Field Theory will be hosting a tutorial on the Live Art with prominent artist and academic Shane Haseman.
Over a period of an hour we will question, discuss and debate this elusive genre.
Those who attend may be asked to prepare by reading a suggested essay.
Monday October 31
7pm
Capacity is limited RSVP essential
To attend email: sarah.rodigari@gmail.com
( the address in Kings Cross, Sydney will be emailed to attendees)
Refreshments will be provided
Some months ago LALA asked me to write down my impressions on the League Of Resonance – an ambitious live art project that occurred in Melbourne from December 2010 to April 2011. As I’m a slow writer and pedantic academic, it’s taken me a little time to settle on my response. Currently I’m writing a thesis on participation in art, so I thought it might be useful to discuss the project by relating it back to a concern I have with participatory, site-specific artworks.
Particularly I want to discuss a frustration with the lack of engagement that projects such as League of Resonance receive from audiences beyond the usual throngs of art-goers, a frustration that I know other live and participatory artists share. Despite good intentions to attract participants from the wider public, often the best efforts by artists fail.
It seems that the particular skill set of a participatory artist requires charming, cajoling, arm-twisting and coercing “ordinary” people to get involved in your project, but is this the best way to engage people in your art?
A commission
Live artists Sarah Rodigari, Jess Oliveri and Jason Maling were in residence at the intersection of Elizabeth and Flinders Streets, Melbourne from December 2010 to April 2011. Commissioned by Melbourne City Council, the artists were asked to creatively respond to the area as it was considered to have a “bad vibe”. Or to put it in City Council speak:
“The intention of the project is to appoint artists as an alternative method for Council to engage with the city night experience and explore diverse experiences and views. The artistic outcomes aim to provide a counterpoint to late night culture, and is designed to activate the space with positivity, romance and humour and to create a softer alternative to an area that is quickly gaining a reputation for the inverse.”
Sarah, Jason and Jess’s “softer alternative” manifested in the project the League of Resonance, a series of gentle and playful interventions that aimed to directly and meaningfully engage with the space and the people that move through it. As one League participant describes in her blog, “Jason and Jess explained how the project aimed to take seriously the idea of an area having a ‘bad vibe’ and their desire to investigate all the components of this area’s vibe.” With an upbeat and whimsical sensibility, the League’s website explains how they aimed to uncover “the intangible and barely perceptible” and tune into, collect and combine “the resonance of individuals: their stories, perceptions and rituals”.
One tactic they employed to encourage people to do this was to take them out on dates, a convivial strategy to collect the stories and experiences embedded in the space. Participants were sourced via word of mouth, their website and a one-page publication the League produced and distributed at the intersection, available in three editions, called This Is Townend. Up until March 18th, anyone who had even a passing connection with the intersection were welcome to get friendly with the League. In Edition 2 of This is Townend they wrote:
“If you live, work, or pass through this area please contact us. We would like to meet you, listen to your thoughts and opinions about this place. We’ll take you out for a coffee, lunch or dinner. We’ll go for a walk, and share stories about this area. The League of Resonance is just a good old-fashioned way of trying to make friends in this crazy city.”
My date
In late February, I went on a date with the League. Although I had only the most minor association with the site - I have caught the number 19 tram home to Brunswick and eaten a hot dog at Walker’s Donuts on occasion – Sarah Rodigari had asked me to come along as her friend and a fellow artist interested in site-specific and participatory practices.
We met one evening outside Flinders Street Station, by two of the city’s last remaining black and white chemical processing photo booths. Smelling like piss and traffic, this site also conveniently faced right on to the intersection of Elizabeth and Flinders Streets. In addition to Sarah, my date companions were Sarah’s video camera-wielding assistant, Emma Williamson, and Melbourne-based video artist, Salote Tawale. Sarah explained that it was the usual habit of the League to have singular encounters, but as Salote, Sarah and myself were already pals, she had seized the opportunity to have a “double date”.
