PAR+RS Blogs

Jeremy Deller's Sacrilege on Glasgow Green, 2012

Chris Fremantle — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:47:45 GMT

Jeremy Deller, Sacrilege, 2012

Andrea Schlieker audio of talk

Chris Fremantle — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:31:14 GMT

Andrea Schlieker, freelance curator, lecturer and writer. Curator of British Art Show 6 and the Folkestone Triennial 2008 & 2011. Andrea’s talk focused on the Folkestone Triennial.

Nina Möntmann Audio of talk

Chris Fremantle — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:18:50 GMT

Nina Möntmann, curator and professor at the Royal Institute of Art (KKH) in Stockholm, and editor of ‘Art and its Institutions’ (Black Dog Publishing) 2006. Möntmann’s presentation focused on the role of institutional critique in programming and place.

Mike Crang: Audio of talk

Chris Fremantle — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:15:43 GMT

Mike Crang, Professor at Durham University with an interest in cultural geography. Crang focused on the construction of national identity through museums, and the way that museums can create the country in miniature.

David Butler: Regeneration or Change?

Chris Fremantle — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:11:56 GMT

‘Responsibility’.

At the Detours Discussion Nathan Coley made the point that as an artist, unlike the curators, project organisers etc who were speaking, he didn’t have ‘responsibility’ to the clients, the funders or the commissioners. But let’s replace ‘responsibility’ with ‘context’. Then we might have a different conversation. And ‘context’, certainly for curators etc may be a term that can include, for example, the agendas of the commissioners of a project.

Nuno Sacramento makes this point very clearly in his comments arising out of Detours (What is the context of context?). He says, for example: ‘_…when we are to talk about ‘context’ to farmers, tradesmen and bank clerks in the North East of Scotland, some of them extremely educated people, the word ‘context’ might have no currency at all, and a lot of the Glasgow context would feel pretty irrelevant._’

So we have a question about terminology – or language. This isn’t, of course, a question of definitions. The issues are communication, dialogue, negotiation, understanding – issues of social interaction.

I was recently at an event looking at rural development and social renewal where Professor Mark Shucksmith (Director of the Institute for Social Renewal, Newcastle University) talked about these issues in relation to research into the impact of the EU Leader funding programme across member states. The Leader programme lists ‘innovation’ as a major criterion of receiving funding. What does it mean by ‘innovation’? In the urban context, for these kinds of scheme (i.e. governmental, EU) ‘innovation’ is usually linked to science and technology. However this is seen as problematic in the rural context (despite agri-business technology) – so there is a greater emphasis on ‘social innovation’. That expands the field of what might be ‘innovative’ but still doesn’t help with a definition. As it turns out ‘innovation’ is usually read by selectors as ‘new’ – that is, something that hasn’t happened in that specific place before.

When asked about what the term meant to them, recipients of Leader funder usually said they didn’t think about their projects initially in terms of innovation. It just wasn’t a word they used – they preferred expressions like ‘rural development’. Interestingly though, when asked to reflect back on those projects, they were prepared to describe them as innovative.

At another recent event looking at the Portas Report on the High Street the words ‘arts’, ‘culture’, ‘gallery’ and ‘artist’ were used but more common were ‘re-imagining’, ‘place-making’, ‘identity’ and ‘risk taking’. The presenters and participants included civil servants, planners, property developers, estate agents, politicians, academics and think tank members. I was the only person from the arts. A bit of an outsider maybe – but as it turned out people were really keen to talk to me. They were interested in working with artists, some were already doing that. They knew why they wanted to have the conversation and importantly, among the people I was talking to (though this is my view and others may not bear it out), they understood that to achieve their agendas they had to work with artists as artists and not as some kind of service providers -so we’re back to Nathan Coley talking about responsibility.

Strikingly, but I think not surprisingly, the further those people were from central government (ie the closer they were to the coal face) the broader their views of the idea of the ‘High Street’ or the ‘Town Centre’ and this impacted on their language, the terms they used and the kinds of connections they made across disciplines.

I work, along with Dr Venda Pollock, at Newcastle University as part of Intersections – a public art research project. Our focus is around work that is temporary, cross disciplinary, collaborative and/or participatory. Currently we are really interested in the rural and in ‘small’ towns. With the Inbetween project, we are looking at the relation between arts and regeneration in ‘market’ towns – or what we are calling ‘inbetween’ towns. This will culminate in a series of symposia in Autumn 2012 involving Dumfries in South West Scotland; Hexham, in North East England and Pontypool in South Wales.

Regeneration is a pejorative term. It has the implication that something is wrong and it needs to be made better. It is usually linked with physical derelication and social deprivation. But it might be better to think about it simply as dealing with change. It’s useful with any place to take a long view. Change hasn’t suddenly arrived: it’s been the force that makes that place what it is and presents it with challenges for the future.

For regeneration projects, thinking about the past will usually be labelled ‘heritage’. But let’s call it ‘evolutionary history’ and let’s think of ‘change’ simply as the evolutionary process. Let’s work this metaphor a bit more and think about ‘place’ as an ecosystem. One definition of an ecosystem is a set of communities of different species of organisims, living in the same place at the same, enjoying an influx of external energy and matter (Lynn Margulis, The Symbiotic Planet referencing Daniel Botkin). Or, if I’ve understand this correctly, a set of organisms that collectively recycle their waste (e.g. what you discard provides nourishment for something else). To be successful evolutionary change within the system has to maintain that balance.

