ARTISTS TALKING

# 30 [23 July 2009]

Once again, I'd like to be able to talk about the work - and once again, other stuff's getting in the way.

Until five minutes ago, it looked like everything was going fine. In the last five minutes I've had a massive bomb thrown my way. I can't tell you more, right now. 

The lecture was good. Really good. The academic who delivered it is going to email me  PDF of the paper and I'll put it online.

I need more sleep. The workmen outside my window start at 6am sharp every morning.

# 29 [22 July 2009]

Can. Barely. Speak. So. Tired.

And in a rush a I'm up later than usual and have to be at the studio - ie our studio, not the TV studio - for 11 which is in an hour.

Very briefly.

The show was a hoot. I'm thrilled to be in the team I'm in - Andrus, a 25 year old Lithuanian, whose body work includes a 400 foot high string of helium filled balloons, one of my favourite pieces of work from the presentations the other day, and Ania, our Moscovite, who is a fan of and has collaborated with Oliver Laric, an ex-Chelsea student whose work I came across some months ago at the Seventeen Gallery, down the road from my studio. I think he's fantastic.

The work we made in an hour in the TV studio was pretty awful - but the process, working together under pressure and being performative, was good fun. And with a week to prep for the next one, I think we might come up with something more rigorous. Probably a bit of a school exercise, maybe, but fun anyway.

I'll post the link to the show when I have time to get it. It airs at 10pm (8pm UK time) on Thursday.

Tonight we have our first lecture, "Art and Education may turn Revolutionary" by Hubertus von Amelunxen.

This is him (sorry 'bout the cut n paste):

"One of the most well-known contemporary philosophers of photography.

At present he is rector of the European School of Visual Arts and
professor at the Canadian Center for Architecture and the European
Graduate School in Switzerland. Hubertus von Amelunxen worked at the Muthesius Hochschule for Art, where he founded a Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies. He is also founder of the International
School of New Media in Lubeck.

Hubertus von Amelunxen has published a few books about the history of photography and trends in contemporary photography, he is also actively involved in the supervision of international exhibitions."

One of the great things about living with different nationals is picking up bits and pieces from our languages. I talk too quickly and use way too many idiomatic phrases to be easily understood, but Monica is keen to learn them. She has learned the various meaning of "bollocks", "the dogs bollocks" and what it is to be "bollocksed". Also when it's appropriate to respond to something with "big swinging mickeys".

I'm hoping very much that on my return, having hung out with Justin and Tom, I'll be able to trip out "douchebag" without sounding self-concious or contrived.

I'll add pics later.

# 28 [21 July 2009]

Awake early.

A short pep talk from Claire on the phone last night who said: when in doubt, draw. So I've had a few thoughts about that.

I figured that rather than try to sleep with building work noises outside, I'd try and articulate to myself, once again, why it is that I'm here.

1. Reality TV has a bad name among many. But the idea of trying to make art, in the context of a reality TV show, is interesting, because TV is what people watch - me included. Reality TV is a massive part of our culture - there is never a shortage of people who want to appear on them (even when they are cynically set up to make people look daft or silly). It has to be a medium worth exploring.

2. Lithuania is an interesting country. On the one hand, it's very old - with a huge medieval history - and on the other, it's very young, only around 17 years since independence from the soviet union.

The nation is ambitious, energetic, and it's changing rapidly. Guidebooks published even just two years ago have proved pretty out-of-date with regard to changes in some aspects of culture. There's a manufacturing base, an educated workforce and there's money. Not evenly spread of course, but it's there. There maybe 50% discount signs in the Armani shop window, with an international recession on, but the point is, there IS an Armani shop window. 

The Contemporary Arts Centre is a classy building that shows work that has been carefully chosen and curated with care.

3. There's an academic programme of lectures - which could be really interesting.

Given that my own emerging practice is about trying to express an optimism for the future and the connections that we all share, it's not a bad place to spend time thinking about that.

Time to make another cup of tea. Who knows how it'll go today but hey, if it goes badly, it's only a reality TV show. I'll live to tell the tale.

