ARTISTS TALKING

# 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]

Salon no.4 (cont)

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]

Salon no.3 (cont)

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.

# 7 [19 February 2008]

Salon no.3

Location: loft apartment on Bethnal Green Road.

Present: James Porter, Alice Shay, Ben Roberts, Andrew Tullis, Russell Martin, Lisa Le Feuvre, Karen Mirza, Melanie Carvalho, Anne-Marie Watson and Ruth Beale. 

Themed buffet (East End Delights): bagels and samosas from Brick Lane, cakes and tarts made by Mrs Pelicci from E.Pelicci's cafe.

Speaker: Ms Mirza

Miss B's reading: extract from The so-called utopia of the centre beaubourg - An interpretation by Luca Frei (www.bookworks.org.uk) and from the essay in in the last post. The essay draws comparisons between the Centre Beaubourg -  an imagined radical libertarian space submerged over 76 stories beneath the newly erected Pompidou centre in which the population are invited to reinvent 'culture' - and the architect Cedric Price's unrealised Fun Palace - an interactive 'laboratory of fun' with interchangeable architecture.. and a precursor to and inspiration for the Pompidou. 

I had imagined that the conversation would focus around the notion of the 'blank slate' - the beginnings of any artistic, organisational or curatorial project; if or how this could ever be blank. It steered, however, more to the problems and constraints within this 'egalitarian' architecture. It was felt that architecture could not be truly democratic; besides the ego of the architect, there is the question of predetermined elements influencing behaviour. Also, some found the anti-intellectualisation or anti-skilling of culture problematic. Contemporary precedents cropped up - Public Works, N55 -but our interest was drawn to real self-generated culture, the stuff that crops up in the cracks. I wonder now about this kind of state-sponsored culture ever being viable. 

This led to ideas about subversion (Foucault's theory that a government should turn allow a certain amount of subversion or law-breaking but keep one eye on it), from the beer tent at Crystal Palace that really drew the workers, the cinema in Paris' underground network, soundsystems in Spanish sewers, restrictions on meeting and protesting.. was Rave a political act?

More about the discussion around Karen Mirza's work to follow..

# 6 [17 February 2008]

I have asked the group to read the article at the following link in advance of the next meeting, with a view to taking the notion of starting culture 'from scratch' as explored in 'The so-called utopia of the centre beauborg' (Luca Frei's interpretation).  http://www.metamute.org/en/In-the-Bowels-of-the-Fun-Palace

# 5 [14 February 2008]

Some works talked about so far.

# 4 [14 February 2008]

Salon no.2:

Location: studio/warehouse apt in Dalston

Attendees: Anne-Marie Watson, Kate Hawkins, Alice Shay, Karen Mirza, Spartacus Chetwynd, Andrew Tullis, Ruth Beale.

Speakers: Ms Hawkins, Mr Tullis.

Supper: dips, salsa, soup, breads, carrot cake and wine (a red theme..!)

We watched two films of Joseph Beuys' trips to Scotland; roadtrips and Richard De Marco looking very pleased with himself.

Andrew showed us his documentary film The Man Who Captured Nessie about Loch Ness Monster Hunter Frank Searle’s strange life, obsession, fakery and dubious relationship with the truth. We talked about escaping entirely and assuming identities (see Dr Charlotte Bach below). Kate showed the film of her performance Eternal Peas – the professed link was 'lies', this time etiquette’s pretence at propriety come endurance test. We talked of anecdotes and eventually Annabel Chong’s sex marathon (who was screwing who – the TV producers came out best).

There was also introduced the subject of ‘newness’, illustrated through a fluxus diagram showing creativity, Fluxus, art and unexeplored territory (they don't care about being new). We talked about: the word galvanise coming from Galvani, who discovered that electric shocks could induce twitches in frogs legs.. leading to the idea of a human undead factory labourforce; re-enactments; Smithson’s widow signing editions after his death; repetition of the same stories in creative folk traditions such as Mumming plays (crusader type falls ill, doctor cures, all well). We also continued the conversation about doing stuff: Why do we still make work for galleries when other media such as TV and magazines offer alternative means of exhibition and communication?; how does having a day job become both a financial necessity and artistic hindrance – what about Chekov who was Doctor, and Chaucer who was a civil servant?

Further reading/viewing: Who was Dr Charlotte Bach?, Nessies, Seven Years in Search of the Monster, The Princess and the Pea, Black Christmas, Russian Arc, I am Curious (Blue), Picnic at the Hanging Rock, BBC Iplayer, TVI.

# 3 [10 February 2008]

I had a very disturbing dream on Friday that the next Salon was dominated by a an (impostor) artist who behaved disgracefully and dominated the whole thing with an unrepeatably unsavoury performance. Every hostess' nightmare. I assure you Guests - this will not happen. 

# 2 [7 February 2008]

Salon no. 1:

Venue: 9th floor modernism on the post-war inner-city housing success story Golden Lane Estate.

Attendees: Bev Bytheway, Clare Cumberlidge, Kate Hawkins, Andrew Tullis, Ben Roberts, Anne-Marie Watson, Cathy Lomax, Rebecca May Marston, Spartacus Chetwynd and Ruth Beale. Three apologies and one absence due to hospitalisation(!) 

Speakers: Ms Beale, Ms Chetwynd.

Befitting victuals: bread, apples, cheese, sardines on toast, Elderflower cordial, rosehip tea, ale.

On the record player: Reginald Liversidge and Peter Jebson Entertain at the Manchester Gaumont Lancashire WURLITZER (sic) and Amazing Bavarian Stompers (Pontefract charity shop purchases)

Spartacus showed The Walk to Dover –  see previous post - and I fired through about 100 slides; a mixture of my work, buildings I’ve visited, Aurora projects and random found slides. I am glad that my presentation is out the way, because I will make a better hostess when i'm not doing silly things like leaving my projector cable in Hackney and having to run back for it just before the Salon.

Some starting statements and questions posed to the group:

•  Art and life: the productive and consumptive activity inherent in everyday life.
•  Jack of all trades, master of none .
•  “Artists shouldn’t show in projects they have curated themselves”. The integrity issue.
•  Self-organisation - responsive, subversive, spontaneous.
•  Lo-fi. Low budget. Home-made. Purely Aesthetic concerns?
•  Institutions that emanate the artist-run project.
•  Integrated practice? Where does artists practice start and finish?
• Strategic moves and self-mythologising. Just a stepping-stone on the career path?

We talked about the notion of doing something for itself (like going on holiday) or making it art by framing it and presenting it as such. There was agreement about the importance of just doing stuff.. not waiting for reasons, but that sometimes outside catalysts that provide a framework can help. Most heated subject: does the appeal of doing things for the sake of doing them, rather than as a career move or for monentary gain come when one is afforded the ‘luxury’ of an alternative?

Further reading/visits: The German Hospital in Hackney; The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tresham; George Orwell’s essay on Charles Dickens; Le Mystère du château du dé by Man Ray, the officially off-limits roof of Great Arthur House on the Golden Lane estate, and more including other films I have forgotton (note to self: take notes to self).