Current pressures on small towns include industrial decline, changes in agriculture, the impact of the internet, aging populations and people’s skillsets. But change has always been there, it’s just been pushed by different pressures in the past and at times these have happened at different rates. These places though are still here – but they’re different in some way than they have been. For that to be the case a new equilibrium must have been struck. That’s what regeneration is aiming for. This will then go off balance and the process starts again.

Regeneration, of course, has to make stuff happen. The large amounts of public funding demand that ‘stuff’ happens – new buildings, better healthcare, business support etc. But it’s also a process of thinking about a place, what that place might be now, what it might become, how that might happen, and who might be involved. Nuno Sacramento talks about this when he says that artists and artworks: ‘_must now generate a ‘space’ of public discussion and debate_’.

It’s clear to me (and I guess it is to many readers of this) when I talk to people in regeneration teams that they both need and want to have that debate and for it to underpin making the ‘stuff’ happen. It’s one of the reasons why they want to work with artists. So these kinds of dialogue are happening all the time in projects. But there is a problem with capturing this stuff. People (artists, planners, architects etc) build it into their body of tacit knowledge and apply that in their professional practice. That’s extremely powerful but it doesn’t always allow you to stand back and take a look at what you are doing or how you do it and it doesn’t always inform the top down processes in regeneration. That’s what Intersections is trying to do with Inbetween. I think it’s what Nuno is saying is part of the function of an agency like Scottish Sculpture Workshop. It’s why PAR+RS has invited our commentary on the website. As part of that what I hope is that this elicits further commentary from readers.

I started by talking about responsibility and context and I’m interested in comments on that. But I’m also interested in the debate around change. Are these simply anodyne comments stating the obvious or can we can we say something useful here by further elaborating on this debate?

David Butler

David Butler is Coordinator of LifeWorkArt, a professional development programme for fine art students. LifeWorkArt also supports professional development for artists and others in the cultural sector. T1

He is Co-Director of Intersections, a public art research group, and Director of Engagement for the School of Arts and Cultures.

He is chair of the Turning Point (Arts Council North East) working party on Continuing Professional Develepment for the visual arts sector.

He has over twenty five years experience and knowledge of working in the visual arts as artist, arts manager, commentator and teacher, working both independently and with others.

Nuno Sacramento: What is the context of context?

Chris Fremantle — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:14:57 GMT

This short text is a reply to an invitation by PAR+RS, to attend Detours Discussion in Glasgow during early February 2012, and to respond to some of the themes from the perspective of a curated organisation located outside Scotland’s large urban conurbations. The 1000 words allocated to this reflection are barely enough to warm up our discursive engines, so let’s accept we will remain at the level of enunciation. There will surely be further opportunities to take the discussion forward, so without further ado…

The Detours conceptual framework, as introduced by the organisers of the event, captures a series of reflections by curators and commissioners about the relationship between programme and notions of context and place. These concerns have commonalities (and many differences too) with the ones put forward by Creative Scotland, through the increasingly visible place-making agenda. This generates a rich spectrum of approaches that range from the largely instrumentalised to the critically distanced, through a small but promising number of hybrid and progressive practices.

This modest contribution aims at shedding some light on the curation of a contemporary programme in a rural environment, the village of Lumsden in Aberdeenshire. It will briefly ponder over two questions posed by Katrina Brown at the introduction of the event:

(1) How does context affect programme? Does it? Should it?

(2) Can a programme change a place?

To answer these questions we need to reflect on the notion of context, by asking the question posed in the title: what is the context of context?

The word ‘context’ is not free floating, it is not a given, and is certainly not directly transferable from one conversation to another. In the fields of Environmental Art and Sculpture, in Scotland, this word has great resonance due to the work of David Harding, the other staff and students at Glasgow School of Art (GSA) during the 80’s and 90’s.

So in this instance some of the contexts for thinking about ‘context’ in Scotland in 2012 are Environmental Art and Sculpture pedagogies; Scottish public culture and specifically the importance of culture in the regeneration of Glasgow; the work and network of David Harding; Glasgow School of Art’s own history and the wider history of the 80’s and 90’s. All of these will have had great currency for the audience at Detours.

However, when we are to talk about ‘context’ to farmers, tradesmen and bank clerks in the North East of Scotland, some of them extremely educated people, the word ‘context’ does not have the same currency, the same conceptual weight. If we were to tell people in the North East about the internationally regarded Glasgow art context, it would feel pretty irrelevant.

Or when we are talk to someone from a funding body or policy maker, the word might have a different currency altogether. For instance they might be interested in geographical communities, but not in communities of interest.

This job of translating ideas like context from one constituency to another is one of the most useful curatorial tools. The net cast by the use of the word context is expanding.

