http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Making art politically Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:29:37 +0000 a-n rss generator a-n The Artists Information Company and contributors edit@a-n.co.uk technical@a-n.co.uk http://www.a-n.co.uk/img/logo.gif http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I would like this blog to be a shared space where I and others can post some responses to Hirschhorn's work 'The Incommensurable Banner' and to everything that happens around that. Tomorrow I'm meeting Liz and Matthew at Fabrica to go over preparations for the residency, talk about text panels and so on.I think I am supposed to have a plan.I've got ideas.But not a plan as such.I keep coming back to the phrase: I am at a loss. It seems like the most appropriate one to use.I'm sure it must be dangerous to publish one's thoughts like this as they happen. I am deeply suspicious of blogs and of people's motives for having them.But as a shared space I can contemplate the use of one. At a loss. That sounds so financial in these credit crunching days. Perhaps that is appropriate. We'll be thinking about weights and measures in relation to the idea of incommensurability. I'd like your help with that one, using Ranciere's 'The Future of the Image' as a point of reference.No plan, just ideas. At a loss. The work leaves me at a loss. And I haven't even seen it yet. But I've been thinking about it since April. And thinking about Hirschhorn's work for several years.I will have to ask permission of certain friends if I can share their thoughts with you too. If they mind or not if I talk to you (whoever you are) about conversations we have had. I think that would be helpful.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I have been thinking that perhaps I should explain what I meant by 'at a loss' in relation to Hirschhorn's work. I see it as a good starting point, one from where anything might happen and any direction might be taken. I suppose it's like being at a junction of several paths with no signpost. A position where a great deal of thought and perhaps some animal instinct might be called on to take me somewhere. Hirschhorn asks the question 'Where do I stand?' and for me to feel, at this stage, as if the ground has disappeared from under my feet can only be a good thing. I am standing but the nature of the ground is not apparent nor is my position in relation to it. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Have lately been thinking a lot about the notion of equality. This came out of a conversation I had with Liz Whitehead as part of our planning for the residency. For one thing she was describing to me the potential of the animateur's role to challenge any institutionalised aspects of the way that things are done at Fabrica. She was also telling me about running workshops so that everyone can be a participant. This set me thinking about equality. I got a glimpse of really understanding what equality means. You know that difference between understanding something intellectually and kind of 'getting it' from the inside out, which involves a different kind of understanding which happens in your whole being rather than just in your head.I wonder if there is a connection between the incommensurable banner and these thoughts? I suppose there must be. And I suspect it has something to do with the depiction of death. I will think about this some more. I've started a new (freelance, part-time) job and it has taken up most of my time this week. And my thoughts. I keep longing for some really free time to let my thoughts roam.'Sans commune mesure' is the French for 'incommensurable'. Without common measure. I'll try and decipher what it is Rancière says about this and let you know . . . ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Am having a very busy time at the moment. I don't know when I'm not busy really so it almost seems redundant to point it out. And now, late in the evening I am checking my blog to see if anyone is talking to me and - they're not. So it's me, sitting here, talking to myself again. I've not blogged before (as you can no doubt tell) and am being careful not to make this whole blog be about blogging itself.  Who is the 'you' I'm talking to? Who are you? I tell you what, if anyone does read this, please let me know, by leaving a post, or should I just send out messages, bottle post-like, with no hope or expectation of any return?  Some keys:individual - social - responsibility - guilt - involvement - detachment - solitude - position (in relation to what/whom?)  Chatted to Liz today on the phone about text panels and presentations we are going to be giving at the Engage conference, which is going to be happening in Brighton around the Photo Biennial.I've just re-read what I sent in for the text panels and you (who are you?) might as well have a first glimpse. Maybe it'll give you more insight into what I'm up to with the residency. I think it's probably cheating but it's late and it's easy.[Just tried to send the text panels text but got the message 'Post validation failed' because I'd exceeded a 500 word limit that I didn't know existed. So, I'm going to send this next in another post. Which will mean that my post for this evening will be somewhat back to front. I feel a bit conspiratorial with You (have decided you should start with a capital Y) and that we are covertly subverting the rules of this blog software.] ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 (Text for text panels in exhibition of Hirschhorn's work):I have taken a keen interest in Hirschhorn’s work since seeing his Bataille Monument at Documenta XI in 2002. What excited me was how Hirschhorn had involved people living in a particular part of Kassel to such an extent in the project that it became theirs, whilst still remaining his work. I also really liked the idea of introducing a thinker’s work to people in such a way that they might get as excited about those ideas as one does oneself. I imagined trying to achieve that in this country. Would it be possible?When I was told about ‘The Incommensurable Banner’ and saw some images of it, I was instantly enthusiastic because I made connections between what the banner shows and the lack of imagery of the destruction of bodies in the media coverage of our war against Iraq. And the provenance of the images being largely unknown opens the work out so that it is not just about the imagery of war. The work raises many questions about where one positions oneself, literally, in terms of where you stand in relation to it and also politically by being encouraged to think hard about what it gives us to consider. Aesthetically and ethically too, there is so much that can be discussed in relation to this work.I have been given the opportunity to approach this residency first and foremost as an artist rather than as a facilitator or gallery educator, work which I have a lot of experience of.  One of my challenges will be to rethink my working relationship as an artist to others engaging in a dialogue with myself via a blog, with anyone who wants to get into contact with me via the blog or by email and with Hirschhorn via the work and through readings of his ideas about what he is trying to do as an artist.I have instigated an ongoing gallery project to make a banner showing a collection of images that anybody can contribute to. Words to go with those images can also be considered. In addition to this, there are ways to contribute your responses to the work and I, together with yourselves and Fabrica volunteers and staff will be thinking about what to do with these responses. Where do they belong?Alongside this I will be inviting people from different disciplines (eg a philosopher and a poet) to view Hirschhorn’s work and contribute a personal response informed by their particular specialisms. All of these activities will inform and contribute to my own responses to the residency and to the work on show. Where that may lead has to remain open for now… (end of text panel text) I know you want some images. But both  my cameras are broken at the moment. I'll try and find some soon to liven this up a bit , I promise. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I have had a response to my rather sad plea last night for someone to tell me if they were actually reading this. Not that I think that people ought to be reading it but just because it helps me to know that there is someone out there. Not only did you say hello but you even let me know who you are. So, thanks for that. I have been thinking a great deal lately about art practice and about how artists are employed 'as artists'. I suppose it's inevitable that I should think about this a lot, given that I have jobs teaching, advising other artists, facilitating other people's creativity, mentoring, leading gallery education workshops etc. I get paid for being an artist doing activities where I am not actually making art. Because my practice has often had a strong strand of working with others in it, this has sort of merged with those other paid activities in my perception of what I am as an artist. These days, I often think quite simply that in order to call myself an artist I ought to be making art and my idea of what that is seems to have become rather conventional in many respects. I am rather suspicious of this move, thinking that there are unconscious strings coming at me from the direction of the Art Market, pulling gently on my motivations and desires and skewing them. I suppose this is inevitable.This evening I got out my peace banner (that you can see in the only picture on my blog) from its plastic storage wrapping. I've not looked at it since 2003. I'm making a piece of work for a show in London at Hold and Freight which references this earlier work. I was surprised when I unfolded it at how colourful it is. At the time I made it I was trying to depict something positive and all I could think of was flowers and idyllic rural landscape so that's what I've shown. It looks so naive and hopeless. It embarrasses me. But I don't mind that. In many ways it seems like the polar opposite of Hirschhorn's banner. It's more modest too in its dimensions . . . which isn't surprising. I took it on the march in Feb 2003 and it caught people's attention. One person told me it ought to win the Turner Prize and I remember just thinking "that's not the point, it's supposed to stop the war". Lovely idea that, that one could make a piece of work that would stop a war. Hideously grandiose, naturally, but says something still about the potency of objects, or at least about the potency we attribute to them.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 This is a photograph of a photograph of Thérèse Fatallah, my Grandmother, on her Iraqi pass papers of 1925. As I write that a hole opens up in my heart. Voices and questions sound in my head: I have no right to show her to you. It is not safe to show her to you. What am I trying to say anyway by showing her to you? What kind of cultural claims am I pretending to stake by showing her to you? The link between her and me is thread thin. She died in 1999. She was my Grandmother. How can I validate the necessary papers in my mind to make it allowable to contemplate that she might have mattered to me? That her having existed matters still? A photograph of a dead Iraqi.The previous sentence rings obscene. What does the space between sentimentality and offence measure? Where is the language to find the correct questions to be asking?Of what am I so afraid? ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Some striking differences of opinion:"I think that "Where do I stand? What do I want?" is the essential question for an artist. I want to answer this question myself first. But I want this also to be a challenge to any other artist, in order to know: "Where does he/she stand? What does he/she want?" Because, when confronted with an artwork, I always ask myself if the artist is answering this question, and it is essential that the response come through the artwork directly. This is what art can establish - a direct dialog, one to one."Hirschhorn, Art Review Supplement, June 2008 "I steer clear of definitions. I don't know what I want. I am inconsistent, noncommittal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty. Other qualities may be conducive to achievement, publicity, success; but they are all outworn - as outworn as ideologies, opinions, concepts and names for things."Gerhard Richter, 1966, quoted in Guardian 20/09/08 "I believe in Art, I believe in Art because it's Art. I have faith in Art and I believe in the power of Art. Faith in Art and passion are essential as an artist, there is no doubt. But Art does not change your life when you stay passive, Art changes your life when you have the courage to be active yourself. Active in thinking. Art has the ability to create its own space, its own reality, its own truth. Doing Art is not utopian, doing Art is not dreaming or escaping reality. Art creates the condition to confront the other, directly, without communication, mediation or explanation. I am not doing my artwork for an ideal world - but I want to do my artwork in this non-transparent, in this violent, in this complex, and in this chaotic world we are living in. I am part of it and I want this to be obvious in my work. There is no ideal world and there is no ideal artwork."Hirschhorn, Art Review Supplement, June 2008 "I believe in nothing ... I consider belief of every kind, from astrology to every elevated religion and all great ideologies, to be superfluous and mortally dangerous [ ... ] We no longer need such things. We ought to work out different strategies against misery and injustice, war and catastrophes."Gerhard Richter, 'Notes' 1964, quoted in Guardian 20/09/08 ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Some books of mine relevant to this residency:Armstrong, N. & Tennenhouse, L. eds., 1989. The Violence of Representation – Literature and the history of violence. London: Routledge.Art Review, Issue 23, June 2008 – Thomas Hirschhorn SupplementBarthes, R., 2000. Camera Lucida. London: Vintage.Berger, J., 2007. Hold Everything Dear. London: Verso.Bhabha, H.,1994. The Location of Culture. Abingdon: Routledge.Chomsky, N., 2007. Hegemony or Survival. London: Penguin.Costello, D. & Willsdon, D., 2008. The Life and Death of Images. London: Tate.Coulter-Smith, G. & Owen, M. eds., 2005. Art in the Age of Terrorism. London: Paul Holberton Publishing.Derrida, J., 1995. The Gift of Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Foucault, M., 2001. Fearless Speech. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).Gray, J., 2004. Heresies. London: Granta.Hyde, L., 2006. The Gift. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.Kraus, C. & Lotringer, S. eds., 2001. Hatred of Capitalism. Los Angeles, California: Semiotext(e).Kristeva, J., 1989. Black Sun – Depression and Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press.Rancière, J., 2007. On the Shores of Politics. London: Verso.Rancière, J., 2007. The Future of the Image. London: Verso.Rancière, J., 1991. The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Rose, G., 1997. Mourning Becomes the Law – Philosophy and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Sauermann, B., 2003. 2/15 – The Day the World Said No to War. New York, NY: Hello.Scarry, E., 1985. The Body in Pain – The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: OUP.Sebald, W.G., 2003. On the Natural History of Destruction. London: Penguin.Sontag, S., 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. London: Penguin.Woolf, Virginia., 1943. Three Guineas. London: The Hogarth Press. Zizek, S., 2008. Violence. London: Profile Books.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 This residency is making me think about images, specifically photographic images. Of course, I think about images a lot, but not necessarily about photos. Soon, I'm going to try to read with you what Rancière has to say about incommensurability. Before that though, I wanted to show you this image. I found it amongst some family documents. I don't know where it was taken and I've only got a slightly out of focus digital photo of the photo itself. It looks to be an office and the date on the wall tells us it was taken on the 6th of the month (if that is a calendar). Two of the men in the scene are looking towards the camera, the other is busy with his work. I feel they must be accountants but of course their work might be anything. There appear to be murals painted on the wall of trees and a landscape with a horizon. It's a very beautiful room with high arched ceiling and a stone floor. I suppose the man on the left who is looking straight at us might be my Grandfather as a young man but I don't know because I only know my Grandfather from photos of him as a much older man.The story goes that he, his sister and his mother turned up in Syria with only a suitcase and without his father. They were probably Armenians and fled the Turkish genocide at the beginning of the last century. I don't know for sure, so much is hazy with uncertainty. I'm bringing these old photos into this blog almost despite myself. I keep wondering what on earth they have to do with anything. But of course there is a link with the residency: photos as witnesses, calling us to account. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I keep coming back to the blog to see if anything has 'happened' with it. I don't know what I am hoping for or expecting to happen. This hope has made me think about others and about reciprocation. Hirschhorn: "To me, The Other is my next, my neighbour. The Other is what is unfamiliar to me, what is strange to me, what I cannot understand and what I am afraid of. The Other is also what is remote and close at the same time. The Other is the absolute neighbour. The Other  is the unexpected but it is not part of me, it's not not myself, that is the difficulty - particularism is the less difficult, the expected, the determined, the conformed, and it is me also, as well. In experiences of Artwork in public space "The Other" means the absolute will to include, to work for - and not to exclude - what I call a 'non-exclusive' audience. "The Other" is also my audience and "The Other" is the assertion of this possible audience. With my work I try to confront Artlovers, Artconnaisseurs, other Artists, Artcritics, Arthistorians but I also want to confront my work to The Other. I think that Art - because it is Art - can create the conditions for confrontation or direct dialogue with The Other, from one to one. In this sense Art has a political meaning. Art escapes the control, the control of myself - the artist - and in doing this, Art has the capacity to reach The Other. This is the miracle of Art. I learnt from projects such as the "Musée Précaire Albinet", the "Bataille Monument" or trhe Deleuze Monument" that "The Other" is with The Other because I chose him and his neighbourhood, and made my artwork with him in his space. Agreeing with "The Other" means "working politically", with confidence in the tool "Art" - which has its own logic and its own strength. "Working politically" means working without cynicism, without negativity and without self-satisfying criticism."I scanned a paperweight on my desk so as to have a photo. I have learnt that putting a new image on your blog takes you to the top of the list. So any image will do. The weight of paper.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Seen today: a banner put up outside a house round the corner from where I live. Not a protest banner but a welcome home banner. Anti War - Aunty StickHmm...   ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I've been thinking about the variable meaning of the word 'political' so that 'making art politically' could mean something very different to you from what it means to me. This situation is of course desirable and it is in the nature of language that it should be so indeterminate. I took the phrase from an interview I read by Hirschhorn where he is asked if his art is political and he replies that he makes art politically but that he doesn't make political art. In so doing he refers to Jean-Luc Godard who he attributes as having made this distinction:"I think that the problem, the difficult question, the goal is to do the artwork politically, this is the whole, entire and enormous difference. J.-L. Godard said : “to make film politically and not make political films”. “Working politically” means working without cynicism, without negativity and without self-satisfying criticism. "Working politically" means first working, just working, doing the work, doing it ! Because I believe that Art - as Art - can attain a real importance. I want to work it out. I want to do an artwork which resists the moralist or nihilistic tradition.I love the work of Goya and I love the work of Duchamp. Why should I choose between these two artists to answer the question “is Art political” if I think that both Goya and Duchamp are exemplary of how to do Art politically ? Goya and Duchamp made artwork with the confidence of the absolute autonomy of Art. So I want to try to replace the word “political” with “autonomous”. I want to insist on the importance of the autonomy of Art. The term "autonomy” is a positive term to me, because "autonomy" can be a tool to work out contemporary problematics involving economic, religious, cultural and social issues. But I also know that “autonomy in Art/ autonomy of esthetics” can also be interpreted in a negative way, and I do not understand nor do I accept this. It is a reductive interpretation of the term “autonomy” and - I think - it is a politician (not a political), academic, polemic and only critic understanding. To consider “autonomy of Art” as only a self-sufficiency, as “l’art pour l’art” is partial and dogmatic. The “autonomy of Art” which interests me is the autonomy of courage, the autonomy of assertion, the autonomy to authorize myself, the autonomy to do something on my own - without argumentation, without explanation, without communication and without justification. I authorize myself to believe in the autonomy of Art. The autonomy of Art does not come from self-sufficiency but from self-authorization. This is why autonomy is never passive, autonomy is active, it’s the activity of hope." I like the distinction he makes between the self-sufficiency of art and its self-authorization.That's an incredibly powerful statement which I will go to bed thinking about: "I authorize myself to believe in the autonomy of Art." ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 On Tuesday 23 September I ran a workshop at Fabrica for volunteers and staff. After looking at some documentation of the Hirschhorn work that will be showing during the Photobiennial I asked people to write down their responses to the work. Each response was then sealed in an envelope, thrown into the middle of the room and then each person picked an envelope. In small groups of four we read out and discussed these reactions to the work.These responses now follow, unedited, in the following four postings: Hirschhorn has said that anybody should see this piece. Why should I choose to see dead bodies in blood? I wonder if I unroll the rest of the banner, would I see anything happier? I want to. I desperately want to.  For me, I think it’s easy to find material to protest against all the unhappy, full of misery events that happens every day and have happened in this world. But isn’t it a bigger challenge to do art for something that really makes our heart happy and our lips smile? This is the challenge that I am given by Hirschhorn’s Incommensurable Banner.Waste human lifeBrutalityInhumaneUnrecognisable as human.Nazi Germany ideology that soldiers were told Jews were animals/monsters so they were ok to be killed.Faceless victimsNo consequence of the connection to others, familyRageViolenceAll male?DecapitationSicknessEvil Non-sensical(animalistic) I feel I have to switch off and having to write about the work is too hard as I look at gnarled bodies. I fell [sic] empty.I feel sad and angry. I also feel very relieved to see these images. I kind of feel elated. Joyous. I don’t know that I would admit that to anyone. It reminds me of when my Dad died and I went to see his body in the morgue. I came out feeling really high and I rang my friend and told her: “They should take you to a morgue when you’re still at school so that you get to know death early on in life.” Of course, some people, a lot of people, are forced to know death far too soon.It seems to be images that I’ve seen a hundred times on the news that don’t have any meaning anymore.There is only horror and nothing else.I don’t agree with the fact that it always relates to the same people.MessyBloodyDismemberedUnrecognisable/RecognisableRandomCaught off guardSnapshotAbstract/AbstractedExposedExposéInsides-outThe ordinariness of killing somewhere else to where I liveA disconnected connectedness... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 On Tuesday 23 September I ran a workshop at Fabrica for volunteers and staff. After looking at some documentation of the Hirschhorn work that will be showing during the Photobiennial I asked people to write down their responses to the work. Each response was then sealed in an envelope, thrown into the middle of the room and then each person picked an envelope. In small groups of four we read out and discussed these reactions to the work. Looks very overbearing, it’s so big.The writing looks like it could have been written in blood (if it wasn’t black)The position of the viewer is very difficult.How do I look at disembodied/uncontextualised images of gore? When they were taken, what was the purpose?Media images of war have become so ubiquitous, do we see them at all when they’re in their original context, if not, why not?It is hard to tell what the images are until closer in, but it has a feeling of them being something terrible.The shock value of ths project interests me, from a stand point of pacifist protest, this is a very violent protest.I have mixed feelingsToo many bloodSHOCKINGWho will see this exhibition? (AGE)?Is not for everyoneDramaticVast, overwhelming, provocative, violent, distressing, confrontational.Collage, use of mass media, second hand images, everyday/familiar, perhaps those we have become desensitised to in a way but given the context and quantity of images we are forced to confront them in a new way, banner suggests element of protest. Currency of war, universality, immediacy.I find it interesting how the artwork appears so impersonal to the artist – any one could of copy and pasted the images from google or spray painted the title – AND YET it is such a highly personal piece ~ personal to the people in the images ~ a unique + personal story to each and every one of them.In my opinion I find the work pretty vulgar and disrespectful.This work makes me feel guilty. Because sometimes I’m a passive person and I think I could do more. I think the war is the consequence of a lot of passives people. This images probably come from the Irak war but they came from any war. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 On Tuesday 23 September I ran a workshop at Fabrica for volunteers and staff. After looking at some documentation of the Hirschhorn work that will be showing during the Photobiennial I asked people to write down their responses to the work. Each response was then sealed in an envelope, thrown into the middle of the room and then each person picked an envelope. In small groups of four we read out and discussed these reactions to the work. HORRORHow could one human make/cause a other to look like this. The peace/photos are extremely powerful when put together like this, because it make the horror seem even worse. Makes you think, what is so important that is worth killing for, making people see these things in their lives, happening with their friends and family. When you see these by themselves in the news paper they don't seem as significant.WarHypocrisyAngryIncommensurableUpsetHumanityInjusticeDiedViolenceBlood WarSeen so many images like this recently in the news/newspaper.  Possibly not as graphic/uncensored as this particular work.Maybe this is why I don't find it shocking/upsetting?However there is a brutality to them. Violence.Should they be used in artwork or installation?DisplayedPublicVery raw.High shock value, almost reads like a bloody version of Heat magazine.Reminds me a little of Santiago Sierra only Hirschhorn uses the notion of humanity and suffering in a different manner. The photographs are at an extremity of human warfare suffering but however I'm not sure how successful they are in shocking the Western society into doing something beneficial. I can imagine a large majority of people feeling highly emotional and extremely guilty and those combinations of emotions being so heightened that they feel at a loss. So much so that they personally choose to numb themselves to the over sensation they just encountered.The communication of suffering - singularity of pain - can it be truly expressed? What does it mean for the viewer?Is it appropriate? For those represented and for those viewing the exhibition.VOYEURISMWhat are the intentions of showing these pictures?Reality of war - individual experiences.What we do not usually see.But will it have any l [this line crossed out] ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 On Tuesday 23 September I ran a workshop at Fabrica for volunteers and staff. After looking at some documentation of the Hirschhorn work that will be showing during the Photobiennial I asked people to write down their responses to the work. Each response was then sealed in an envelope, thrown into the middle of the room and then each person picked an envelope. In small groups of four we read out and discussed these reactions to the work:DisbeliefGuiltDisgustIntrigueDefianceI feel that good Art by definition evokes strong emotions within us, and this piece certainly does that.As these images used are all from real life, and are already in circulation within the media, it would seem hypocritical to censor these images in any way. Should act as a wake-up call.WrinklyDishevelledWhacked together.Tacked and strung to the wall in a hurried fashion, not wanting to be cool or distanced or overly considered. The banner is glued onto the cardboard roll and this encourages you to view it as a banner rather than a picture.An urgent display in sympathy with the flayed bodies plastered over its surface.HorrorDisgustFearInhumanityHow can humans do this?Some of the images I don’t know, can’t tell what they are and that’s quite worrying … I don’t think I really want to know – but you can’t stop yourself from trying to figure it out. Horrifying – to see bodies to disfiguredAnd left with no-one to clear up the mess.Imagine finding your relative in the street like that. Maybe in such a state that you’re not even sure if it’s your loved one.I see this as a the deeds of others… I feel quite detached because I don’t know what I can do about the situation.How involved/detached should I be with any war?Whilst looking at the first few images of the entire work, I felt a rather distanced interest in the actual physical presentation of it: The fact that is is a partially rolled out banner, that there seemed to be something scriptural about that kind of reading surface; that perhaps what we can see might just be a beginning – would the tone and content of the material change further in?And then the close-ups – then, I got lost in the horror, the awkward positions, the strange grimaces, the absence of expression.BloodViolenceNastyIntriguingEmergencyWarSufferingExtremeDifficultRedMessStruggleUnfairStupidityPoliticsDisgustingToo much to bear.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 On Tuesday 23 September I ran a workshop at Fabrica for volunteers and staff. After looking at some documentation of the Hirschhorn work that will be showing during the Photobiennial I asked people to write down their responses to the work. Each response was then sealed in an envelope, thrown into the middle of the room and then each person picked an envelope. In small groups of four we read out and discussed these reactions to the work: SadDepressed, angryWant to cryAnxious. Makes me worry about people. What do their families think. What does their best friend think. What happens to lead to this.Anti-dote to governmental propaganda.Language, complexities hiding reality.What kind of artist feels able to present this subject matter. What does he want. [writer didn’t use any question marks]Mutilated, cut up, bloodied, defaced, wounded, dead, shot up bodiesTortured, horrific scenes of bombed out cars and half naked bodies.Images are billboard like arranged in no particular order or place.Militant style writing, untidy and dripping with paint.Space is as dirty and scruffy as the images themselves.Angry bloodshed scenes.Nothing to laugh about it is a serious matter. Should this really been shown in an art gallery?? These are someones friends, loved ones, son, daughter, mother, fatherSickness. Anger. Rage.Before I saw the images I thought I had prepared myself. I told myself, it is up to you how you view the banner: as people with lives and loved ones and grief or as merely a group of pictures depicting particles and atoms arranged differently. Not people. I thought I could try and look past death, at the aesthetics. The colour. The patterns. But I couldn’t. Each image holds so much – loss, despair, inconsolable, grief. Mourning. Horror. Shame, the shame of us as humans.Death is not something I am privy to see often in my life, making it seem intriguing, like a secret. In reality it is not this, it is something else, terrifying and scarily real. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 This week is gearing up to the opening of the Hirschhorn exhibition on Thursday at Fabrica, Brighton 6-9pm and also the whole launch of the Brighton Photo Biennial. It will be good to see The Incommensurable Banner at last. I feel I know it so well yet haven't actually seen it live yet.Started teaching back at the university this week. It is very heartening to find such enthusiasm amongst my students about the White Night debate 'Make Love Not War' that will be happening on 25 October in the University of Brighton gallery 9-10pm. At least a few of them already are keen to get involved. I would like the whole event to be theirs really. For them to ask the question what does that phrase 'Make Love Not War' mean to them now? I'm reading Mark Kurlansky's book about 1968 to find out more about student activism in the 60s and 70s.Altogether the times feel particularly volatile. People are starting to give voice to their resentment that they might have to pick up the tab for the mistakes arising from unregulated banking maneouvres. In trying to engage with what was my rather mouldering political consciousness I often feel like a phoney. In this whole process I tend to monitor the feelings which arise as if they were a weather vane for more generalised situations. Being 'political' or appealing to a 'political consciousness' from the comfort of one's own circumstances can seem a bit like a cheap trick: an easy option compared to the myriad ambiguities of art. But I don't think it is a particularly 'easy' approach, riddled as it is with all the complexities of interest, desire and history.I had a dental check up this morning at a dental practice I've not been to before. It is nearer to my new home. At the end of the check-up (one small cavity otherwise all well) I asked my new dentist how transferring dentists works and whether I would need to arrange to have my dental records from my previous dentist sent to this practice. He looked at me with such a look of bewilderment and annoyance on his face. I might as well have asked him to relate his earliest childhood memory to me. No, he explained, we can just work with what we've seen today.I left pondering the consequences of working without reference to history. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Last night I saw 'The Incommensurable Banner' for the first time. Come and see it yourself at Fabrica, the private view's tonight 6-9pm. This morning I exploded my Grandma. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609   And this evening I put her back together again. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Had a conversation where I realised that I make assumptions about there existing an area of common ground about what is meant by 'political'. The person I was talking to clearly thought that by 'political' I meant 'party political'. This was a thunderbolt to me. To realise that a lot of what I take for granted, have always taken for granted, actually doesn't exist (any more? did it ever?). There was a time in the 70s and 80s when if you talked about politics then it was sort of assumed that what you were talking about was something to do with power relations, identity, gender, race, class, in short, the underlying dynamics of any situation. Everything could be understood politically. This didn't make life any easier. In fact it often made it seem a lot harder, but there was a language (or at least we liked to think there was) for what went on amongst people. Then there was a time when you had to talk about 'politics with a small 'p' to denote the same kind of analysis and to make clear that you were not talking about party politics. Now, if you talk about politics, people turn their noses up and look displeased, or they assume you have some personal chip on your shoulder, or that you're just plain mad.Yesterday on Radio 4 there was a programme about anger. Apparently, in the States now they are calling anger 'intermittent explosive outburst syndrome' or something like that, I can't remember exactly what they called it. And of course there is a pill for it. To cure it. To stop it. So in these placated times where does justified outrage go? Where do we put it? How can we channel it into action? 'The personal is political' was a rallying cry of feminism. It meant that what went on between people, in their relationships, in everyday life, was significant, that it mattered, that it was the world in microcosm. But is the personal being squeezed out along with the political? Are the only spaces left for the personal: the confessional art of autobiographical artists providing vicarious experience as commodified art products for the over-busy super-rich? Or the safe and hidden, intimate spaces we create in our own, very private, private lives? ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Last Chance to see 'For Those Killed in Ambush' at Hold & Freight, Bradwell St, London E1. Finishes Sunday 5th at 6pm.I am showing one piece:2003 Peace Banner  -  2008 Pea SpannerGeddit?http://www.holdandfreight.org ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I was in Polegate today, which is a town near Eastbourne, in Sussex. I found this completely flattened and very rusty tin can on the grass verge by the side of the road.It set me thinking about flatness and three-dimensionality. And about bodies I suppose. And their transposition into images.Photography.What an alien concept to me.The visual.What does that mean?And why if we inhabit fleshed out, rounded bodies, would we ever think of making flat images? I know, it's something to do with the retina and all.Flat Stanley.A children's book about a boy whose noticeboard falls onto him in the night and he wakes up with as a two dimensional person. And then he has adventures as a 2-D person in a 3-D world.How can the images that Hirschhorn has chosen for his banner have the visceral impact on us that they do have? What is the process whereby animal fear is generated by looking at pictures of dead and mutilated people? I'm not really interested in the neurological answers to these questions. But rather in the part that imagination plays in that process.Imag(e) in a(c)tion.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Blog blockA lot has happened over the past couple of days. I have done my first two residency sessions in the gallery talking to visitors about the Thomas Hirschhorn exhibition. I need to digest it all a bit before adding another blog posting. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 A view of the tin can from the side. To prove that it really is flat. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Someone's response emailed to me. They wish to remain anonymous."I looked at your blog and the Fabrica site about Hirschhorn.It must be difficult to keep an objective position on this work.Quite honestly I think his work is such butch male piffle.I suppose if we live in a landscape of rubbish and people are brutally turned into rubbish and then photographed like landfill sites,we will get an ‘art’ that is an equivalent of MRM.What is the point of this kind of visual / philosophical appropriation.It colludes with the visual landscape of excess, nihilism and amorality - its really about his celebrity, about violence and political philosophy being sexy.He’s producing a commodity - ‘find prices on artnet’." ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Some text I have written to accompany my contribution to our open studios exhibition 'Around Photography' 25 and 26 October and 1 and 2 November 12 - 6pm: Thinking StillPhotography is to my practice what something is to something else, but I don’t know what those things are.I don’t know what the relationship is or the things that it connects. I don’t know that I need to articulate this any more clearly to myself at the moment.I use photography just as most artists do. I use it for the following:•    To document work I have made and exhibitions I am in.•    To record visual ideas I think of so that I don’t forget them.•    To record an arrangement of objects in my studio before I move it around or put it away, so that the connections may be recalled at a later date.But mostly I don’t go back to look at these saved images.I can’t get round the power involved in photography. Behind the lens I am a god creating worlds. In front of the camera I am always a victim. Maybe because I am female and I can’t get through, round, over or past porn.My first camera was a really old paper concertina job that my Dad gave me. I took it to London on a school trip and took a picture of Tower Bridge. It was magic.During the Brighton Photobiennial 2008 I am artist in residence at Fabrica, engaging with and thinking (a lot) about the work of Thomas Hirschhorn, specifically his use of appropriated images in his Incommensurable Banner. The images are graphic depictions of bodies damaged and destroyed by munitions. People so far are displaying a range of reactions to this work. I am a lightning conductor for them.I am thinking still. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Just some things I've observed over the past few days: I heard a loud banging and when I looked down onto the street from a top floor window I saw a young lad, perhaps 12 years old, hitting a flint wall repeatedly with a long stick. Standing next to him was a much younger boy, perhaps about 6 years old, watching, motionless. The older boy was putting all his effort into attacking the wall although there was nothing to be seen on or around the wall that might have been his target other than the wall itself. When he had done enough hitting with the stick they both walked up the road a bit until the older lad stopped near a grass verge and with great concentration ground the toe of one of his shoes into the ground flattening the grass. He did this calmly several times on the same small patch of ground until he felt he had stopped the growing. A tiny boy about 5 years old dressed in an immaculately pressed bright white karate suit flew by me silently on a scooter near the seafront road. Several times he measured out the breadth of the car salesroom forecourt with his two small wheels. The words 'avenging' and 'angel' came to mind. Outside the Londis shop a cluster of adults laughing happily after their meal out in the Italian restaurant next door kept an amused eye on the two boys. Imitating computer game fighting these two were extremely skilfully raising clenched fists and pointed toes to each others chins without ever as much as touching each other and equally skilfully ducking to avoid the acted out blows. The sounds coming from their mouths were aping simulated explosion noises and imagined gasping reactions to violent hitting. "Ah", the adults' faces said, "look at the boys enjoying themselves".  In the park earlier this evening, three boys, around 8 or 9 years old walking conspiratorially close to each other. As I overtook them one was twirling a gun around his middle finger. Presumably a replica, but by the evident weight of its metal in his small hand, definitely not a toy. I stared long and hard at it in his hand as I passed them, as if to say "I can see what you've got, I've noticed you" but didn't say anything to them. A bit further on up the path I turned to look back at them. Looking slightly more agitated now, the one in possession of the weapon was stuffing it into his little backpack whilst his friend was saying something in a raised voice about his big sister.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I couldn't bear that picture of the gun being on my blog for longer than about an hour, so I've put a new picture up.A visitor to the gallery on Saturday offered to bring in a picture of a fluffy kitten to stick onto the collective protest banner that visitors to the exhibition can contribute to. (This image was not donated by her but found by me online). In amidst all of this experience I am finding that my ability to judge the tone of people's comments is weak. Did she really mean that a fluffy kitten would be a suitable counterbalance to the images on show on Hirschhorn's banner or was she being entirely facetious. It may seem obvious to you but at the moment I really can't tell.It's the same with 'Max Loader' and his/her posts about the tin can (see below). To use a word like 'transfixed' to describe an interest in my discussion of 2- and 3-Dimensions appears to me to be rather exaggerated. A gap has opened up in my interactions with others between their intentions and my receptiveness to those intentions. A widening which includes a muddying and mixing of friendliness and hostility.But I can work with that. It's at the core. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 A good day.Spent the morning making some work. When I had done what I'd wanted to do I got so excited I had trouble catching my breath. I made what I consider the most perfect piece of work I've ever made. I will show it at our open studios.Then I went to said studios and spent the afternoon taking photos and putting up more banners and deciding what was going to go on them. In all (if I can get it all done before 25 October which is the first day of the Open Studios) I will have 5 new experiments of work to show.What a good day it's been.Then a talk by Juilan Stallabrass at Fabrica about Thomas Hirschhorn and 'The Incommensurable Banner'. JS was very good. Lots of factual information and background, a lot of which I already knew from my research but enough new stuff to keep it interesting. I was much heartened by seeing J there and having a nice chat with him about it all. We have arranged that he will come in to the gallery when I am doing one of my stints so that we can have more of a conversation about our thoughts about Hirschhorn's banner. I showed him my perfect piece of work and had no qualms saying I thought it perfect.Brilliant to see some more of my Brighton Students there as well. Especially E and some of the first years whom I haven't met properly yet. Also exchanged emails with L at Sussex Uni this evening. She is going to bring their Visual Culture Society group down to the gallery to do a workshop with me in November.Also spoke to J today who is going to come to see the exhibition and talk to me - and D has emailed me back to say that he will come down from Oxford too. He's doing a poetry gig on the South Bank for Modern Poetry in Translation involving John Berger so must find out about that.All going well.I'm firing on all cylinders.Brrrrum brrruummmmm!!  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 There's another blog post to be written which I don't yet have the wherewithal to compose. It's to do with looking and porn and what Hirschhorn (after Bataille) says about The Eye. And to do with siding with the victim (hence my current strong attraction to Bachmann) rather than with the perpetrator because it's an easier position to own up to. And it's to do with what Hirschhorn has to say about us all being both victims and perpetrators.Porn and The Eye came up quite a bit in the discussion this evening. I was trying to formulate something but it's a long way off being a question yet.The eye looks for the red, says TH. I've been thinking about eyes and penetration.And about those who feel assaulted by the banner.And about a kind of resurgence of confidence I'm finding in myself about looking and showing. All those old debates about the gaze and the gender of the viewer seem to be finding new relevance. And I've got a first year student who is making work investigating heterosexual masculinity. As capitalism crumbles around our ears. It's a good (exhilarating/frightening) time.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I've just re-read my previous post. I need to adjust what I said about siding with the victim as explaining my current attraction to Bachmann*. I am a huge fan of Bachmann's work and have been since the 80s when I read her for the first time. In other words, I have had a strong attraction to her writing since then. And this comes from her extraordinary writing which demonstrates great psychological and poetic strength (in the best sense of the word) as well as an ability to transform language into something so agile that I had not necessarily thought possible before reading her. You would need to read Malina, her novel, to understand what I mean by victimhood in her. In some senses she is all about the victim, in that she embodies (in her characters and in her tragic premature death) what it is to be on the receiving end of brutality. But at the same time there is such an extraordinary power and strength (again, in the best sense of the words) to what she achieves and it is this unfathomable co-existence of weakness and confidence that baffles me and is one reason for my enormous admiration for her oeuvre. She also happens to be one of Hirschhorn's mentioned preferred authors. *Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973), Austrian writer, author of short stories, poetry, plays and a novel, Malina. