Another week has passed incredibly quickly. I have not really had time to think about everything (anything?) that happened, this and a conversation with a friend has made me realised that I am someone who needs time – something which seems to be increasingly rare resource as I get more and more involved in more and more things.
The first session of the Introduction to Artistic Research course was good and I am looking forward to the coming sessions. It felt wonderful to be in an academic environment again, the educative experience is something that I really enjoy – it is my way of understanding myself, the world and my place in it. (And not just the art world, I can say the same of my Swedish classes too!) My impression is that on the spectrum from academic to practical I sit somewhere in the middle, I felt this quite strongly during the discussions and while listening to the presentation on contemporary research contexts and perspectives. I want to maintain and develop this position rather than shift to one side or the other – my own kind of ‘middle way’. We have a couple of assignments to prepare for the next session. We also have a starting point for our course assignment that includes a seemingly simple question that is already making me realise that I need (and want) to know more about the particular art scene that I can imagine myself belonging to.
I am setting myself a personal challenge during the course and that is not to use the word ‘project’ when discussing my own practice. This could be a red herring however it seems too easier a catchall word that lends apparent weight and gravitas to things. I am keen to see if I can develop skills with a language that maintains artistic and creative references rather than immediately adopting scientific, managerial or bureaucratic terms.
Our short presentations of ourselves to the group reminded me how unique the Art & Social Context course was. I feel very fortunate to have done that course and think that is fantastic that 25 years later I continue to reap the benefits of its philosophies.
On Monday I visited KKV (the Artists’ Collective Workshops). It is a large former industrial building not far from the city centre that now houses various workshops that artists and designers can hire by the day, week or month. Walking around I started to think about how having such a place enables artists to continue developing their material skills as well as their conceptual ideas for new work. Perhaps I started to see connections that are not really there but I wondered whether the YBA’s combination of DIY aesthetic and their employment of high-end fabricators had anything to do with the lack of practical resources available after college. Actually the systematic removal of space eating resources, such as casting rooms, wood workshops, weaving looms and print presses, in colleges must lead to completely different generations of artists. I was shocked to see how my old studio at the Slade had been carved up enable more fee-paying ‘digital-based workspaces’, not that I blame the Slade – it is doing what it has to do to survive in terrible times.
Straight after seeing KKV I went to another discussion about artists in relation to Stockholm’s development. The city’s rapid expansion is pushing artists out of the more central areas, and the question of gentrification has urgency about it as poorer districts are being given cosmetic facelifts in attempts to lure the new money to formerly undesirable parts of town. Questions about the displacement of the often neglected current residents in these areas are being raised by artists and curators who are truly embedded in those places. I like these kinds of artists’ town meetings – they feel important and significant, they are open, public and well attended. I hope that Sweden’s more horizontal axis of differentiation (compared with the UK’s more vertical one) means that these discussions have relevance to, and some purchase on, issues of city policy and planning. For me it is refreshing that artists believe that they do and that their opinions (should) have the same authority as those of business.
http://kkv.nu/ Artists’ Collective Workshops in Stockholm. They are about to start a residency programme – details will be on the website soon.
The weeks are passing very quickly. After a year of going to school every morning the change to going just twice a week is taking some getting used to – at the moment I find myself thinking that it is Monday when it is Tuesday (which is my first day at school each week) and that it is Friday on Thursday (which is the second day at school). My current inability to work out what day of the week it is perhaps contributes to the feeling that time is somewhat accelerated.
At an opening in gallery here last week I meet another artist who has knows Kjetil and Liz (artists I know in Norway and who know other artists also at Wip). It really can be a very small world.
My meeting with an advisor at the tax office was very useful and quite enjoyable. Not only did we talk about my situation regarding (lack of) income and (relatively modest) expenditure, but about how the internet – and in particular the relationship between ideas of physical and virtual locations – is creating so many complex theoretical questions about where things, such as web transactions and exchanges, can be considered to be ‘sited’. I really was not expecting to have such an abstract, interesting and stimulating conversation!
Meeting up with Alex, whom I took over the studio from, is always good. We had a great talk about art and education – she is training to be an art teacher, which is a specialist discipline here, and is investigating, amongst other things, how processes rather than products could be valued. It is something that I very much wanted to pursue when I was working on education projects but never really had the opportunity. That evening I was reading a text for the ‘Artistic Research’ course that I am about to start, and it too was promoting the idea that processes (as outcomes in and of themselves) will continue to become more and more significant in terms of knowledge theory.
Definitely a area that I want to explore ….
The winter here continues to amaze and fascinate me. Last weekend as I was about to head off for a run I spotted my first “snowbow”*. It was truly beautiful – an incredible thing to see. The picture does not really capture the ethereal wonder of it, nor the brilliance or clarity of the colours.
Later that day I noticed the coral like formations of snow crystals on the metal handrail on the bridge over a road. The temporariness of these crystal formations seems to poignant – a perfect reminder to appreciate the presentness of things.
* apparently it’s still called a rainbow even though it was not raining. It was a cold late morning (about -15°) and the low winter sun was shining through ice crystals in the air. I guess I should call it an “icebow” but the alliteration of snowbow is so much more appealing.
I have just received the exciting news that I have a place on a short course that I recently applied for. Sixteen years after finishing at the Slade I will be back at art school! The course – An Introduction to Artistic Research – is at Konstfack, is part-time over twenty weeks and is in English. Making the application I realised just how much has changed in the academic art world since my time at the Slade, back then artistic and practice-based research was in its infancy even if it didn’t feel like it at the time. Now it seems so established with its own distinct methodologies, terminology and networks.
