In what way is what artists do different than other forms of creativity?
Can something useful be learnt from asking artists simply to respond through their work to these situations?
Curating the community based leg of the project meant that curator, artists and audience were invited to view sites of community work in a new way. Not coming here for a service or to find help – we came to see if the work would fit in – with the place and the people. Discussions, getting to know what went on there, answering questions about our project, assessing the possibilities of each space as a potential display area, bearing in mind the embryonic works in progress – discussions took place at each centre, broad discussions about what art is going on here already or what they’d like to see happening. Suggestions about artists working with young people, older people, placing work in environmental centres, programming a film series for refugees, places that already have thriving projects with artists – creative people who already work her making links with these was a good outcome of the project and could potentially lead to a multitude of new projects.
Being there finding out, sharing – developing the networks became a part of the process of the project. Getting challenged. What purpose were we serving (actually only one person did question this – everyone else was bending over backwards to help) The gatekeepers of community spaces. Overworked, creative, busy, but taking time to hear about artists and hoping that their place could be involved. If nothing else this could lead to other things perhaps – and might promote their own centre. Again, it wasn’t art that was confusing people – but CN4M was!
In Manchester’s centre of power, the gloriously gothic Town Hall, Hafsah Naib’s TV installation plonked 6 ordinary people – and their living rooms, into the seat of local power. Councillors and public servants came to sit before these disembodied talking heads and eavesdrop their conversations. Sidestepping the Galleries and Museums version of “culture” whilst creating a work that was paradoxically very much at home in the independent gallery, being an arena for ideas. Hafsah created a virtual network of people whose musings about culture were discussed via the medium and the subject of TV. So the discussions stretched from family relationships, the nature of technology, representation, what kids do, to global political issues – but with their heads in their own television sets.