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 It's interesting. I wanted to write something for this blog last night before I went to bed but, sitting at my computer, realised that I was too utterly physically and mentally exhausted from a very full working week to be able to think. I went to bed and slept only four hours before I was woken by my thoughts again. So now I am up in the middle of the night having had just enough recovery time to get me ready for some blog action again. So, the thoughts go something like this: However much I protested when starting this blog against the tendency towards gut-spilling in blogs and tried to set myself apart from this by stating that I would be avoiding navel-gazing and instead trying to create a space for many voices to share, I realise that in many ways this blog has become something of a personal journey.I am thoroughly enjoying this space to think and compose my thoughts 'out loud' with one part of my mind always on the awareness that someone else might read what I write, which in itself creates a desire to transform the strictly personal into a more public text.However, I know that there is a whole side (or set of sides) of what I am currently thinking that is not getting said here. This is because this forum is a public forum and I am afraid I do not trust the world enough to share these deepest thoughts with you. You are an unknown to me: you might wish me harm but at the same time you could be my best friend. I can't know.  This means that for myself (from myself?), in this blog, I am leaving out or withholding significant aspects of my life. They are not getting written. By this I mean, I could be writing them elsewhere, in a 'private' journal for example, but I am not.They are not getting written.I don't think I am even prepared to let you know what these aspects of my thoughts relate to. Or perhaps I could risk this much and tell you some categories in which they might be found: family, money, sex.Now, I happen to find the fact that these areas of thought (and others that are not even classifiable) are not being written about by myself in this blog extremely interesting. Because this leads me towards becoming able to say something about how human experience has been privatised. see next blog entry ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 (continued from previous post)Now, I happen to find the fact that these areas of thought (and others that are not even classifiable) are not being written about by myself in this blog extremely interesting. Because this leads me towards becoming able to say something about how human experience has been privatised.In a previous posting (no.22) I wrote something about 'the personal is political'. Now, the idea that there are personal aspects to oneself that cannot be divulged to others because it is does not feel safe to do so, THAT is highly political.But, you might say, of course it's not safe. Why am I being so naive or idealistic as to think it should be? This blog, as a forum on the interface between personal journal and public noticeboard brings this issue to the fore.I contend that in contemporary society as we know it, not only are vast areas of the personal unshareable, they are actually inhospitable tracts of land that often we cannot venture into even on our own.So, in answer to Hirschhorn's injunction to declare where we stand and what we want, I would say that, depending on the individual, part of the attempt at this definition of a subject position may include caveats and qualifications, that, without being able to define or characterise them (e.g. because it is not safe enough to do so) could render the whole project of stating one's location in the world meaningless. Or am I just taking Hirschhorn's injunction too literally? And actually it is no more than a rhetorical device for invoking the possibility of total self-knowledge and knowledge of the other?One way in which our experience has been privatised to such an extent that we do not have access to it ourselves is carried out by the mental health system, which takes away from ourselves the rightful ownership and occupation of our own minds, putting them into the hands of experts and professionals who are supposed to understand them better than us. It is a system which makes us believe that our minds are dangerous things that we have to be very careful about investigating if we do not understand how they work as well as, say, a psychiatrist does.  This is interesting: even the very mention of 'mental health' here in this blog is ringing alarm bells in my head and a voice is saying: "Now they all think you're screwy". However, today, rather yesterday, was World Mental Health Day and that lends my interest in the subject some validity. Because if, on World Mental Health Day, you can't talk about how the enjoyment of experience has been stolen from us by a medical system that is backed by a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry which is supposed to control and correct the proper functioning of our brains better than we can ourselves, then when can you talk about it?   ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 note to self: formulate questions relating to human relationships and interactions in context of (un)safe/(un)charted territory.honesty - what is this?talk about openness: Critical Practice? http://www.criticalpracticechelsea.orgthe whole story? ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I was at Fabrica gallery this afternoon. It was a strange afternoon. Outside, it was a lovely sunny day and the streets of Brighton town centre were packed with people with buskers seemingly on every street corner. Everyone out enjoying the sunshine. It felt extremely hard to go into the gallery and spend time with the banner. T was there and two volunteers and I enjoyed chatting to them. We got talking about White Night on 25 October  and I found myself suggesting we have a party on that night in the gallery until 2am. It seemed in incredibly bad taste to suggest such a thing in the presence of THE BANNER. But it also seemed necessary to be light of heart and not to pretend to some kind of solemnity that would have been inauthentic. In fact, I think it was a deliberate provocation of mine to suggest partying. In defiance of death and the warmongers.But, I suppose, since we ARE the warmongers, it amounts to dancing on the graves of the people in the images.I couldn't be doing with it all today. The work, the people, the atmosphere. The warnings to people as they entered the work. The dumb screens. The books lying potently around the place. No one is using the response email:respond2incommensurable@gmail.com to send in comments. There have been hardly any posts to this blog. Which is not surprising since I am posting semi-tracts to it which are all pretty much my attempts to articulate my thoughts without leaving much room for others to step in. But that's all fine because it's all an experiment and I can adapt and adjust to the situation and rethink and work from here. What I did do was to photocopy the comments book to bring home so that I can reread it at my leisure and add other voices into this blog. And I took some photos. But I was glad to get back out into the late afternoon sunshine, out into the crowd. I went into a shop and started looking for a chunky orange scarf to buy. I suddenly got it into my head that I had to have an orange scarf and went from shop to shop quickly before they shut up for the day, like the demented consumer I sometimes am. Couldn't find one. I noticed the comfort of the quest though and the sense of purpose it gave me. Orange. Brightness. Brightonness. Energy. Everything positive under the sun. Away from all that awfulness. Away. Away. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I had a look at the collective banner project I initiated to see how it was getting on and was dismayed to see only two images on it so far. With around 500 visitors per day at the moment to the exhibition that is a pretty poor result. I acknowledged to myself my half-hearted attitude to this collective banner project and there is undoubtedly a connection to my half-heartedness and its lack of development. I decided I do want it to go ahead and I do want to see it filled with pictures. So, I will set about rethinking how to present it to people so that they will want to take part.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 To what extent should a blogger limit their input so as not to put off potential readers by presenting them with a barrage of postings that they will not have time to read in their entirety and how much should the blogger 'go with the flow' and carry on posting if that is what the impulse is to do?There, I have demonstrated that I am at least considering taking you, Reader, into account, which gives me permission to continue now with the posting(s?) I was going to put up anyway. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Had a good session in Fabrica yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. I spent some time exploring the whole space with the banner in it by taking photographs. There were four volunteers in as well as Tasha (Front of House Manager) so together we were already a discussion group even without any visitors. It was good to have the opportunity to get together with Giuseppe, one of the volunteers and a teacher (in his spare time) who is going to bring some of his students to the exhibition, to talk about how to approach doing so. After some discussion in front of the banner, we came to the conclusion that neither of us had any idea about how to plan for such an occasion. I was all for waiting and seeing what happened and letting the students take charge. I do think this is the best policy with this work. All you have to plan is how to guide their leadership, or, better said, their facilitation of the session. Then there was a surprise when an old school friend of mine turned up. We have bumped into each other since school, several times actually, but we've never really managed to hook up again. I felt very touched by her presence in the space with me in front of Hirschhorn's work. She's a child psychologist now working in schools on emotional literacy and we talked a bit about how unkind the girls in our class had been to one another back then, as girls in a girls' school. I told her I had worked in schools as an artist on projects around 'emotional intelligence' and I think we both saw some link (without needing to spell it out) between what it was like then and our decisions to do this work now. Her mum and young daughter were waiting to one side of the space in Fabrica away from sight of the exhibition and we had moved to join them. Thus moving away from the 'zone of action' which is occupied by the banner and its viewing space to the marginal area occupied by those who don't wish to look, those excluded by age and the rest of the world.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 The other good things that happened during my session in Fabrica yesterday were: initiating discussions with visitors to the exhibition in front of the work and a large, round table discussion taking place spontaneously when a female visitor with a good strong voice came up and addressed the room in general with her response to the work.I approached a man who was carrying a tripod and a backpack and  told him that I would be very interested to know what his thoughts were on seeing the work because I was artist in residence for the exhibition and that talking to him about the work would help my own reflections. As I was saying this I realised that this was the key: it was actually true! I was presenting myself to him not as a sort of 'listening ear' for him to offload his reaction to the work onto, nor as some sort of background filler-in of facts about the piece but as who I was and with a genuine offer to have a conversation because I wanted to. Obvious really, isn't it.We went back into the viewing space and stood and talked about the work. As we were talking a large part of my thoughts was observing our interaction. It felt friendly. I found myself thinking about our two bodies facing each other in front of the array of images of bodies on the banner. Worlds apart. They as dead and no more than flat images. Us as living embodied beings. They voiceless, exploded, contorted, rendered immaterial through the destruction of their materiality exaggerated further by their reproduction as mass-produced images. We full of potential and of the moment. Possible progenitors of future generations, but now also having witnessed through the work (indirectly, oh so indirectly) the results of the worst of human behaviour. [I can't remember much about what we spoke about I was so absorbed in my reflections about our encounter.]There's a vague whiff of exploitation in the binary opposition I've drawn here. I can't put my finger on this element but it's something to do with the potency of the living being enhanced by the presence of the dead. I don't like it. I've frightened myself with it. Should I call it 'fascist'? Use that word with extreme caution. Is it Sadeian excess? To use the dead to make oneself feel more alive? Maybe this is what B means in her condemnation of the work? Is it in all of us? Maybe I shouldn't speak for 'all of us' but I spot it in myself at least. Latent. It's how tyranny takes hold. By exploiting that streak. Better to get it out and look at it.Too scared now. Back to bed for me.  Note to self: take another look at Angela Carter's 'The Sadeian Woman'.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 As I move through the week and my several freelance and teaching jobs a large part of my mind is on getting ready for our open studios at APEC on 25 and 26 Oct and 1 and 2 November. I know what work I want to have up but I haven't made most of it yet. So, slightly panicking about that. How much of the time my work is on the back burner, gestating in my head, while I get on with earning a living.I have been thinking about how to display the piece that I want to put on the wall outside my studio. It's very small and simple: a print on a handkerchief. Whether to let it hang loose with just a pin in each of the top corners or whether to give it a board angled to the wall to rest on so that it can lie flat. It's that old question again about flatness or not.Just quickly. Was at Tate Britain on Monday for Turner Prize and Francis Bacon.Bacon: human flesh as meat. Of course! But I'd forgotten how bloody his carcasses look. His archive of photos that he had lying around in his studio to paint from: body parts and and war wounded.Cathy Wilkes: fragility and femininity expressed in such pure sculptural terms. I found her display very arresting. And Mark Leckey's film of his performed lectures reminded me of this blog: ruminations on nothing much except the things that interest one. And why not!  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 A book I ordered through Amazon arrived today. For some reason I looked closely at the original price sticker on the back and it said it was from Silver Moon Bookshop, 68 Charing Cross Road.Talk about nostalgia! ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Note to self Things I would write about if it weren't so late and I weren't so tired:What I've not yet said about Hirschhorn's work.Fear.What I've been reading about photography's indexical relationship to reality.Quotes from Judith's article about politics and art (and fear).Notes from the secure unit.The impossibility of working with others.Anti Edo demo today.The face(s) of political engagement today.Lots of other things that I've forgotten.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Spent some of Thursday, Friday and today getting studios ready for our open studios event over the next two weekends 25 & 26 October and 1 & 2 November. I know what I want to show. It will be a series of 'banners' which aren't really banners. They are pieces of found fabric with images applied to them via photo transfer paper. I'll show them on the walls of my studio. I like the fact that I don't know what sort of banners they are. Or what they are 'for'. I've been thinking quite a bit about my use of fabric and questioning it. As a support and with this photo transfer method, it is quite easy to work with. I wonder how I feel about showing a number of cloths. It all feels terribly feminine to me. Apart from my Ingeborg Bachmann piece, which I am very happy with, this seems problematic. But I am going to go with it. I have considered using clothing when I have seen garments that would be suitable to transfer images onto in charity shops. But I have so far rejected the idea of using clothes. So, this much I know, they are not cloths to be worn. Not clothes.Neither are they protest banners nor interior soft furnishings. The pieces of fabric are:a small white hemmed sheet about 100cm squarea white cotton lawn handkerchiefan old faded curtain with a floral print on it from my (maternal) granny's house an embroidered tray cloth with drawn thread worka length of curtain lining fabric removed from the curtain mentioned above and which is a very nice soft beige colourI'm going to show these in my studio space as well as displaying my Peace Banner / Pea Spanner piece and setting up a laptop with this blog on it in case anyone wants to look at it.I'm also transferring an image of a scrunched up lump of brown parcel tape onto some white museum object handling gloves. The brown tape was taken off the packaging that was wrapping the Incommensurable Banner and was given to me by Michael Maydon at Fabrica as genuine Hirschhorn parcel tape. I like the idea of this throw away material decorating museum gloves that would be used to handle precious or fragile objects.