Our date began with a choice: where to eat? Dinner would be paid for by the League, but on the condition that Salote and I limited our eating options to the immediate area surrounding the intersection, leaving us with an unappealing list of fast food outlets. We chose Pepperoni’s because, as Sarah sagely suggested, it was one of the few places where you could also get a beer.
Pepperoni’s is a place where the city’s late night drinkers go to buy slices of greasy pizza before heading home. It’s not a place you usually eat at sober. As Salote and I tucked into our eating “experiences” among some depressive, unhealthy-looking diners – Salote described our meals as something out of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares – Sarah explained the rest of the night’s activities.
Pulling out an impressive display of League of Resonance-branded stationery, we were told that following our dinner we could go for a stroll around the block. During our walk we were asked to tell Sarah any associations or points of interest we may have with the space, and she would note them down on an A5 map of the area.
As mentioned, however, my experience of the area was limited and so my contributions to Sarah’s map were scant. Indeed, Salote too had little to offer beyond tales of late night pizza devouring and running for trams and trains at the intersection. So it was left up to Sarah and Jess (who joined us after our meal) to play the role of tour guides and regale us with tidbits of information they had gleaned from their research and encounters with people at the intersection.
A walk down a stretch of Elizabeth Street revealed to us an overlooked 1950s mural of clinking glasses towering above the 7-Eleven and the smallest shop in Australia – a watch repair stall where customers placed orders via a window that opened onto the street. Down alleyways off Flinders Lane we were offered the chance to go fossicking for kosher bakery treats in Glick’s dumpster bins and shown a line of chewing gum that one of the suited professionals had begun during his smoko breaks. Sarah invited us to add to the line with a piece of gum she had given us after dinner.
Walking back towards our starting point, Sarah shined a dolphin torch to help us spot rats that scurried in the open by Flinders Street Station and pointed out the glamorous Rendezvous Hotel that seemed out of place in a street with rodents and Dreams Gentleman’s Club. Opposite we were shown some underground public toilets that had been concreted over to deter a gay beat that allegedly once existed there.
After a pleasant walk around the block we found ourselves back at the photo booths. Despite contributing very little to Sarah and Jess’s research, Salote and I had still earned ourselves the chance to become members of the League of Resonance. Membership, it was explained, involved receiving our very own League membership card that detailed our personal connection to the intersection on the back. At a later date, we could attend a Swap Meet to meet other League members, collect the whole set of membership cards and exchange stories about the intersection.
Accepting the invitation, Salote and I were both asked to participate in a kind of initiation process. Firstly we listened to Jess sing a song from the Victorian Railway Institute – a men’s club with Masonic overtones who had gathered in halls above Flinders Street Station in the early 1900s – which, I supposed, was an example of a “resonance” they had found at the site. Next, we had our picture taken in the photo booth, to be printed on our membership card. Finally, we were asked to hum a tune into a voice recorder. It was explained that any tune was appropriate, so long as it was associated with what we felt was the resonance of the intersection.
This last request seemed baffling and nebulous, but taking inspiration from a nearby patch of graffiti that depicted a dinosaur with a speech bubble that said “So Lonely,” I obediently hummed the chorus of The Police’s song of the same name and had my photo taken.
It’s not easy to sell friendship
At an intersection that is characterised by a busy tram terminus and train station, a “Barnes Dance” pedestrian crossing, adult bookshops and fast food outlets, the League responded to their City of Melbourne brief by attempting to slow down the impersonal rush of human foot traffic and urging people to look, listen and engage more attentively with their surroundings. They highlighted the overlooked and made conscious our unexamined habits and routines in the area.
However, I couldn’t help feeling my date was an experience that was akin to window shopping. I wasn’t given any genuine or thought-provoking engagement with the “vibe” of the place or the people that move through it, beyond a superficial viewing of points of interest. I imagined Salote and I were like tourists who only had other tourists, Sarah and Jess, to show us around. We all lacked the insight of locals, a personal perspective outside of our experience from people who had a sustained knowledge of the space.
