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The NewBridge Project is an artist led studio and exhibition space which makes use of empty business premises in Newcastle city centre. Currently situated in a 29,000sqft former office block, the project provides the foundation from which progressive practice can develop. We have a commitment to collaboration between artists to construct a framework around which critical dialogue, new ideas and innovative projects are initiated. The NewBridge Project operates a studio complex that is home to over 60 resident artists. The studios offer an engaged and discursive community that promotes exchange and support.

[email protected]

Contents page image credits

Limbo-Land

Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich,

(2002), commissioned

by Berwick Gymnasium Fellowship.

Image courtesy of the artists

and Pippy Houldsworth

Gallery. A

NewBridge Enquiry Flyer,

Andrew Wilson and Toby Lloyd,

(2012), screen printed flyer

given out prior to and during A NewBridge

Enquiry.

From art to life to art,

Jacob Dahlgren (Stockholm

2009). Galleri Andrehn-

Schiptjenko. photo: Carl

Kleiner. Courtesy of the artist.

The Weather

Project Olafur Eliasson

(2004) in the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern,

London. Image courtesy of

the artist, Tate Modern and

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

How to say Hello

to a Horse, The Recipe

Exchange, Helen Pritchard 2011.

Photo Credit: Martha Crean.

CANNED teamEditorialIris Priest & Rory BiddulphArt direction & design Adriana Rojas ViquezAdministration David McDonald & Rebecca TravisFundraising Holly Watson & Louise de Froment

CANNED is a new artist run magazine of contemporary art and critical dialogue which emerged from the NewBridge Project in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is an innovative publication of articles, reviews and interviews by writers, artists and cultural critics from a range of backgrounds and disciplines. CANNED seeks to promote a greater synergy between art and writing by supporting cross-media conversation, exchange and collaboration.

[email protected]

Editorial....................................................p3

Art: Social solution or romantic reverie?Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich: A Case StudyBy: Fiona Morris Fiona Morris considers the collaborative works of Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich and questions the implied social responsibility of art......................p4

A NewBridge Enquiry: The Politics of Participation and the Act of InvitationBy: Toby Lloyd, Andrew Wilson, Chris Witter, Iris Priest Lloyd, Wilson, Witter and Priest discuss the three day project A NewBridge Enquiry and the role of invitation, participation and politics in contemporary art practice.....................................................p8

Peinture AbstraiteJacob Dahlgren, The Striped T-shirt and Thomas WhittleBy: Holly Watson Holly Watson examines the work of Jacob Dahlgren and his collaboration Peinture Abstraite with the Newcastle-based artist Thomas Whittle..............p15

The Other Point of View By: Rory Biddulph Rory Biddulph critiques the position of the philistine in relation to contemporary perspectives and discourse on art and aesthetics. .................p24

A Conversation of Things: The (Farringdon) Recipe ExchangeBy: Helen Pritchard An evaluative essay of Pritchard’s project The (Farringdon) Recipe Exchange as a decentralized, community driven enterprise............................p31

contents

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The ideas of collaboration, exchange and collective action in art are not new. In 1971 Joseph Beuys’ set up the Organization for Direct Democracy through Referendum and even before this Dada, Fluxus and the Situationist International had thoroughly explored collaboration and collective action in art as a means to challenge the hegemony of the solitary artist-hero and the (commercial) status and (monetary) value of the art work. But with the rise of the internet, digital media and telecommunications technologies the questions of ownership, authorship and individualism are brought to the fore by the mass exchange of information and the emergent trend towards reappropriation, reproduction and redistribution. The very ethos upon which the first zines, artist publications and CANNED itself were founded often encompassed those of collaboration and collective action.

The CANNED committee work together as a voluntary group in order to create a publication which facilitates platforms for the exchange and enlargement of ideas and to support emerging artists and writers in their career progression both regionally and nationally.As such, issues to do with community, dialogue and reciprocity are important both to our founding intent and on-going aspirations. For ISSUE 3 of CANNED we invited an open discourse on these themes, collaborating with artists, writers and critics to facilitate a wide, diverse and at times challenging examination of the perceived role of art in the contemporary context.

