ARTISTS TALKING

# 17 [22 April 2008]

I have emailed the group with an invitation to collaborate. The first series of six Salons now feels like a pilot project: they will certainly continue. I’m thinking roughly once a month. I’m hoping to partner up with people for each upcoming one – so that those who would like to be more involved, can. Others can just turn up. We can also open them up more to other people – there are loads of people I think would like to come to different ones depending on what the subject is.

I really enjoyed a reading event that Spartacus did at Vilma Gold about a month ago.. It was a totally open thing, but by dressing up in a kind of inside out outfit, it injected an air of silliness that putting others at ease but also contextualised the discussion about the carnivalesque. She had everyone wearing pants on their head and reading Rabellais, but in a way that felt like it was totally cool to join in or not. A fine skill.

Eleven people made presentations at the first six Salons, which I think was a lot. But we learnt a lot, about what each other did/do, and what the Salons could be. I’m looking forward to the flexibility that can be afforded them now. They can be anything. It would be nice if some of the same people came, but also if some of the people who asked to come came, and some of the people who couldn’t make it to the first ones.

Lined up for May and June: a 'favourite bits' video night hosted by Andrew Tullis; and a beer-making workshop where we will consider the artisan in the everyday and maybe read some Morris.

A few other ideas: bring a short film club; show-and-tell research material or a piece of work that has influenced you; continue the critique of the everyday; style; rules; archives; anthropology; secret Fascist architecture fetishes.

# 16 [9 April 2008]

We reflected on the six Salons and the people that have come together. Despite differences in practices and ways on working, there was a thread that emerged running through the ‘guests’ work and projects. Karen described it as ‘structures that are flexible but have focus and rigour’. Fundamental to these projects is the objective to subvert, manipulate, challenge question and highlight existing structures for the production and dissemination of art… not just to replicate. To create something responsive. Projects that construct meaningful conceptual frameworks for making and sharing art and ideas.

Can these structures survive when they wish to operate outside traditional funding structures? Ben’s limited edition ‘shares’ sold to finance Brown Mountain Festival (part artwork, part intangible share in live art) or The Crying of Potential Estate obviously get actual money out of people who actually  have some to start with.. creative entrepreneurialism.. I've just spotted Emilia Telese's new blog on the artist as social entrepreneur..

We all relate to shoehorning ourselves into various boxes in order to get funding, or at least presenting our projects to others in a way that will appeal to funders. Community.. social agendas.. creative industries.. commercial product. Whichever way the policy is leaning. Superficial Measurements of qualitiatve and quantative meaning – is that our prerogative? Whilst wrestling off the cliche of artists as sociopathic incapables we have subjected ourselves to worries about the deadly audit? Gotta stop those artists buggering off on holiday with their arts council grants (like the hoax-holiday students from Leeds who pretended to do that but spent two weeks in a Headingly basement taking turns on the sunbed).
Perhaps initiating our own projects is a way of allowing, even expecting, for projects to change direction and become something else through the act of carrying them out.

# 15 [9 April 2008]

Comments and prizes..

I have been informed by two seprate astute gentlemen that the film I may have been attempting to note down was Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. As I had imagined - nothing to do with right-wing politics.

Mr Andrew Tullis wins the prize for coming to ALL the Salons so far. A themed buffet of his choosing?

# 14 [28 March 2008]

For Melanie too, the issue of national identity was forefront. Her poetic mission, to seek out palm trees around Scotland, took her around the country on travels over two years. It was in part in response to her discomfort at anti-English sentiment - but more particularly the idea that she wouldn't be offended by it as she was told by one person she "wasn't really English". The project was took in the notion of the botanical explorers. She drew and painted, but the diaries and accounts became as much the artwork as the beautiful paintings. Mel read an extract of the diary to us; personal journeys and incidental events. We talked of colonisation, of how Scotland is seen to lend itself to being ‘toured’ (or is victim to the European and North American impulse to colonise), and heard about Mel’s lectures with experts: horticulturalists and those that have broken down the notion of the ‘native’. She showed us a film too, in a tropical garden in Scotland’s gulf stream west coast; her outdoor gear giving her the authority to roam about in the undergrowth; her on-the-spot botanical painting quaint and still strangely eccentric.

Further reading: Coast magazine; Radio 4’s 1968 season; Ken Russell films; A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud (about the respected horticulturalist who pretended to find new species on Rum).


Thoughts about the future of the Salons to come..

# 13 [28 March 2008]

Salon no.6

Attendees: Cathy Lomax, Karen Mirza, Andrew Tullis, Melanie Carvalho, Ruth Beale

Location: Transition Gallery – a second-floor unit in the GLC-era Regent Studios business block.

Libations: oatcakes and cheese, smoked salmon pate, celery, shortbread, pink fizzy wine with strawberries.