In the case of SSW which started as a strictly sculpture/residential facility. It then expanded towards visual arts and currently probes spatial critical and cultural practices. Something that started in the realm of aesthetics, art theory and history, then moved into the territories of geography, agriculture, economy, anthropology, and craft/trade, while also engaging in discussions around identity, public-ness, cultural migration, precariousness etc. The well-defined context of sculptural practice gave way to a number of social, critical, and political nebulous contexts, while keeping the aesthetic at its heart.

Only two decades ago the context of sculpture was essentially constituted by physical space. The theoretical works of Rosalind Krauss, Rosalind Deutsche, Hal Foster, and Miwon Kwon, the artistic projects of artists associated with Kontext Kunst and New Genre Public Art, and the curation of Mary Jane Jacob, Maria Lind, Charles Esche, Catherine David and Okwe Enwezor, to mention a few, have been instrumental in the expansion of notions of context and place. In the specific case of SSW, a critical thinking around the notion of context was supplemented by literature and practices that pose effective resistance to the recent neoliberal turn, and to its aims to monetise and marketwise all aspects of cultural practice, as well as health, education, sport etc. The emergence of a global civic movement, the antithesis to the enclosure of aspects of society that previously had universal access, is the social and political drive that envelops the artistic and institutional practices through which we operate.

The fact that the net encompassing the idea of context is cast in a broader landscape reflects one of the most poignant transformations in the field of culture in the last decade, following the advents of institutional critique and of new institutionalism. It is increasingly accepted that arts organisations that are publicly funded have the responsibility to create public-ness. This responsibility does not stop at the positioning of ‘artworks’ in so called public spaces like squares and roundabouts, but must now generate a ‘space’ of public discussion and debate. And in order to generate public debate, cultural forms that might range from food events, to bronze casting, from walks to craft activities, have to be hospitable and remain open ended, porous and unfinished. In this context, there is no escape to the conditions of production and distribution of cultural artefacts and events. It is thus impossible to talk about programme without probing its contexts.

The attraction exerted between contexts and programmes is mutual and synergetic, happening always within social, political, cultural and durational dimensions. For this to happen, as brilliantly articulated by Nina Montmann at the event, curatorial practices “…must integrate the process of artistic production into its institutional activity, through residencies, workshops and studio spaces.” These practices “…must initiate a discourse admitting critical debate into institutional practice rather than depicting and commenting what is happening in the world from an outside position.” They “…must relieve the viewer from its passivity to become an active participant in the creative and discursive process”.

To be more specific, here are some examples of contexts where SSW operates:

in the geography and topology of the north east of Scotland (ruralities);
in one of the most feudal parts of Europe;
in an area with economies based on farming, fishing, oil industry, heritage;
in the professional contemporary artworld;
in international arts education;
in the practices of regional artists and artisans;
in the lives of locally based groups and individuals as well as incoming migrants;
and in the remits of local councils and local schools,
to name a few.

The curatorial programming of SSW is both affected, and affects all the above. To demonstrate how this happens we will resort to two elements of our current programme: the communities’ room and slow prototypes.

The community room was built as part of a recent capital development project, which took place between 2010 and 2011. It was instrumental for the organisation to be awarded a number of grants to rebuild part of its facilities and allowed, for the first time, a formal space inside the organisation that could be used by local groups. One of our first curatorial decisions was to change its name from community room to communities’ room, reflecting a distance from the notion of monolithic community, or of community essentialised through geography. The function of this space was also rigorously thought through. To think of it as a space where people would come to ‘make pots’ would be to under utilise this space. A more constructive use of this space would result from an invitation to local groups, to come in and produce forms of culture that were relevant to them. The idea, but never an imposition, was that it could be used for film screenings, dance classes, discussions and debates, radio podcasts etc. The result would be a sense of ownership of part of the organisation. It would be seen as a place where civic forms of culture would be developed alongside professional artistic practices, creating intersections between people based locally and incoming international and national residents. The zones of contact between these practices could be potentially generative of new forms of culture and inhabitation. Context here potentially affects programme because the local groups have a say in the production of cultural output by the organisation. They are invited to contribute, rather than to attend, to talk and participate rather than simply to listen. This mode of thinking is highly indebted to the practice of Jeanne van Heeswijk and Het Blauwe Huis in Amsterdam.

The extent to which these results have been born at SSW is yet to be seen.

The other project is called slow prototypes and will set up collaborations between incoming contemporary artists and local artisans. These collaborations will move beyond the default position of an artist commissioning an artisan to fabricate a work, and insist in processes that will affect both practices. SSW is located remotely, in a place with relatively scarce contemporary visual art practices, but a large amount of artisanal practices, involved in farming,fishing, whisky, heritage etc. This is seen as a constructive way of starting a process based on a Freirean dialogue, assuming that the participants, whether artists or artisans, are more than empty vessels to be filled by education and/or art.

The curation of SSW activates a space where public debates around the production and distribution of culture, the notion of career and of professionalism, and ideas of craftsmanship and artisan practices are explored and reframed. It is a contemporary space that emanates from the local and the rural, but which converses with, and more importantly asserts itself vehemently in, the global.