In her elegant review of Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich’s collaborative practice, Fiona Morris introduces the contentious issue of the implied social ‘function’ of art which often comes to the fore when addressing collaboration andpublic participation. This issue is interrogated further throughout the articles from Chris Witter’s penetrating comments on the false assertion of political agency in participatory art projects through A NewBridge Enquiry: the Politics of Participation and the Act of Invitation; to Rory Biddulph’s challenging analysis of the philistine as the discursive ‘other’ in relation to contemporary perspectives on art and aesthetics in the other point of view. In the overview of her organic, collaborative project The Recipe Exchange Helen Pritchard discusses the open source model of hacktivism, ideas sharing and decentralized authorship as a means to test and critique participatory democracy. In addition to the discussion represented in the pages of CANNED we have also sought to extend our project to facilitate ‘real world’ conversations and exchanges; Peinture Abstraite is the collaboration between the artists Thomas Whittle and Holly Watson from The NewBridge Project with the Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren. We are pleased to present the outcomes of this ongoing exchange as both the CANNED centrefold and a thoughtful response from Watson on the nature of collaboration in Dahlgren’s practice with wider implications for the (now mutable) roles of the artist, viewer and curator.

In February this year CANNED instigated a three day long event A NewBridge Enquiry devised and hosted by the artists Andrew Wilson and Toby Lloyd. Held in the gallery space at the NewBridge Project, this event sought to critique the position, status and activity of the art gallery in relation to its larger context through the conversations and interactions that a hospitable, open invitation could foster. Some of these conversations - encompassing conflicting opinions and perspectives - are represented and continued here in the four-way discursive essay A NewBridge Enquiry: the Politics of Participation and the Act of Invitation.

The multiplicity of perspectives and opinions represented in CANNED Issue 3 is evocative of the far reaching debate underway concerning the position and potential of art against the backdrop of the greater sociocultural and economic context. Whilst we present no single position we hope that the discussion will continue beyond the parameters of the magazine and perhaps, even, challenge our own inherent positions and ways of thinking about art.

Iris PriestCANNED Editor

editorial

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The idea of an artist as a revolutionary individual, free from the constraints of regular society, building his own creative world from outside, looking in, has crumbled away. That image of the artist as estranged and distanced, brilliantly described in Albert Camus’ ‘The Outsider’, is now rendered eccentric and passé. With the vast increases in digital technology, a sense of how we are all connected has been heightened. Borders have opened up and we are in constant communication. It is little surprise that collaborative projects and collective action in art has rocketed in the past twenty years and that art and life have continued to merge closer together. Artists are very aware of their position within places and communities, with an ever-increasing responsibility to contribute to the efforts of society as a whole. A call has been answered for art and artists to initiate a meaningful, direct relationship with the world, understanding the interconnectedness of life and how art’s ability to influence and define cultural shifts in attitude, action and perception, affect the larger shaping of our world. It is normal to collaborate in art now, to involve oneself in a collective act, but is there a hankering after the days when an artist could just vent his or her own creative vision without the need to weigh up the social impact first? Is there certain nostalgia for the life of the lone, wandering artist able to explore the world on his own terms, free from the pressure to conform and connect? Essentially, is art tiring already under the weight of social responsibility placed onto it by writers like Suzy Gablik,1

who argued that art has a specific duty and function to perform? Neil Bromwich and Zoe Walker are a collaborative duo whose artworks appear to directly answer the call of critics like Gablik. They make it their specific goal to be a catalyst for positive change, asking: ‘Is it possible for Art, and more importantly our practice to promote practical, aesthetic and poetic solutions to social, political and environmental problems?’2

Their works evolve as projects from the cultural situations in which they are produced, and their bold, idealistic visual language adapts to the concerns and attentions of these environments. ‘Celestial Radio’ engages with a local community to produce a work specifically for that community. A radio station housed on a sailing boat, covered in glittering tiles, it anchors off shore in a location and invites local people to tell stories, engage in conversations and select music to create a site-specific broadcast. This broadcast is then heard by people listening near-by in their own homes, or by those lucky enough to be passing and able to witness at the same time the glistening of the boat in the distance. Both personal and universal in its content and romantic in its context, this work marks them out as a pair able to connect art with life in a valuable and meaningful way, a way able to touch base with people on a significant, everyday level and take them somewhere moving, poignant and exciting. ‘Love Cannon’ is a piece that tries to promote peace and love in the world, in a mad, pink inflatable fashion. It is unashamedly loud in its attempt to draw people together in an air of festivity and ‘joie de vivre.’ The optimistic and idealistic qualities inherent in this piece effectively combat the cynicism and detachment of post-modernism, in a genuine act of reconciliation between art and public and place. There is much to applaud in the effort to instil a sense of fun and freedom and a surreal democracy into a performative sculptural piece that becomes a celebratory event at the heart of a community.

