Investigations into the conditions and possibilities of collabor
Submitting Institution
University of WolverhamptonUnit of Assessment
Art and Design: History, Practice and TheorySummary Impact Type
CulturalResearch Subject Area(s)
Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media, Visual Arts and Crafts
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies
Summary of the impact
This case study focuses on three areas in relation to the social impact
of art, across the categories of `cultural life' and `public discourse'.
1) Artistic collaborations with non-artistic specialists in order to
generate new interdisciplinary pathways
2) Artistic collaborations with non-artists within a given community or
non-artistic institutional setting in order to create new forms of
artist-audience participation
3) The sharing of knowledge/skills between either non-artistic
specialists or a non-specialist audience and artists in the production of
a shared task or project.
4) Performance-based practice inside and outside of the gallery
The outward facing nature of this research, then, addresses the way such
work tests the prevailing competences, boundaries and identities of artist
and audience alike. This means researchers are involved with both artistic
and non-artistic funding-bodies and agencies as the basis for work on a
range of critical issues affecting the borders between the art institution
and non-artistic settings and contexts.
Underpinning research
The School of Art & Design at Wolverhampton has a long history of
involvement with the social engagement of art, specifically, in the
development of a specially designated degree, Art & Social Practice,
which ran from the late eighties to the early noughties. This was one of
the first of its kind in the UK, and placed a direct emphasis upon art's
extra-artistic relationship to the world. The recent expansion of
participatory, relational and post-relational practice, has confirmed the
significance of the training the course provided, in period where the
notion of `art in the expanded' field was limited largely to the museum
installation.
In the 2000's this platform provided the basis for the development of a
new art and social practice research culture in the School, in which the
cluster `Art, Critique and Social Practice' has played an important role.
The forms of practice outlined in Section 1, therefore, represent a
research programme that covers both interdisciplinary artistic practice
and interdisciplinary curating practice. In this respect the pursuit of
such practices across the art/science, art/performance and art/non-art
divide, establish the artist and the curator (and the artist as
curator) as facilitators of new routes and pathways into art's social
engagement.
These questions around the production of audience, the public and public
sphere are explored in the practices of the artist Rona Lee, the recent
curating fellow Monika Vykoukal, the artist Andy Hewitt, a member of the
group FREEE, and the performance artist Dean Kelland. These questions are
also addressed theoretically in the writing of Hewitt (as one of the
editors of Art and the Public Sphere) and the cluster leader, the
art theorist Prof. John Roberts, who has written extensively on art,
collaboration, and art after `art in the expanded field'. His recent work
on skill and deskilling has had an influence on recent international
debates on art and value after post-conceptualism, inside and outside of
the academic community. For example, the exhibition `Art in Labor:
Skill/Deskilling/Reskilling' organized by Octavian Esanu at the American
University of Beirut, May 2013, and the discussion of the significance of
his writing on skill-deskilling-reskilling in `The Editorial
Introduction', to The Journal of Modern Craft, Vol 5, No. 2, 2012.
In addition the cluster has just made two major appointments that expand
this commitment to interdisciplinary research and collaboration: the
philosopher, art theorist and member of the internationally renowned
Russian art collective, Chto Delat, who has been appointed Reader in Art,
and the Turner Prize nominated filmmakers Jane and Louise Wilson, who have
been appointed Professors of Art. Both add a historical and archival
dimension to the interdisciplinary research model of the cluster. Penzin's
collaborative practice in Chto Delat, (co-authored articles and film
scripts and group performances) have linked the repressed legacy of the
early Soviet avant-garde and Moscow conceptualism of the 1980s (Collective
Actions) to the production of new post-Soviet avant-garde research
programme. The Wilson twins' archival film work on the ruins and remnants
of Cold War landscapes involve extensive research with professional
historians and archivists, and have been shown to acclaim in various
international film festivals. Like Penzin their commitment to a practice
of historical recovery provides an additional focus for the general work
in the cluster on art, the public sphere and collaboration.
