Monday, January 15, 2007
Edited Discussion transcription for Hue +Cry
I'm actually going to try and post the script as a comment 'cos it's MEGA and that way there'll be lee scrolling to get to other important posts. This is what I've sent to Chloe at Hue+Cry just now because of deadlines but I've said I want the OK from you lot first. I've removed the names of who said what and cut and pasted a little, let me know what you think...
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The Association of Collaboration: A Work in Process
The Association of Collaboration is an art project currently consisting of seven participants who meet on a regular basis to critically discuss collaborative processes and frameworks. As a member of the group it is my intention that this writing will reflect the process of working collaboratively. The following excerpt is an edited discussion transcription from one of our recent meetings:
The colour of the trolley, the hosts and the manning, the multiples cabinet, title, the 100-word bio, the audio-track and availability…
I would like to do a bit of a critique of the actual work that we plan to do, for example if someone could explain to me: I don’t know why exactly we are doing a flowchart, why that’s our response to the show? I thought that if we had the chance to explain the work clearly then we could also use it as an opportunity to write that down and use that for our blurb because I’ve been explaining it to a lot of people just for practice really, and also to get some feedback. And I found it’s actually a really hard thing to talk about and it’s really hard for people to understand what it’s all about. I guess the other question I had is what is each person’s role in the collaboration and how do we see the collaboration working at the moment?
So has anyone got experience with agendas and what should go first?
You go with what’s most important first because that’s when your brain’s freshest.
Does someone want to be the keeping an eye on the time person? and hurrying us along when we get off-track?
Yea I can do that I’m in front of the clock. How many flow-charts have we got and do people want me to photocopy them so that we can look at everyone’s at the same time?
I don’t want mine photocopied
Does someone want to be taking minutes?
I will yep
I found it really difficult to do, I think the linear fashion of it really confused me and so then I ended up needing to do 2 flow charts, but then they kind of overlapped each other at the same time and then I just couldn’t do it and then I just wrote a central thing and
Mind-mapping
Yea, and also YES and NO things: sometimes I wanted to ask a question that didn’t have a yes or no answer and that’s how flow-charts work eh?
They’re very binary aren’t they? Is the binary structure problematic?
Should we talk about the purpose of them maybe? What we’re hoping to achieve? I thought the idea was to clarify some questions that we approach art with and we thought might be useful for other people to use as a way of getting the most out of Prospect, is that the basic idea?
I think the thing we started with was thinking about a help desk and then we were thinking about the differences between that and what the hosts do and then thinking it would be good, rather than us telling people what the answers were, you know rather than being oh what IS it? THIS is what it is…
Prescriptive
Prescriptive, the idea of the flow-charts was to try and give people a tool to empower them to you know to encourage people or whatever to do their own thing
I understand that a bit clearer now, but I wondered how people coming to our station and asking questions and looking at our information… how is that a collaboration? I mean an outside collaboration, for the visitors coming to our stall?
Isn’t the idea that they will then change the flowchart or submit their own and they will be able to feedback into that system?
I didn’t realise that
So they can take the flowchart and go, ‘Rubbish that point’s crap!’ and there would be a vivid available and it would be laminated and they could write on it and then that would be processed and reproduced and put back out and the flow-charts would change over the time of the exhibition, that’s the way I understood it
That’s a good idea with the vivids cos that’s really easy
And we can just re-photocopy it
And that way it would end up being a collaboration between people who came on Tuesday and people who visited on Thursday
And the person on thursday might say no I think that’s wrong and change it back
So kind of cumulative but not because it’s going back and forth
I really like the idea of it being an open collaboration but I just wondered whether in its current format…will people do that? I’m just fearful that it won’t be, its not that our biggest problem is the colour of the trolley but whether or not people will feel
Engaged
The need to engage or whether in fact the engagement is the driving force and so I think that hosts and maybe something else can be really key to getting that involved. I wonder if we could do a briefing with the hosts?
We could definitely email them, it’s quite hard logistically to meet with all of them because there are quite a few of them and they get information packs at the beginning of each season as well, we could include something
Are we talking about the hosts as potential collaborators or facilitators?
I was thinking of them more as facilitators, they could actually be in another part of the gallery with the flow-charts cause I know that hosts don’t get much of a chance to interact and sometimes you want to and sometimes you don’t- but it could be a critique of the actual system. We need to thoroughly work out all those ways in which we’re critiquing the institution
We’re kind of covering the hosting thing and manning it now, but do we want to finish up with this and get back to our point of order? I was just thinking we nearly said something which was quite concise, between the two of you guys about what the purpose of the project is:
So its basically working within the format of a survey exhibition the context is quite important
I thought that the purpose or the function of the flow-charts was to provide a tool in order to provide some clarity and questions that maybe pertinently are looking at contemporary art specifically in prospect but also in general
So the important words are TOOL, CLARIFY… what else?