1Author of ‘The Re-Enchantment of Art’ and ‘Conversations Before the End of Time.’2http://www.walkerandbromwich.org.uk/walkerandbromwich/introduction.html, accessed 22/03/12Reference/Related Websites:http://www.houldsworth.co.uk/http://collabarts.org/

Art: Social solution or romantic reverie?

Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich: A Case Study

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‘The Bank of Reason’ is perhaps the closest their work comes to the community and social mindedness promoted in art recently. Through a series of banner led rallying walks through the centre of Edinburgh led by Economists, Ecologists and local community groups, participants were encouraged to develop ideas for an alternative Banking Systems and find new sustainable models for the ecology and economy of Edinburgh. Having packed up their artistic tool kit and hopped across the border to Scotland, the pair initiated and developed this project that directly uses the name and practice of art as a means to bring many different thoughts, perspectives and professions together to discuss and progress thinking on the future possibilities of a place and its operative abilities. In this case, Gablik would certainly be proud. The slick social functioning of their artworks is not, however, without contradictions, ironies and sheer unbelievabilities. Put together the pieces seem suddenly less straight forward. The systematic and pragmatic side to their collaborative practice is strongly countered by a desire for escapism and a voyage into the dreamy realm of romance, fiction and nostalgia. Despite fulfilling the current trend for light and easy public artworks that inspire and uplift, the pair wander imaginatively and unconsciously outside of where it would be considered wise for many practical minded helpers of the world to go. A longing for ‘otherness’ that is connected to the improbable and unlikely haunts nearly every piece of work they produce. ‘Celestial Radio’ is itself designed to exist as a solitary floating object, tossed about at sea, drawn this way and that, responding to an ebb and flow of interest and activity. In every way it takes on the role of the misplaced, nomadic artist, who is not always valued. The boat is held at a distance from real events and people, able to contribute only through its unusual, particular ability to contemplate and communicate the unfathomable, philosophical mysteries of our remarkable and sometimes lonely, existence on earth. In a glittering tribute to nostalgia and a mind let loose, their boat becomes the artist that can no longer exist but evidently is still partly wished for. The romanticizing of being without place and existing outside of the usual confines of society and time, despite an inherent alienation, are also brought to the fore in ‘Limbo-Land’ – aptly titled. This simple video of a woman dressed as an astronaut, throwing, rolling and catching a puppet-like moon, with all the enthusiasm of a young girl, has a deliberate tragicomic feel. Situated on the beach, on the edge of sea and land, near the border between England and Scotland, the liminal state of inbetweeness is potent with uncertainty and melancholia and yet the overall feel is wistful, with a hopeful glimpse of life as potentially light and free. It seems to suggest that we can let go, sometimes, of our seriousness about the big things in life and not fall apart. An underlying response to the pressure and burden of responsibility one might ask? ‘Love Cannon’, the ultimate show-piece of optimism and idealism, is even more childlike in its simplicity and Oldenburg-like cartoonery. The escapism into a land of fantasy is not hard to admit to, for all its virtuosity as focal point for a carnival and celebration of the real. And the idyllic little French town that gave birth to it adds a further fairy tale dimension to the documentation. Surely, we ask, they are not serious that this reflects or accepts anything near most people’s reality? Once our ingrained cynicism has been alerted, there are further clues that it could all be one big artistic game. The nearness in imagery to popular culture, that we know from experience should never be fully believed or trusted; the synthetic materials and reliance on costumes that are put on and taken off with ease; the documentary remains that edit out and are staged: so much it could be said is merely an act, out to tease as much as please.

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Celestial Radio Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich, (2004 – ongoing), commissioned by Commissions East and Essex County Council. Image courtesy of the artists and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.

The piece that really causes a stir and unsettles the hens is ‘Friendly Frontier’. Mountains put up like tents and made from the same material, with inflatable yellow escape slides down either side, are erected in a white gallery space. The obviously absurd notion of borders offering a safe landing for accidental visitors in this way could only bear weight in the plastic world of bouncy castles and pink love balloons. This work can surely aim to do nothing but undermine any genuine attempt at viable problem solving the duo set out to achieve, as well as calling into serious question their own statement about the practical solving of our world’s most pressing problems. But throwing such ambitions aside, it is a wonderful testament to the child that exists in us all and the fondness that creeps in for their way of seeing, says: ‘Let the child stay and play some more please - I want more fun like this in my life!’