Please don’t get me wrong, I think the project was laudable. It opened up the space for non-object, process-based, site-specific practices to be supported as legitimate public art activities by city councils. I appreciate that it was a brave and exciting experiment that emerged and developed over time. Although there were tensions and uneasy compromises between council desires and artistic control (see Lucas Ihlein’s essay) the City of Melbourne Art and Participation program and the League of Resonance artistic team should be commended for attempting such a project.
As Lucas points out: “The working methods which underlie a project like this are not widely understood. This is hardly surprising – the artists of the League employ a set of processes which are still relatively novel additions to the toolbox of contemporary art.” As socially-engaged and participatory art of this type is arguably new and experimental, it is difficult to find an adequate criteria for measuring its success.
However, I want to begin a discussion about the League’s chosen strategy – making friends and going on dates – by observing a couple of crucial things. Firstly, the League of Resonance was a response to an agenda in the City of Melbourne’s commission, which as Lucas suggests, sought to instrumentalise art as a tool for social change at the intersection. The effect of this was, in part, to predetermine the tone of the project and prevent the League artists from enjoying complete creative autonomy. It’s likely the Council objectives that directed the project “to activate the space with positivity, romance and humour,” also obliged the League to employ a feel-good and ameliorative methodology.
Yet, is it possible that the League’s friendly and participatory model actually had the effect of excluding people? Observing the 70 members the League accrued over three months, it’s worth noting that a large proportion have been sourced from the League artists’ friends, family and interested members of the arts community. Which makes me wonder: what vibes were collected, whose resonance recorded? Is it only those who had the inclination to participate?
Connecting beyond that which we know
From my chats with Sarah, I got the impression that the League of Resonance did not have heaps of success in sourcing dates on the intersection. This might come as a surprise to LALA readers: I mean, who would turn down a free meal and the chance to chin wag with Sarah, Jess and Jason?
Talking to Sarah about the project, she described the experience of trying to involve people on the intersection as a harrowing cold-calling task that was as challenging as a Mormon’s attempt to peddle God to passers-by. In a revealing statement she claimed: “It’s not easy to sell friendship.”
Sarah explained that it was important for the League to involve people who would be meaningfully engaged and invested in the project. Although this makes sense when you require some time commitment to the artistic activities, perhaps this is a big ask in an area that has been singled out for its “bad vibe”? In a space like this there is no sense of pride in the surroundings, no desire for local connectedness. It’s a transitory point between more important destinations with little reason to linger, as is demonstrated by all the fast food that is available. As League Member no. 52, Rakesh, is quoted as saying on the back of his League card, “This is a place where people just get on with their jobs, you don’t really talk to each other here.”
I’d like to suggest then, that perhaps making friends and going on dates may not have been the best strategy to employ? To illuminate my point better I’d like to offer another example of a participatory project that struggled to attract a plurality and diversity of participants. Some years ago, I developed the project, Agents Of Proximity, for the 2008 Next Wave Festival with writer Victoria Stead. A localised, artist-run travel service based in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick,Agents Of Proximity, like League Of Resonance aimed to explore urban space via the stories and experiences of the people who shared it. It was an exploration of the ways in which the rituals and mindsets associated with travel could be applied to the streets we walk down daily and the places that we think we know.
In the months leading up to the 2008 Next Wave Festival, the Agents of Proximity took people from Brunswick on travels within their own neighbourhood. These tours usually involved two participants at a time, where one person took the other to their personal sites of significance in Brunswick. We documented the encounters through a series of postcards and the production of our Brunswick Travel Guide, which we launched during Next Wave.