I’ve got the words empower and encourage
What’s the word… EQUIP, ‘cause its like taking up tools or something
Yea encouraging people to do their own thinking about what the artworks mean or what the connections between the artworks are rather than being told, oh ‘This is This’
Non-prescriptive
And a way of drawing associations between works, yea I think the key is that we’re not providing a wall text or a curatorial statement about the work, or even asking artist where the work’s coming from, because all that stuff gets really samey
It’s also about encouraging those audiences to expand their thinking around the works I think
What I started doing with my flowchart was thinking about works of art that I have really not liked at all, and just mapped what went through my head. I think it’s quite interesting what actually goes through people’s heads.
So the 100 words, is it incorporating a complaint reaction, not just an appreciation reaction?
We have to be quite careful then with the adjectives, if we’re going to write ENCOURAGE and EQUIP, that connotes a positive response I reckon
We are also operating in a slightly subversive way in what we’re trying to do. It’s a bit like others have spent all this time working on artwork and we just come in and use our analysis, ‘Y’know like, we’re all art professionals, so, y’know, we can offer you the alternate version, y’know?!”
Or the ‘real’ version
Yea that’s a critique that I can think of myself and I think that we all need to use our own critical voices here with the work.
I’ve been thinking that maybe there could be flow-charts that are more for us as well. Maybe how sometimes people look at works and are thinking about them in terms of their monetary value, the material value and the artworks value. A lot of people approach work that way and that’s really weird. And I wondered if we asked all the artists in the show to tell us how much they got paid for making the work and exposing an institutional system that way could be kind of interesting
Would there be variations over the show between et al and TAC and Steve Carr in the corner? Or would it all be that flat $150?
It seems farcical I don’t know
I like that idea of exposure of the framework
It needs to have a real difficulty built into it because I think it is a difficult kind of a work and if its just framed as like ‘hey we’re just to here to help out’ it just becomes very much like we’re blameless, I think we need to be a little bit more gritty
Yea it’s a very polished front isn’t it? You’ve got the hosts and you’ve got your information and everything’s beautiful, but there’s a whole load of crap that’s gone on behind that where the artist hasn’t rung the curator back and they’ve been a pain in the arse and whatever
Yea and, ‘That’s not the work I wanted in the first place and now I’m pissed off because you haven’t done what you said you’d do!’
Yea and I wonder whether that’s part of what we should be documenting, the actual process, the difficulties we’ve had in our actual process, of just like now going, ‘Fuck! We’ve got a week and a half!’ and all of that stuff, cause that’s the stuff that no one ever sees
I feel like what we’re doing is operating in between the art and the people, that we’re making an intervention in that interaction. And maybe it will be a facilitation or maybe it will just be a complication
I think its kind of a rebellious act to be just sitting in the gallery, I just imagine, I mean I’m going to be sitting I’m not going to be standing in gallery hopefully on some kind of deckchair or something
With a Pina Colada in your hand!
So we’re the artists, we’re actually physically in the gallery, which is different, and kind of checking people out and checking things out. That feels a bit naughty just in itself in a way
I think in terms of getting gallery hosts on board there is this kind of mythological thing that happened in the City Gallery, where Paula Savage came downstairs one day and found a gallery host behind the desk sitting on a chair and reading a magazine. So she took away the chair from behind the desk, and nobody was allowed to sit behind the desk ever again. So we could get the gallery hosts on board by saying, ‘Okay we want you to sit down in this space and we want you to not be so concerned about whether or not a kid is eating the popcorn. We want you to be more concerned about taking to that person that comes in the door…’
The Association of Collaboration is made up of a range of Wellington based artists and art professionals. To this date they have participated in Every Now, and Then (29 November- 16 December 2006) curated by Melanie Oliver for Enjoy Public Art Gallery. Their next inclusion will be in Prospect 2007, City Gallery Wellington.
Andrea Bell is an arts writer currently based in Wellington and a member of the TAC.
I really like it! - i can hear everyones voices as the comments are said! I like your decision to omit the speakers names - it emphasises the collective cause.
The paragraphs surrounding: "the 'real' version" need a bit of further clarification.
Perhaps someone who wasn't at the meeting or in TAC could repond to its overall coherency from a readers perspective?
See you at the meeting :)
Hey I like it too, feels like a collective voice and seems to sound like us. Good on ya. Like how you picked out words too.
Just heard back from Chloe and she loves it, thinks it's very funny (in a good way she assures me) so all that's left now is for us to send her the images. I've told her I'll try and email them to her on Friday after we've made our final vote assuming the online image dimensions won't need to be re-formatted to email, sweet!
I have just printed this out to take home for a wee read as it is quite long.
the bits i've read are funny, interesting but it think needs a little refinining in the name of readability and clarity. i've got the reader in mind.
i am happy to help out with a second eye edit if you want andie and everyone agrees.
i don't want to lose our natural voices, so have to be carefull but editing is one of my fav things.
xp
hey, this is a really interesting piece of writing, i like the way you seek to describe but not too diligently, and let things explain themselves to a certain extent. i would agree with paula that it needs a bit of tidying up, and a bit of an edit here and there. the introduction sets a tone which doesn't seem to follow on. it is a bit disjunctive. but really entertaining, and i think captures the tone of our meetings......
paula yes i'd love you to edit it if you wanna! I've got to send it to chloe on friday if you can edit it by then that'd be great, thanks!
Hey guys,
I really like this text! Editing is cool but don't make it too tidy...
Good work!
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