In an age where art can really seek to gain a strategic and ambitious position within society, as an area of expertise that can involve itself in a process of social, economic and environmental change, it appears art still wants to be art. Whether it is downfall or heroism, art clings onto a helplessly romantic side that seeks to explore beyond real time and real life and sometimes simply imagine. This side to art, which is unlikely ever to be the most pragmatic, or grounded, or realistic, is what keeps a sense of mystery and excitement and enthusiasm for life, alive. Walker and Bromwich clearly want to engage in current debates and encourage public participation. They do not seek to simply escape from reality but their art is testament to a desire to bring a playful energy to our heavy existence. The transparency of flux and motion between early ambitions and end works relates a need for an artwork to not be pinned down, if it is to gain and inhabit its own identity, character and charm. For all the benefits of arguing what art should be, what position or place it should take, Bromwich and Walker’s work alludes to the fact that even if the artists choose to adopt a standpoint, their art will naturally rebel and search for a space of its own, anyway. For art, conformity to a given structure is the enemy. It sets out in hope of finding freedom in the unknown.

Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich are represented by Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London

Fiona Morris is a recent Fine Art graduate of Newcastle University currently forming a base as a writer for

artists and exhibitions in Newcastle Upon Tyne.

[email protected]

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CW: Perhaps Toby and Andrew can start us off by introducing A NewBridge Enquiry? It seems a challenge to even begin to describe it, for it was a three day event, a series of open-ended actions and the creation of a space. Indeed, it seems the Enquiry is still ongoing, here and on the Enquiry’s blog, as a continuing conversation… Let’s begin, then, with the basics: what was A NewBridge Enquiry, how would you describe it, and what were you particularly trying to achieve through the Enquiry? AW: A NewBridge Enquiry, instigated by Toby Lloyd and myself, was a three day programme designed to cultivate hospitality, reciprocity and social dialogue via a process of invitation. Over this three day period the NewBridge Project Gallery Space, a former letting agency located in Newcastle city centre, was transformed into an entrance hall, bar and living quarters. The programme consisted of deliberate periods of open and closed hours allowing for concentrated activity and attendance; a model loosely based upon past public house opening hours.Each morning the doors opened at 7am, welcoming visitors to a modest breakfast of ‘Tea & Toast’. After this the programme hosted a series of varied and open events, loosely designed to cultivate distinct periods of both Concentrated Hard-thinking and Jovial Soft-thinking; a technique borrowed from Einstein. All events were free and welcome to all. Although we had no intention of dragging the ‘public’ into the space, like a drunken uncle dragging his niece onto the wedding dance floor, we aimed to ensure that everyone – city commuters, downtown shoppers, Newbridge Project studio holders, buskers, beggars and bus riders – were aware of our invitation (hence the design of the flyer in the style of a party invitation).As for our purpose, the answer to this question probably lies in a modest curiosity about the role of gallery spaces within commercial city centres - in this case the highly acclaimed NewBridge Project, its gallery space, programme of events, its 70 plus artist studios and its post-commercial locale. By transforming the gallery space into a public house we intentionally transformed the role of the visitor from audience member to participant, a point prefigured in a Mass Observation Worktown Study which noted: ‘Within the four walls of a pub, once a man has bought or been bought his glass of beer he has entered an environment in which he is participator rather than spectator.’ Via a process of invitation we opened up our curiosities for discussion, observation and participation.

CW: I wonder if you could tell me more about the role you see participation playing in the Enquiry, and the importance of the ‘open’ and aleatory – politically and aesthetically? For my own part I’m highly sceptical of a certain association that has been established between participation, dialogue and democracy in contemporary aesthetic theory and practices. I’m thinking particularly of a line of critics running from Roland Barthes through to Nicholas Bourriaud and beyond. In this analysis ‘dialogue’ is seen as inherently progressive – democratic. But, for me ‘democracy’ is something of a black box, here, concealing more than it explains. Democracy for whom, in relation to what? Certainly it is not politically critical or progressive to champion ‘democracy’ if by it we mean capitalist democracy. But, perhaps it is exactly this that some artworks are championing: the ‘interactivity’ of a ‘multicultural’ society where political agency appears as the ability of ‘the public’ to ‘feedback’ through television and internet polls. Choice and agency, here, are collapsed into consumption and fed back as ideology. This, I think, is the necessary context of all contemporary participatory art, and its intrusive content. In this context, why did you feel obliged to open up the Enquiry (actions and events) to anonymous strangers?