Our starting point was our curiosity for the area – which we both called home – and a desire to explore it in ways that moved outside the normal social circles and circuits of bars and cafes where we spent our time. We specifically wanted to engage with people and places who were not normally part of our Brunswick experience, and give agency to others to do the same. We tried to attract participants to the project through a number of ways, including beginning with people we already knew and spreading out via word of mouth, posters and flyers. However, at the end of the project Victoria and I both felt we had only marginal success in attracting participants. Victoria reflected on this in an essay that accompanied our Travel Guide:
“It’s uncertain to what extent we succeeded in what we set out to do. In trying to traverse the myriad subjective experiences of this place where we live, the experiment we initiated was an ambitious one, perhaps more so than we realised when we began. After months of tramping through our suburb searching for participants, we have not succeeded in moving as far beyond our own worlds as we had hoped to do. Negotiating points of disconnect, though, is an unavoidable part of navigating the plurality of shared space. Tensions and disjunctures are always present within such spaces, essential even …
One night, many months ago we got talking to two men at the RSL on Sydney Rd. We were putting up fliers on the lamp post near the balcony where they were standing with their beers. They wanted to know what we were doing and we started trying to explain. They were bemused, mildly intrigued, but ultimately had no interest in participating in our “wanky art shit”. They did, however, talk to us at length about their experiences of Brunswick over the span of several decades …
We would have loved to have initiated a tour led by those men, through the Brunswick they knew. But ultimately they had better things to do than indulge us in our artistic meanderings, and we couldn’t really blame them. If nothing else, the fact they didn’t participate is testament to the limitations of our own experience; our own capacity to connect beyond that which we know.”
We wanted to open up possibilities for individual people to re-view and recreate the spaces in which they move. It was a nice idea, but only for people who were interested in doing so – those people who were like-minded and interested in “wanky art shit”. As Victoria observed, the barriers to human connection run deeper than the lack of opportunities to connect: “They are cultural, social, linguistic, emotional, aesthetic. Some of them are imposed; others are created and maintained through choice.”
Documenting disconnect
Perhaps, if the success of projects such as League Of Resonance and Agents of Proximity is to be judged on the participation of an extensive number and range of people, it could be argued that more time, or perhaps by more effective cajoling, would produce a ‘better’ work. Spending extra time in the site talking with the people who live, work and play there, may allow the trust and interest of a diverse range of participants to be gained. It could be argued too, that a project’s design and methodology should be more attuned and relevant to the targeted site.
However, I think the more interesting point here is that as live artists (as well as funding bodies and arts organisations) we shouldn’t assume that an open call-out for participation automatically results in inclusiveness, openness or an equal representation of a site or community. Often these methodologies attract a certain type of person – a like-minded coterie of people who have a common interest in art and social engagement. The selection and creation of a group of participants necessarily involves an inability to connect and inadvertent exclusion. This is as much a part of a participatory work as its moments of surprising engagement.
The concern is that many participatory projects only structure into the work the experience of connecting. They document just those people who were comfortable and eager to participate – and then attempt to claim that these contributions are a sufficient representation of a “vibe” or area. But what does not rate a mention are the points of disconnect – which are, arguably, as (if not more) thought-provoking and unpredictable as the moments of engagement the work attempts to facilitate. Surely it is these dead ends and failed moments of connection that tell you a more complex and interesting story about a place?
The task of involving people in our work is a worthy one. Perhaps we just need to engage people with greater sophistication and thematise these problems in the work – allowing for disconnection, fragmentation, friction and lack of interest to have an impact on the outcome.
Last weekend I went to Open Engagement in Portland Oregon USA.
The Open Engagement conference is an initiative of Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice MFA concentration. Directed and founded by Jen Delos Reyes and planned in conjunction with Harrell Fletcher and the Art and Social Practice students, this year’s conference features internationally renowned artists Julie Ault, Fritz Haeg, and Pablo Helguera. The work by these artists’ touch on subjects including democracy, group work, the boundary (or lack there of) between art and life, education, and transdisciplinarity.
This year’s Open Engagement sets out to discuss various perspectives on art and social practice. Through conversations, interviews, open reflection on experiences, and related projects created for or presented at the conference we will be looking at five themes that encompass ideas connected to social practice: Peoples and Publics, Social Economies, In Between Places, Tracking and Tracing, and Sentiment and Strategies
My experience of the conference was three solid days of listening to Artists from across the US discuss their work in relation to Social Practice, what it is, it’s history, it’s relation between art and activism, it’s role as ‘useful’ art, it’s parameters. I absorbed a lot; I am still processing it. As with all, festivals, conferences, symposiums etc, the people you meet, the new friends you make and the conversations you have can often affect your experiences and help shape perspectives and of course this is what happened to me. Rather than write about it, I wanted to share this with you as directly and as quickly as possible.