Nuno Sacramento
Nuno Sacramento was born in Maputo, Mozambique in 1973 and now lives in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where he is currently the Director of the Scottish Sculpture Workshop. He has a degree in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts – University of Lisbon, is a graduate of the prestigious Curatorial Training Programme of DeAppel Foundation (Gulbenkian Foundation bursary) and completed his PhD in visual arts curation at the School of Media Arts and Imaging, Dundee University (thesis Shadow Curating: A Critical Portfolio). After a decade developing exhibitions and international project platforms, he became a research associate in the Post-Doctoral GradCAM, Dublin and FBA-UL, where he belongs to the scientific committee of the CSO Congress and the magazine :Estúdio. He is a co-author of the book ARTocracy. Art, Informal Space, and Social Consequence: A Curatorial book in collaborative practice.

reflections

Bérengère Chabanis — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:15:04 GMT

Who knows what these are for really?

Reflections by the Nile

Rocca Gutteridge — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:15:20 GMT

A weekend away from the hectic energy of Kampala.

I’m by the Nile, just one mile from it’s source in Jinja, watching a huge patch of green being pulled from it’s home and carried into the swell and then dropping off a lethal rapid.

If that green survives it might end up in Egypt one day.

Looking around me, the green is lush, the water sparkling, the rocks a perfect, rock colour. Locals bathe and fish from a natural jetty. Bright colours of washing lie out to dry while kids run around kids with the unstoppable rubber tyre and stick game.

The idea for 32º East has been brewing slowly since February 2011 and as rapidly as this river since last October.

It’s one of those rare opportunities to reflect and look back on what’s been achieved, as well as forward to what needs to be done.

My view of the Nile with the escaping greenery

I’ve been living in Kampala for 6 months and I still feel the need to research as much as when I first arrived. Being here and understanding the project beats any art theory text on setting up arts institutions.

A year ago, when I was first invited to Uganda by a fantastic NGO, the Child’s i Foundation, I kept a blog to track and record all the arts and cultural activities I came across. I did it simply so the next traveller could use the blog rather than have to spend a month uncovering what I’d already found.

You can see the blog here: web link

It was from this research that fate got in the way, I met a funder back in the UK and the mission to set up a supportive network for contemporary visual art was born.

The arts scene wasn’t what I had expected to find. What does Ugandan Art look like? For me it looks like the people that make it. The diverse, generous, passionate, uninhibited minds and talents of the some 50 artists I’ve met in Uganda so far.

There are issues that affect the work being produced. The audience for Ugandan Art at the moment is predominantly an ex pat one. The ex pat system usually revolves on a three year wheel so there is the tendency among artists to make their work revolve on the same cycle. This leads to a very similar style being created rather than a fight and energy to find one’s own, unique style.

This is the minority; if you scratch the surface of Ugandan Art you’ll find works that comment, question and reveal what it is to be an artist, to be a living, breathing, culturally producing human in Uganda, Africa, the world.

Nikki and I began 32º East with a huge vision: stacks of artist studios, a gleaming new gallery space, a new modern, out of this word, out of Africa, Art space.

After 6 months we’re only just beginning to understand what this art scene might actually need and want.

Meeting artists has been essential to the process. Observing networks that are already in place and seeing what to support and to partner, what resources are really needed, what will survive and contribute to the scene in the long run?

Makerere Art school is one of the growing number of key partners for 32º East.

At a discussion we asked artists what they thought of building an arts centre. The reply came: “If you just build an art centre no one will come, you have to come to us first.”

The energy and passion is already in this art scene. East Africa’s Art is starting to kick and 32º East is part of the movement, by watching, supporting, promoting all it has to offer.

The way forward feels a lot clearer now. We’re building a place where artists can interact, make, show ideas and discuss. We’ll create networks, contacts, exciting projects. Above all, we’ll work with and not against what’s already here.

A crucial and first step to the organistion is the creation of an arts library with Makerere University School of Art. The British Council have donated the books and we’ve just secured free shipping to get everything to Kampala. All we need is a container to put them in. If… if… if… you wanted to join our adventure and contribute to the library I’d be so grateful.

Here’s the link: web link

I’d also love to hear anyone’s comments on our work so far. It occasionally gets a bit lonely in the head out here. Criticize, critique, question me! Or just say hi (that’s nice too).

Have a lovely week and thank you for reading,

Rocca

And here’s a little image diary from the last few weeks:

Blissfully unaware of the reality behind his new paint job.

This is the stuff that Africa is made of.

Pre-dive warm up

Public health warning, Africa style.

A visit to a local weaving loom in Jinja

Pop up shop culture in Uganda.

Ant tracks. I’ve been told they can kill a puppy in minutes.

Up close and beautiful, but deadly. The best thing I’ve seen on safari!

Gi Primer: Jeremy Deller

Producer Public Art Scotland — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:09:37 GMT

On the 7th of March, Jeremy Deller talked about his work with Katrina Brown of Gi. This followed a screening of Jeremy Deller: Middle Class Hero, a Culture Show special produced by BBC Scotland and broadcast on the 24th Feb.

This talk was part of the “Primers’ series ahead of the 2012 Festival. It was produced in collaboration with BBC Scotland.

Here are a few notes from a wide-ranging conversation. While they’ll probably make most sense to those of you who have seen the Culture Show special, they should read as a standalone sketch of the discussion.

