At long last...Two-fold documentation shots

Trolley storage

Hi guys,

We couldn't cover everything in the meeting and I forgot that we need to discuss storage of the trolley. All great ideas about reusing it but all still involve it being stored in Tyree's space until next Feb! She is doing lots of work at home and really needs the space. It's urgent and I am getting hassled!! Any ideas??

Assessment of Prospect

I've been thinking about the necessity of assessing TAC's activity in Prospect in order that me may move onto greener pastures with clear directives, awareness of successes and failures and evident focuses. I don't know if the Wellington meeting of TAC has gone ahead or any discussion has been had a about this?

I thought that since we are all now spread around corners of the globe, one way to collect and assess would be to draw up a number of questions to which each TAC member could respond (perhaps by using the email system). After this we could analyse, assess, see if there are any similarities or wild discrepancies in our responses.

I also thought that these written responses could also partially be used in future documentation of process and potentially some of it could even be re-worked for the toolkit if we decide that is something we want to go ahead with.

A few questions I had thought of so far were:

1. At what stage did you feel most comfortable with TAC's processes?
2. How effective did you feel the trolley project was in engaging with a community wider than the art community?
3. If you could have changed a process in the development of the trolley project, what would you have changed? Why?

ps Best title award goes to Sian for title previous to this one :)

CAMRU home?

Hi all,

So just another practical thing to think about. CAMRU is currently housed in our church / studio space. We have positioned her in a corner so she is taking up the minimum of space.......but it still is rather a lot of space. I am conscious that the corner is in Tyree's workspace and she is making lots more work in there at the moment.

I guess we need to consider a more long term solution ie storage or dismantlement or gift or sale or?! I am loathe to dismantle it after all the work, but I also can't store it indefinately. Perhaps we could consider some other uses for it?

One thing I had wondered was if it could be used as something to do with the Fringe Festival? Very vague ideas at the moment, but I just know that is a really public and outdoor event where it reaches lots of non art audiences................

Could it be somehow used to gather information or be a public beacon for finding out about people's collaborative thoughts / experiences? Could it be the locus for launching a booklet?!

X Sian

Thoughts from Kassel...

Dear TAC,

Sorry for my lack of communication and input for the last while – I feel particularly bad since what I have been doing lately is quite related to CAMRU - but I am now in a better position to contribute again. (In case you’re not sure where I disappeared to, I am currently in Kassel, Germany working as part of the art mediation team of documenta 12. With the particular focus on Education for documenta and the efforts of the team coordinators to encourage innovative formats for guiding tours and special projects, I’ve been learning and involved with attempts to provide more dialogical educative models within the exhibition.)

So, yes Andie I would love to share my experiences but I'm not sure what is relevant - do you have any specific questions?? Actually, the 3rd documenta magazine themed on Education is now available and perhaps you could find this in Melbourne but the articles are also all available online...

I feel like I can’t really evaluate how the programme is working yet and whether this has been successful, but when I first arrived we heard from some interesting art education theorists and one project in particular was very similar to that of us with CAMRU- it was by Anna Zosik entitled ‘Hannah Arendt Denkraum’ as part of an exhibition held in Berlin (October to November 2006). She basically set up a room in the middle of this group show where people were encouraged to respond in ways similar to CAMRU – she edited responses a little more but really had the same difficulties and results as us… the guards got really into it, people took active ownership of the space, and it took on a life of its own.

The art mediation team is actually part of a research project by Carmen Moersch who is writing her PhD on art mediation and trying to progress this in Germany in relation to UK based models.

Okay, perhaps I can write more on this soon, but love to you all,
M xx

Tim's article for MOB now finished

Hello dears,
Tim's article on collaboration featuring TAC, Rachael Rakena & Brett Graham, and Nova Paul is finsished and you will find it in the TAC gmail account.
Check it out, it is interesting to see what he quoted from us in the final version!
x p

success and failure

Hey guys I just thought maybe we should take some time to reflect on what we consider to be our successes and failures so far...

SUCCESSES:
How things worked out with Heather and Sarah, the way they were open to our unsolicited roomsheets,and the inclusion of visitors' post it notes in the catalogue, etc. The way we allowed for a previously silent audience to participate in art dialogue and discourse alongside the curator. (Limits to this: censorship, not totally democratic-we chose some voices over others, CAMRU initiated dialogue still contained and framed within wider prospect curatorial discourse)
Public response in terms of volume of feedback/post its.

