AHM Symposium 2 @ National Galleries

Better late than never, here’s my review of AHM‘s second symposium in a series of three on the state of art and culture in Scotland today. It took place at National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, on 2 April 2011.

Any discussion staged now on the state of art and culture today is set against a backdrop of anxiety. And don’t we all know it. If it isn’t funding cuts, it’s the death of criticism, or the rocky relations of art and education. But even as we pencil another furrowed brow in the diary, it still seems important to have these discussions. Undoubtedly, artists need to voice their concerns. And it’s good to talk.

Through their Research Residency at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, AHM – Sam Ainsley, David Harding and Sandy Moffat -are staging a series of three symposia. Their aim is “to raise the profile of Scottish artists in the public domain whereby they can make a more significant contribution to the public life of Scotland, and to directly influence politicians and institutions of the vital importance of the arts to our society.”

After the first symposium addressed the situation on home turf, the second featured presentations by Scottish artists working internationally. Introducing the event as Chairperson, Sandy Moffat asked: “What is truly distinctive about Scottish art? Where is Scotland in the world order? Can this small state exist at the level of big ones?”

Departing from the broader question of art’s status in society, most of the speakers addressed this theme of Scottishness. Dean of CalArts Thomas Lawson spoke of artists as “essentially rootless” by profession: they relocate in search of a network that will sustain them and support their practice. As such, he sees their Scottishness as unimportant.

Artist Jim Mooney painted a vivid picture of his formative experiences at Edinburgh College of Art and then the Royal College of Arts. He had felt personally liberated by the College’s embrace of the avant-garde, and expounded the merits of an art school education. For Mooney, mergers between universities and art schools – such as the imminent one between ECA and Edinburgh University – are seriously detrimental to art education.

Following this talk, comments from the floor were concerned with the art world’s increasing academicisation. Sandy Moffat urged: “Let’s have more questions about art.” But when such questions were asked, they seemed to be met with little response. Sogol Mabadi suggested that artists should allow outsiders more opportunity to see artwork during the making process. By making art less exclusive, we might help to protect its future. Speaking from the panel, Peter Hill said briefly that this might be one way – but he didn’t advocate only one form of action. Of the others he would adopt, he made no mention.

Unfortunately, this rather strange exchange was typical of the symposium. Presentations were mostly interesting, and the discussion was engaging. But it was almost as though AHM had preconceived ideas about what they wanted from their audience, and we weren’t fulfilling them. In spite of their aims and paper handouts, their agenda for the symposium remained obscured.

Concluding the day, Moffat praised the value of having these discussions before adding sagely: ‘but we still have a long way to go’. While we would all acknowledge that art today faces problems, it’s an oversight to assume that we agree on what those problems are or what the desired situation would be. If artists wish us all to act in pursuit of a common goal, we must first be clear on what the problem is. As yet, there has been no census.

Artist Manifesto Performances

Videos of the Individual Manifesto performances from AHM’s State of Play symposium in October are now available to watch on AHM’s blog or alternatively, on Central Station network.

The 27 one-minute manifesto performances were on artists’ personal thoughts on the state of art and culture in Scotland today, and the performers included Ruth Barker, Justin Carter, Dalziel & Scullion, Ellie Harrison, Oliver Metzger, Peter McCaughey, and Shauna McMullan. You can watch mine here.

AHM are currently calling for more manifestos for the next symposium, which will be held in Edinburgh on 2 April 2011. AHM describe the manifestos as an opportunity for artists to give voice to their concerns and ambitions about where they feel visual art stands today and what the future might hold. To contribute, email ahm@googlemail.com. The deadline is 1 March.

AHM’s reflections on their State of Play symposium

Below is a link to AHM’s report reflecting on their State of Play symposium on 9 October 2010 (the first of a series of three). There is a wee mention of my manifesto, alongside Jimmie Durham’s and Chris Fremantle’s! Hopefully AHM will eventually make videos of the whole symposium available online, including the manifestos, as the artists performing missed the opportunity to hear each other’s very clearly.

Read AHM’s report of the State of Play: Art and Culture in Scotland Today symposium

AHM have also created a group that you can join on Central Station network, to continue the discussions set in motion at the symposium.

Art School Alternatives symposium

‘Is school a place, an institution, a set of facilities, a situation, a circumstance, an attitude, or a constellation of relationships of the transfer of acquired, invented, and accumulated knowledge?’ asked Raqs Media Collective in their essay for the 2009 compendium ‘Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century),’ MIT Press.