While he didn’t talk explicitly about his relationship with the public realm, he was – of course – always talking about it. Because this is central to how he thinks and makes. It’s both intriguing and inspiring. Jeremy Deller doesn’t over-explain or over-justify. His motivations and his work are clear and rigorous. He makes complex things happen in the simplest ways.

Sacrilege is a new piece of work by Jeremy Deller. It has been co-commissioned by GI Festival 2012 in collaboration with the Mayor of London. It will be on Glasgow Green from the 20th April to the 7th May. The work is set to head to London during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

These are just a few of the things that were discussed in the order that they came up, paraphrased rather than verbatim:

The miners strike was fundamentally life-changing. You had to decide what side you were on. Night after night. It stays with you. It was a pivotal moment.

Everything is related – re. connections between Acid Brass and The Battle of Orgreave. Perhaps not explicitly, but you realise that everything talks to everything else.

And now we’re having a flashback moment – today’s “crop” of politicians so resemble that lot back then.

My studio is a room with a computer. I wait for emails to come in. Not much happens.

Our subconsciousness is affected by what goes on around is, rhetoric is absorbed – sometimes unknowingly.

Audience question: will the current government change the way you work?
JD: I don’t know yet. It took me 17 years to do something about the miner’s strike…

There’s a lot of non-joy in my work. The current Hayward Gallery exhibition ensnares people with the title, but it’s definitely not all joyous.

Audience question: How do you approach people and convince them to work with you?
JD: By being in the community, by never hiding anything, by not pretending that you’re doing anything else. Be honest and straightforward.

There’s a receptive public to contemporary art at the moment. We’re in a good place.

My heroes are…Ken Russell & David Attenborough.

The beginning of my journey: Setting up an Arts Trust in Uganda

Rocca Gutteridge — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:49:16 GMT

Last night the skies burst. I was at a neighbour’s party: Cold Club beer, beautiful kids darting around the scorched compound, guests with real stories to tell and glowing African sunshine. It gets dark here at 7.30 on the dot, like a blanket being chucked over Uganda. Bang! Day over, night begins. It’s 7pm though and night comes half an hour quicker today: a huge black meringue sweeps over us. It happens so quickly- I’m terrified, the kids start screaming with joy and locals calmly take their matoke, potatoes, rice and beans inside just as the first fork of lightning rips across the sky.

Nothing here is constant, nothing is settled, it feels like anything could happen at anytime. But Uganda’s also a contradiction of terms, In 1907 Winston Churchill visited Uganda and called it ‘a garden of sunshine and deadly nightshade’. Life stumbles along leading you to believe the chaos will always remain and the mindsets are concrete. It’s not going to be easy but there’s hope and adventure bursting out of every artist and conversation I’ve had so I know I’m in for an exciting ride.

Maribou stalks watching over Kampala- huge beasts towering over you from lampposts, trees, buildings and huts

In October 2011 I packed up my Edinburgh flat, bags and wrote off (not-intentionally) my little white van to move to Uganda to begin 32º East | Ugandan Arts Trust: A passionate attempt at creating a network to support and bring together the nodes of artistic excitement in this growing art scene.

I’m working with Nicola Elphinstone, my co-founder and curator of the organisation. Nikki contrasts with and therefore compliments everything about me: Nikki’s blonde, calm, grounded and incredibly diplomatic.

We’ve just taken on board Sophie Alal, a Ugandan Arts writer and new General Manager. Sophie’s husband is Scottish and Sophie is a beautiful mix of a deep East African soul and a sharp, cheeky Scottish mind. I have happy thoughts about the potential of our trio.

Boda Bodas: My daily commute to work on the back of one of these. Scary / stupid / exhilarating.

We have a venue in Kansanga, a district of this bustling, dusty, hectic capital city, Kampala. Within the venue we aim to: build a resource centre, filled with books thanks to the generosity of the British Council, create an experimental exhibition space and have an open communal workspace for artists to meet, discuss, fulfill projects, push ideas. The business plan is extensive, we’re building partnerships, creating networks, developing exchanges. The plan is also in flux. I’ll explain why soon but in a nut shell the last twelve months have been dedicated to research, to making sure this project is needed, will work and essentially be sustainable.

A first sketch of the art space in Kampala. Containers stacked to create a flexible working environment

I’m going to use this blog personally, to unwrap and describe everything that happens in between the endless funding pitches, meetings, budget sheets, plans, politics and all that I’ve discovered is needed to set up a body for the arts. The words therefore are my own and not those of the Ugandan Arts Trust.

If you want to comment on my blog please do, it’d make me happy to feel connected and to keep being challenged by your thoughts, I want to be questioned and critiqued. If there’s anything anyone wants to know about setting up projects of this kind just let me know and if there’s a way you think you can get involved please get in contact anytime here or by emailing me at rocca@ugandanartstrust.org

Previously to this project (and as you’ll see in prior posts) I ran a project called Artachat: a discussion network for Contemporary Art, predominantly focused around public art and social engagement. Artachat is set to continue both here and in Scotland through my planned trip home in May and by the generosity of Orange Uganda, who have provided technical equipment to live webstream the talks from Uganda.

Thank you to the Edinburgh Mela festival who are paying my salary until the end of April, without their support this project would be impossible. Thanks also to Chris and the team at PAR +RS for allowing me to use this space to blether and connect.