A NewBridge Enquiry: The Politics of Participation and the Act of Invitation

Toby Lloyd: TL | Andrew Wilson: AW | Chris Witter: CW | Iris Priest: IP

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IP: A few things occurred to me in relation to this, as a reporter on events. After the unexpectedly well attended first (early morning) ‘Tea & Toast event’, the space emptied quickly until only I was left, a solitary breakfast straggler, watching Toby cleaning furiously, fiddling with the jukebox and frequently glancing out of the window. As time passed the tenuous reality of a project founded upon an open invitation for participation - and the ‘aleatory’ results that invites - was looming over the empty bar. What if nobody took part?Throughout the day, however, unplanned and unexpected things started to happen. Collaborative art works grew over the walls, floors and ceilings of the space; arguments about the use and necessity of the contemporary ‘white box’ gallery were bounded about; and impromptu workshops and presentations taught us about DIY rucksack making and the history of communal quilting.

Whilst I think that it is sensible and correct to be sceptical about the implied ‘democracy’ inherent in a lot of participatory art practice, I didn’t really feel like this project was pitched in that politically loaded genealogy. Rather it was an open ended, rhizomatic enquiry: the conscious occupation of a space and a context (an art gallery, formerly a letting agency) which invited undetermined, open ended questioning, discussion and action. I think that the intention of the project was to make an incision into that space (architectural, sociocultural, time-based) in order to critique both it and our own habitual relationships to it (by ‘us’ I mean the passers-by, the artists, the curators, the visitors etc). What I felt as a participant was not increased ‘political’ empowerment but rather extended cultural realization through direct engagement and self-determination, through meeting new people, new ideas and, for a while, feeling part of something larger than myself. By opening up a space for drift beyond the everyday - through lunchtime discos and communal breakfasts – I felt that A NewBridge Enquiry offered us the possibility of realising our own creative capacities through self-determined actions.

AW: In response to Chris’s question, we intentionally titled the project an enquiry, as opposed to A NewBridge Public House, based upon our curiosity to explore the NewBridge Project as part of and within its immediate social structure, rather than simply presenting an existing and successful social model (the pub) in an existing ‘art’ space to an existing ‘art’ audience. The measure of success for the project, we informed our fervent volunteers, lay not necessarily with the amount of interaction, participation or bodies through the door but rather with the level and earnestness of our invitation. As I mentioned previously, we aimed to ensure that everyone was aware of our invitation. Why? Because we were curious about the role of the NewBridge Project, and the ‘art space’ in general, within its immediate social settings: who interacts with it? Who is it for? How does it interact with itself? And how does it position itself among existing social relations? The act of invitation was integral to the project. The process of invitation opens up the possibility for a host and guest relationship to occur, a relationship based upon hospitality. This act of hospitality is marked by the same characteristics put forward by Marcel Mauss to describe a ‘gift economy’. For Mauss gift economies tend to be marked by three related obligations: the obligation to give, the obligation to receive and the obligation to reciprocate. Immanuel Kant describes hospitality as ‘the right of an alien not to be treated as an enemy upon his arrival in another country’ – in our case the office clerk arriving in the art gallery. Invitation thus posed numerous questions: is the NewBridge Project interested in its neighbours? Are these neighbours interested in (or even aware of) the NewBridge Project? Should they be?

A NewBridge Enquiry Invitation, Andrew Wilson and Toby Lloyd, (2012), screen printed invitation given out

prior to and during A NewBridge Enquiry.

Day One : Tea & Toast, Iris Priest, (2012), Documentation of A NewBridge Enquiry.

Day One : Video Performance Iris Priest, (2012), Documentation of A NewBridge Enquiry.

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Marcel Duchamp famously gave up painting for a period and became a librarian because he was frustrated that art was only talking to itself: ‘it came from several things, firstly rubbing elbows with artists, the fact that one lives with artists, talks with artists displeased me a lot.’

