Future Perfect conference blog

What can we do with all our healthy cynicism of regeneration? To what extent are we able or willing to put ourselves, jobs, reputations or funding on the line when it comes to acting upon these criticisms of bad regeneration? It seems many of us are trying to find our voices in a messy process of complicity.

Malcolm Miles in his closing remarks referred to how a ‘free society’ could not be designed but has to be continually remade by its members. Claire Doherty referred to the ‘empty gestures’ of a new kind of orthodoxy of commissioned self-reflexive art projects consisting of endless workshops and open-ended questions that remain as promises of action, sanctioned conversations and performed protests – where artists and curators are role-playing the researchers/fieldworkers. Doherty calls for a return to the ‘remarkable encounter’, to projects that ‘blow your socks off’; spectacles that reshape the way people come together due to something awe-inspiring and unexpected.

‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on’ (Samuel Beckett, 'The Unnamable', 1953).How do we continue, why do we continue? It seems inevitable that time frames are stretched way beyond the original block of time allocated and budgeted for. Because of our ‘commitment’ (to what?) there is a desire to spill over and carry on just that little bit longer. This is natural, if we like something/one we want to stick to it. But this is work as life and so it’s complicated. We squeeze our process-based, collective, evolving practices into programmes of ‘projects’ with beginnings, middles and ends. This professional approach allows for budgets to be drawn up and people to be paid. And we need paying if we pursue this activity as a career.

Art in regeneration has become a professional creative industry that keeps justifying the value of art in regeneration in order to keep the industry going. And yet some of the practices that are being developed through regeneration areas are rooted in patterns of thought and action that run counter to top-down development. How do we deal with these dilemmas in practice?

Are the time-consuming (long or short term) programmes of (‘off site’) art projects that are carefully and sensitively rolled out by arts organisations across the land destined to be initiated in places by people who don’t live there, arriving uninvited (it can work better that way, apparently), docking on to a perceived need, trying to find a use, perhaps trying too hard in a desperate attempt to provoke and/or be liked? Or is there a chance that things start happening the other way round, that unofficial, uncommissioned, unpredictable initiatives are encouraged and flourish through the support of a critical mass of artists, curators and arts organisations? Of course, that might put all our careers in the art and regeneration industry in jeopardy as we discover we’re not needed in the way we thought we were. At what times is our work imposed, invited, responsive and/or pro-active?

Photograph of a quote by Gandhi being used on a hoarding in the City: Be the change you want to see in the world

As artists, arts organisations, curators, educators and programmers we are busying ourselves worrying about how we fit in, or not, what we are giving and what are we taking from the communities we are temporarily inhabiting/passing through. We are tourists, paid to make connections, pave the way for others to discover places, talk to locals, plant roots in a community and get a real sense of the place. We like it so much we think we could live here. But then we’d have to be tourists elsewhere. The circles we swim in don’t like to commission ‘local’ artists. We can’t risk going local. We’d be out of a job, or at least, this kind of job.

The more voices, the more conflictual the collective experience will be. Who is talking and who is listening in this process? Does this result in a cacophony of sound which might be beautiful to listen to but difficult to decipher (as we try to balance the poetry with the politics)? Is there an element of self-censorship in these acts of participation? How do we avoid ironing out the tensions, conflicts and criticisms in an attempt at producing something clearly audible?

‘We are living in interesting times’ (Iain Sinclair)
‘We are living in dangerous times’ (Malcolm Dickson)

Urgency

There is a sense of urgency to capture alternative histories, unheard of moments, discrete actions and playful encounters. We are (self) mythologizing in a never-ending cycle, keen to find the next new, unheard of off-the-map experience in order to incorporate it into a new narrative that desperately tries to be relevant yet alternative enough to be just out of the grasp of the Grand Narrative of Big Business and Regeneration.

There is also a sense of urgency in terms of just getting on with it. There is work to be done. The dominance of an artist-centred commissioning model (invite artist to make work in location X after a period of research and see what happens, within reason) is overshadowing other significant approaches which take their lead from urgent human concerns and are trying to do something about these in different ways (presented in the work of Street Level Photoworks and Febrik, for example). These approaches are not concerned with art being instrumentalised during the regeneration process, or retaining an element of autonomy, thanks to the buffer zone created by education curators who work hard to protect the artist from the harmful rays of instrumentalism. These practitioners want to be useful. Their art is instrumental, that’s the point.

There is, however, a professionalised system in place where artists are selected to produce publics. The process has become formalised and recognised, a badge of approval from a gallery or commissioning agency that adds a notch to your bedpost and allows you to move on to the next commission. At times the art is the most important to you and at other times your social conscience gets the better of you. Sometimes these are the same thing and there is no distinction.