The lightning’s still flying all over the seven hills of Kampala, I’m going to sign off, have some eggs on toast and prepare for the week ahead. I look forward to being in touch soon and thank you for reading.

Rocca

A few pics so far:

A butchers shop- Francis Bacon would have been in heaven

The market’s are artworks in themselves

Pearls of Africa

Buckets of sculptural charcoal

A post office in the town of Kasese, Uganda

The Goodman's Croft

Rocca Gutteridge — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:33:21 GMT

“For the next ten days the Goodman’s Croft, SSW’s brand new radio station, will be streaming untapped and unheard arts and cultural content from the depths of Scotland. If you’ve got audio you’d like to showcase then get in touch: radio@goodmanscroft.org”

The Goodman’s Croft- a brand new online and on wheels radio station is up and running at the Scottish Sculpture Workshops

The title comes from an age old North East Scottish myth- 300 years ago every farmer would leave a section of his land untilled as an offering to the devil, without doing so one feared their entire field would be destroyed. We applied this myth to the contemporary concept of community radio and asked: “What if a media voice was given to all the unheard, untapped and untilled voices and talents of the local area?”

Since our launch on the 15th October the Goodman’s Croft has been gathering stories, discussions, live music, debate and community banter from near and far. Content includes radio dramas by Rhynie Youth Group, interviews with local artists, poets and musicians, discussion on agricultural and farming issues with broadcast journalists and people local to the area directly affected by the topics.

The station is broadcasting live Tuesday – Sunday, 5- 7pm until the 31st October. You can tune in by clicking on the giant ear at www.goodmanscroft.org
If you miss a show, fear not- you can listen again to the Goodman’s Croft podcast archive by just a click of the mouse.

We want this station to grow and be truly integrated into the area. So drop us a line at radio@goodmanscroft.org or pop into the Scottish Sculpture Workshops communities room for a cuppa, to learn how to use the equipment and perhaps become our next Goodman’s Croft DJ star!

Let's Get Together- Write Up

Rocca Gutteridge — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:36:33 GMT

An Artachat discussion with:
Angus Farquhar (Creative Director, NVA)
Peter McCaughey (Artist, Lecturer and Director at Wave)
Blane Johnson (Former RGU student)
Deborah Beeson (The Mother’s Art Movement)

Last Thursday’s Artachat, the first in three devised in collaboration with Robert Gordon University, focused it’s attention around the theme of collaboration in Contemporary Art and asked the following three questions to a fully engaged audience at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture in Aberdeen.

Why do we collaborate and with who?
What types of collaboration do we pursue?
How do we know when collaborations do and don’t work?

The following transcript is a series of Twitter style short notes composed by independent curator Dane Sutherland for Artachat. A podcast of the event can be heard here: http://snd.sc/p6t3F4

and thank you as ever to Stephen McGarry for his excellent photo documentation.

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Opening Presentation- Angus Farquhar (Director, NVA):

I can see two main reasons for working collaboratively:

I’m primarily publicly funded, so already I define this as a collaboration.

I don’t make objects for galleries.

Collaboration brings groups of people together in positive circumstances.

In a wider field, it is necessary to collaborate with funders, statutory bodies and the public.

If you’re making public art, there is a responsibility and importance to explore the effect of the work on people who have not asked for the work – these people have different interests from those of the artist.

A challenge in my work is that often my collaborators are disengaged with my artistic interests.

Some projects I have been involved with illustrate the idea of resistance – people who don’t initially want something to happen. What happens when an artist goes into this situation?

The artist must learn the language and work with the system of the public domain, otherwise there is a loss of control. These are often life skills to be learned, not just artistic skills.

To work collaboratively and meaningfully, a building of trust is required, which can only be done through time – years, not days or weeks.

An artist I worked with in Skye had a meaningful message but a limited mode of expression. We provided the challenge, and were challenged, to develop the work in this situation.

There is an iceberg principle at work – what holds the peak up, is a mass of relations underneath.

With planning authorities, comes a burden of suspicion with regards art. Again, building relationships is required.

We live in a deeply controlled, and risk-assessed society – there are demands of best practice to prove the value of the works and of working creatively.

An example of our (NVA) collaboration with the public was the re-enactment of the White Bike Plan project for Glasgow International in 2010, where we released 50 white bikes into the streets for the public to use during the festival.

21 bikes were returned, while some of the remaining 29 have been spotted in places as far as New York and Germany. This was noted through a further, unmediated, collaboration via social media platforms – it seemed to become a truly democratic project.

It caught the imagination of the popular press, and not just the artworld, producing an impact on the wider world.

We had no problem with a re-appropriation of the bikes, whether by junkies of the press. We knew that the original scheme failed, but not the idea.

We were implementing a trusting, positive statement.

Looking for an opportunity to change and affect policies – democracy is fluid.

Trying to produce art that looks for a pro-active, rather than a reactive response, which challenges current views of the world.

The project was a beautifully human experience, with the collaborative capacity to be collectively good for the individual.

Inconversation- Peter McCaughey (Director at WAVE and artist lecturer at Glasgow School of Art):

In the past I have been a rotten collaborator – I have come from a fine art educated tradition, where I have acted as a maverick, formed and working in a vacuum.