Our aim to stimulate dialogue relates to this; do artists, art galleries and art institutions only want to engage with one another and if so what are the limitations placed upon art, artists and society under such circumstances?

CW: Perhaps what needs to be articulated, here, are those connections between my ‘political’ scepticism, and the experience of the Enquiry as a space in which an ‘undetermined, open ended’ process of enquiry was made possible through invitation and hospitality. A few questions spring to mind here. Firstly, does this idea of a space and practices being ‘undetermined’ rely upon a conception of artistic autonomy? Secondly, as a space of hospitality and ‘open’ interpersonal interaction, was the space created by the Enquiry really very different from the ‘microtopias’ championed by Bourriaud? This emphasis on hospitality and concern for ‘neighbours’ reminds me of Bourriaud’s comment that ‘it seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows’. This denigration of broader social movements stinks to me of the political defeatism and ‘third-way’ politics of the 1990s, and of ‘cultural entrepreneurs’ accommodating themselves to the status quo. Do you think the Enquiry avoids this legacy? On this note, and following on from the emphasis on invitation, the Kant quotation really caught my attention. For I’m wondering, is the office clerk really so alien to the art gallery? Is it the office clerk who feels alien, or the artist? It is often said that modernism felt itself to be outside bourgeois society, developing an antagonistic attitude towards bourgeois ‘morality’ and the ‘vulgarities’ of capitalism. What does it mean, then, that a group of artists today might position themselves as beneficent hosts, offering up art to a public it feels is excluded from art? I think this is intimately connected with the social role public arts and educational institutions have constructed for art since the postwar period. What is the connection between contemporary arts practices in the UK and Europe, and the social roles produced by artistic formations whose basis is public funding for universities and arts institutions? This question seems particularly important in the current moment, when arts funding is being transformed amidst a more general neoliberal transformation of the concept and material reality of the ‘public’.Why do you feel there was this determined need to prove art is not cut off from society by attempting to communicate with an anonymous ‘public’? And what is the connection here to the idea of using art to create spontaneous ‘community’? To be a bit topical, this reminds me of the ambivalences of the ‘big society’ discourse. ‘Community’ can appear in many different forms: as active solidarity, as myth, as exclusion, as analgesic ideology. Why attempt to build a communal space and communal activities?

IP: It seems to me that you are positioning your questions amidst the prerequisite that art and A NewBridge Enquiry are, or ought to be, overtly political. As an extension of this, it seems you are inferring a comparison between radical leftist politics and art projects which invite participation from audiences of a ‘non-art’ background, including in A NewBridge Enquiry.

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There is of course an undeniable, well documented relationship between such political models and the historical avant-gardes, which extolled the de-centralization of the art-making process and dissolution of the commodifiable art work – including Dada, Fluxus, the Situationist International, Relational Art, etc. However, in transposing that comparison to the present situation and to our specific conversation regarding A NewBridge Enquiry, there is a fundamental disparity. Namely, whilst politics deals with the general and the ideal - distilling this into manifestos and finite solutions by which to achieve utopian aspirations - contemporary art acknowledges the infinite subjectivity and indeterminacy of reality, not asserting any single vision but an infinite variety of subjective, changeable, even contradictory possibilities. If A NewBridge Enquiry had been about collectivism and a common goal then I believe it would have been called A NewBridge Project or A NewBridge Manifesto; it would have cited the broader sociocultural context in its founding aims; it would have been a call to action, not a gentle, playful invitation to participate. A NewBridge Enquiry was just that – an enquiry – an open ended question and resultant discussion which included all the grey areas which the polarized and polarizing nature of politics occludes – i.e. uncertainties, the chance of failure, human emotions (including joy, anguish, wonder), subtleties and nuances. Do we always ask questions with an answer already forecast? Do we go to art shows, the cinema, the theatre, always expecting to be intellectually, politically driven, challenged or emancipated? Never touched, moved, left with unresolved thoughts, questions or feelings? Is it wrong to delve into the unknown, without a fixed or politically motivated purpose, to come away with ‘merely’ impressions, dreams, thoughts, new ways of seeing or thinking, new connections? But maybe these arguments are all too ineffable and immaterial a response to your questions? With regards the question of whether this view relies upon a conception of artistic autonomy, I think there are as many answers to this question as there are artists and viewers. Speaking for myself, I do not believe that art is separate from anything. ‘Art making’ is a natural impulse demonstrated by every child. The harm we have done is in rarefying that impulse, conditioning it and giving it the name ‘art’. ‘Art’ as we are using the term is a concept which emerged during the early industrial revolution (‘art’ is, of course, a term designated by commerce), a term which is unrecognisable to many other cultures who do not distinguish the act of making and imagining from everyday life. This name and concept of ‘art’ has since been applied, retrospectively, to ‘art’ history and, in addition, to the images and objects of past civilizations and other cultures. I cannot conceive of the possibility of an ‘artistic autonomy’ any more than I can conceive of a ‘scientific autonomy’ or a ‘literary autonomy’. I believe this is something A NewBridge Enquiry was directly exploring and exploding – art’s own, self-conditioned isolation in the cloistered gallery ‘context’.Joseph Beuys’ concept of ‘art’, not as a thing to be aligned to politics (which assumes that politics comes first and art comes second), but as a political agency in and of itself, may underscore what I’m arguing. Namely, Beuys conceived of a ‘total art’ which was absolutely political; not through the ‘political’ language it adopted but through the innate artistic language it speaks; a language which is conveyed and accessed on levels which supercede language and theory - the language of the material, the ineffable and the ‘underground’. I believe A NewBridge Enquiry offered an indiscriminate invitation for engagement, just as Beuys did with his ‘total art’. Because at its heart was not a ‘political’ motivation but a sincere feeling for the equality of all people, it was an invitation to everyone to engage with connection over isolation, community over individualism, self-determinism over state-determinism.