We started by talking about The Crying of Potential Estate, a project that Karen had picked up on: a fiendishly multi-layered artists’ group project that involved a story written being cut up into 45 lots that were actioned and read from an audio-booth as they were sold. The story related to Belgium Wisconsin, but the group are Belgian and the auction was in New York.. They seemed to be creating an alternative economy, whilst reinventing and utilising every layer of the means of dissemination. This was all whilst nibbling on the faux-Scottish spread - in celebration of Mel’s ‘Tropical Scotland’ project, but totally apt too to Cathy’s musings on real ‘Englishness’. Cathy read us a text about ‘Albion’: Britishness, or more specifically Englishness, and showed us images of some of her paintings and ‘The English Museum’ installation she made with Alex Micho.n She said she was embarrassed about the text’s ‘crudeness’, but it had a fresh honesty in its celebration of English talent and verve, as well as England’s seaside shabby mediocrity. Cathy showed us ‘O Dreamland’ by Lindsay Anderson – a film essay made from documentary footage of the Dreamland pleasure beach in Margate. The film is in some part celebration of that grim post-war determination to have fun.. and the gritty side of England that sees folk traditions caught between the industrial age and modernity (but no glitz). An appealing simplicity. Is this what we can’t find anywhere else? What keeps us from from skipping the country? There was certainly an element of voyeurism.. a horror in the deprivation. But the ‘Free Cinema’ movement, we learned, was about cheap filmmaking made outside the confines of the film industry, showing ordinary, working-class British people. Their manifesto:
These films were not made together; nor with the
idea of showing them together. But when they came
together, we felt they had an attitude in common.
Implicit in this attitude is a belief in freedom,
in the importance of people and the significance of
the everyday.
As filmmakers we believe that    
No film can be too personal.
The image speaks. Sound amplifies and comments.
Size is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim.
An attitude means a style. A style means an attitude.

True DIY ethic! And that era of filmmaking seemed to be made possible by good people getting inside of institutions with vision and the conviction to carry out their own agenda (again, subversion from the inside). Beuys’ schooling (where he accepted anyone who wanted to come to his classes) cropped up again. What a remarkable thing.. easy in theory but so difficult to carry through when your class is heaving with hundreds of students.

# 12 [24 March 2008]

So to Ms Shay's turn at the Wenlock.. Alice set up a task for us. She handed out cards with words on, and we were to choose three that appealed to us. Inside were images of an installation made from objects found on a walk. We were to draw our own cartographies relating to the words. Alice played us a 10-minute spoken word sound piece where she described a walk. As the words on our cards cropped up we had to place them in the centre of the table – like a game of consequences, or exquisite corpse. The reading was rich took us through a semi-familiar city-scape (not without its wildernesses and disorder). The drawings made us listen and hang on every word. Alice has studied both urban theory and art theory, and her artistic projects have been influenced by this. The project was a many-layered detourn – the drawing, installation and sound piece as process-based and interpretive.. and steps away from the ‘experience’.

Further reading from Salon 5: George Orwell - Keep the Aspidistra Flying (but not the film); Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment; Rainer Werner Fassbinder films; Knut Hanson – Hunger. (I have also written down Bruce  Chapman, Sunlines, but can only find reference on the internet to a US politician with links to the religious right and a conservative think-tank. Perhaps not)

# 11 [18 March 2008]

Salon no.5

Location: Upstairs at the Wenlock Arms. A Proper pub.

Present: Karen Mirza, Alice Shay, Andrew Tullis, Ben Roberts, Melanie Carvalho, Anne-Marie Watson, Spartacus Chetwynd and Ruth Beale.

Pub buffet: egg mayo, cheese and pickle, ham and mustard,  pork pies, sausage rolls, scotch eggs, crisps and dip. Real Ale.

Speakers: Mr Roberts and Ms Shay.

Ben Roberts led us through some of the experimental live art and multi-artform events projects he has programmed at Camden Arts Centre – it’s clear his job title as Programme Co-ordinator within the Education department doesn’t fully represent the role he has carved out for himself.. the development of programming as practice (Camden’s no curator stance.. ‘no curators’ or ‘everyone’s a curator’?). It was great to see how Camden operates on a number of levels – as an international art space; community education programmes; emerging artists’ residencies; (occasionally dangerous) performance art. Ben told us about Robin Deacon’s performance / re-enactment of Moby Dick where Robin ended up in a bath of water with a microphone in his hands. Where do you step in and stop it?
We returned to the idea of the spontaneous within the institution – such as the 24-hour performance marathon at The Serpentine Pavilion… when the shambolicness and over-ambitiousness is practically deliberately incorporated to create energy (perhaps as an audience we want a bit of an ‘edge’... we want it to be ‘experimental’, dancing on the brink between brilliance and chaos..).
Ben’s new project – Brown Mountain Festival – is a spin-off from Sally O’Reilly and Mel Brimfield’s Brown Mountain College (a sly to Black Mountain College - www.bmcproject.org). They plan to put on events during Frieze (yes, another thing we mused, but worth it for all the internationals in town during that week). He cited ‘white nights’ as an inspiration - in Rome Paris and Brussels cinemas; theatres, museums, art galleries, shops, restaurants and clubs stay open all night. When can we do this in London?!

