The Visual Artists’ News Sheet
17
July – August 2009
CONFERENCE
Collaboration and its Discontents
(1)
Liz Burns ON ‘From Context to Exhibition: The Learning Development Programme (NCAD, DIT, IADT, Tisch School of Performing Arts NYU)’ managed and produced by CREATE. (2)
tour open to the public centred on the neighbourhood of Ballybough. Defined by the French Marxist theorist Guy Debord, psycho geography is “a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities”. By allowing the women to develop their alternative and playful maps and walking routes of Ballybough, the artists were in Debord’s works “jolting people into a new awareness of the urban landscape”.(6) The video piece titled The Picnic by Aoife Leddy, Emma Clarke, and Bridge Lucey perhaps best captured the tensions and discontents within collaborative arts practice and the difficulties artists might encounter when trying to work with people. The piece used the metaphor of a ‘picnic’ to address the over-romanticisation of working collaboratively with ‘the community’. The 17 minute looped video depicted a rather odd picnic scenario, where endless cups of tea are being poured, overflowing onto a picnic rug where food and drink become a unrecognisable mush. This work stemmed from what the artists described as the “hours spent drinking tea waiting for their collaborators to turn up”. As further described by the artists on their blog “theory becomes redundant, when the raw materials of art in context are not present, and the ideological picnic becomes a logistic mess” (7). This logistical mess however is strangely evocative and suggestive of the difficulties and conflict that can exist within
Nadia Shah. Beyond the Veil. Installation view. The Lab, Dublin.
collaborative arts practice and how artists might translate this experience to the gallery space. The roundtable discussion focused on the difficulties and ambiguities of the very terms ‘community’ – which is forever in flux, and often contested. It was encouraging to note that a more complex and sophisticated understanding of what a ‘community’(might be) was held by the students – some had opted to explore alternative communities, or even create their own. Amie Lawless’s and Sarah Johnson’s project came about through a call the students put online for those interested in engaging in what they called ‘guerilla knitting’ – an activity in the city involving ‘yarn bombings ’ which critiqued aspects of urban planning within the cityscape (8). The Community 53 project was a collaboration between students Siobhan Carroll and Caitriona Rogerson with commuters of the No 53 Bus route. Through free tea
Siobhan Carroll and Caitriona Rogerson Community 53.
Emma Geraghty and Casey Craig, Discover Ballybough
‘From Context to Exhibition’ which took place in the LAB 23 – 30
programme, was both challenging and thought provoking, and posed
April 2009 presented the work of 29 undergraduate arts students from
many pertinent questions regarding collaborative and socially engaged
The Learning Development Programme – a partnership between the
arts practice.
(3)
national development agency for collaborative arts CREATE and the
The politics of representation was a key issue discussed in
four art colleges NCAD, DIT, IADT and Tisch School of Performing
relation to the work presented in the gallery and how decisions were
Arts, New York University. The programme has been ongoing for the
made by the students when translating this work from the context of
past seven years –with the recent additions of DIT and Tisch in 2007
production with the community to the gallery space. Paul O’Neill
and IADT in 2008 – and is offered to third year students, who are
posed the questions: “are you doing it for them? are you doing it with
interested in expanding their practice outside the studio to engage in
them? are you doing it about them?” One of the students, Nadia Shah,
collaborative arts practices. It consists of a six-week placement with a
discussed the difficulty of representation with her Beyond the Veil
prescribed or elected ‘community’ of place or interest, with mentoring
project. The aim of this project was to counter the misrepresentation
and support provided through CREATE and the colleges in the lead in
of Islam in Ireland today largely through the media. Nadia together
and during the placements.
with her fellow student Catherine Clarke chose to work with a small
This year saw a shift in focus in The Learning Development
group of Muslim women to counter their representation particularly
Programme, with further training and support for the students prior to
in relation to the wearing of the Hijab. The end result of this
and during their placements. Prior to their placements students were
engagement was multifaceted and ambitious, consisting of an archival
asked to consider two key questions – “what makes a community?”