Taking this meditation as a starting point, the Manchester visual art journal Corridor8 staged an Art School Alternatives symposium at Liverpool Biennial on 7 October 2010 which proposed to explore alternative concepts and structures of learning to a traditional art school education, calling on practitioners and artist-led initiatives from around the North West to speak about their experiences.

Coming at a time when discussions, symposia, and books addressing the future of art education are prevalent, and given the title “Art School Alternatives,” one might have expected some artists to call for radical re-thinks or advocate courses of action, but a common thread among the speakers was that they all viewed their positions as distinct from the zeitgeist. The artist and writer Derek Horton made the very good point that most of these discussions on the future of art education take place within academic institutions and between academics – and as such, may feel irrelevant to artists working outside institutions who have practical considerations.

Dan Simpkins and Penny Whitehead from Disrupt Dominant Frequencies outlined how, through the process of applying for a Masters course, they had begun to question the system and opted out, and were evolving a communal practice that meant they could have an equivalent education outside an institution. This included setting their own (fluid) semesters and organising research trips – actually mimicking the structure of the academic year. Horton suggested that the priority of most of these practitioners is to try to recreate what institutions offer in the way of critical dialogue, but without the debt at the end of it, whilst artist and educator Andy Abbott argued that much-used phrases “DIY” and “artist-led initiatives” are often employed simply to mean “non-institutional,” and signify an ethos rather than a practical approach.

Harry Meadley posited that traditional art school allows students to get used to institutional structures and problems, which are useful beyond graduation and into the real world – an invaluable education, as the presentation by Department 21 illustrated. Graduates of the Royal College of Art Bianca Elzenbaumer and Fabio Franz explained how they had set up an interdepartmental, cross-disciplinary, social workspace – Department 21 – within the College after finding that all the departments were insular and uncommunicative.

Some of the artists’ positions were underpinned by ethics, but in the main, the discussion wasn’t about how to avoid an institutionalised art education, or utopian models of pedagogy, but was focused on much more expedient issues, such as economic considerations in light of the recession and the fact that formal qualifications are no guarantee of employment. Although many of the practitioners had evolved their work in response to a localised problem or crisis that they perceived in relation to institutions or “the system,” there was no common feeling of crisis under which they had assembled for the symposium. Instead, the day progressed more as a varied collection of presentations of different interests and different ways of working, and had a refreshing plurality of voices.

With the aim, perhaps, of steering such diverse threads back into the discussion, Derek Horton reiterated on several occasions that there needn’t be a polarisation of art schools on the one hand and “alternatives” on the other, and that the important thing is “trying to find ways to do the things you want to do, whether within the system, without the system, or however.” Perhaps feeling suffocated by such expressions of tolerance and equability, an artist from No Fixed Abode collective pointed out in the Round Table discussion that we had yet to mention the content of our curriculum, self-imposed or otherwise: “All this talk about learning, about pedagogy – is just the fact that we are learning really enough?”

It was a good question, and unfortunately one that we barely began to address in the symposium – although as the discussion’s trajectory very much followed the will of the audience, three-quarters of whom were participating as speakers or leading workshops, it would be reductive to see this necessarily as a failing.

The afternoon session was devoted to presentations by artists whose practices are based around communal, collaborative, and social activities, as opposed to having developed in response or reaction to an art school experience. Kate Rich presented her ongoing project ‘Feral Trade,’ in which she trades a range of consumable goods via social networks with the aim of taking responsibility of one’s own imports and exports, and explained, “All this knowledge and discussion is very well, but where does the actual money come from? Otherwise we’re in a strange volunteer profession.”

This interesting talk aside, these presentations functioned more as “show and tell” stock Artist Talks, and it proved difficult to locate their relevance to Art School Alternatives. Heath Bunting presented the “adventures,” involving climbing and raft-building, that he organises with friends, fellow artists and strangers, and which blur the boundaries between everyday life and art, even to the extent that it wasn’t clear what Bunting himself considered them to be.

If the symposium’s aim was to share information and experiences among artists of the practices people are involved in ordinarily and not in response to a current trend, perhaps habitual Artist Talks are perfectly appropriate, but some of them would have benefited from a little extra contextualisation so as to allow outsiders way in. It was, on reflection, very much a meeting of “insiders,” with practitioners composing most of the audience, and – just as academic discussions may be conducted from the ivory tower, so these conversations were distinguished by their grassroots origins.

This review was first published on Interface on 14 October 2010 www.a-n.co.uk/interface and is the result of an Interface and Corridor8 Bursary Partnership.

