mid-morning at Situations office, Spike Island. Beautiful poster from Slow Space Bjorvika on notice board.
Claire Doherty begins by asking me about my practice and where I see my work in 3 years from now. Am unnerved as it seems that my current activity is all focused on the 3-year programme we are hoping to roll out in partnership with TCCT – and it needs to fit in with Situations recommendations for the ‘new artistic vision’ for Torbay. My response to Claire has to be to start talking about Smooth Space partnering TCCT for a 3-year programme of projects across flagship Geopark sites. I list the sites and ask whether this clashes with Situations proposals.
Well, yes is the short answer.
I was expecting this, in my heart of hearts, but it’s still tough to face the finality of months and months of hard work and pushing ourselves to come up to the task of planning and proposals writing and funding applications and meetings and to accept that it is all finished….If we are trying to do the same thing that Situations has been commissioned for, then we will not get support from the Arts Council – and we were hoping for 60% funding from ACE.
But, Claire is very kind and very sensitive and keeps asking questions about what Smooth Space values are, why we are so focused on lengthy periods of research, what we like about non-arts partnerships.
Claire responds that we are artists and that the project we’ve been planning turns us into a commissioning organisation, taking us far away from our own artistic vision.
(We were aware of this, but I think about the conversations we’d had, batting ideas back and forwards as we began forming the idea of Smooth Space and what we wanted to achieve through working collectively. And our Smooth Space committee meeting, immediately post over the horizon, where we talked about how to move forward. And then how we were approached by the Director of TCCT, shortly after the committee meeting, with a direct request to work with them to produce this massive project across their sites and feeling like we musn’t refuse – that we should not turn down such a fantastic opportunity).
Claire says that Smooth Space could be referred to as an initiative rather than a commissioning organisation. We need to drill down into what we are/what it is like working with us – and to write this as a new values/vision document which will help artists to understand who we are. Claire picks up on everything I’ve described (and on things that were implicit) and speaks about Smooth Space giving ourselves time to really bed down in place – that projects which have research periods built into their structure still don’t really get under the skin of place – that commissioned artists will only visit a site perhaps once or twice during research – and that what we at Smooth Space are talking about really is residencies.
I talk about working people with expert knowledge and cross-fertilization of disciplines – for example, during over the horizon we commissioned specialists such as Dr Chris Proctor, geologist and Andy Byfield from Plantlife to work with us during our research phase. Claire speaks about using Smooth Space as the umbrella under which our activity takes place, with artists and others with specialist knowledge invited to collaborate with us on embedded projects.
I feel stunned – am sure it shows – reeling, in fact! And wierdly, experience a bit of a head-rush moment.
And so here it is – all that we had ever proposed that Smooth Space could be spoken out loud, pulled back to us.All hypothetical – but so is everything before it properly begins.