# 27 [20 July 2009]

Press conference this morning.

By being in the main drag of the river, rather than at the edge, we managed to commit to the river as an idea. It created a scene for the press and keep a distance from them. Performative.

There were around 20 journalists. It was all pretty absurd - see the pictures - but the translator said it was by far the most surreal press conference she'd ever been to, which is a measure of success, I suppose.

Then to the TV studio. It's in an old soviet building but the studios are well-equipped.

We were briefed by Donatus. There are now 12 of us: Romeo dropped out, asked to come back in then dropped out again, the second Monica decided she'd rather learn French over the summer and Mantas, who I never got to know, has disappeared. Nat flew home this morning and they tried to pressurise Eero into signing the contract before the press conference. He refused and they relented, thank God. 

Rafal is in, as is Monica (the first one), Andrus, Tadas and Saulius. I really need to talk about them and their art practice, I just haven't had time, so far.

So given that they were originally meant to have 16, it's still undecided whether they will make the numbers up or leave it at 12 people. And we're filming tomorrow.

There are four white square boards with white paper on the ground, lots of different types of materials and a couple of workhops in the bowels of the building which we can have prior access to.

The plan is that we will be put into teams, in front of the studio audience, and invited to make some work. We'll have an hour to discuss it and plan it, and then an hour to make it. We can do some prep in the workshops and studios, prior to the show, but we won't know which teams we're in so we can only prep our own ideas, which will then have to feed in to the group.

There's more than one of us thinking "I have no goddamn idea", but there are two approaches we can take. Either, we brainstorm together and come up with some ideas as a group, or we leave it till the appointed hour, working only by ourselves, and embrace the pressure.

I can buy that, but because this is a TV show and we're perfoming, we should try to make it as performative as we can, to be mannered. I think.

I don't know how it'll play out - a group of us had pizza late afternoon, so I'm missing dinner to write this and spend some time reading. I also need to phone  home. A late-night swim in the lake last night had me sleep like a baby, but I'm still dog-tired.

# 26 [19 July 2009]

The signing's done and I got offside to the Museum for some quiet and some shade. The trip was worth it, if only for The Vilnius Market Square Pole of Shame.

Tomorrow's the Press Conference. We've chosen a spot by the river. It'll be, as Tom says, very fin-de-siecle. I spent some time there, reading, this afternoon until we got rained off. I've just started reading Moral Clarity, by Susan Neiman and I think it'll take me a long time.

I've been charged with the task of introducing the away team - so I'm writing this as a dress rehearsal.

Eero is a performance artist. He  makes art that brings people together using art, science and technology. He's an American and right now, he works and teaches in Tallin, Estonia.

Ania Shastakova is a recent graduate who works primarily with photography and video. She also likes to splice existing YouTube content to make new work.

Pavel Forman is a painter. He's German but he currently lives in the Czech Republic. He's a big strong guy and he make big, strong paintings. Man paintings.

Andreia Filipe is a final year student. She makes big work, often on walls of buildings. She also likes to use Chinese plastic toys and bright colours in her work.She's from Faro in Portugal.

Tom Russotti runs the Aesthletics Institute, which merges sports and art by creating new sports - which pretty much everyone can play - even me. We had the inaugural Vilnius Wiffle Hurling match last week and we've worked with Tom to invent a number of new games while we've been here. He live in Brooklyn, New York.

I'm Fiona Flynn and I'm a first year student. I try to make art that expresses an optimistic outlook and I use all sorts of media to do that. I'm also a teacher, a journalist, a mother of twin boys and I live in London.

Justin Tyler Tate makes kinetic and interactive objects and installations. He's a technical genius and if we were a band of jewelry thieves, he'd be the one hacking into the safe. Sometimes he does little performances on the quiet, too. He's a Floridan who lives currently in Nova Scotia, Canada.

................

The sad news is that Nat's bailing out and going home. He was pretty uncomfortable with it from the start, I think, and I suppose the cons ended up outweighing the pros for him. He was really concerned that the project had lost the critical aspect that had been sold to us. Last night's performance from the director and TV company boss can't have helped, as he said he'd decided to stay. What a shame.  I think the rest of us are just going to have a good time, do some stuff together and see what happens.