POTENTIAL ISSUES/FAILURES?
criticisms in Artbashthe catalogue and the listener- eg our work was patronising (to an art informed audience) are these points that we want to address? How? Can our work be aimed at these people?
Levels of participation by TAC members- we all have had different availability-working together long distance etc
Misconceptions that TAC is a liz/Enjoy project

Any thoughts? Maybe some other issues came up back on the day of the artist talk?

xA

Handing Over the Responses to City Gall

yo, how's the collab group hanging??
we're giving the little colourful notes to sarah farrah, so she and her helpers can put them in the back pockets of the prospect catalog, as we discussed as a group a wee while ago.
we have only selected responses that related to the Prosect show (in any way) poetic, negative, illustrations, praise, the lot!! we thought that this would be an alright way of selecting the ones to document, and we have kept all the scores of other ones too.
i'll be sad to see some of them go, but they have all had the opportunity to be seen on the trolley or the wall or written about or collated. we have also scanned or photgraphed them all for CAMRU records before sending then to sarah.
liz and i just spent a wee while collating the responses that were still in wellington, many had just come off the trolley in the last few weeks.

can mel and tom please bring to wellington the ones tht they have been sent? we can give those ones striaght to sarrah as they've already been photographed.

word, p

andies response collation

here is Andies contribution that she emailed thru from the responses she was sent. please post your comments and i will turn it into a template to make photocopied exhibition notes from once we have got the go ahead. x p

“Words and thoughts are pointless”

If the above is true, then what use is any attempt to facilitate engagement and critical dialogue in an art gallery? There have been many disillusioned responses with the way New Zealand contemporary art has been presented in Prospect 2007, with the efforts of the Association of Collaboration proven to be no exception. However, self-reflexivity and evaluation are fundamental to our interests, thus every scribbled post-it note has been processed, and we’d like to share some of these thoughts, ideas and feelings with you…

-I’ve never been more bored. Prospect has become mundane, predictable, tired, blasé, indifferent, incompetent, unencouraging. This work could be from the seventies, that work could be a repetition of that work, and this work could be a regurgitation of every work ever made. You could have saved time by putting a pile of FLASHART magazines in the foyer…

The Contemporary Art Mobile Response Unit supported a profusion of responses, though some felt their words were falling on deaf ears…

-You can say its rubbish as much as you like-they will still do it again next year. Proof that institutions just don’t listen unless you say what they want to hear.

The Contemporary Art Mobile Response Unit not only encouraged responses to the artwork but also inspired visitors to engage with one another’s responses

-You are allowed to say, “I don’t like it” and not have to explain yourself
-It’s not that you don’t like it, it’s that you don’t understand it or vice versa? (as Mrs V my 7th form art history teacher often used to say)

Other criticisms centred on the didactic nature of contemporary art survey shows

-Just because you use big words, doesn’t mean that what you think about art is more important, or even relevant. Art is for enjoyment, not for being a pompous ass over.

Some felt intimidated by the pressure to make spontaneous and insightful comments on the spot

-I think my own thoughts are becoming less clear... I am fading with every exhibit

While others used humour to make sense of their experience

When I went to the toilet after seeing the show I felt I might be in an installation…

If nothing else, on viewing Prospect 2007, perhaps some left with a new appreciation for contemporary art.

The Life of CAMRU

I made a visit to the ol' City Gallery today to take CAMRU some more pads, pencils and pins and thought I would do a little report back for those of us that can't wander down the road to see it!
Since its outing with the sheep CAMRU has been parked back in the original installation spot, next to the comments wall. As always, not long after its 'denuding', I found it filled up again with comments and drawings. It was looking a little disshevelled, as sometimes happens after a busy weekend and especially in the current school holidays - I also found a heap of fantastic kids drawings both on the trolley and pinned low down on the comments wall.
Polly (the very fantastic full time security assistant) asked if she could have CAMRU in her gallery (contemporary abstraction) for the rest of the show. She tells me she really likes having something to do in the quiet times, and promised that she could keep it tidy (but not too tidy so as no one would think they could use it) and let visitors know they could write things, and where the wall is for pinning their comments up. So that's great news for us, and thanks to Polly for her care. We moved it into gallery one and she chose a park in the centre of the room, just to the left as you walk in.
I have had heaps of positive feedback from the gallery hosts, who have really enjoyed watching the comments growing and changing over the weeks. Lots of them are particularly impressed by one gallery visitor, who I am told stayed for a couple of hours building a very sophisticated pencil sculpture, which he then attatched to the comments wall with the help of a gallery host. Its quite an addition, with postit note eyes and long snaky body it looks like a stationary cupboard taniwha.
Most of the folders are now also housing relevant audience responses, and there has been a handfull of flow charts filled in, often in really lateral, sometimes insightful and amusing ways.
The TAC roomsheets are sitting on the fold out desk, looking quite the part and adding some weight (and more humour) to our orange experiment. I am now wondering whether it would be better to print your roomsheet now Tom, rather than wait for the next batch of Andies. It is a good way to communicate to the audience how we see the project rounding out and your summaries are really spot on, I can see those trends continuing with the current responses and it would be good to have recognition of that on CAMRU before the show ends so the audience could potentially respond to response themes. Prospect finishes in two weeks!!!
There is a whole lot more to be said, and a whole box of responses which I have taken away to sort through (Paula, Sian and I are catching up on Wednesday so perhaps we can do that then yes?), but I am a little bleary eyed at the end of my day and think I better stop before I stop making sense... I will report before I go that Et al. has packed down further to the national interest and turned off her gallery spotlights, leaving the gear tidily in the corner and a brown taped out border on the floor - quite a sombre composition. I must say I miss the audio track which had become strangely soothing... I really have to go now!