# 10 [18 March 2008]

More on the discussion at Limoncello:
Lucy Clout presented the Associates programme on behalf of Rebecca. This unique venture of Ryan Gander's - to put £40k into a year-long programme promoting 12 artists - shows an extroadinary generosity.. and overt (positively joyful) nepotism. But also a deliberately manipulative approach to the market, to try and launch these artists' careers and get them representation. We branded him a philanthropist (is that a good thing or a bad thing?). Limoncello seems to have grown organically from Associates, staying in the same space and working with some of the ‘associate artists’. It was really nice to see a curatorial sensibility in the selection of artists, and such a simple thing, to bring together these artists whose work you think is great and undervalued (and who have since become friends). There's something special about the sincerity and honesty of this position that belies the hard graft required to and make the gallery viable. 

Criticisms of the commercial art world have come up several times in the Salons, in relation to the drive, ambition or focus of artists. Sometimes we have talked about artists motivation for making work but this time about the vulnerability of the trust relationship - the suspicion of contracts -  but how this can create power struggles rather than loyalties. 

Anne-Marie described her Seam project in Glasgow as deliberately non-commercial. This was perhaps reflects the lack of a contemporary commercial market in Galsgow, but also the promotional/career progression position that peers and artist-run projects profer almost in place of this. This could be seen in some of the artists she showed - the projects gave the chance to make and show work but not just muck around (in Anne-Marie's own words - some the work seems surprisingly formal in retrospect).  It was great to see slides of the space which she chose to leave gutted on the inside, but to paint the facade white and pristine on the outside.. playing with artist-gallery-as-regeneration/gentrification. 

# 9 [11 March 2008]

Salon no.4

Location: Limoncello gallery, Hoxton Street.

Present: Alice Shay, Brad Butler, Melanie Carvalho, Karen Mirza, Rebecca May Marston, Lucy Clout, Andrew Tullis, Anne-Marie Watson, Ben Roberts and Ruth Beale.

Delectable treats: Italian canapes, home-made Limoncello and After Eight mints. 

Speakers: Ms May Marston (assisted by Ms Clout) and Ms Watson.

Until I find my notes, I'm just going to write out the reading which preceded the presentations. It's from Henri Lefebre's Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 1 (a pre-cursor to de Certeau's Practice of Everyday Life discussed in an earlier Salon), from the chapter 'The Development of Marxist Thought':

"Every ideology us an 'expression' of its time; but in fact the term has no predetermined meaning; in hindsight a critically minded reader will realise that a novel, a play or a book of poetry was an ‘expression’ of its times – one possible ‘expression’ among others. There can be all manner of spaces and distances, transpositions and metamorphoses, standing between reality and the ways reality is expressed, so much so the very differing works of art can equally and quite justifiably be regarded as ‘expressing’ the same moment in time (Balzac and Stendhal, for example). Here again the distance between what is expressed and the means of expression itself must be bridged by a doube-edged line of though: on the one hand, by explaining each work in the light of real life; and on the other by seeking to discover what we learn about that life as it was, in the literary work which has ‘expressed’ it”

Does culture make us, or do we make culture?

# 8 [4 March 2008]

After a week's reprieve, the Salons resume tonight. Plans for a 'reading week' were on hold as I spent two weeks tracking down a set of Lefebvre's Critique of Everyday Life. Finally in my clutches, I have prepared a reading tonight on artistic expression.

Going back to the last Salon, I did not report last week on the discussion around Karen Mirza's work -  a series of films made with her collaborator Brad Butler.

Two stacked TV monitors showed a person (different each time) standing holding a mirror (in one case) and a piece of coloured perspex (in another) in different locations. Both the reflection and the scene behind the protagonist could be seen. Sometimes the camera came into sight. The dimensions of the mirror corresponded to that of a TV screen but created another frame. Locations included Coney Island beach and a Karachi street.

References thrown up by the group included the film Mean Streets, Morris (used mirror), colour field paintings.

Discovering that these works were meant as films and not video changed our perception - the work then became about light, reflection, film: determining space through film. Someone asked if Karen had thought of making the work a performance (possible live event). We talked about how speculating the audience for a work affected it's creation, and how the same work would be viewed by people in different cultures.

Karen professed an obsession with 'space' and the ephemeral, and an interest in the frame and the gaze. It was interesting to hear that Brad's slant relates to his background as an athropologist - in the people, their behaviour.

In the context of the earlier discussions, we talked about   relationship betweem passive and controlled experience, and the notion of setting 'rules ' in everything we do. It seems we are always working withing existing frameworks, but by starting things and making work we have the chance to make our own systems and rules.