FA:CP LEVEL 5 DOCUMENTATION
AÏCHA DAFFÉ
THE COMMITTEE private view
INTRODUCTION Level 5 Oct. ’12 - May ‘13
To present my documentation for level 5 I have decided to create an online book. This decision was inspired by a documentation workshop we took part in as a class in which we looked at and discussed the effectiveness of different modes of documentation. One thing that I struggled to get my head around was why someone would want to create a document of something that was not built to last. Before looking at the work we were asked to wash our hands so as not to ruin the documents. Although the request was reasonable, it built the pieces of documentation up to be an artefact, something as vulnerable as the thing it is trying to represent. It was this that brought me to the decision that my documentation would exist online, as an imperishable record of my work that can easily be referred back to. Publishing my documentation online will also mean that it will be easy and practical to share with others. When on my placement it was extremely useful to have my blog (that showed my progress throughout the project) in order to demonstrate to tutors and classmates what I was doing. I would like this document ultimately to be available to others who are interested in my work and what I am doing as well as to myself. The reason I decided against producing a standard blog or webpage layout for this body of documentation was because I didn’t want to overcomplicate my document. I wanted it to be chronological, simple and easy to navigate.
FLOOR COLLECTION 1 Day Residency at the Booth Museum Nov. ‘12
Since being encouraged to work in a site-specific way, and having looked at the way in which APG artists responded to their surroundings I feel that my approach to work has matured; I feel more confident in responding in an honest way to time and place, making my work more instinctive. I found that my day residency at Booth Museum and the work I produced there opened my eyes to how work of this sort can be achieved. We arrived at the museum and had a tour of the collection of stuffed animals, rocks and minerals on display and behind the scenes. I was overwhelmed by the amount of wonderful pieces the museum had that were hidden from the public. This led me to think about what a collection is, why someone would collect and what elevates these items to such great importance. In the afternoon, each of us at the Booth Museum began to work on a piece of art in response to our surroundings. This task I found initially very daunting. All the research and inspiration I needed to make the piece was in the museum – I had never worked in this way before. I began by walking around the museum, and I began to notice all the small objects and bits of rubbish left on the floor. Without thinking about it too much I started picking it up, and laying them all out on a large piece of paper. I then labelled each item with the time and place I found it. This process became obsessive, I was constantly to-in and fro-ing from the room where I was making the work, to the rest of the museum where these small artefacts could be found. The fact that they were so much more sought after purely because I was looking for them told me what a collection is; these objects were no longer pieces of rubbish found on the floor, but pieces of rubbish in my collection, tentatively mounted on white card, giving these objects a purpose and a sense of ahistoricism. In her essay on The Collection, Paradise of Consumption, Susan Stewart states that ‘the past is at service of the collection, for whereas the souvenir lends authenticity to the past, the past lends authenticity to the collection. A collection seems to be a fetishisation of the souvenir and the memory, which only appears to hold any importance when related back to each item’s past.
Floor Collection
8 POINT ARC Visual Essay Dec. ‘12
The 8 point arc is a concept coined by literary theorist Nigel Watts. He believes that there is a checklist by which any writer can mark his story. The most successful story would follow this basic structure: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Stasis Trigger The quest Surprise Critical choice Climax Reversal Resolution
I found this idea interesting and quite comical after the investigation into a successful artwork we undertook as part of The Committee and how incredibly flawed we understood the idea of a formula for the perfect artwork to be. When we were asked to produce a visual essay in response to our research into the different modes of communicating a message after having read Roland Barthes’ Image, Music, Text, and having read semiotics. At the time I was mid-way through my Creative Writing For Performance faculty option and working on my own piece of narrative storytelling. The piece involved 3 classic stories from cinema that I believed would be familiar to the viewer: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Wizard of Oz and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I then worked my way through the 3 films and displayed the 8 stills from each film that represented the 8 key moments of the arc. The piece was an investigation into whether or not the stories would follow the 8 point arc. When I found that they in fact did, it raised the question of whether or not the stories intentionally followed it; suggesting some kind of conspiracy, whether they followed the arc because they were all simply well-structured, successful stories, or whether it was all just a coincidence.