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CW: I think what I am saying is not that art must be overtly political (as though, as you say, politics precedes art). Rather, that art is always already political – though not necessarily in conscious, articulated ways. The point is not for art to be dogmatic, or to offer up its thoughts and positions on ‘the issues of the day’, but to explore the relation between culture and society. With regards participation and similar attempts to overcome the specialisation of art, I wonder if such avant-garde gestures have become reified? That is to say, whether they have ceased to connect with active dissent, and in doing so have been emptied out of meaning and transformed into what Marcuse calls ‘affirmative culture’. For, crucially, the question of overcoming art’s specialisation is not simply a formal question. Rather, it is intimately connected with dissent, since it is reliant precisely upon altering the relation between culture and society. In this moment, what does it mean to make art? This is a political question; it is also an open question, for it is an ongoing, living struggle. What may be important is to reopen these fundamental questions, and to ask them in relation to the current moment – not merely as formal or philosophical questions. If we dare risk it, we can ask this question in more specific terms: what does it mean to be a generation of young people who were encouraged to hope and aspire but who are now being told, on reaching adulthood, put away your dreams, there’s a recession on? IP: I just wanted to pick up on Chris’ observation ‘it seems the Enquiry is still ongoing.’ The project has provoked some challenging conversations and one important issue which these conversations have raised, and which I would like us to address here, is the contentious concept of ‘praxis’. How and why did this idea find its way into the project?

TL: I hate to quote Tony Wilson, but I am going to. For him the term Praxis could be summed up in the following statement: ‘We spent the last year building the Hacienda… We have the next year to decide why we did it.’The original concept behind A Newbridge Enquiry was ‘collaboration.’ For me it has remained the driving force behind it, and is evident even in the way that this article is being written. Wilson’s statement feels relevant to me as we had no fixed expectations or goals regarding what would happen over the course of the two and a bit days. A Newbridge Enquiry did not intend to solve any problems, or make any grand statements, what we were interested in was starting a conversation. Marcel Duchamp stated that ‘the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.’Andrew and I wanted to break down the distinction between artist and audience by setting parameters which anyone could enter and contribute to. We hoped that conversations we had with people over Tea and Toast would determine what happened in the Video/Performance or the Workshop sessions later in the day, and this did happen. Several visitors’ first reaction after they had done a lap of the gallery/space/pub was, ‘where’s the art?’ or ‘what’s the point of this?’ Some of these people promptly walked out but those who stayed, once they felt comfortable, engaged in conversation with other visitors and contributed to the activities in some way. We were unable to predict how visitors would react to the project and each other, which is why we thought it was worthwhile.

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Chris, I can see where your scepticism is coming from as projects like these are often presented with a fixed outcome or objective, that promises to engage with the public by bringing together different minorities or fringe groups and making a better society. Whether these intentions are genuine or done purely for funding purposes, I can’t be sure, but they can come across as patronising, often viewing these groups one dimensionally. Through a process of collaboration we wanted to explore our preconceived idea of the ‘public,’ and hoped to reflect on ourselves and question the public’s impression of the ‘artist’.

