreciation and labour value. Concerns disguised as questions were raised early on as to why one writes if nobody is going to read it? This commonly held position reveals the underlying attitude that writing is supposedly a servant to communicate knowledge, and that knowledge is presupposed, rather than created. Would anyone ask if a musician would play and sing if there is no audience to hear it? Or if a thought is going to be explored if nobody is ever going to understand it? Eventually somebody comes across the work in some incarnation or another, but the work must begin somewhere. Having been given an option between production or discussion, I am thrilled the majority voted on production, as that’s at least a positive sign towards a better direction. For more information visit AmyFung.ca amyfung.ca writing and editing for all Art in a show touring Britain 08/19/2011
Whilst I respect the curators' aim to set out clear parameters in dealing with those complex and institutional issues mentioned below - such as the portrayal of a British art, the survey show infrastructure, setting guidelines for their collaboration - those parameters weren't opened up in the discussion. In describing their conditions of approach - albeit with the caveat that these aren't interesting for discussion in themselves - the conversation that followed could have developed to focus on the art in the show or the strands running through their curatorial approach. Perhaps we should have started out by talking about art, rather than the construction around it? Against the highly complex set of arrangements binding it, this exhibition intends to reinforce a validity of encounter between people, ideas and objects in a defined public space (gallery), free from obstacles that interrupt looking at artwork, such as the spectre of theory. However, the political potential can only be talked about when the parameters that are set around the exhibition don't preclude from discussion of the space, the work and the people that are left within. Blogging about Britishness? 08/13/2011
I'm not sure entirely how I feel about this workshop. While on the one hand it was interesting to hear about how such large scale arts events like BAS 7 are developed conceptually and then organised practically, I do tend to agree with Amy's blog below: the part that was missing from the day was perhaps the part I consider to be the most important aspect - how they dealt with curating a show with such a history of being associated with representations of national or even cultural identity. The feeling in the room was definitely at times tense and I think this was due to the double-act nature of Lisa and Tom's discussion. Perhaps if they'd asked more questions, or perhaps if we'd interrupted, more questions about developing BAS 7 would have been answered in more depth. This was certainly a contrast to Jan Verwoert's workshop where participants were questioned about their own practice or asked to think about it in a different way. Probing and intrusive, yes, however this was a wonderful opportunity for a more established curator to mentor participants- not in a horribly patrionising way - but by guiding positive self-criticism and introducing new ways of thinking. We all knew both Tom and Lisa had just come out of afternoon talks prior to our workshop and it was a rather hot and lazy Saturday afternoon - but did this stop participants from being more inquisitive? Stop them from probing Tom and Lisa as Jan had probed us the week before? Or perhaps it was the fact that there were two of them that put us off somewhat....however, after summing up the courage to ask a few questions I was more than a little disappointed. I began by sharing an experience of taking in a group of mostly 60+ workshop participants to visit the BAS7 exhibition at GOMA and the feedback the participants gave me - which was mostly negative regarding the accompanying literature and signage. I must admit, I was relieved to learn that this was something outwith the control of both curators due to the PR control of Hayward (something that I thought tied in rather nicely to Jan's talk the week before). Too scared to tell them that my students had also told me "Well after seeing the whole exhibition and reading all the literature and talking to the gallery staff, I still don't see what's British about it" I held my breath until the conversation turned to the murky subject of "cities need big art events like BAS 7 and biennials and art festivals". I felt I couldn't hold back any longer and I had questioned why somewhere like Nottingham needed BAS7. Unfortunately, I was met with a rather vague response...to be honest, I can't actually remember exactly what was said about why these kinds of events are important, however I remember the conversation ending with an answer along the lines of events like BAS7 are important for inspiring lazy art students who no longer have an interest in seeing exhibitions....but what about the rest of Nottingham? What concerns me most of all - and yes, perhaps I'm still a bit revved up after attending Rocca Gutteridge's Artachat talk in the Borders (www.artachat.com) about immigration policy affecting cultural exchange between the UK and non-EU countries - is that in an age when the UK government is a little too preoccupied with defining cultural borders, two leading curators could be so irresponsible as to not openly discuss what makes a British Art Show a British art show to a group of emerging curators. Kate Martin is a freelance curator and arts educator based in Edinburgh and a participant of Framework. Response to British Art Show 7 discussion with Lisa le Feuvre and Tom Morton, By Amy Fung 08/03/2011