Film Still used for Visual Essay
ALBERT LUNE AND THE WHITE BEAR Short Story Jan. ‘13
‘The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.’ – Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost) Albert Lune and the White Bear follows the process of a young woman accepting loss and welcoming the unknown whole heartedly; the majority of the story following her misconceptions on how to go about it. She is captivated by the concept of Psychogeography; conceived by Guy Debord. Debord himself describes Psychogeography as ‘the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals’. Noemi is guilty of taking his writings on the subject all too literally, finding herself influenced so much by his legacy that she becomes stifled and unable to engage with her environment past a superficial level; making the whole exercise rather pointless. The backdrop of the story is fittingly in Paris; the birthplace of various trains of thought concerning psychological interaction with geography. I was also inspired by the exercise of ‘seeing’ explored by Georges Perec in his 20th Century essay on The Street , in which he states that if you do not see anything worthy of note at any given time on any given street ‘you don’t know how to see’. This statement is accompanied by a set of instructions on how to see: ‘You must set about it more slowly, almost stupidly. Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless’. The story, as well on reflecting on the reading we have done around post-studio practice, seems to tie in with other thoughts I have been having concerning art. In his theory of Negative Capability, John Keats speaks of the contrast between the ‘virtuous philosopher’ and the ‘chameleon poet’ he states that ‘a poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no identity, he is continually filling some other body’. I feel that the contrast between art practice and art theory is reflective of this statement made by Keats; the ideal state for an artist to be in being ‘when man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.' In A Field Guide to Getting Lost Rebecca Solnit says that ‘we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown. Perhaps fantasy is what you fill up maps with rather than saying that they too contain the unknown.’ Despite what my protagonist says, she is much more comfortable with the fantasy of Paris and her own preconceived ideas of what the city is about. It is not until the final scene of the story that she becomes emancipated from such a restrictive way of thinking and is able to see the city with her own eyes.
‘I spent 19 years as Noemi Cavey, and on my twentieth I became Noemi Rubert, Dedicated wife of full-time stonemason and half-hearted musician Mathieu Rubert. My favourite pastime was flicking through photo albums others had arranged as it used to reassure me of the supposed happiness that existed in my life when I couldn’t see it myself. Lovingly captured, selected and presented by another I was able to cling to what I chose to see instead of the bleak reality of how things had become. I’d even become quite adept at aping the tentative arms and glazed sedated smiles. I had lain awake in bed feeling broken, dismembered from whom I felt I was by definition: Someone else’s dream. The image battled with me in the dark, and eventually began to win. Mathieu was more myself than I was; he loved me, so I guess that used to make me feel safe. But the sex was cold and it eventually got to the stage where there was no use pretending I was crazy about him. I’d keep going until he appeared satisfied and then make my exit, letting him hold me limply in its wake. I knew it was obvious I was parroting his ‘I adore you’s but he didn’t seem to care how I said it, just so long as I did. Conversation was stale, his passion for adventure and learning disintegrated before my eyes as he became the job he didn’t even like. I found his daily routine excruciating to watch. Why make excuses to myself why he was never my everything? I had to remind myself 1,460 contraceptive pills and 4 shitty birthday presents down the line that this wasn’t what I signed up for; A man slowly fading, sleeping with the television guide clutched to the place where I think his heart used to be.’ Excerpt from Albert Lune and the White Bear
THE COMMITTEE FA:CP Collaborative Exhibition Jan. ‘13