Tim Wong interviews TAC here!

Consensus reached - onwards through interview process. TAC : Remember to use the association's login for commenting, and that all contributions are up for grabs for quoting. Tim: Look forward to your questions, and resulting writing!

Below is an anonymous comment gleaned from CAMRU that I thought might add something to the conversation
click on image to see larger view.
x p

New members wrapping up CAMRU

I been thinking and I reckon we should think about inviting some new members to the group. Online is good but it would also be great to have some more peeps in welly. And I wonder whether we should just be quite open in who it is or select? And when we should start looking if we decide we do want to, cos what is our next project....what more do we want to do with the CAMRU info and would new people be interested in that or should we do collating etc ourselves and then invite new people to a new project?

My suggestions are that at the end of the show we do what we have done for the room sheets; ie document the responses and sort them into groups and condense them into an appropriate format. And then they could be made into a document or part of the kit or an online thing.

Then we look for new people who are interested in researching other collaborative structures, to move forward with the kit.

RE the kit; is this still something we want to do? Who do we think the audience is? How much information do we already have which we can use for it ? ( I think we have quite a lot and that we could use making the kit as a kind of debrief session which we had discussed before ie we could all write down what we think has worked well adn not so well in our group and this could start to form part of the kit.)

Personally I have to admit I am all about the art. I am not that interested in going to talk to other groups about thier structures. i am interested in collaboration in an art context and how it works in terms of authorship, ownership, how the magic still gets to happen which so often happens in solitary confinement of the studio........why collaboration is currently important / trendy / contemporary..............all that kind of stuff. Perhaps we would be able to look at areas which interest each of us?

But I do think we have a lot of info already which we haven't put down in terms of how the process has worked for us which we could start by using.

Hmm. What do others think?!

X S

City gallery publication

Hi huys,

Just read the gmail account and they wanna put our popcorn room sheet in the print publication. Sounds like a good plan to me...no cost to us; they will print. Everyone keen? Sounds like we all need to agree adn let them know ( as usual ) asap

X S

p.s. a few days later Liz logged into post and uploaded new roomsheet, above. Click to view at larger size - L

TAC reviews

hey guys
just thought since we're constantly re-evaluating our practice i'd cut and paste a comment from (din din din) artbash!

"My point about participants using language that is concise is an important one, for Bagnall's project has relational aspects. It is makes good sense that it is part of a partnership with Enjoy Public Gallery. CSC has similarities with the current work in Telecom Prospect by The Association of Collaboration, a seven person group linked to Enjoy that interacts with visitors to City Gallery. Again the problem is what is the desired result apart from touchy-feely vibes? Having visitors sticking little memo pad notes on the gallery wall is not a super smart method of encouraging sophisticated discourse. It is skimpy and shallow. There needs to be a lot more than fragmented and unfocussed chat for its own sake. If art is now 'post-production' and moving from 'goods' to 'services', those 'services' need to be thoroughly thought through in terms of the desired results. That is the problem for TAC and CSC."

http://www.artbash.co.nz/article.asp?id=982

maybe this is something we can discuss later

xxA

Interview Request

hey all, a place holder post for possible discussions re interest from Tim Wong in interviewing us for a piece he has been commisioned to write, on the theme of collaboration in the Prospect show.
Check out our email for all the info including full disclosure of the very directive brief he has been given to work off by the commisioner: elecom 'Mob' publication. It makes for an interesting study in the commercial and economic capital spin off of the ol creative process'. I'm confident Tim has got the skills to turn out an interesting piece of writing (based on reading several pieces he has written, you can check out his reader www.Lumier.net.nz to see for yourself) - and it would be great to have a thoughtful response to the relationship between our collaborative process' and the CAMRU work.
I am also wary of our project being championed as an illustration for the values of the evil coca cola bottling company - ah i mean, telecommunications magnate (it costs E.T. alot to phone home these days!). Having said that - we are going to be mentioned with or without our involvement and it could be a chance for us to get something productive out of the inclusion. As usual, we would be working with a truncated time-line...
I suggest to you guys that if we want to go ahead that Mr T. Wong could post a few questions onto the blog and we could let it unfold from there.
What do you think???