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Fear (part one)Last week and the week before I woke up a few times in the middle of the night with my heart pounding. I was inclined to think that this was the result perhaps of eating dark chocolate late at night. But then a friend, a good friend, suggested that maybe it had something to do with the images on the I.B. (Incommensurable Banner). As soon as she made this connection I knew it was true. But, interestingly, I hadn't been able to make that connection myself. So, I've been thinking about the response of fear that the banner images evoke in people. Tasha, Fabrica Front of House Manager and I always joke about the importance of the biscuits on our shifts in the gallery. She says she thinks sugar is a necessary accompaniment to time spent near the work. It takes the edge off the shock? When I first saw the banner itself, rather than the images of it I had seen prior to that, I felt sick and a bit shaky. Now, having spent more time looking at the banner and thinking about it, I think the fear has deepened and is resulting in these mid-night awakenings. At the start of this blog I spoke about fear in relation to sharing with you my Grandmother's Iraqi heritage. This is different: less specific, more general and - perhaps, animal. I tried to articulate this today in the gallery to someone I was having a conversation with but noticed how woefully incapable I was of speaking about it. I'll try: the fear of death, yes. The fear of looking at such damaged bodies. The fear of imagining that that could happen to you.I am reminded of being a child at school and learning about beheading as a form of punishment. And that beheadings took place in the Tower of London.  I remember that it was inconceivable to me that people would remove other people's heads. And then visiting the block and axe at the Tower on a school trip and trying to imagine the axe coming down and severing the head from the body.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Fear (part two)So, the carnage that is represented on the banner. To face that degree of harm, mutilation. To physically stand in front of that so that one's view is filled with it. To appreciate the scale of it. To place one's own (intact) body in front of the evidence of what modern munitions can do.Of course we cannot feel the response to all that. From my observations so far of how different people respond to the images, it is clear that some are more immediately in touch with some kind of visceral or emotional reaction than others. But I am pretty sure that even those who appear immediately affected are only feeling the outer edges of a very much bigger potential response. Something INCOMMENSURABLE. Something that is building within my self and that is starting to manifest itself in physical responses of which I am not in charge. And I am very glad to have those responses because I would almost be worried if I didn't. It seems to me fitting and the very least one would expect in the face of such unmeasurable force. I haven't been able to write about this fear at all adequately. But I'd like not to give up and will have another go at it another time.Biscuit, anyone?   ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I have called my Ingeborg Bachmann piece I.B.I've just realised this also stands for Incommensurable Banner.  The collective protest banner that I started off in the gallery is not working at all. I am considering ditching the whole endeavour. I have not managed to start it off in such a way that others want to keep it going. It would require, I can see, my active involvement in generating interest around it. But I am too busy being involved in what is happening with my work in my studio and in this blog and in talking to people while I am in the gallery. I talked to Jane Fordham today when I was at Fabrica about this. She said the collective banner project is too hidden. It is. It is in a box. I sent an email to Tasha last week to forward to all the volunteers to try to generate some new enthusiasm about it. It doesn't seem to have made much difference. I think I'll leave it for now and talk to Tila tomorrow about it if she is in.Perhaps it is just too much to ask to expect people to want to leave a visual response to Hirschhorn's banner. I have been considering my own responses since April this year and for most visitors, their first view of the work does not leave them in a position to consider making a contribution to an ongoing art project.In my statement to accompany our open studios exhibition about how we use photography I wrote that I am a lightning conductor for people's reactions to the work. Their reactions aren't bolts of lightning though; rather perceptible only as small flickers. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I can't articulate my thoughts because there are too many in my head. About the role of the artist and the privilege that is still assumed to accrue to that role. Questioning that. I've tried just now to sketch out some questions about this but there's too much for now. I need to let it settle.Some gold shoes. The camera had trouble focussing on Georgia's shoes because they sparkled so much.Been thinking a lot today about The Feminine, with a capital T and a capital F. About Ingeborg Bachmann. About using textiles. About domesticity. About wearing the trousers. About evading the role of the perpetrator in favour of occupying the territory of the victim. About Hirschhorn He and Diab She. About polarities and ambiguities. About the idea of keeping to an 'eye-line' - Whose eye? Whose line of vision? About aiming and firing. About shooting and framing. Wondering how to get past and over it all.Thinking about how little I know.Disappearing. Like she did.Between Ivan and Malina*Into a crack.But, how that is history.We've progressed beyond that. We learn, we move on.You think?  *The two male protagonists in Bachmann's novel 'Malina'. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Taught my Critical Fine Art Practice students today all day in Fabrica sat around the large round discussion table in the gallery. It was part of my plan to explore new environments for teaching in. It went very well. The students fed back at the end of the day that they had enjoyed the round table and being in a 'proper gallery' and that it was good to be working and thinking about photography near Hirschhorn's banner, which was indeed a constant reference for our discussions. I found myself saying at one point that the more I have thought about the banner the less I know about it. That it seems as if my thinking has broken down, is broken, like the bodies. And that if one of the bodies were to get up and reconstitute itself what radical potential there would be for new thought.The students introduced very interesting perspectives on their own practices via texts they had chosen for presentation to the group. We looked at Mary Midgley's examination of human nature in 'Beast And Man', David Green's short essay 'Moving to Manual Override', an  extract about gypsies and their persecution and extermination by the Nazis taken from 'The Gypsies' by Jean-Paul Clébert and Fredric Jameson's reading (in 'The Deconstruction of Expression') of Heidegger's reading of Van Gogh's painting of the peasant shoes.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Judith Kazantzis, poet, has sent me a response to the Incommensurable Banner as well as the image that accompanies this post, which is entitled 'war is pants':"I meant to send this pic earlier, the woodcut  I did after the 2 million march of  03. I am not familiar with pdf files but I think you can print it out for the banner you are making. I do hope that is going well. This last week I have been back to Fabrica to look at the show again (and with Cecile's brilliant tech help to ready a short light projection piece on art/war I want to start with in my 'War and Writing' workshop); for the first time I really made myself walk the length of the banner and look at every picture. That was on the third visit! I think the writeup on the website was very good, didn't mince matters. I look forward very much to visiting your blog, and thought I would try this out first on you. There are at least 3 other woodcuts all about Iraq, (jpegs) but this was the one I mentioned when we met."Judith's own blog:www.judikaz.blogspot.com ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Friday 24 October 5.55am posted 17.15   We have had no internet connection at home since Tuesday evening. This has left me with no chance to write this blog since my usual blogging times are late at night after the working day when I have some peace and solitude. However, it occurred to me last night that I could write something anyway and take it into college with me and send it from there. It is interesting how not having an internet connection made me feel that I couldn’t write anything at all. I even considered writing something in an notebook to be typed up later as if I were unable to use my computer at all without internet access. Anyway, it’s been a very frustrating experience not to be online (as it always is now) and it makes me realise how dependent on the internet I have become. At the beginning of the week I developed some thoughts that I wanted to tell you about but the energy of that thinking seems to have dissipated somewhat and I haven’t been able to do the research (another late at night activity) to back it up. It was to do with a news report I heard on R4 about The Foresight Commission which has come up with evidence of the links between a ‘mentally healthy’ populace and the economy. The representative of the research was speaking quite shamefacedly about how what he called ‘mental capital’ pays directly into the economy as revenue to the government. This, in conjunction with all the government sponsorship that is going into researching what creativity is led me to see how ideas are the next booty to be plundered by governments. As natural resources dwindle and it becomes increasingly perilous to get our hands on them without costly and unpopular wars we have to find another kind of asset to translate into dollars and what better material than people’s ideas. So I came up with the idea of ‘intellectual colonialism’ for this approach. I seem to have had several conversations with artists in various situations over the past year or so about our creative processes and have often detected a reluctance to give up the goods (as if they were secrets) of  what one’s processes actually are. There is plenty of money going into university and schools projects aiming to find out what creativity is. Since the thinking goes that if we can turn ideas directly into capital in this technological age then to wrest how those ideas come about from creative people is the key to future economic wealth. As I say, I have to research this more myself to see if there is any basis for some kind of theory.  But if you have heard anything that would back this up then do get in touch. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 On Tuesday a group of photography and art students from BHASVIC (Brighton and Hove 6th Form College) came to Fabrica for a workshop with their teacher, Polly.  I was nervous about the session because I was curious to see how what a workshop would be like where it was possible that not everyone would have seen the exhibition. Since everyone who enters the Fabrica exhibition has the choice as to whether to go in and see the banner or not it was important that this group had that choice too and that the individuals in it did not feel that they all had to look at the images just because they were there as an organised group.  I think the session went very well in the end and the students were very articulate about their thoughts and feelings about the work. They had to come up with a brief for a new piece of work involving photography and their ideas were great. They suggested putting on a multi-voiced outdoor exhibition in as a protest against war using a stage and projections representing different views in the same spirit. Another idea was to throw paper aeroplanes from a tall building each with handwritten message on it protesting about how it is never the sons and daughters of those in power who are sent off to war to be killed. They thought it important that the messages be handwritten so that there was a personal touch to the planes and they pointed out that the planes would remind people of war. Someone raised the doubt about how to get so many messages handwritten and one fo the group really impressed me with her matter of face response to this that all you had to do was involve loads of people. She made it sound so easy to involve loads of people and spoke with such assured confidence which was really inspiring.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 response from Alice Flight, artist:"I don't usually look for what people have written about things but wanted to to this...felt like I wanted to join in a communal response to these images...not in my name...didn't feel any responsibility or anything  but just wanted to see what people wrote....it was weird having my back to the images to start with. I felt like that felt insensitive to start with when I turned and looked at the books on the table where the images are. I could sort of feel the images there behind me....the faces....that was sort of the thing to me....afterwards I walked along the seafront and past the children's playground on the front and all the kids running around in the sunshine which was heaven."... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Comments about Thomas Hirschhorn's 'Incommensurable Banner' from the Fabrica comments book:"Truth at last.""Bold and uncompromising, if a little obvious. This is just one truth, framing in an exhibition in that most liberal of cities distorts the message of the piece to bend it purely to one end of the political spectrum. Where are the Al-Queda victims in this picture? Very provoking piece, though, expertly realised.""Incommensurable!""suitably disturbing . . . comment though that the biggest casualties of war by the end of C20 are civilian 90% i.e. women, children and ineligible' men (UN) . . . one thing stands out is the absence of caucasian victims thus the exhibition and war is ... someplace out there far away ...""resist the bomb makers - smashEDO""Unbelievable - war is disgusting - humanity can be evil. 'War' is an abstract word - until you see these images.""very good X""War is so evil.""Nauseating and overpowering. This is an exhibition that needs the widest possible audience. If we could get the likes of Blair, Bush and Brown to understand the consequences of their actions.""If everyone saw these important images there would be no more war!""It's good to show the real horror of war - if it's done in our name we should know what it means.""Powerful and eye opening. I am forever affected and want to make the world a better place. Peace and love is the only way...""Appalling and necessary - but I was not sure if the pictures humanised the victims of war or de-humanised them. Not nice. But how could it be?" ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Comments about Thomas Hirschhorn's 'Incommensurable Banner' from the Fabrica comments book:"It seems totally surreal and makes you realise how lucky we are to live in a non-war zone!! Well done to photographer - need a lot of courage and bravery!""It's horrible, these people's lives ruined or ended.""It shows the suffering that is hidden by the media so well.""Lovely colours""This is all happening now and in our town EDO/MBM in Brighton manufacturing the components that allow this kind of carnage to continue. SHUT THEM DOWN!""I've recently graduated on Media and Popular Culture at Leeds Met ... My final year dissertation on film, more exactly, the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and its representation in fiction both in Spain and abroad... It's been a long struggle, most of my life, to know and learn about the recent history of my country: this was banned for ages because of Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975)... Still is kind of difficult to talk about this with both of my parents... Still is hard to today for most spaniards to talk about this... Although the images in today's exhibition made me cry, not much seems new to me and yet, tears can't be prevented from coming out of my eyes 'seeing' what human beings still are inflicting onto other human beings ... yet (and again) these horrible images, perhaps in a smaller size are shown to us everyday through the media and it seems to me that perhaps we have grown blind and deaf and mute as if our hearts have stopped beating as if we too are dead!""Thanks for putting this up in Brighton. This reality needs to be seen." "This is an important work. Please take away the wall!""Shocking but very valid.""I started out being brave to view these images and halfway along I was suddenly being confronted with a very sick feeling in my stomach (literally a physical sensation of sickness and pain!!) These images are that powerful!! In reality all these are even hundreds of times more shocking and dreadful. Gruesome." ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Comments about Thomas Hirschhorn's 'Incommensurable Banner' from the Fabrica comments book:"It's interesting how easy it is to become inured to the suffering of others when viewing a block of images such as these and the others in the University gallery. Photography's failure is how it distances you from suffering whilst pulling you close. There is no 'bodily' contact. The record is away and other, these are other people. The presentation of this work in a sort of discotheque of colour lessens the specialness of each individual event. This won't stop now. That would be naive to think. People are resilient and can learn to cope with all sorts of events, perhaps that is why we will continue to experience and perpetrate aggressive events such as war.""Although this piece is indeed shocking and extreme I feel it does not so much highlight the suffering inflicted by war as create a gallery of gore that appeals to the dark, voyeuristic side of our nature, that which compels us to slow down when we pass a car accident. We are horrified by what we see, yet we cannnot turn away. We are constantly bombarded by the media reports of bombings and suicide attacks, 'friendly fire incidents' and ghosts of past war atrocities yet we do not allow the victims of these awful events to rest easy, to dredge up these images and display them to an audience which has (largely) never experienced the sorrow of conflict firsthand, an audience who will recoil in horror and make offhand statements about the transience of life and exclaim 'what is the point of it all?' before going to lunch, making light jokes about what they have seen is not a respectful treatment of the dead. Would we respond in the same way if it were images of OUR loved ones splashed across the banner? Would we pace up and down in respectful silence, contemplating all the evil occurring in far flung corners of the world, brought to us safely anaesthetised through the medium of our televisions and the omni-net? No. We would fall to our knees and we would wail." ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Congratulations to everyone for their contributions to the White Night debate ‘Make Love Not War!’. This event was a great success. Devised and planned jointly by students of the Critical Fine Art Practice course at the University of Brighton and the Visual Culture Society of Sussex University with myself, it took place in the University of Brighton gallery at Grand Parade in Brighton in amongst the images of Iraq and Vietnam that make up the exhibition ‘Iraq through the lens of Vietnam’ one of the Brighton Photo Biennial exhibitions that make up the War of Images, Images of War biennial curated by Julian Stallabrass. White Night is a new event in Brighton that celebrates putting the clocks back by many venues staying open until the early hours, with all sorts of things happening. The premise of the debate was to test the proposition ‘Make Love Not War’ and I was billed to chair the event. From the start I had wanted to give the event to students to lead in order for them to experience facilitating a  public discussion of politics within the Institution that is a university. I was interested in what form their political energies take and how they get to be exercised currently.Esther started proceedings by leading a hand-holding activity which ended with half the group outside the gallery on the street and the other half inside the gallery and the two rows of us facing each other through the glass. I found this strangely moving. We were like two factions or like two different species examining each other.  And the holding of hands created an instant connection and awareness of our interdependence as people. The second part of the event had people talking to people they hadn’t met before about issues relating to war and peace prompted by keywords chosen by Luska and presented by Lucy. Everyone was talking at once, animatedly, in pairs. This was followed by a viewing of videos made by Thomas Blatchford, aka The Thomas Ferguson Band, consisting of excerpts of interviews, imagery and film relating to questions around war, aesthetics and ethics. A debate rounded off the evening with Thomas taking a lead in prompting the discussion and opinions getting quite heated at one point, which made the event exciting and the issues come alive. Nothing was settled, no resolution was forthcoming, no motions were passed. Instead various arena were opened up as possible spaces for debate and the smorgasbord of activities kept the event lively and stimulating. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 White Night debate continuedImagining a world without war.For those who wanted to take part, a lie-down collaborative imagining came next. I led this, inviting people to lie down, close their eyes and to start imagining a world without war. I asked people to speak out loud any aspect of this new world that came to mind and to resist the urge to destroy any part of the picture that was constructed as a result. The world that came about temporarily for those fifteen or so minutes was green, lush, filled with chocolate, had no locked doors, was relaxing and had a university where people of any age could come and use the facilities to accomplish ideas they had without having to pass any exams or prove their competence. The people who lived there felt no need to be led by anyone else. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Having spent the past week bemoaning the fact that I have had no internet access at home for the past week (due to technical problems with my ISP) and so have had my late nightly blogging habit interrupted I now feel that I have turned a corner. I have now realised that I am a nomad blogger.I am having to write and blog posts here and there wherever I can. Ah, such freedom! Such liberation from the domestic realm!Not as easy to download, crop, optimise and post images but it needn't stop me writing and I can catch up with images at the weekend.So, if you're reading this, Richard Branson, please do keep trying to fix the problem but be assured that my outlook is looking somewhat brighter.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I am in a North London library. Mum is sitting on a sofa in the children's area. I think she's nodding off. We've just had lunch together in a cafe. She's 81, though, for some reason, I keep thinking she's 82. Her eyesight is poor as she suffers from age-related macular degeneration and she is becoming increasingly unable to look after herself. I come and see her when I can but the job of looking after her falls mainly to my sister who lives near to her.I noticed this morning having spent yesterday evening and last night in my old family home that something strange had happened to time and space and that I felt as if I had been there forever and that my life in Brighton felt like a million miles away. I'd better not keep her waiting too long but it's nice and warm in here, much warmer than at her house where there seems to be something wrong with the heating. It's political. Me being here. Her sitting over there. Me trying to take care of her but failing mostly. The job is much larger than I can manage, short of giving up my life and living with her. Maybe that's what I ought to do? You only have one mum after all. But I know I can't - or rather won't.I miss her. She used to be such a lively spirit. So vivacious. Now she sits mainly motionless and seems rather tuned out a lot of the time, cocooned in her dulled senses. But she's still there.I feel sad but keep cheerful because that's the least I can do. What this has got to do with Hirschhorn I really don't know. Except that if he is really trying to reach for the human in us all, as Julian Stallabrass said during his talk about him, then that is what I am trying to do too.In her. And in myself.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Blog entries to write:Conversation with David Constantine yesterday about Brecht's 'Kriegsfibel' and relationship of poetry to photographic images of war - transcribe recording of conversation and select parts for blog.Impromptu discussion today at Fabrica with students from Greenwich University.On speechlessness.Reading of Islam & the West - conversation between Derrida and Mustapha Chérif - when I've read more of it.Rancière on translation and communication.Replace Branson image with something - anything - else.     - done  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I am in touch with someone from The Forum, which describes itself as "an innovative weblog featuring reviews, previews, opinion pieces and interviews from independent arts writers." She has sent me four questions which have actually been very timely in prompting me to write about aspects of my own responses to Hirschhorn's Incommensurable Banner. I have decided to post these (rather lengthy) entries in this and the following posts.   1. What kind of responses have you had to the work and how have your reactions changed during this time, if they have? If so, in what ways? I have been thinking about ‘The Incommensurable Banner’ by Hirschhorn since April of this year. This was on the basis of my already existing strong interest in Hirschhorn’s practice, specifically how he works with other people, sometimes with communities of people, whilst still maintaining a strong sense of the identity of his own practice as an artist. When I was first offered the chance to be artist animateur at Fabrica, in residence alongside the banner, I was extremely pleased because I was invited to do so on the basis of what Liz and Matthew, the two directors of Fabrica, knew about my practice, without either of them knowing that I had this strong interest in Hirschhorn. So, it seemed to me, and this is still the case, that there it is a very good match for me to be engaging with Hirschhorn’s work in this way. The very first response to the work that I noted, upon being told what the work consisted of, was a sense of relief. I heard myself say inside my head: “At last we are going to be shown the images that demonstrate what war is actually about” and this reaction came about against a background of recognition that the wars we are involved in as aggressors are highly sanitised in their representation by the media. I was also excited by the idea of making some kind of comparison in intent and effect of Hirschhorn’s Incommensurable Banner with my own attempt to make an anti-war banner. In 2003 I made a peace banner to take with me to the demonstrations in London against the war on Iraq. At the time I remember being utterly lost when trying to picture what sort of imagery I might put on my banner. In the end I opted for what I considered, at the time, to be ‘positive’ imagery, though when I look back at this now I can see that the imagery, of verdant countryside, flowers and rainbows, is extremely clichéd and really rather ‘cheesy’. So, this residency has been a good opportunity to get this banner of mine out of storage, have another look at it and reconsider the relationship of art to politics at this stage, five years after the worldwide opposition on the streets to the war against Iraq. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 For introduction to this post see previous post:So there are these two parallel areas of activity for this residency: considering Hirschhorn’s Incommensurable Banner and reconsidering my own engagement with protest through, or via, visual imagery on a banner.Between April of this year and September when Hirschhorn’s banner was finally unrolled and installed in Fabrica I knew the work only through photographs of it. Although the photographic documentation of it I was given included several close-up detailed shots of the individual images on the banner, when I first saw the piece for real I experienced a reaction that I have understood, from observing other people looking at the work, to be fairly typical of a first viewing of it. I felt physically shaken and sick in the stomach. However, I did want to look at the images. That fascination has been there from the start and it is something I continue to reflect upon. I would say that since that first viewing I have been through a range of responses. Quite near the start of the residency proper I had a period of quite strong doubt about my involvement with the work at all. It was a kind of moral objection. I suppose I was anticipating, or trying to anticipate, the responses of visitors to the exhibition and trying to place myself in relation to the work – as if I had to have a very clear take on it. I remember seriously fantasising about withdrawing from the project, without any intention whatsoever of actually wanting to. As if to try out in my mind what kind of position it would signify if I were to declare that I were dissociating myself from the work. But I found the notion of this kind of withdrawal unsatisfactory because I hadn’t yet tested myself against the work in relation to other people. I have found myself agreeing with people who find the images degrading to the dead people on show. I think many of the images are degrading to them especially if you consider that some of them will have been taken by the perpetrators of the crimes represented. But whether the work is degrading? I don’t think so. I remember coming into the gallery space one day when it was quite empty and standing in front of the banner and I suddenly had a very strong sense of how the piece is a very true memorial to all those who are represented on it. They all appeared extremely dignified in their death and I felt the piece was honouring each and every single one of them.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 For an introduction to this post see post no. 64 Another day, which was one of my timetabled gallery sessions, I noticed that I had not gone anywhere near the work or even so much as looked at it and had spent the whole afternoon with my back to it. I remember this quite clearly. I just didn’t want to think about it – about war, about death, about the awfulness of it all. It was a lovely sunny Brighton day outside and I wanted to be out there, with the throng, enjoying the sunshine – we had so little this summer, who can blame me? – so instead of engaging in any way with the work directly I realised that I was chatting happily to the Fabrica volunteers who were there. And then of course, having that feeling, that so many have talked about in relation to this work, that one’s cheerfulness is inappropriate in the vicinity of the work. But of course, even this was a form of engagement with the work. Even wanting not to see is a response. It is all valid. I have learnt to understand much more about one’s response to an artwork over time: that it shifts and changes depending on so many factors. I read recently about a new book by T.J.Clark about his viewing of two works by Poussin: “Clark's 'experiment' is essentially a diary that tells the story of his engagement with two masterpieces by Poussin, Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake and Landscape with a Calm, that hang face-to-face in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The resulting book is unusual in that it treats the act of looking as a process that occurs in time.” (London Review of Books) I might have thought this change of response over time to be an obvious way of describing how one’s looking develops were it not for the use of the word ‘unusual’ in this blurb about Clark’s book.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 For an introduction to this post see introduction to entry 64. For a while I felt myself identifying very strongly with my femaleness in relation to the work. I got interested in thinking again about the work of the Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann, whose incredible writing and ability to articulate the experience of being on the receiving end of oppression as a woman, made her into something of a heroine to feminists. She is also (furthermore) one of the (few) women whose name Hirschhorn cites amongst his roll call of writers and philosophers whom he admires. Specifically, I made a new piece of work which was a scanned image of the front of her novel, Malina, which incorporates a smiling photo of Bachmann herself on it, transferred onto a white pocket handkerchief. This is currently on show hanging on the wall outside my studio at APEC as part of our Open Studios exhibition for the Brighton Photo Biennial Photofringe. I also wrote some entries for my blog which were suggestive of the link between masculinity and violence, as evidenced, for example, in some observations I had made about the behaviour of young boys in the streets around where I live. Even whilst indulging in this position alongside some kind of female imaginary victim, I knew I was sidestepping my own complicity in the perpetration of the violence for which we are all responsible, by the very fact of us belonging to a nation that wages illegal wars using dishonest reasons as excuses for them. Somehow making the handkerchief/Bachmann piece, which I called I.B. (for Ingeborg Bachmann, but which also co-incidentally stands for ‘Incommensurable Banner’) freed me from the need to take up the victim role. Not that Bachmann was a victim, you understand, rather that the main, female, character in the novel ‘Malina’ disappears at the end of the novel into a crack in the wall and leaves you, the reader, not knowing whether she has ever existed at all or whether she has perhaps been murdered.