This particular course intrigues me and I hope it will enable me to work out how my practice might sit within a research context. In the past I have been sceptical about the idea of using terms such as research to describe a/my practice, preferring to insist that my practice (all of it) is art and that art necessarily includes a great deal of research. I am therefore very interested to see in what way my practice can maintain its identity as art and at the same time contribute to what is a distinct academic discipline. Perhaps I am more confident than I previously was that my practice is sufficiently secure and established within itself to shape the idea of research rather than being shaped by the idea(s) of research.
It will be very interesting to find out if I am capable of doing the two different things at the same time – it feels as though it will be a little like patting my head with one hand while rubbing my tummy with the other! I mean that I want to keep making art and I want to see how it works as “research” – which to me two different activities being carried out by the same body. Already I am thinking about the applications to other courses that I have made over the years and how I have often times tried to fit my art in to what I imagine pre-existing frameworks to be, my aim for this course is to test out how I develop my practice on my terms in the context of artistic research and to investigate where this might lead.
One of the other students on the course is Ingrid who (with Anna) I have been working with for the last year on our Sandcastles in Greece project. I also noticed from the email list that another artist who was at the meeting when I met both Anna and Ingrid will be on the course too!
Taking a hard-copy application to Konstfack was interesting in and of itself. I experienced a very real sense of excitement as I approached the building, just as I did when I have previously visited KKH (Stockholm’s Royal College of Art). I really enjoy being in places of learning: schools, museums, libraries, and for me art school is the ultimate. On the day that I delivered my application I had also arranged to pick up the final version of the Ljusfältet film from the filmmaker who lives nearby, I was early and waited in the college café. It is hard to describe the senses of rightness and belonging I have at such times – I remember it was the same when I had lunch in the café at KKH before meeting the research coordinator there. The phrase ‘being institutionalised’ is often and popularly loaded with negative connotations and I am aware that I can make my friends squirm a little when I say that I long to be institutionalised … I mean, of course, being an active member of a good and healthy educational or research institution, a place of enquiry, collaboration and potential. I am absolutely delighted that for twenty weeks from the first of February I will be, albeit part-time, institutionalised again!
I am really pleased with how the Ljusfältet evening here at Wip:konsthall turned out – a good and fitting start to the New Year! The whole idea of doing something in early January is appealing; something to mark the arrival of the new year, a pleasurable way to re-engage with work after the holidays, the opportunity to catch-up with colleagues and …
The evening worked really well: the discussion was interesting and stimulating for both the speakers and the audience – it ran over by half an hour and continued informally afterwards; the gallery version of the installation looked good – the possibility and potential to make non-site specific versions of site specific work is something that I have wanted to develop for some time now and this was a great opportunity to see how it could be done and how the work can work in new ways; people responded really well to the booklet – there is something (perhaps something a little more intimate) about reading words on a page of a book that is very different from reading the same words on the wall of a gallery; keeping the look of the show simple seemed to create space for thoughts, ideas and discussion – which for me is really important; and not least the evening brought together a diverse group of people – the subject under discussion (the future of open and public spaces in the city) brought in a far wider audience than often come to exhibitions at Wip:konsthall.
Thinking around the idea of in-between space in both preparation for and after the discussion has raised a lot of questions for me and has led to interesting and intense conversations with friends and other artists at the studios. One subject that keeps coming up in various ways is the seemingly relentless pursuit of, and faith in, financial capital. Perhaps it is not surprising that artists find this difficult, especially artists with practices that are not solely commercial. Art can offer alternative value systems – how to do this in such image saturated and possession obsessed cultures appears to be a very pertinent question. It occurred to me that my avoidance of image and advertising loaded mass media could be part of my personal strategy for enabling me to see the art when I visit galleries and museums. As the in-between spaces in our towns and cities, as well as people’s mobile phones and social media networks, become more and more drenched in advertisements with their demand to buy, their insidious message that we are always lacking, is it any wonder that people do not know how to relate to (art) images which invite them to think differently, to contemplate something, to simply enjoy the image for what it is. Before the panel discussion I had not heard about São Paulo’s city wide ban on billboards – the conservative Mayor leading the campaign and calling them “visual pollution”, apparently the result has been hugely successful – it’s certainly something I am going to follow up!
It feels as though the evening was not only good for me but also good for the exhibition space. People’s enthusiasm for more discussions and events that give an exhibition additional dimensions is certainly something that could be developed as a core part of the exhibition space’s future programme.
Birgitta and I were not the only ones to kick off the New Year with something exciting. Last night the contemporary galleries in the Hudiksvallsgatan area of the city all opened with new shows. These evenings when the galleries open together are always enjoyable and last night there was a definite sense of excitement and energy. Going around the various shows I bumped into two of the panel guests from Tuesday evening as well as other people who had come along and people who had heard about it but could not make it – in total more people to stop and chat with than I would do in similar circumstances in London. I had a new sense of starting to belong in the art-scene here – and I like it!
This morning I collected the test print of the Ljusfältet booklet – it looks really nice. I am looking forward to being able to give them to people when they come to the show, and to sending some to people who can not make it here. It feels more more ‘me’ to send something real than a link to a website. Of course the two things are not mutually exclusive – perhaps I should produce a web-version of the booklet for my next website update.