type installation in the LAB which charted the artists’ experience and
and “what type of community they might wish to work with and how
challenges of working with their elected community and the launch
would this collaboration inform their own arts practice?” This was
of a specially hand printed newspaper titled The Revealer with articles
followed by a week-long orientation programme in the lead in to the
by the Muslim women and other invited writers. The difficulty of
placements where students were exposed to cross disciplinary,
representing ‘the other’ was very effectively highlighted in the archival
experimental and innovative contemporary collaborative arts practice
display where blank audio tapes and empty photo albums were
and weekly sessions during the placements. In addition the students
carefully placed side by side , tagged with the lines “photographs were
were given examples of some best practice internationally, as well as
taken but we were asked to not show them for the sake of anonymity”.
prescribed reading of seminal texts around socially engaged and
“Conversations were recorded but we were asked to delete them for the
collaborative arts practice from key art historians and critics such as
sake of anonymity.” The danger of exoticising the perceived
Grant Kester, Claire Bishop, Miwon Kwon, and Claire Doherty.
marginalised ‘other’ within socially engaged practice was also
This exhibition presented some of the outcomes of this six week
discussed. As pointed out, such perceived ‘exotic’ communities in
programme and was accompanied by a week long series of talks and
Ireland such as the Muslim and Jewish communities are being
events in partnership with the LAB, the aim of which was “to explore
‘researched to death’ by the social sciences and now by artists, where it
some of the critical questions around artists working collaboratively
was stressed that artists must seriously consider their motivations for
with communities to co-author work, and to question the politics of
wanting to work with such communities in the first place. It was
translating the work from the context of production (the community) to a formal arts space ( the gallery)”(4). Speakers included UK artist
interesting to note that Beyond the Veil project has a life beyond the
Faisal Abdu’Allah; US Performance artist Peggy Shaw; Milena
six-week placement programme, where it is now part of an ongoing blog (5).
Dragicevic-Sesic (a cultural policy advisor to the Minister for Arts,
Paul O’Neill questioned whether it was perhaps more strategic for
Republic of Serbia) and curator, artist and writer Paul O’Neill. Like all
the students to take a more psycho geographical approach? One
such talks series, some were more successful than others with the final
particular project that nicely echoed this approach was the off site
roundtable discussion chaired by Paul O’Neill, adding a level of
project entitled Discover Ballybough by students Emma Geraghty and
analysis and criticality that was to be welcomed. This discussion
Casey Craig, that was carried out with women from the Larkin
attended primarily by the students who had taken part in the
Community Centre. This consisted of a performance based walking
and coffee services, free afternoon concerts on the bus routes, as well as the creation of a free 53 Community Newsletter , the artists were sought to counter the anonymity of public transport, creating what Jean Luc Nancy calls a temporary “community of being” (9) in the process. This alternative exploring of ‘community’ is no doubt attributable to a shift this year in the learning development programme, where provocations were made to the students as well as a more intensive orientation programme. The importance of capacity-building was another important issue that came out of the roundtable discussion. The difficulties faced by undergraduate students attempting to engage and facilitate processes, within a short six-week time frame were discussed. In particular the tensions between having to facilitate a process with people, and the challenge of translating this process or outcome into a gallery context were highlighted. One student felt more akin to the ‘itinerant artist’ as identified by Miwon Kwon (10) – who is parachuted into a marginalised community for only a short time frame. Issues of power and censorship within communities themselves, and how artists might choose to deal with this, were also discussed. Rather than seeing socially engaged and collaborative arts practice as separate to artists’ studio practice, it is important that initiatives like the learning development programme seek to integrate this type of work within the wider field of contemporary international arts practice. There is still a disjuncture between artists’ studio practices and critical theory as taught in third level art institutions. As contemporary art practice continues to engage in what Claire Bishop calls ‘the social turn’ of recent years, now is an apt time for new ways of thinking and working within third level institutions with organisations like CREATE , that offer students opportunities for exploring their practice both inside and outside of the studio. Liz Burns Notes 1. This title is taken from an article by Claire Bishop titled The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents published in Artforum February 2006 pg 178. 2. www.create-ireland.ie 3. For further information on all works developed during this programme go to CREATE’s blog http://ldprogramme2009.com 4.Create News No 6 March 2009 5. For further information on this ongoing project go to the blog created by Nadia Khan and Catherine Clark http://misrepresentationinislam.blogspot.com 6. Discover Ballybough – Exhibition Brochure distributed at exhibition in the LAB. 7.http://ldprogramme2009.com 8. http://ldprogramme2009.com 9. Jean Luc Nancy , The Inoperative Community , University of Minnesota Press, 1991. 10. Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another; Site –Specific Art and Locational Identity, MIT Press 2004.