Photos: Laura Mansfield.

Corridor8 is a Manchester-based annual visual art journal. Its second edition, Strange Weather, is released on 25 October with a launch at Liverpool Biennial Visitor Centre. www.corridor8.co.uk

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Individual Manifesto at the AHM State of Play symposium

Today I took part in a performance at State of Play: Art and Culture in Scotland, a symposium organised by Glasgow-based collaborative artist group AHM (Sam Ainsley; David Harding; Sandy Moffat) as part of their research residency at the Glasgow Sculpture Studios.

As well as keynote lectures by Philip Schlesinger, Christine Borland, Dr. Neil Mulholland, and Sam Ainsley and Sandy Moffat of AHM, the day included an Individual Manifestos performance. This involved about thirty artists presenting their (very diverse) thoughts on the state of contemporary art today. AHM said of the performance:

“We don’t often hear from artists themselves – usually we hear only from art critics, journalists and administrators. The manifesto performance will give the opportunity to 30 artists to express their views, in a public forum, delivering a wide range of thoughts and attitudes reacting to the present condition.”

A film of the day will be posted on the AHM blog in the near future:  http://theahmblog.blogspot.com/

The manifesto I read is as follows:

Claims of a crisis in culture are rife.

Critics pronounce the death of criticism, but in fact what they refer to is the end of reputation as a decoy for informed judgement. Criticism is not dead, but it is bereft of criticality, superficial, and boring.

The real crisis is the lack of interest in and importance placed upon critique by artists, their audiences, and even by writers themselves, claiming priority for the artwork and deeming writing secondary.

But the potency of critique is a two-way deal, dependent on the willingness of artists to respond to the little good criticism that is out there and to give it real agency by making contemporary discourse significant, indeed fundamental, to the development of their work.

The proliferation of social media and digital content is displacing the national mainstream media as the main source of arts criticism for the general public; it is up to artists and writers to capitalise on this opportunity. We must question the writing as rigorously as we do the art, and accept nothing as a foregone conclusion.

Change is imperative, as little and bad critique means poor and complacent art.

How We Go On Now symposium, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow

The Long Loch: How Do We Go On From Here?, a “discursive exhibition project” at Glasgow’s CCA by Kate Davis and Faith Wilding, pledges to question how we dream and desire to go on in the future in relation to a feminist heritage.

The project comprises visual art installations, a temporary reading room in CCA’s foyer, and a programme of reading group meetings developed in conjunction with Glasgow Women’s Library; an online resource of Feminist Lines of Flight – suggested reading material by “co-inspiritors” to Davis and Wilding; and events such as a one-day symposium.

Feminist texts and reading as a “grounds of possibility” figure strongly through each strand of the project. The texts or ‘Lines of Flight’ that writers, artists and academics have suggested at the artists’ invitation now await discovery on specially constructed reading desks in the foyer, while Davis’ films and sculptures reference the works of Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Yvonne Rainer, and Eva Hesse, as well aspects of her and her mother’s lives.  In the exhibition pamphlet, Dominic Paterson writes that ‘the relationship between feminism and reading is central to the work we encounter in The Long Loch insofar as it […] creates an imagined community in which, as Wilding puts it, it is possible to take inspiration from “conversations with the living and the dead.”’

The one-day symposium, How We Go On Now, was free but ticketed, and open to the public.  Like the “here” in the project’s overarching title, ‘how we go on now’ seems to loosely reference the common perception of feminism’s current state as being at a sort of crossroads or existing in the aftermath of its past.  Here, it is suggested, is a position of known, shared, and fatigued theoretical and philosophical conflict, and “how to go on,” whilst obviously having no simple or single answer, nevertheless, seems to propose a discussion of a practical nature.

The first presentation of the day, given by Canadian artist Elizabeth Zvonar, did relate to a contemporary, daily reality.  Zvonar spoke about feminism as a framework being antithetical to capitalism, the dominant framework that we live within, and thus being frequently misunderstood and undermined.  She stressed the importance of emotion and said that it shouldn’t be suppressed or pejorised in favour of intellect, which is increasingly endorsed in our culture as having supremacy.  “Emotion is limited to an ever-empty and unfulfilled desire within capitalism, which does not allow the full range of emotions to exist.”  More and more, Zvonar explained, she had been thinking about human relations, and that the way in which she prizes her friendships, “discovering each other’s differences in order to grow towards a longevity,” is antithetical to capitalism, which promotes the opposite – convenience, hedonism, instantaneity – as our natural right.