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Around this Bachmann phase of my response to the Hirschhorn banner I think some kind of shift happened in my understanding of my own relationship to looking. This, I have often thought, has been rather troubled. I do not have the kind of confident relationship to looking that Hirschhorn demonstrates when he stresses for example the fact that he is a visual artist. I have sometimes made sound pieces or found ways to avoid the visual even while attempting to make ‘visual art’. As if the ‘visual’ part of ‘visual art’ to me is more to do with the viewer looking than about the object itself being particularly visible. But lately I think I have been looking more, perhaps because I have talked myself through the doubts I have had about looking at the images on the banner and accepted that there is a desire in me just to look. Wherever that desire comes from, whether it is part of an animal instinct for survival that makes us want to look at pictures of dead and destroyed bodies in order to try to understand what has happened to these people (so as, perhaps, to avoid something similar happening to ourselves) or whether it is purer than that, less instrumental and more for its own sake, as desire per se, I think I have become more willing and accepting of that. This is very exciting for my own practice where I have been concentrating on what it means to put flat, photographic images on fabric backgrounds, to what effect and with whichever consequences for image and ground.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 For an introduction to this post see introduction to entry 64.  What I am currently thinking about most in relation to Hirschhorn’s banner is the psycho-sexual dimension within looking that relates to the connection between desire and violence. From thinking about this work over time and going through a range of responses I now feel drawn into asking a set of troubling yet, I think, hugely important questions concerning the impulse for violence itself. It comes across to me very clearly from Hirschhorn’s piece that he is addressing these questions. He talks about this himself in the interview he gave to Fiacre Gibbons in the summer, a recording of which is playing in Fabrica. He talks about the eye looking for the red. He doesn’t explain this he just comments on it as something that he has observed when watching viewers looking at other works he had made which contained images like those in the Incommensurable Banner. What I really like about the banner is how it forces the viewer to interrogate themselves. It puts the viewer in the position of victim (by identifying with the dead) and of perpetrator (by finding oneself in the place of the photographer who may have been someone responsible for the violence done to the victim shown). In a sense it forces us to take a stand, to claim or declare our own position. I use the word ‘force’ advisably because really there is no escape from the work, except, perhaps in not looking at it at all.    Interestingly, I have not used my blog as a way to record these various stages of my response to Hirschhorn’s piece. Instead I think I have had more a tendency to write about developments in my practice directly. It is only now that I am asked the specific question about my own responses that I have given myself the opportunity to record and reflect upon these. I am reminded with this of a talk I went to yesterday by Julian Stallabrass, the curator of the Photo Biennial. Expecting some kind of declaration of a position on his part I came away disappointed by his descriptive approach to talking about the contents of the various exhibitions that make up the Biennial. This, in conjunction with his repeated encouragements to the audience to record their responses on the biennial blog highlighted to me rather sharply a similar approach in myself: to withhold my own opinion whilst urging others to give theirs*. Cushioned within the diversity of opinions of others one can retain a kind of neutral stance as relayer of what other people think without ever having to acknowledge one’s own standpoint.* Of course, his very curation of the Biennial exhibitions is, in itself,  a declaration of a position in that they are based on his choices and selection. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I am in touch with someone from The Forum, which describes itself as "an innovative weblog featuring reviews, previews, opinion pieces and interviews from independent arts writers." She has sent me four questions which have actually been very timely in prompting me to write about aspects of my own responses to Hirschhorn's Incommensurable Banner. I have decided to post these (rather lengthy) entries in this and the following posts. The first question began on post no. 64.  2. What kind of audience reactions have you noticed?  The range of audience reactions has been broad: from deciding not to look at all to an apparent laughing enjoyment of an overt and hungry looking at them. (Though I would question what such laughter is and where it comes from. Laughter can often be a very effective way of releasing fear, embarrassment and anxiety, for example.)  To describe all degrees in between these two poles would amount to another long passage.  But generally, as regards my own perception of these responses I would have to say that I have remained very open to what others’ responses might been. More open than usual perhaps as a result of the extended process of observing the vacillations in my own developing responses. I feel I would not want to condemn any kind of response but rather take them all on board as interesting and necessary to try to understand or at least to discuss. I find it slightly hard to understand those who will not look at all because I don’t understand how you can know you don’t want to look at something if you don’t even try. But perhaps I am just judging others against my own, very strong, curiosity?... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 For an introduction to this post see introduction to post no. 70  3. Do you think that an audience can become desensitised to images, such as those used in the banner, through repeated or prolonged viewings?This is a very interesting question but one that it is extremely difficult to answer without really carrying out some kind of controlled research project with audiences. I wouldn’t want to speculate on this at all. I think we all talk a lot about how we have become desensitised to images because of how we are bombarded by so many visual signs every day. I think it really depends on what the image is and how we look at it. Also, of course, and crucially, on the context in which the images are presented to us. I can now look at the Hirschhorn images quite easily compared with how it was when I first stood before the banner. But I wouldn’t call this ease desensitisation. I was thinking the other week about how I think I am now less afraid of dying a violent death because I have looked this (indirectly, very indirectly of course) in the eye, so to speak.  But maybe this decrease in fear is as a result of an intensification of sensitivity to the images. Maybe my body has adjusted its ability to consider its own potential differently? Even if I say the question about whether an audience can become desensitised can’t be answered, I have to admit that it’s a really interesting question to speculate upon because the increased ability to look could have such different reasons depending on whose looking one is talking about.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 For an introduction to this post see introduction to entry 70  4. In what ways is the blog part of your project and how keen have people been to comment on the work?The blog has become a very important part of the project. It has become a daily notebook for the residency and a way of noting down developments in my thinking. Not requiring the structure or editing of a (hard) published document it leaves me free to post a variety of types of entries that, together, can lead to unforeseen connections. The growth of the blog as a document that evolves through time can be as organic, as wilful or as arbitrary as the processes that I go through when making artwork. The presence of an imagined reader or readers leads me to be more thoughtful in what I am writing than I might be if I were just noting things down for myself. I feel a responsibility to the reader to try to be interesting, to keep things relevant and not be too obscure.Originally, I thought that I had wanted to set the blog up as a kind of conversational space hoping that others would join in and add their comments. It was to be a kind of repository for my own and other people’s comments about the Hirschhorn banner. When this didn’t happen and I realised that only one or two comments every now and then would be forthcoming I think I kind of resigned myself to the idea of ‘talking into the void’. Then of course, I realised that I really enjoyed this: the notion of there being no audience other than the possibility of one. That gives me a wonderful sense of freedom. To be myself, whatever that is. And to have to answer to no one. Because to worry about what I am writing, whether it is erudite or informed enough, for example, would stifle my voice altogether, so, far better to get on with it and try some ideas out.I do get verbal feedback from people that they are reading it and this is extremely encouraging and exciting. Lisa, who works at Fabrica, has told me several times that she always reads it. To think that there is at least one person who is following the thread all the way through is just so incredibly exciting. It’s like having a witness to the workings of my mind and that is such an affirmation of my thinking and such a gift of the generosity of another human being. I find it extremely moving and it gives me great strength and it strengthens my voice too. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Answer to question 4 continued from previous post. For an introduction to this question see introduction to entry 70  I have received several comments on the work mainly via the email address that I set up as well as the blog. I then ask people if I can have their permission to transfer their comments to the blog. I will admit that I like to have this kind of editorial control, that in many ways the blog is ‘mine’ and that I want to keep an overview of it. I am aware of the politics of what this says about me as a person, I mean, this attitude in comparison say, with setting up a WIKI. But I don’t have a particular problem with that. In fact I am pleased that I can have such a sense of ownership of my work and I definitely see the blog now as a very significant part of my practice. My new website also has a blog on it on the ‘news’ page and when the Fabrica residency ends I will be able to carry on with a blog in some form there even if it’s just as a noticeboard for my activities. But there’s nothing to say I won’t be able to continue with the a-n blog too.I record on the blog conversations I have with people about the work and I have also been typing in comments from the comments book because there people have been registering their responses in very long, considered and articulate ways. Here people tend to be very much in favour of the work and I’ve noticed that a lot of them display gratitude towards Fabrica and Hirschhorn for providing the work. A lot of people say ‘thank you’. I read from this a response that might be similar to my very first thought about the work that it was a relief to hear that someone was showing the images of war that are not usually shown, the images that show just how horrific war actually is.I would be very interested to know the responses of those people who choose not to look at the banner at all or who look but leave quickly without wanting to talk or leave a comment. Those would be extremely valuable responses to bear in mind and consider, I am aware of that. But catching them is to trace around craters on the dark side of the moon. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Close up it’s harder to see.This is resistance! Light reflects off:             the surface of the ink,            off faces, flat off,            resisted facts,            glue splatters,            explosive matters,            creases in the paper.Where the Iron Duke is - pixellations.  Where are you now? I have to stand backAnd just keep walking.Judge the right distanceOnce in my life.To be able to see.Done in.Headlessness.Hollowed out.  Why can’t I see?      This text was written at a workshop called ‘War and Writing’ led by poet Judith Kazantzis on Monday 3 November 2008, at Fabrica and organised by The South. I wrote some words down after viewing the “Incommensurable Banner’ which all related to trying, and failing. to find a suitable position to stand in relation to it from which to be able to see (in the sense of ‘grasp’, ‘take in’) what is being portrayed in the images.  Judith recommended we use a technique of collaging words from other people in with our own so I chose a short passage by Hirschhorn about collage and lifted lines from it to intersperse with my own. During this one of the workshop participants received a telephone call from a friend asking directions and I began also to lift lines from her phone conversation and place these into the mix.        ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Speechlessness How to talk about speechlessness When words leave meLeaving me utterly without utterance.Devoid of my coating. Freezing cold. Shivering, not even stammering.  Contrast with His voice: emphatic, declaiming,Certain, he says:“This is exactly what I want to insist upon.”“It is essential to me.”“It is so easy.”“So possible.”“I want to do a work which reaches Universality.” He so fully inhabits his sentences.His words fit him so completely.  I want to talk tonight about speechlessness, About how I don’t know what to say.I’m going to put some words on a bare skeletonAnd have it walk off, reconstitutedFleshed by my tongue. I can take his confidence and appropriate it:Turn “I’m not sure” into “I’m certain”.Believe me, I’m absolutely certain I can do this, Display my empty mouthing mouth,My silent clagging tongue.Its speech act heroicsMaking youForcing youTo witness  -  nothing.  I can only beat you into submissionTo my way of describing the world.  Can I be companion, I, shy, unsure,To your huge, definite shape on the page, Your stature in person:            words on hips            hands on lips?     This text was written at a workshop called ‘War and Writing’ led by poet Judith Kazantzis on Monday 3 November 2008, at Fabrica and organised by The South. The idea came from having led a guided tour of the three exhibitions: Iraq through the Lens of Vietnam at the University of Brighton Gallery, Geert van Kesteren at Lighthouse and ‘The Incommensurable Banner’ by Hirschhorn at Fabrica. At the start of the tour in the first of these exhibitions I found myself in the awkward position of becoming speechless before the images just at the moment when I was supposed to be talking about them to a group of people. In this text I place myself next to, “contrast with His voice”, the written statements by Hirschhorn about his work, which demonstrate such emphatic confidence and which are often so boldly and uncompromisingly written. I imagine appropriating his boldness and making it my own but with this strategy I cannot but become oppressive. The last two words are a response to the confident pose struck by Hirschhorn in the photo of him on the Fabrica brochure. I ask how I can befriend such dominant boldness “be companion” without surrendering uncertainty, which can be seen as a strength.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I cannot help feeling hopeful.