The lingering memory hanging over from last Saturday's afternoon with Lisa le Feuvre and Tom Morton comes in the form of clearly remembering several facial expression from fellow participants: a raised discerning eyebrow followed by an uneasy shifting of eyes as if silently asking, "What? Really?" The expressions came near the end, responding immediately to le Feuvre's question of whether anyone in the room had thought about curating the BAS. That question, on paper, is fine, and potentially interesting to consider as a long term professional goal. Only, the question came after 90 minutes of tense pauses, well-practiced double-team promotional pitching, and vague attempts to cut through the double-speak of "unspectacular legacies" and being "experts in the present". While the group, or the small handful who spoke, seemed directly interested in the politics, logistics and marketing of an animal such as BAS, its role as a rejuvenation event, as an appeal to the idealized broad public, the curators would only indulge in how they found all of that the least interesting, yet could not seem to separate or differentiate how their curatorial choices existed outside of the system. While their curatorial focus has been on selecting individual works of merit, history cannot be escaped, and motfis cannot be suppressed. The exhibition of BAS 7 may be trying to do something different than previous editions, but there is no convincing argument that the system of a large group show based on such a loose parameter of "British in the past 5 years" can be anything but a survey show. Looking back, the discussion wasn't so much a discussion then as it was a sales pitch starting from the point of self-denial. Comfortably playing off each other, though visibly exhausted and drained as they approach their fourth and final installment of BAS 7, Morton and le Feuvre stayed firm to their message, filling in each pregnant pause to keep the pitch alive. In the moment I thought they were just too well rehearsed to do anything but stay on course, even if the atmosphere wanted something different, but in light of the question proposed by le Feuvre at the end, their determinate denial feels more like a steadfast reflection of their own affirmation of the system, one that they feel they may have changed in some way. I went to see The British Art Show 7 again the next day, and my favorite works remain Christian Marclay's The Clock and Luke Fowler's collaboration with Toshiya Tsunoda. It doesn't actually matter if Marclay isn't British (though he sometimes spends time in his London home), but why it doesn't matter is certainly one (missing) entry point towards discussing the relevance of carrying on and on this exhibition. And in attempting to explore this further, we would require a considered and realistic perspective on how we exist within a moving history of politics, and not just a belief of existing hermetically (and with expertise, no doubt!) in the present. Amy Fung is the Visiting Arts Writer at Deveron-Arts.com. For more information, visit AmyFung.ca  Thanks to Lisa and Tom for Saturday's discussion on the British Art Show and curatorial collaboration. We talked about the mechanics of the BAS structure and a curatorial mode for working within it: Lisa and Tom's catalogue essays make associative references to literature, using the motif of HG Well's title "In The Days of the Comet" rather than referencing theory or exhibition histories. We discussed the marketing and promotion of BAS in relation to attracting new audiences in different locations for the show and ways of addressing the audience through events and written material in the context of the curators' decision-making process for the artists they have selected. I'm interested to hear comments from others on the discussion.  Jan Verwoert workshop 07/30/2011
Jan- "How do you value your practice?" "What resistances and obstacles do you encounter?" Me- "I value it when... when the creative process can be socially useful... I mean I don't want to sound like a complete hippy but, erm, well there you go- I'm interested in art's potential, well at least exploring it's potential to be useful, socially useful... ...and the obstacles?... well feeling like I'm a complete hippy" A glance away and discussion on the roots of socially engaged practices, Labour, socialism, the failures the successes, then more discussion on the importance of discussion around the artwork then... Jan- "Right I'm going to return to you (pointing at me)... this term hippy..." Jan is very good at pushing you, I've never felt so hot and embarrassed in a casual crit situation. He's brilliantly direct yet charming and confidence enhancing. I needed the pushing, I now realise it has been a long time since I have been made to dig deep and really challenge, why and why and why. The afternoon picked at (the ones that resonated most for me) artistic integrity, loosing and keeping curatorial values, institutional logic and the importance of interruptions, problems and processes of collaborative curating, transparency- how much and why. The key phrase I'll use in my, wanting to be potentially useful practice is, "the gay uncle". When you're in a project, say for example with a group or youth kids and it's your time to get out, (funding, contracts, pain) bring in the gay uncle as a distraction- the kids love him, they forget about you and you can leave, quietly through the back door. Framework's first session for me was the fantastic cliches: inspirational, mind expanding, invigorating. Hard work too. Cove Park was stunning, the artists in residence focused, friendly, thought-provoking. Thank you very much Framework, the cobwebs of my brain are slowly being brushed away. Rocca Gutteridge is an Artist, currently in residence at the Mela Festival and working with socially engaged organisation Deveron Arts |
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