In an attempt to introduce you to some of the inspiring people I met, on the last day I recorded a series of short interviews with some of these people. The recordings are pretty raw, you will notice … Um..Um..Um… The stereotypical Ozzie ‘um’ is there way, way too much, forgive me, I was constantly being ‘glamoured ‘ by these dudes and often found myself lost for words.
I tried to keep each interview to a total of 15 minutes and asked questions that would give you a context, like what is social practice ( does it matter?) and what is Open Engagement…
I hope these recordings give you a glimpse into the nature of the conference, the content and work being discussed over the weekend.
Edie Tsong’s explorations in interactive portraiture have used traditional media as well as performance, facsimile, videoconference and plasticene. She has exhibited her works nationally and internationally including exhibitions at the Mattress Factory, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Time-Based Arts Festival, and April Meetings in Belgrade, Serbia. Tsong lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
3. Kelsie Nelson – Artist and new local Portland resident
4. Michelle Swineheart – PSU MFA Student
5. Joseph del Pesco and Christian Nagler
The aging of Social Practice and How to get to know your parents through political economy
Unfortunately our conversation had to be cut short, I have included what I have anyway because I found this research project fascinating, I want to know more and thought you might to.
Joseph del Pesco – An independent curator, art journalist, and perennial collaborator. While he’s organized projects and exhibitions for museums internationally, he has also disbursed artist grants, presented video programs in private homes, distributed posters and other ephemera through informal channels, and produced content for the internet.
Christian Nagler – Works as a writer/teacher in San Francisco. Recent work can be found in forthcoming issues of the journals Encyclopedia and Paul Revere’s Horse. He has been a resident at Millay and the Anderson Center, and has received a fellowship from the Wallace Foundation. He directs the Colima Project at San Francisco State University, a social practice project focused on immigration issues. He is currently working on a novel, a book of essays, and a series of performance texts.
Since Guy Debord and the situationists in the 1960′s, walking has been seen as a political act against urbanism or capitalism or as a more abstract poetic intervention into the rules and structure of the city environment.
Drawing together some walks by artists in the recent (and not so recent) past;
Performance Space’s 2011 series of ‘walks’ which you can see here includes Sarah Rodigari’s planned walk from Melbourne to Sydney. As she packs up her life and sells everything she owns, she will move to another city, by putting one foot in front of the other.
This is reminiscent of Marina Abromovic’s The Great Wall Walk (although without the drama of a partner walking the other way of course).
It is nice to see that some city governments are seeing the cultural benefits of not only walking but having artists lead this process, Rodigari, Jess Olivieri and Jason Maling’s recently completed project under the auspices of the City of Melbourne, the League of Resonance conducted personalised intimate tours around the urban space (amongst other events).
And in Los Angeles which is a rampant car city is an interesting approach to this issue, literally showing people what is out there. Another side of LA is opened up by Will Self in a documentary called Obsessed with Walking, where he does some crazy things like walking from LAX airport to his city hotel.
And finally another one from Ms Rodigari – Excursion with Eels from Visible City 2010.
1. Find the longest way to leave
2. Announce your dramatic departure to be sure there’s no turning back.
3. Sell everything you’ve spent the last ten years collecting on eBay so that you can afford ultra-light, warm, waterproof hiking equipment that you will only use this once.
4. Source redundant road maps, scaled 1:2500 and pin them to the wall across from your bed. Spend hours planning the flattest and most direct route, and then acknowledge that it’s probably best to just follow the train line.
5. Romanticise solitude and anticipate loneliness, invite everyone to join you.
Dear Everyone,
I am writing this in the hope that you will read it and decide to join me on my walk at some point.
