JL: Meeting with David Berridge
Our paths have crossed with David on different occasions in the past couple of years. He was a fellow writer with me and Charlotte for the publication RITE, I personally took part in his Art Writing – Field Station research in Leeds, and also more recently David contributed his text ‘Dog Man Seeing Double’ to the first edition of COPY by the Collective. Despite all of that, this is was actually the first opportunity we have had to meet in person to discuss practices and projects together, so our first meeting in London was a very welcome and very overdue one, in a café on Brick Lane.
David updated us on his recent trip to Dublin for ART CRITICISM NOW including the interesting mix of attendees and lines of discussion arising at the event hosted by The Lab. How criticism exists within a particular size and shape of artistic community was raised, and David commented on the similarities with what he had seen in Yorkshire. We also spoke about the clear differences in practices drawn together at the event, from the reviewer who insisted upon ‘assessment, description and judgment’ in every text, to new projects like Billion and Paper Visual Art Journal which were also represented. Because of this variety of practices, inevitably some discussion arose around the tension surrounding how an artists own writing practice can sit (or if it should) as or with criticism/critique and the shifting/morphing of roles between artist/writer as well as the types and breadth of writing generated, in online blogs and hardcopy print from both ‘critics’ as well as artists themselves.
These discussions are ongoing and very much still on the agenda for all those who find themselves connected to the words and worlds of both ‘art’ and ‘writing’. This discussion reminded both myself and Charlotte of a similar debate which arose from the Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin festival project, where we first met as writers back in 2008. David’s recent blog gives a further run down of events in Dublin and some of the things we talked to him about here.
We also talked to David about the upcoming VerySmallKitchen summer school which is planned to take place at the Totalkunst Gallery in Edinburgh 7-10 August. We discussed how the project came about, and how the title ‘I am not a poet’ and poetry as a genre filtrates this school, where the concern is “minimalist poetry, documentary poetics, poets theatre, and boundaries of experimental poetics and art practice.”
David also shared with us some other projects of interest, including a letter that he had been sent by Neil Chapman, as part of Muleskind, which included a photograph, which he has been asked to write in response to. There was also mention of the programme Dirty Literature presented by Electra, using the late night openings of the National Portrait Gallery.
Lots to muse on, and many points of reference and further research to take with us.