‘L5 Fine Art: Critical practice students present The Committee; an exhibition which examines what makes a piece of contemporary art successful. The Committee established, by means of research, discussion and documented meetings, a criteria by which to judge a work’s ‘success’. This criterion is: originality, balance between exclusivity and accessibility, effective use of medium, emotional impact, technical execution and cultural & contextual references. The Committee members submitted a proposal for an artwork of their own for exhibition and evaluated each other’s work against the criteria. All work was included in the exhibition but some was deemed more ‘sucessful’ than others. The evaluating process will be repeated by the committee throughout the exhibition taking into account audience response and discussion initiated around the show, creating an evolving concept of what is successful.’ – Exhibition Statement
The concept was born out of an interest and in some cases, the disdain the group had for the suggestions the marketing department gave us in order to increase footfall at our exhibition; such as human interest stories, and using ‘risqué’ materials. From there we formed a fictional committee judging the success of an art work, in which we were the members as well as the artists whose art would be exhibited. We researched into aesthetics, as well as neuroscience, including the theories of successful art outlined by neuro-aestheticist Prof. Ramachandran. Putting on the show has changed the way I work in various ways. Although the business-like approach we adopted was largely satirical, I was still required to adhere to strict organisational procedures and a professional attitude toward meetings; being given the role of ‘correspondence team’ I had to draft letters of warning to people who did not behave equally professionally, stepping away from my position as a friend and a peer. I felt that this has increased my ability to behave with professionalism, and helped me when having the need to correspond with placement hosts in semester two. I am very proud of having been part of putting on a strong exhibition, and although our findings are by no means reflective of what I believe, acting as a panel in order to establish what makes a ‘successful’ artwork made me reconsider my feelings relating to my own practice; although perhaps not directly as a result of the criteria, it will definitely impact how I produce work from now on.
The Committee exhibition
SLIPSTREAM Video Jan. ‘13
This piece seemed to serve as a vehicle for me and my friends to celebrate all being back in the same space after being away studying in various different places in the country, taking ownership of and documenting the experience before it was taken away from us again. I wanted to do something on a large scale, physically and collaboratively that we could be proud of. We built a den, a large fabric covered and artificially lit space that to me served as a kind of fishtank; a microsystem within which all that was important to us about being back in each other’s company; catching up, watching films, listening to music, dancing, having a drink and a smoke, happened within this confined space, this stage through which all these commonplace behaviours could be magnified and analysed. I filmed the experience, and this footage I collected forms the piece of work. It was like an artist residency in a completely fictionalised and contrived environment, built specifically for the purpose of filming, and based around a poem I wrote about returning home for the Christmas holidays: I admired my reflection in a pool of people I knew and the places we had built. It was December and the stars fizzed in a sky rendered incarnadine, my eyes wouldn’t focus so everything existed in a bitter limey haze. We moved through our geography in a slipstream alongside the dreams and ambitions we had each built for ourselves, gold threads between each of us spanning hundreds of miles. Aesthetically I was inspired by beat film, more specifically the first sequence of Ken Jacobs’ Little Stabs at Happiness, in which a group of young people inhabit a room, partially aware of being filmed and therefore very interesting to be observed, as they flicker in and out of being conscious of being followed by a camera, and in and out of sincerity in their behaviours. This piece was a real experiment for me in filming, editing, and producing music for a short film. I had never done it before and I was interested to see how I could turn a short piece of prose I had produced into something visual, and translate the narrative across. I produced this piece around the time of having read ‘Image, Music, Text’, looking at semiotics and producing Visual Essays. It has made me reflect on the effectiveness of communicating a message through different modes which may have largely influenced this piece.