There is a desire to be useful and effect change, but on whose terms? Part of this process is about making available and redistributing the information artists and curators manage to get their hands on during all that research they are doing in areas of regeneration.

http://tacticalplay.blogspot.com/

Invisibility

Invisibility could be used as a strategy to effect change ‘off the radar’ to avoid co-option by developers. Clare Cumberlidge suggested that if you want to effect change, the less visible you might have to be but that this might be difficult for cultural organisations that require visibility. But invisibility also implies you/the work won’t be seen and taken notice of, which is kind of important if you want to effect change. There is a contradiction between the desire to hide and to celebrate. As we incorporate the ‘invisible’ into a well-designed narrative, no matter how informal, fictional or low key, the aesthetisisation of the place/people/issue can become a red flag to the developers. What/who are we hiding from and what are we hiding from others? What are the ethical considerations of our duplicitous acts?

Just say no?

Are we destined to develop covert operations within the agendas of regeneration that we might have some moral and political qualms about? But, hey we need the money, let’s take it and see what we can do with it. It might provide an amazing opportunity and something unexpected might crop up…

Pure Imagination

There is an assumption that alternative stories, maps and plans are needed and the artists imagination can unlock these unknown, slightly out of reach dreams. We seem to be investing a lot in the power of dreams and the potential world changing effects our imaginations can bring. If we remain in the land of dreams and imagination, though, how effective can we be? Or is the point that this enables us to believe in ourselves more, which has a knock on effect on how we act in the world? Art projects should / do produce agency and new subjectivities. Individual agency is social commitment (as Paul Domela reminded us). I believe in this but I also have the uneasy feeling that we could be talking about a car advert.

Conflictual places

I don’t think we can assume that there is any neutrality to our research or practices (as individuals or institutions). It is perhaps arrogant to assume an autonomous position that floats above other agendas. I want to hear more about how you negotiate these agendas and how you encourage and deal with the inherent conflicts you find in your work. When were your own assumptions, preconceptions and understandings last challenged and what did you do about it?

I was wondering, what will you go home with today? What about your concerns? How will you deal with these big questions when you go back to work on Monday?

There are so many questions I want to ask you. What role do you as/and your institution play in all of this? For example, how will you negotiate the pressure to lead your participants like pied pipers back to your galleries?

Caricatures of the artist that I thought you had left behind are alive and well. Are you really that interested in perpetuating the myth of the artist as bandit and tormented outsider?

You seem obsessed with pointing out obvious things that people are doing anyway, creating a methodology around this, formalising, redesigning or rewriting, and then presenting slicker, shinier, grown up/younger versions back to people to use.

I’m tempted to grab you and shake you and scream, ‘just get on with it! Don’t wait for permissions, awards, applications, programmes or invitations’. But how can you pursue this anarchic approach within the context of your funded-addicted art organisations?

While you might be committed to developing and supporting actively vocal participants with agency, that might not be what your funders or local authorities want. A vocal, articulate citizen is a pain in the arse. I wanted to ask you, how do you deal with that?
What space is there for the communities you work with to contest and contradict the values you are imposing on them as artists and institutions? Do you listen to that and change your practices as a result? Or are you too arrogant to listen?

 

Sophie Hope, Staged protest at the gates of Het Reservaat, a community performance, 2006-2007, commissioned by Beyond, Netherlands (Sign reads art is useless)

 

There is no autonomy! Just because you don’t have a label or brand attached to your event / product / project, it doesn’t mean you are without an agenda, value system or position of power. It is not easy to find a (political, social, cultural) position and this will inevitably change as you find things out and meet more people, but please be honest with me if you expect me to trust you. You might not have decided what your position is before you ‘start’ a project, but you already have preconceptions, motivations and agendas. You do not arrive as, or into, a blank canvas. But you don’t need me to tell you that.

There is a dominance of the participatory model of commissioning artists to work with people and co-create something but what are the other ways of working? Please keep inventing new ways of trying stuff out. Continue to surprise me!

How does all this relate to gallery education and the organisations you are working in/for/with? What role does engage play in this? Can you take a position as facilitator of a process? Or do you, as artist and institution, have to learn to step back?

When is it good to be pointless (performers) and when can we be useful (in the ‘real’ world)? Sometimes it is useful to be pointless and pointless to be useful. The difference between what you say you’re going to do and what you actually do can be disappointing and also an opportunity. When can we apply humour and irony and when is it time to be serious and sincere?

I’d like to thank you for sharing your critical distinctions, languages, values, certainties and misgivings about art and regeneration with me. Let’s keep exchanging ways of getting stuff done whilst reminding each other that there’s always another way of looking at things.