On Saturday June 4, I will be leaving Melbourne and moving home to Sydney, on foot. I will walk four hours a day, more or less and it will take me two months, more or less. Most times I will camp, sometimes I will have to stay in a motel or if I’m lucky enough, someone, like you or a friend of yours will take me in for the night (I like pets).
I will be following the train line so it is easy to meet me. You can walk for a day, you can stay the night, you can walk again the next day and longer. There is room in my tent but you’re better off bringing your own, as well as food (for me too, I’m vegetarian) and please dress for the weather.
To join me, email: strategies@strategiesforleavingandarrivinghome.com with the date or dates you are thinking of and we can arrange a place and time to meet. For further information please see strategiesforleavingandarrivinghome.com
Field Theory was dreamed up by a group of artists with varying interests and practices.
It is fair to say that all of us are interested in different ways in which to engage people in experiences of meaning. If that sounds a bit vague it is because the actual parameters of the work that we have carried out is so broad and does not follow a simple and easily definable pattern. If one was to look at what we have created separately in the past year, (beyond the Field Theory funding model) it would look something like this;
- researching an underwater choral work about coral
- undergoing a year long investigation into what it takes to be an expert
- directing an 11 artist collaborative project which yielded 40 new works in 3 weeks
- creating a socially engaged project with the City of Melbourne to enliven/activate an area of the CBD for a transient local community
- creating an interactive tug-of-war on a train
And that’s just a couple of the projects.
SO with such a wide variety of interests what is it that has brought us together to create Field Theory?
Field Theory is an alternative funding model, an attempt to try to enable the type of projects that we are interested in to continue and thrive. It came about through a filtering of discussion around how to fund a project like Jason Maling’s three year The Vorticist. Funding bodies are not set up for an ongoing or iterative project like this and we are not artists who can claim triennial funding or the like.
The main differences to those projects are that we maintain curatorial control over the artists that are selected to be funded. The reason for this is that we want to engage in a more personal or intimate exchange with the community that are supporting the projects.
Each supported artist is asked (in return for the $5000 that they will receive for their project) that they will send one gift to every Field Theory member (The Field Theory organisers assist with the sending of the gift). This then cements the economy of exchange that will be built up over the period of the membership.
TO our surprise (delight and consternation) there were some very enthusiastic Field Theory members who once they had given their $100 to the cause then also wanted to come and be in every work and support in other ways. Part of our theory was that there was a crowd of people out there who were eager to take part in some activities that were art related and we were correct, however we were not ready for the response and this presented a challenge to us.
If we are to throw open the doors to people having a stake in a work then how far does this go? In films when there are large funders or backers for a project there is some influence these fat cats will have. What about the thin cats of live art funding? What is the rate of exchange for Field Theory?
I guess this is something we will continue to investigate as we move forward into our second year.
We are a few weeks away from completing the final Field Theory project for its first year. Very soon after that we will put the call out for the next years members. Please stay tuned to the Field Theory website over the next month.
Three things have happened in the last month that I think will forward the discussion around Live Art in the country and region…
The first is Visible City, I won’t go into it as I was intimately involved in the project and it really is for others to speak or write about in more depth once they get their heads around it. The archive of the work is here. Over the next few weeks I will be uploading the audio from the two Salons which took place as part of the project – the first around the topic of Live Art in Australia the second around criticality and rigour in Live Art. These discussions were recorded by Sally Ann McIntyre (NZ) and are a great resource for all.
The second thing is that Jason Maling’s piece Inbetweenness has been selected to appear in Live Art Almanac Volume 2, this is a great coup for Jason and also for lala which is where it was ‘published’. It is great to see some local content in that UK publication. We will let you know when it finally rolls off the presses!
The third is that after a year of going it alone I have decided to open out the editorial team of lala to other voices, more varied practices and to other cities. So I would like to welcome Sarah Rodigari. Jen Jamieson and Amy Spiers to lala and look forward to their contributions and broadening of the dialogue and criticality of the blog. I will give links and biogs to them in a small moment…stay tuned.
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