Still from Slipstream
CREATIVE WRITING & BROADCAST MEDIA Semester 2 Artist Residency Feb. – May ‘13
For our second semester I took part in two different residencies in other areas of the University; Creative Writing and Broadcast Media. It took me a while to decide where I wanted to do my placement. I eventually decided to go for subjects that I am passionate and excited about, as I was hoping that my residency could inform and help shape my art practice, as at that point I felt extremely confused about what my practice was. I chose Creative Writing because it is a subject I have always been extremely passionate about alongside Fine Art. After doing Creative Writing for my Extension Studies, and seeing how my reading for my own course infiltrated my writing, I was keen to find areas of crossover and a way of integrating the two subjects. Contrastingly, I chose to do Broadcast Media because I didn’t know much about the subject but was really interested in learning more. Getting in touch with placement hosts and arranging my placements tested my organisational skills and professionalism, and once the two placement hosts had been set up I felt a satisfaction that I had organised it myself. I documented the whole experience on a blog (http://creativewritingbroadcastmedia.wordpress.com). In Broadcast Media the main things I learned were to do with the subject itself rather than the experience; I found the group of students hard to engage with and attendance to the class was poor overall. I learnt about the idea of ‘truth’ being a manmade construct or an ideology put in place to satisfy large numbers of people. We watched documentaries about war and propaganda, and discussed the responsibilities we have as humans vs. the responsibilities we may have as professionals entering a war torn environment. This led me to look further into ethics and particularly graphic images in the media that are met with apathy. This led me to read Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others .In Creative Writing my experience seemed much more well-rounded. I learned a great deal about the subject, such as various creative writing exercises, some literary theory to do with different modes and types of writing and when and why we would use it, this too led me to follow my own personal investigation into narrative storytelling, and led me to read Paul Cobley’s Narrative and Roland Barthes’ Writing Degree Zero. But the Residency was about much more than just the subject itself; the class was filled with exciting and interesting individuals who appeared to have a genuine passion for the subject; which made the experience a great deal more exciting. They were interested in my presence and the experience was much more socially motivated, including meeting and speaking with practicing writers, and going to poetry events as a group. This led me to create a body of work which was much more to do with people and relationships than anything I had done before.
http://creativewritingbroadcastmedia.wordpress.com screenshot
CONVERSATION PIECE Relational Activity, Collaboration w/ Beth Pocock March ‘13
In his 1999 article for the Sunday Times, Bryan Appleyard defines narrative as ‘a communicative relation which is often conflated with straightforward understandings of what a story is.’ He says that ‘even the most ‘simple’ of stories is embedded with a network of relations that are sometimes astounding in their complexity’. He describes narrative storytelling as a ‘human impulse’ to ‘make sense of each moment by referring it to a larger narrative.’ He believes that ‘We (as humans) need to live in a world not of our own making’. He goes on to say that narrative makes our lives ‘meaningful’ by ‘placing us in something bigger than ourselves’. This all appears to make sense; humans appear to always look to ideologies (religion, politics, legality and science) for answers to a larger meaning. Judith Williamson said that ‘We feel the need to belong, to have a social place. It can be hard to find. Instead we may have to be given an imaginary one.’ Perhaps rather than an opportunity for escapism, stories are a way of grounding us in sequence, space and time, and a vehicle for allowing us to ‘be’ comfortably in a world that gives us no clear explanation of things. This piece serves as a social experiment; we created a mini ideology in which storytelling was central to social interaction. The piece was set up around a table and involved a group of eleven people; each provided with a soft drink, some Brighton buttons (a local orange flavoured biscuit) and an envelope labelled ‘starting points for stimulating storytelling’. Each envelope contained three slips of paper; on each was the beginning of a sentence (eg. The last holiday I went on was…, I have never had so much fun as when I…) that prompted an exchange of stories to be told in order to break the ice and socialise. Although the experience was sometimes awkward as conversation seemed forced, it made the participant aware of the way in which we interact with each other and prompted some unexpected social behaviour patterns. This piece would be defined as relational: an artwork that is resolved as a collective as opposed to the more solitary and quiet nature of viewing ‘traditional’ art in a ‘traditional’ gallery setting. Relational pieces rely heavily on their audience for completion and are typically opposed to the hierarchical relationships, between the artist, the art and its viewer. The project is called ‘Conversation Piece’; this is a reference to a type of 18th century portraiture that depicted groups of people apparently engaged in genteel conversation or engaged in an activity. I think the title draws an interesting comparison between these two modes of art; one similar subject area (social interaction) yet two very different art experiences (traditional and relational).