Collational activity

greetings all from merry chch,

thanks for feedback on 'negative response collation'. perhaps to avoid excessive negativity we could wait until the positive reponses have been collated from across the tasman and produce those in tandem?? this would perhaps create a better balance, and potentially get some good conversations going between the respondees (i'm making up words today).

also, i thought that the little blurb (in grey?) which was on sian and liz's collation could be transferred as a brief ending for all of the collations. it sounded quite universal i thought. how much longer does prospect even run for? i've lost track of time..........

and, um, other stuff.....HSP would love some pencils to sell down here! there is a little spot in the reading room which i would love to fill up with orangeness!!

also, just a little thing to think about. HSP is all about the off site projects this year. we even have a new position to coordinate these, and we are busy coming up with new and exiciting ideas. i realise we are all very busy, and thinking about lots of different projects. but i thought that this might be a great way to faciliate a TAC project in chch sometime in the future. whether it be talks, workshops, investigation of local art community, a publication, a discussion, perhaps even a collaboration toolkit!! i'm just planting the seed in all of your minds (speaking of seeds, one has to be careful of falling acorns in chch, they are quite sore on the old noodle!!)

hope you are all well, and miss you all heaps xxxx

A windy Sunday with the Baas

It was a windy Wellinton day and the trolley was about as queit as the sheep we were collecting feedback on. This was an unusual lul for what has been a very busy site of response and writing, folding, colouring and general productivity of some form or another - including inane shout-outs.
This led Sian and Paula to deduce that while the CAMRU certainly is a mobile unit, it is dependant on the gallery's supporting framework, context as place of quiet contempation to make it communicate to an audience and act out its own role within the Prospect show.

A weekend with the sheep for Mobile Response Unit

Hello TACers!
The Wellington crew have a big weekend ahead with Gregor Kregar's sheep out in Civic Square.
We''ll be there Sunday, eliciting thoughtful and crass feedback alike from 9.30am till 5.30pm...Sweating it out with the baa baas! Get your Welly pals to come visit us.

In the meanitme I emptied the trolley of its tac'ed on responses today to prepare for its sideways journey thru the front door of the City Gallery. I took some snaps as it was looking so amazing and i was sad to de-nude it. : ) p

TAC hits paydirt with pencil profits!!

Dear public:
To own your own 'People's Pencil' designed by TAC - as modelled by 'Paula' - please visit City Galley in Civic Square, Wellington, NZ and talk to a nice counter assistant to see our full range of merhandise. Prices start at just NZ$5






That is right folks, we've offically sold 40 pencils at the City Gallery Prospect Multiple Cabinets netting a total of $134.
Woo hoo..another 40 pencils and well be out of the black and into real profit!!

Meeting & CAMRU visit & Flowcharts

Draft version of responses about CAMRU collated into a flowchart. Click to view at readable size.

(Bad photo of) drawing of proposed outpost additions.


Collaborators reading & harvesting the first round of responses for roomsheets.


One example of the conversations that sprout up on the Contemporary Art Mobile Response Unit.


An audible silent response.


Self authored info panel.


Hi all,
we had a power meeting this morning with just 1 hour and the three of us available: Sian, Paula and myself (Liz).
It focused on three main things:

*How to modify the outposts so they can function better as a display for the responses generated in their respective galleries (with view to keeping the responses site specific). We now pose to you that: wires are attatched to the outposts and the mini bulldog clips we are using on the wall down stairs are attatched to the end of the wires for attatching the resposes. Concrete cinder blocks are also suggested - strapped on with the kind of blue tape you see around bundles of newspapers - for raising the height of the outposts - logic - temporary/functional/building site.
We want to get this done ASAP so please lodge your opinions now!!!

*Catalogue inserts: we had a chat about this but Paula has made a posting about it already, so see below: 'what to do with written feedback - catalogue' for that discussion. Additional comments included "that would be like slipping someone a note" and "nice and random".

*Managing distance: how can Andie, Mel and soon Tom contribute to the creative decision making process from their ends and avoid being relegated to the function of 'rubber stamping' decisions that Wellington members make?
We talked about the time-delay involved in making decisions (see above) and discussed the possibility of making calls for the group in peoples absence: when is this appropriate and when is this not? and the need for members to initiate potential new ideas for current and new projects from their end: see Andie's new post below for pre-emptive movement on that front!!

THEN:

We went next door to the city gallery and took away all of the responses (off the wall and the trolley) that had been around for a while (with help from an attentive gallery host) and Sian now has them to document. Since that meeting I have contacted Tom and Mel, fielded their (positive) reactions to the alternative roomsheet idea. We should be on task to collate responses into seperate piles for each work, and send them out to all us talented writers to collate compile and draft up an incorporative collective take on an alternative room sheet for situating next to Heather's.
This is going to be a creative challenge i rekon, so lets share methodologies in a similar way to the process we went through when making the flowcharts.

xxliz