Shame. Not least since I was hoping to read at least some of his book: The Blurring of Art and Life, by Allan Kaprow.

Ah well.

# 25 [19 July 2009]

We have to meet the production team in half an hour and my contract isn't signed.

Here are the things I need to consider:

* The project we signed up for seems to have changed irrevocably, due to the last minute change in producer

* I honestly and truely think I can learn something really valuable from working with Eero, Nathaniel, Tom, Pavel, Justin, Ania and Andi

* The academic side of it, the Edu-thlon lectures, are still due to take place on Wednesdays - which could be really good

* The living conditions are pretty cramped and basic. We have two mugs, between around 12 of us, and that's only because I bought them- and breakfast is sugar puffs, co-co pop type stuff or long life croissants, filled with asti spumante flavouring (I've been avoiding talking about these details until now)

* I genuinely like all the people - the artists - that I could be working with. We've gotten on great in the last eight days, and that's really saying something (I normally have a pretty low tolerance threshold in confined spaces)

* There are a lot of very heavy smokers in this very confined space

* There are also a fair number of pretty heavy drinkers - and I'm a complete push-over

* I honestly and truely think I can learn something really valuable from working with Eero, Nathaniel, Tom, Pavel, Justin, Ania and Andi

* The attitude of the directors worries me. They talk about art a lot - and how they're leaving the "art" to us and so on and so on - so the pressure will really be on. I mean, you're looking at making something happen, every week, for even weeks, that you can stand next to and defend in front of a jury of critics and the Lithuanian public

* The contract appears to contain, in UK and US legal eyes, utter nonsense

And did I mention?

* I honestly and truely think I can learn something really valuable from working with Eero, Nathaniel, Tom, Pavel, Justin, Ania and Andi.

At worst, I'll have stories to tell for ever.No - at worst, you'll be sending food packages to me in some Baltic jail.

We're having that "Are you in? Are you in?" exchange.

What the hell.

# 24 [19 July 2009]

Continued from last post...

Donatus the director shows up - with Jonas, the big BIG head of something-or-other and Donatus' boss. I watch them having a chat with the departing Zilvinas for several minutes. Then they plonk themselves in the middle of the table and Donatus announces, with a straight face...

...that he wants us to sign the contract NOW. If we don't, we're out. He wants to start filming tomorrow. Are we in? Or out?

Let's just say, words were said. And for the most part, it wasn't polite and it wasn't pretty.

He objected to our words and said he'd just been joking. And given that we were so interested in rigour and competition, how did we feel about the format changing to one of elimination, during the course of the seven weeks?

I've lost the will to live at this stage, and I can't give you a report of the full discussion without doing damage to my emotional health, but inevitably some of it reverted to Lithuanian as the local artists tried to get their views heard in their own language.

We'd been happy and up for it, we'd been knocked down again and for what? Kornelya reckoned that she'd talked to other, not so verbal, artists who had still been confused, and so had invited Donatus to come and "clarify" matters.

Well he did so, like, as Romeo says, an elephant in a china shop. And did Zilvinas know all along that this is what they’d planned to do? If so, what had the previous four hours been about? Are they listening to us at all?

Some of us have been emotionally packing for home for the last 24 - 48 hours. One or two of us have been, I suspect, physically packing. The to-ing and fro-ing is exhausting.

A group have gone off to swim in the lake.

The rest of us are back at the dorm, betting on who can get eliminated first.

More later.

# 23 [19 July 2009]

Continued from last post...

He did. Without making any promises, he was, he said, being completely honest with us and told us that after a big and very long meeting with the production crew this morning, his concerns had been resolved and that he thought the balance was about right. And that we should all try to watch Donatus the director's award-winning film, The Bug Trainer. I got the distinct feeling that the TV people had just been a bit, well, cack-handed with us. 