References to the research
Lee, R, `Envisaging the Deep' (2012), Architectural Research
Quarterly, Spring (peer reviewed) Grant: Lee R, (2012) Arts Council
England, Grants For the Arts, That Oceanic Feeling, £10,000.00
Kelland, D `Living Room Series (Episode One)' (2011) Comedy
Studies, Vol 2 Issue 2 Intellect (peer reviewed)
Hewitt, A., Jordan, M. `Exploring the function of art in
culture-led regeneration: reflections on Futurology, in Culture &
Agency Contemporary Culture and Urban Change', (2009) eds., Degen, M. and
Miles M, Culture & Agency: Contemporary Culture and Urban Change,
University of Plymouth Press (invited contribution)
Hewitt, A., Jordan, M. `I Fail to Agree' (2005), in eds., Miles M.
& Hall T, Interventions: Advance in Urban Futures Volume 4,
Intellect (peer reviewed)
Roberts J, and Wright S. (eds) `Art and Collaboration', Special
Issue (2004), Third Text No 71, Vol 18 Issue 6, November,
Routledge (peer reviewed)
Roberts J. (ed), `Art, Praxis and the Community to Come', Special
Issue (2009), Third Text, No 99, Vol 23 Issue 4, July, Routledge
(peer reviewed)
Details of the impact
Below are four short case studies of different models of collaborative
impact:
1) In 2008 for the show `How to Be Hospitable' at the Collective Gallery
in Edinburgh, Hewitt as part of the group FREEE, proposed an extended
democratic conception of collaboration in community participatory art, by
emphasizing the need for communities to take control of cultural projects
themselves, in order to promote `bottom up' creativity and regeneration.
In this FREEE attempted to facilitate a non-affirmative consensus through
participation. To often `top down' participation with artists, Hewitt,
stresses, "pathologizes dissent and critique." In this sense more broadly,
Hewitt/FREEE have pursued a collective participatory practice in which the
utilization of the skills of non-artists on various community projects
produces an esprit de corps, that defines the collaboration
between artist and `community' as a form of democratic `theatre'
(recently, for example, in 2010 the group formed an amateur choir to sing
various political slogans). Hewitt, is also an advisor to the art and the
public sphere think tank ixiia.
2)With the appointment of Rona Lee as Reader in Fine Art in 2010-2013,
this question of collaborative art as a form of `expanded theatre' — quite
different from the theatrical as such or art as theatre — has
pushed the discourse on impact in quite a different direction. Lee's
ongoing research is concerned with the geographical, environmental and
epistemological function and identity of water, and over the last two
years has worked closely with oceanographers in the development of new
modes of sea-floor visualization (National Oceanography Centre), as a
reflection on existing models of knowledge production. Since 2008-Rona
has been invited by Dr Henry Ruhl of the National Oceanography Centre
(NOCS) to act as a consultant on a large-scale National Environment
Research Council (NERC) funded research project involving the compilation
of highly detailed images of the seabed. Affiliation to the NOCS has a
provided her with a platform to profile her enquiry to researchers from
the GeoData Institute, Centre for Maritime Archaeology, Institute of
Maritime Law, Maritime Energy and Complexity Science groups. In the light
of this her work has been widely discussed in the geo-scientific community
and she is increasingly called on as a contributor to debates around
seabed resource management. In 2009 she received a Leverhulme Trust Award:
£12.300.00 for the exhibition Mapping, Howard Gardens Galley (Nov-Dec). http://www.ronalee.org/notebook/130/mapping-howard-gardens-gallery-12th-nov-18th-dec-2009
This science/art interface is yet another strand of what drives the
legacy of `art and social practice' in the cluster, and across other
subject areas: what are the means and ends under which art's powers
engagement, can be made active, and legible and purposeful?
3) A key project underwriting collaboration between artistic specialists,
non-artistic specialists, and the public (point 3, section 1) has been
Black Country Creative Advantage (2010-11). Initiated from within the
cluster this project involved an extensive model of exchange and
collaboration between artists, designers, planners, architects and various
arts organizations and funding bodies in West Bromwich in order to
research into possible urban regeneration in the area. With a primary
emphasis on public involvement and assessment of `specialist solutions'
the project established forums for public consultation and collaboration.