Being formed in this environment produces isolation and a disconnection from a culture.

Part of the reason I wasn’t very good was the tendency for those of us educated in a particular way to consider ourselves the most important part of a process. This means I could be difficult to work with, a control-freak.

I do have to remind myself, however: don’t totalise – this method does have spirit. With this mode there is a truth to yourself, and not giving a damn about others.

An act of creativity would be to extend this practice out, and ask how the art works, and who it speaks to.

I mapping the diversity of experience in this room – even to harness an nth of the experience here, would be incredible.

Ideas are not just conceived in isolation, but in relation to contemporary times, geographies, politics etc

I am reminded of Liam Gillick’s words: ‘compromise is the most interesting place’

Often we measure the value of what we achieve by how much we exert total control over making something, to the extent that allowing any outside influence seems disingenuous.

Control = incredible attention to detail.

How to we broker compromise?

Investment in ideology leads to failure.

In being beholden to an idea, we fail to realise how ideas function in the world.

Angus Farquhar:

Production of relationships is a key part of the work.

Validation of experience and the process = success, and is as important as a final product.

Peter McCaughey:

How do we build different systems of values? A challenge for those working in institutions with normative values of the object?

A lattice of support can be created through trust, criticality, and being stuck with people, which leads to becoming close with people.

Artists are most interesting when they are placed at other ‘tables,’ where they can have a great impact – the people in this network can affect one another – and also, artists can sit at many tables.

You never make art just for yourself – there is a case for inter-subjectivity in art and in everyday life.

What are we going to do about the parts of the world that don’t care about our valued parts of the world?
- Are we going to try to understand how we impact upon these things, to allow them to make an impact upon the world?
- I mean that our work should have a degree of functionality.

Deborah Beeson (Artist and head of Mothers Art Movement):

My experience of collaboration is deeply rooted within local schools – I am an artist and a mum, with a family and so cannot travel etc.

Here. I engage with the kids by creating an artistic environment for them.

My methodology incorporates a compromise in my personal practice, though I also ask the kids (and teachers) to compromise, that they do research etc.

By doing this they learn how to look at art and make the installations themselves – it is completely their work.

This process has a life of its own, where project can take on new directions, allowing a growth in practice for all involved.

It encourages people to think in a different way.

Audience (Craig Barrowman, Stray Dog Art):

An important concept for me in that respect is that of play – playing games can solidify relationships etc.

Deborah Beeson:

In our lives there is a lack of emphasis on ‘play’ and I encourage the kids to play – it helps them pick up more ideas.

Unfortunately, an element of ‘play’ is lost in the rigid timetable, which gets worse throughout school – this is a division of learning.

Sally Thomson (Grampian Hospital Arts Trust):

A creative practice which involves collaboration and even playing has had a humanizing effect in my area of work – many professionals have found it key to viewing people as people again, rather than as patients, as part of their job.

Peter McCaughey:

Everyone has a circle of influence, which extends throughout their life.

In terms of the ‘tables’ or networks I was talking about earlier, the ‘ripple’ [of creativity] can disappear very quickly once an individual leaves – here, there is dependence upon a charismatic person rather than creating a support network.

Angus Farquhar:

If artists and project are funded by outside bodies – how can we do something that is possibly critical of the funder?

In scientific research it is OK to trash legitimized truths or norms in order to make progress.

Here art can learn from science – scientific research is very good at changing policies – art has, overall, not been very good at changing cultural policies.

Some of the attempts at policy changing such as community-led design have been problematic – there is a problem in the process in that there is a question as to whether they are truly democratic (artists come in as specialist consultants) or sometimes these projects produce very bland results.

Peter McCaughey:

Is the pursuit of truth through scientific methods enough?

Scientific methods are not unbiased – failed research is not published especially to the same extent that art and its failures are documented and embraced.

John Latham’s Artist Placement Group in the 1960s was a project which involved the linking of diverse institutions.

From this we can learn that we all have our own knowledge that we can exchange for a particular problem.

Blane Johnson (Artist and Recent Graduate of RGU:

I’d never thought about collaboration at all – it wasn’t spoken about or explicitly communicated at university.

I suppose I was unaware that it was actually happening.

It is obviously important for any art practice.

Peter McCaughey:

Degrees are always individually awarded, so it is difficult to assess explicit collaboration and how or when it is happening.

The idea of the ‘unique individual’ is still an index for contemporary practice and assessment which stems from the mechanisms of capitalism.

We should make critical decisions based on these traditional values.

For example with textiles [Blane studies Textiles as Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen], how the maker of ‘the thing’ can extend into the realm of/connect to the user of the thing.

Craig Barrowman:

Capitalist culture manages collaboration across the globe.

Angus Farquhar:

Artists need to be taught ‘how’ you make your work, as well as ‘why’.

We’re all to some degree complicit with these power structures – asking ‘how?’ has an ethical consequence.

Goodman's Croft- Radio Lumsden.

Rocca Gutteridge — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:04:43 GMT

Goodman’s Croft. Radio Lumsden

In 17th century, and particularly in the northeast of Scotland, there was the widespread belief that a part of every field should be left untilled. This was based on a myth that if all the land was tilled by the farmer, the devil or the fairies would come back and take part of the crop or the precious cattle. This area left to the spirits was known as the Goodman’s Croft.