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 A response emailed to me recently about 'The Incommensurable Banner': "I was in the gallery yesterday, briefly as I had to leave my daughter outside, I will come in again but I wanted to put forward some thoughts.The images are dreadful. One’s mind stops and reels in horror from them, as it always does with such images.The display of these sorts of images is not a new idea and the notion that by showing people the horror of war you prevent it is, I am sorry to say, entirely discredited by the example of history.In an historical context I would associate the display of photographs of wretchedly mutilated bodies in order to resist war with the First World War (especially by the pacifist movement in the 1920s and 30s)  and Vietnam and the most affecting images of those conflicts present live suffering; the burnt girl fleeing her village, the wounded man carried on the back of a comrade or the last moments of an executed suspect. In my opinion images that present corpses in such a state of destruction have a tendency to distance us from the event that led to their death.I am sure that these images and this installation are well intentioned but they tend to de-humanise the victims.Photography is an extremely blunt instrument when it comes to this sort of imagery. The nature of the imagery is to preach to the converted. It serves as form of impromptu shrine before which the supporters of a particular point of view can perform their obligations.These poor people deserve the right to have their bodily remains respected. Personally I find that these sorts of displays only extend the dreadful humiliation of the victims."... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 a text message exchange I had with Liz Whitehead, one of the Co-Directors of Fabrica Gallery: Susan: I love your hopefulness. It's rubbing off on me. Liz: You have to be hopeful if you are running a publicly funded arts organisation. Susan: Yes. I guess so. Liz: I guess artists need to be even more optimistic. Susan: Yes! The question is: how to show it. Liz: By expecting the best of people every time. My experience is that most people respond to it positively.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Emailed to me by Jonathan Swain:  "We control the daytime, they control the night throughout."David Davis describing the military situation in Helmand Province,Afghanistan.BBC radio 20.10.08... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 On 6 and 7 November the Engage national conference was held in Brighton around the Brighton Photo Biennial. I attended on 7 November and ran a breakout session about my residency in Fabrica. I found the session difficult in that it turned out differently from how I had planned it but actually that can often prove to be fruitful and I came away thinking about quite specific and thought-provoking matters.The main thought centres around the institutionalised ways of being that we develop from performing certain activities repeatedly in similar contexts. I talked about this quite a lot in the breakout session and about how, with this residency, I have quite explicitly tried to avoid allowing those pre-determined patterns of behaviour to colour my interactions with others.It was difficult to speak about, I lost my thread and almost entirely forgot to show the images I had prepared to structure my talk with. I know I grew slightly defensive and a bit hectoring.I decided to abandon my talk and take questions, not liking the way everyone was looking at me expectantly and that I seemed to be lecturing them. This worked quite well but something inside me had grown very vulnerable and I was sweating and felt open to attack.I think the whole session would have gone better if I had decided at the planning stage just to speak about my experiences of the residency and how it had affected my practice rather than trying to address  "how [I]  set about encouraging visitors to engage with the ethical and philosophical complexities of Hirschhorn’s work" , which is what I had promised on the conference programme. This experience has taught me something about the extent to which I bend to what I perceive to be the expectations that others have of what I will do rather than really stopping to think about what it is that I want to say. On a broader level this tells me something about how one’s perceptions of an event based on previous experience detract from being in the present moment or, put otherwise, how stasis within each step of a process risks altering or distorting a voice in the present. This has implications for the progress of democracy.I was reading a passage this morning about democracy from a conversation between Derrida and Mustapha Chérif. I found it helpful in soothing a certain soreness from some degree of breakage within my perception of my own  sense of integrity subsequent to this uncomfortable experience:"To exist in a democracy is to agree to challenge, to be challenged, to challenge the status quo, which is called democratic, in the name of a democracy to come. This is why I always speak of a democracy to come. Democracy is always to come, it is a promise, and it is in the name of that promise that one can always criticise, question that which is proposed as de facto democracy." (Derrida)   ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Emailed to me by a friend on Monday:"A couple of images from the Menzel book because when I saw them I thought about you and the Hirschhorn banner. My thoughts about them are not very original - more emotional really. The drawing is of dead soldiers in a barn during the war between Prussia and Austria in 1860s when Menzel spent time behind the battle lines to document the war. The other drawing is of the Prussian commander Moltke's binoculars, which is interesting in a different way. ... [there were over 6000 drawings when Menzel died in 1904] engagement with interpreting reality. I know we can't turn back time or deny the camera as a tool - that gives another truth - but one not filtered through the draughtsman's body. Adorno said there could be no art after Auschwitz ....then more recently someone, I cant remember who, said there could only be art [ to make sense of experience] after Auschwitz. But the celebration of the 'abject' .... with the elevation of the 'artist'.... and the experience so dematerialized....... I always thought that the function of the 'artist' was in some way to be to transform experience.... [actually the word 'experience' is devalued now, as in the Imperial War Museum's 'First World War Experience' I saw recently]"  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 It's been a very busy and stimulating week. On Wednesday night there was a panel discussion about ethics and the use of public images at Fabrica and then on Thursday Thomas Hirschhorn came to Brighton and delivered a talk about his work. And today was the closing conference of the Brighton Photo Biennial at Brighton University.I'm thinking about the fact that my residency is going to end soon (tomorrow!) and what that means. I am aware that I've got a backlog of material to put on this blog and I don't want to 'lose' it by letting it slip by without writing it up and thinking about it in the considered way that the blog encourages.So I think I will continue to keep the blog for a while longer and see how it develops outside the official space of the term of the residency.There are lots of loose ends to tie up and many questions still to be posed. The ends won't get tied up. I kind of hope they don't, because they are all threads that might lead somewhere. And the questions seem to give rise to further questions. Answers seem like illusions.Having not had internet access from home for nearly three weeks for the second half of the residency was, I feel, very detrimental to this blog. It was so unfortunate. I lost the rhythm I had got into of late night blogging: that quiet, night-time space of darkness and the expansion of thought. I had to adapt and post items up hastily from my work venues which created a different kind of mood to the postings; less reflective and considered, less well-edited and ultimately rather unsatisfactory. I tried to make the most of it calling myself a 'nomad blogger' but really I was not happy.Tomorrow is my last session in the gallery at Fabrica. I've sent an email out to all at Fabrica thanking them for making my residency such a good one. And tomorrow I'm taking in some cake for anyone who is there. It was an odd email I sent out. It was right from the heart but after I'd sent it I worried that it was too euphoric and too revealing. I made a connection at the end of it between aspects of my parental grandparents' lives and my precarious sense of being in the world. I started off this blog mentioning parts of their lives and it feels as if I have come full circle in some ways to have got to this point but with a greater understanding and some new insights.I know this sounds rather cryptic and unexplained so I will attempt to unpack some of what I am talking about in the posts that follow this. And I will do this, I promise (myself), in order to make the connections apparent, through writing. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 An evening with HirschhornWith this, one of the worst photos I have ever taken on my mobile phone, I am announcing the end of my residency at Fabrica engaging with the work of Thomas Hirschhorn, specifically with 'The Incommensurable Banner'.The picture, though you wouldn't know it, is of Hirschhorn himself, or Thomas as we like to call him.On the evening of 13 November, last Thursday, he gave a talk at Fabrica about his practice.I was over the moon to see that he called his presentation, which was accompanied by a powerpoint slideshow, 'Doing Art Politically'. I called this blog 'Making Art Politically' which I took from an interview I read with Hirschhorn where he is asked if he makes political art. His reply is that he does not make political art but that he makes art politically, a phrase that he borrowed from Jean-Luc Godard who talked about making films politically. I was pleased that I had picked out of all the articles I read about Hirschhorn, this one phrase to sum up my approach to the blog and my residency and that Hirschhorn too had felt this phrase to be significant enough to make it the title of his presentation.I enjoyed musing over the differences between 'making' and 'doing'. In German 'machen' means both to make and to do. In a sense I suppose 'doing' is broader than 'making' in that it might encompass many aspects of the processes of doing art: thinking, editing, collating, talking, collaborating etc. etc. as well as making.Hirschhorn outlined his 'doing' of art politically under a number of key words which were:FormCreationDecisionsToolPlatformMaterialGuidelinesThe OtherWarriorCollage and MarketHe spoke passionately and with great conviction. His enthusiasm was infectious and his way of elucidating his ideas was concrete and graphic. For example: "I want to work for the Other, the Other in myself, that I don't know that I don't control, to include it in the work."He also made one or two nice mistranslations from the French or the German, such as speaking about blesséd bodies on the banner, which I guessed came from the french blessé meaning 'wounded' but the notion of them being blessed was just as apt. He concentrated in his talk mainly on the work he made for the Viennese Secession called 'The Eye' and showed many images of it. About the eye and about the colour red it is a room-sized sculptural collage of mannequins, soft toys, text and chairs with imagery and ideas taken straight from street protesters and their homemade props. There is a lot more I could say about this. If you have any questions post them here and I'll answer.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 An evening with Hirschhorn continued:Afterwards we went for dinner: Liz, Matthew, John, Helen, Thomas and I.It was relaxed and enjoyable. We talked about football, running, England, philosophy, a bit about art. I wanted to spend the whole evening telling him about what I have been doing but I held back not wanting to take over the entire conversation. Why am I so polite? It's really annoying.Helen (Cadwallader) the Director of the Photo Biennial took a much nicer picture than the one I show here of me and Thomas together (it's still on her camera and she's said I can have it after January). For the photo I put my arm around his shoulders and then asked if he minded. He smiled and said 'no'. After nine months engaging so closely with his work I felt close to him. But of course that goes through the work. It's the work that brings The Other closer.    ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 Although the residency at Fabrica has officially finished and the exhibition has been taken down I anticipate that I shall continue to keep this blog going since I have a backlog of material, images and responses that deserve to be uploaded.I will keep this going until it becomes about something else at which point it will be time to draw it to a close and maybe start a different sort of blog.The residency has been good for me in a number of ways. It has given me the opportunity to investigate another artist's work over a sustained period in an environment of interested and committed support. I have worked with a range of people had many interesting conversations and almost like an extra bonus, I have made new work which might take me in even more new directions yet.At times the subject matter of the banner and of the Photo Biennial has got me down and I have wanted not to think about it. At those times I have been prompted to think about those people who live directly in war zones and I have wondered how on earth they cope. We are at war but they are wars over there involving Other People and we get other Other People to go there and fight them for us. We cannot even begin to imagine...At the weekend I attended the Conference of the Photo Biennial the best part of which was a visit to Anthony Lam's public event at Jubilee square involving young and older people. There was a soap box for anyone to speak their mind from, a stall where you could make a banner. Here is mine. As powerless as I often feel in the face of human idiocy I like to think that at least I can challenge hostile thoughts within myself and not pay them attention.  I'm talking about hostility towards other people. We all have it in different forms and flavours. It's a bit like hearing voices, though not the kind of voices that won't shut up (they're something else entirely). Voices that come from within and would have us act less than humanly towards others.It's not surprising in this challenging and competitive society that this hostility arises. I wonder where it goes when we refuse to give it voice? ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I'm back in Fabrica today holding one to one sessions with artists for the arc scheme. It's good to be back here and in a different guise. I see that my blog has slipped to the third page of Projects Unedited and my last entry was on 19 November.Where did the second half of November go?Of course, Hirschhorn's banner has long been taken down. The war is over. But of course, it's not.War is over.I just fancied saying that again.The artist I have just seen showed me work about protest. She had made contact with me during the residency so it was good to meet her in person and see more of her work. We talked a bit about Greenham Common and the legacy of feminism. I talked to her about my undergraduates and about how much the teaching of feminism now so often means starting from scratch and how The F Word is such a dirty one now among younger generations. We spoke excitedly about collecting the memories and the insights learned from earlier forms of activism.I never went to Greenham. (That's a good title for a book). But I had some friends who did. I was too chicken. Scared of policemen and 'perimeter fences' and of what I might realise about the world. But it was, it is, an example of successful protest. And we need those examples.I need to reflect on the residency and on everything I learnt. And I need to carry on writing, every day, or as often as I can. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 I'm overwhelmed with work at the moment. The money-earning kind.I just got some pictures back that were taken on disposable cameras at the White Night debate, that seems such a long time ago now.I've chosen this one because of the incongruity of the silly pose, my cheesy smile and the word 'revolt'. What is the difference between taking a stand and taking a stance? Striking a pose? I am lost somewhere between the blog that was about my Hirschhorn residency -  which is now over - and the need/(desire?) for a blog anyway. Before I can move from one to the other I have to define for myself what I mean by 'making art politically'. I am amazed that I haven't done that yet - and that you have let me get away with it. I'll try. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 a link sent to me by a friend for a video of Hirschhorn talking about making art politically: http://www.artreview.com/video/video/show?id=1474022%3AVideo%3A595858... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609 coming soon... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/455609