This process was facilitated by the research associate Monika Vykoukal.
With an artist and architect she set up a workshop for young people and
children to create their own imaginative models for regeneration in the
area, and established a regular market stall in the centre of the town,
which became the main focus for public discussion about the issue of
regeneration. She also produced a newsletter and blog. The project also
involved establishing contact with various agencies and bodies to
facilitate the project. These included: Multistory, Longhouse, Housing
Dept., Sandwell Council, Community History & Archives Service,
Sandwell Council, Spatial Planning Department, Sandwell Council, Black
County Society, West Bromwich Town Team, Sandwell Primary Care Trust,
Sandwell Community Information and Participation Service, Sandwell
Libraries and Archives, Transform Sandwell, Sandwell Council, and
Neighbourhood Manger, Communities Unit West Bromwich.
4) Photography, after a period of re-organization in response to the
ending of social documentary as a general programme of technical expertise
on the Fine Art degree, has placed an increased emphasis on photography's
`post-media' social engagement. This is central to the work of one of the
younger researchers in the cluster, Dean Kelland. In his research on 1960s
British comedy, he combines performance, image and text, as a way of
transforming photography and video into a space for the reclamation and
re-visitation of popular cultural memory. In this sense Kelland's work
also looks to theatre for a model of expanded practice. In 2012 he had has
first solo show at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. He has also been invited
to contribute documentary material to the online publication `Reframing
Photograph', Michigan University Press, and was invited in 2011 to speak
as a performer at the 5th Annual Conference on Comedy, at
Salford University.
Overall, then, the terms and boundaries of collaboration and
participation have established a research programme that operates across
disciplines, in and outside of the gallery, and in multiple social
settings, contributing to both advanced critical debate in the artworld
(Hewitt, Lee) and to debates on cultural policy (Hewitt, Black Country
Creative Advantage).
Sources to corroborate the impact
Reference for the impact of Monika Vykoukal's research
1) Vykoukal. M, (2011) Neither Shoreditch nor Manhattan: Black
Country Creative Advantage (contributors include: Neil Gray, Munu
Luksch, Thomas Bratzke, Leo Singer, John Dummett, Asnne Francis),
Multistory, West Bromwich http://www.multistory.org.uk/
References for the impact of Rona Lee's research
2) Testimony by Karthyn Yusoff (lecturer in Nonhuman geography at
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University) on impact of Lee's
work in area of oceanography and social geography http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sci-tech/departments/lancaster_environment_centre/
3) Works from Lee's John Hansard Exhibition That Oceanic Feeling
were exhibited at an international geography conference at Nottingham
Contemporary Sept 17 2013, (alongside Allan Sekula's Forgotten Space),
(curated by Professor Philip Steinberg, Durham University, author of The
Social Construction of The Ocean) http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/
References for the impact of Andy Hewitt's research
4)Sullivan, L. L (2013) Get Real! Art, Regeneration, and Resistance,
Metamute (culture and politics after the net) www.metamute.org
5) Macmillan, D, (2005), `Ideas Grown From the Seeds of Revolution', The
Scotsman, 15 April
6) Geldard, R, (2009) Generosity is the New Political, Map
Magazine, November http://mapmagazine.co.uk/
References for impact of John Roberts's research
7) Iles A., & M. Vishmidt, M (2011) `Make Whichever You Find Work',
in Variant, Number 41, Spring 2011 http://www.variant.org.uk/
8) Esanu, O (2013 `Art In Labor: Skill/Deskilling/Reskilling', American
University Gallery, Beirut, 2013,
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Art/2013/Jun-01/219042-octavian-esanu-on-skill-deskilling-reskilling.ashx#axzz2l7VIHiOK
9) On influence of work of deskilling-reskilling in craft community, see
The Journal of Modern Craft, Vol 5, Number 2, 2012, `Editorial
Introduction', pp133-135
http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156920610X512444