If you walk around Aberdeenshire 300 years later, you can still notice the parts of fields that remain untouched, some possibly being the legitimate descendants of the Goodman’s Croft. The superstition associated to this practice might have disappeared, but the metaphorical question can still remain: What are the areas that nowadays remain untouched in small rural communities?

Politics, social agendas and individual voices are one such area. Many of the critical decisions that impact upon rural communities have been deferred to the urban centres and institutions, while issues such as the decline of skill, poverty, climate change and anti-social behaviour remain untouched at a local level.

Goodman’s Croft: Radio Lumsden aims to dig up, lay bare and celebrate untilled voices of the Aberdeenshire community. Through the construction of a unique mobile radio station, artist Rocca Gutteridge and radio consultant Craig Priestley will explore how community radio can offer an important media voice for an otherwise disempowered conversation.

For more information or to join in please call 01464 861372 or email intern@ssw.org.uk.

This project is supported by Awards For All Scotland.

Why Is Britain Treating Artists Like Criminals?

Rocca Gutteridge — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 17:21:16 GMT

- written by my Dad after attending the UK Border Talk

A few months ago two young Argentinian tango dancers, Ismael Ludman and Maria Mondino, had a bad experience at Glasgow Airport. Now what I don’t know about tango would fill several libraries, but I’m told these folk are big in the dance world.

Argentinian tango isn’t like the flouncy stuff you see on Dancing With the Stars. It’s exotic and erotic, sinuous and sexy. With their upper bodies welded together, the dancers intertwine, their legs making graceful arcs around them. It’s fascinating and beautiful, and Ludman and Mondino are two of the best exponents. They travel the globe giving workshops and they’re quite well-known in Scotland, apparently, which is why they were invited to tour a few village halls and other small venues.

Sadly, the UK Border Agency had other ideas. The couple were held at the airport, refused entry and sent home. Just two casualties of a new immigration system that is making a mockery of Britain’s claim to be a magnet for international culture.

I only know about this because I was in Kirk Yetholm on Saturday night, where a public meeting, chaired by my daughter, was held to highlight the problem. There were artists, writers, musicians, gallery-owners and film-makers, even a true-blue-blooded member of the House of Lords, and they were all concerned about a system that is threatening to turn Britain into a cultural ghetto.

In 2008, our government introduced a new points-based visa system for non-EEC immigrants. It’s similar to the one that works successfully in Australia, except that in Australia there’s a special category that allows short-term visits by artists, writers and performers. Australians think it’s important that their country’s cultural diet is enriched by the work of significant international artists. Yet, despite Britain’s claims to be at the heart of cultural exchange, when they brought in our new immigration law, the government simply forgot about the arts.

Big festivals, like the Edinburgh International Festival, are given special status, but smaller events, like a book-signing by an award-winning American writer at your local Waterstones, or an appearance by a international director at a film festival in Hawick, requires a “licensed sponsor”. No sponsor, no entry, and the cost of each licence and visa runs to hundreds of pounds.

Sometimes the artist would have to travel hundreds of miles to get a biometric test – a ludicrous expense if you’re just performing for one night at a village hall where a few people like to tango.

The situation is now absurd: an international writer or a photographer on a tourist visa faces deportation if they so much as open a notebook or take a single snap; an established artist can’t even come to visit his own exhibition of paintings.

Musicians and poets from Africa, artists from Russia and China, and now Argentinian tango dancers, have fallen foul of the rules, and the world’s greatest living pianist, Grigory Sokolov, has simply deleted the UK from his touring itinerary. These are people of genius, whom we idolize for their extraordinary creative talent, and then we let the staff of the UK Border Agency treat them like illegal immigrants. They aren’t stealing employment from us, we invite them to our shores to enthrall us with their art.

According to the meeting in Yetholm, the government simply needs to create an “artists and entertainers visitor” route to solve the problem, and yet, despite a crescendo of complaints from every part of Britain’s cultural establishment, Theresa May’s Home Office remains oblivious and Jeremy Hunt’s Culture department is doing nothing to help.

The Argentinian tango dancers have got their revenge, however. There’s a magical YouTube video of them performing around their suitcases in the airport, a tribute to our pointless bureaucracy and the jobsworth mentality of the UKBA. Do take a look, before you write to your local MP.

web link

Manick Govinda of Arts Admin and the Manifesto Club opening the debate.

A diverse mix of cultural workers attended the discussion in Kirk Yetholm

Internationally acclaimed novelist, Kamila Shamsie contributes her opinions and advises on how to push for reform.

Artist and member of the house of lords, Nicholas Trench

Algerian Visual Artist Zineb Sedira offers her personal account of the situation.

The UK Border Walk + Talk at Kirk Yetholm town hall
for info on how to get involved please see:

http://www.manifestoclub.com/visitingartists

UK Border Walk- New Podcast

Rocca Gutteridge — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:30:17 GMT

Link here to brand new podcast “Without Borders” by Clare Carswell and Artachat, documenting last August’s UK Border Walk.

We’d love to know what you think:

web link