Okay - that's fine. Zilvinas got down to brass tacks. He wanted to amend the contract, until we were happy, there and then. The producer Tadas had arrived and between around 20 of us, we managed to sort out our issues. On the question of "unconditional" obedience to the production team plus being fined for not doing so, Nathaniel came up with a solution that was elegant beyond belief. He suggested that the real problem for us was a concern that our professional integrity could be undermined. Could we include a clause that allowed us to leave at any time, if any of us felt that that was the case?

Tadus was happy with this, as long as the previous clause about unconditional obedience was left in - after all, from their point of view, that's about not wasting valuable crew'n'kit time.

This was a massive - MASSIVE relief. So we done it and dusted it and he agreed that Brooklyn Tom could have an electronic version to email to a lawyer in the States, if we could have it back on the table in the morning, signed, ready for the press conference on Tuesday.

It felt like we were finally on board, that the conflict had been doused and that all our concerns about the motives of the TV people had been worked out.

So to beer, smoke, talking about ANYTHING other than contracts and art - two words I figured I never wanted to hear again. We're all cool, we're all, we think, on board. We go to eat, we're planning a film club, we're all happy and laughing and eating soup.

Then Zilvinas leaves to finally catch up with his kids, and guess what.

Continued on next post...

# 22 [19 July 2009]

Continued from last post...

Where to begin?

The agenda was to present our work to each other in an relaxed, informal setting. I'd intended to write about the practice of all the other artists on the project. I'd have mentioned that I now realise why we're always being reminded at college of the importance of critical selection when presenting one's work. I might have mentioned the heat of the day, the laws of Powerpoint and the fact that we did it for THREE AND A HALF HOURS. I'd certainly have talked about how genuinely useful I found it to hear the other artists talk about their work.

But frankly, that all fades into insignificance, compared to what happened next.

We'd spent all morning talking with each other about the contract. The damned contract. The bit we all object to - including the Lithuanian artists who are now staying with us - is the clause that says we must "unconditionally" do whatever the producers say we should do. And, of course, the clause that says if we don't, we get fined. Yes, fined. Proper money. 

Of course we understand the importance of having us commit to the project - after all, TV crew and kit cost big bucks. But the memory of the, frankly, crass "elimination" business of the Lithuanian artists a couple of days ago is still rattling like a caged rat in our collective memory.

So anyway. Zilvinas Lilas, the author of the project, alongside Miga, had arrived off the plane from Cologne where he'd just finished teaching the summer semester. Zilvinas is an art-maker of some repute. Having worked in "the trenches" (as he describes it), painting cells for Disney for some years, he got a teaching job and has been building up his artistic practice ever since.

Given that he'd been the author of the original project, and one of the main players who'd interviewed us, we were keen to meet him. The project we'd signed up to was one that, while being a reality TV show, had shown a commitment to rigour and critical enquiry. We'd been hoping that he'd be able to re-assure us that while they'd sold the idea to the TV company, he and Miga would still be able to ensure that if we put our professional (or emergent) reputations on the line for this show, we wouldn't be subjected to some sort of humiliating Reality TV nightmare.

Continued on next post...

# 21 [19 July 2009]

Damn internet still wasn't working last night but I had to get this down there and then. Uploaded the morning after, and split into sections that A-N‘s system can manage.

I can only add that because sweet Monica (one of the Lithuanian artists) had moved into the room adjoining mine - and locked the shared door while my bag was in my room - locking me OUT. The others had gone to the lake but Eero showed me the footage that he'd taken of the evening's unfolding. It's golddust. 

More: I've had an email back from Eve, a pal of mine who has worked for years in reality TV. She said this:

"No I have never seen a contract where you can fine contributors. Basically even if they sign a release form, they can pull out anytime they like. Then it's a moot point whether you can show their contribution up to the point they pulled out. It depends on whether they say they would be damaged by the broadcast... But from point of view of the producer, you have very little power to make contributors behave. Never heard of a contract where you fine people."

I'm half on my way to the airport and half thinking this could be such fun. But whatever happens, I'll try to stick with the rest of the group. Solidarity is key.

Continued on next post...