Conversation piece
PATCHING LODGE PERFORMANCE Performance April. ‘13
Whilst on my residency with Creative Writing, the students on the course took part in their own kind of one day residency, in which they visited Patching Lodge – a retirement home in Kemp Town and used the stories told to them by the residents to inspire their own pieces of writing. Week 5 of the Creative Writing course saw Sara Clifford: a playwright whose writing practice relies heavily on community involvement come and speak to the class about her work. She interviews people, and edits and re-contextualises the stories she gains to produce pieces of theatre. She told us that this style of theatre is called Verbatim. I was very inspired by Sara’s talk, and couldn’t help but see the correlation between what she does and what the students in my class were being encouraged to do. It was then I came up with the idea of directing a piece of Verbatim Theatre myself, for the Creative Writers to perform back to the residents at Patching Lodge. In my residency we were encouraged to form some kind of exchange with the group we were entering, and I could think of no better way than to enable them to create their own exchange with the residents of Patching Lodge. Overall, it ended up being a lot of work. First I had to pitch the idea to the class. They all seemed to be on-board at this point, and two members even expressed an interest in helping me to do it. It then became difficult, as I had to chase up the pieces of writing classmates had made in response to visiting Patching Lodge in order to assemble a script and encourage classmates to take on acting roles in the performance. I also got in touch with the writer who came to speak to us, Sara Clifford about the ethical implications of using people’s stories, she gave me some great tips for editing and re-contextualising the information I had been given. Me and two Creative Writing classmates created the script. I also made some visuals to be shown alongside the play, and one of my classmates helped me pick music. I arranged a meeting with Helen – a worker at Patching Lodge, and made sure the whole thing was going to be feasible and spent two mornings before the show rehearsing onsite. The performance was a real success; I was congratulated on my hard work by classmates and my tutor, and the Creative Writing group as a whole were thanked a great deal for sharing their work by workers and residents at Patching Lodge. The experience allowed me to use organisational and team leading skills, as well as working on my Creative Writing.
Performance at Patching Lodge
REFLECTIVE STATEMENT Level 5 Oct. ’12 - May ‘13
The year kicked off with no studio, the reading of Daniel Buren’s ‘Function of the Studio’, and with it my questioning where and why I make art. Needless to say, the shift towards independent working and the necessity to organise ourselves more efficiently to get tasks done has seen a huge leap in my own personal development. I have become much more independent in researching, and finding things to read in support of my work. This has in no doubt been aided by the library induction we took part in earlier in the year. Initially, in the first off-site project, I found the whole idea of working in an open environment with no practical constraints extremely daunting, which prevented me from producing any real work at all. Then, through further experimentation and enquiry into other artists working in this way, I eventually found the removal of the frame of the studio upon my work can really open my eyes to the potential of what my work can be. For example, this year I have begun integrating narrative and creative writing with my art practice. This is a big step in the right direction for me, as writing is always something I have been passionate about alongside art, but I have never considered trying to combine with it. In finally doing so, I have managed to take part into an artistic inquiry that I find fascinating, and produce a body of work that I am proud to say reflects me more three dimensionally than before. This year, relationships with other people have become extremely important to me and my practice. In order to work in a post-studio fashion, I have had to behave professionally and courteously in order to make people want to support or participate in what I am doing. This has encouraged me to form bonds and friendships with people that I didn’t expect, and that have since become extremely important to me. This has made me really value the input other people have had on my work, and I have seen changes in the type of work I produce in direct relation to this, such as more relational pieces, and work that involves an exchange between people. I honestly feel that this year I have learned an enormous amount, and the skills and practices I have outlined above will all be extremely valuable to carry with me to level 6, and will be easily transferable to whatever follows on from that.
BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • • • • • • •
Stewart, S. On Longing, (U.S.A: Duke University Press, 1993) Solnit, R. A Field Guide to getting lost (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2006) Debord, G. Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, (1955) Perec, G. Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, (London: Penguin Books, 1997) Keats, J. The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats (New York: Kessinger Publishing, 2007) Barthes, R. Image, Music, Text, (London: Fontana Press 1977) Cobley, P. Narrative, (New York: Routledge, 2001) Appleyard, B. Sunday Times Magazine, (7 February 1999) Williamson, J. Social Communication in Advertising, (New York: Routledge, 1990) Bourriaud, N. Relational Aesthetics, (Paris: Les Presse Du Reel, 2001) Sontag, S. Regarding the Pain of Others, (London: the Penguin Group, 2003)