Gillian Wearing says that when she works with the public she is ‘trying to find ways of discovering new things about people, and in the process discover more about myself.’ Her Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry You Will Be in Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian (1994) offered the participant the possibility of catharsis or resolution, which we were not claiming to offer. Our invitation was to open into a two-way dialogue without any sense of hierarchy. The dictionary definition of praxis is ‘practice, as distinguished from theory; application or use, as of knowledge or skills” and as “convention, habit, or custom.’It is possible to hypothesize, but without action theories are impossible to prove. We learn by doing and the project hoped to give us a better understanding or ourselves and the people around us by questioning our conventions, habits and customs.

Toby Lloyd Originally from Cambridge, Lloyd fled to Newcastle to become an artist and escape a career

as a publican. He is currently undertaking a MFA (Masters of Fine Art), where for the course interim exhibition he

built his own pub, Praxis Public House, which functioned as a self-portrait and a critique of the chain pubs that litter

our high streets and town centres. Lloyd’s practice examines interpretations of the self and the relationship it has

with the surrounding environment. His work has been described as masochistic and ‘banal in the best possible sense

of the word,’ as he takes the everyday action or object and pushes it into the absurd.

Andrew Wilson Born into a catholic household outside of London in the early summer of 1982, by age

13 Andrew had abandoned his religious education in favor of football and beer until a brief spell of fishing in 2002.

Since attaining a BAhons in Fine Art from Newcastle University in 2008 Andrew Wilson has shaped a practice-

led curiosity working alongside and in collaboration with Art institutions, rural communities, Mental Healthcare

Institutions/organisations, daytime disco’s and downtown shoppers. Andrew remains living and working from

Newcastle upon Tyne.

Chris Witter is currently completing a PhD thesis on experimental American short fiction of the 1960s

and ‘70s, at Lancaster University. He is an AHRC studentship award holder. Beyond academic work, Chris writes

fiction, poetry, and political and arts commentary. Much of this material is for and about the international anti-

austerity movement, in which he is involved, working particularly with groups in the Lancaster and Morecambe

area. [email protected]

Iris Priest has been working as a writer and artist in Newcastle-upon-Tyne since graduating from

Cumbria Institute of the Arts in 2008. She has written extensively for artists and arts organisations throughout the

region, and for magazines and journals including Corridor8, Artists Newsletter and this is tomorrow. Iris holds

a studio at The NewBridge Project where she is Editor of the arts magazine CANNED. She is currently an artist in

residence at Northumbria University.

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Nearly two years ago I was invited to a dinner party. The dress code was not black tie or smart casual, all one was required to wear was a striped garment. That evening I dined on tinned bean stew and canned fruit crumble. The guests mingled in linear compositions of nautical and pinstriped Mark Rothko’s, Barnett Newman’s and Frank Stella’s.

A few days later the exhibition Remake/ Remodel1 opened at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland. Jacob Dahlgren’s colourful tin can sculpture From Art to Life to Art (2010) snaked in front of the window as the concrete finale of a collaborative process. Behind this physical form was a history of dinner parties, family meals, fashion, readymade abstract paintings and conversation. From Art to Life to Art existed as sculpture in its own right as well as a monument to its own creation and what it once was, a remnant of a social gathering and exchange of ideas.

Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren utilizes the readymade object from the tin can to the coat hanger, the dartboard to the yoghurt pot and multiplies them into what he sees as abstract paintings. He seeks, recycles and then repeats. “If you use a lot of plastic coffee mugs you transform them into something else. If you use just one, then it is still a plastic coffee mug.”2

When I met Dahlgren at the National Glass Centre in 2010 I noticed that he always carried a camera on him. He regularly takes pictures capturing linear abstract paintings in everyday life; zebra crossings, umbrellas, shop signs, lorries, deck chairs and uniforms, from which he has developed a photographic archive. Dahlgren is an avid art collector with a photographic catalogue that he can use as an extensive resource as inspiration for new work. His photographs are sketches for paintings, as well paintings in their own right. As Duchamp once said, “since the tubes of paint used by the artists are manufactured and ready-made products we must conclude that all paintings in the world are “ready-mades aided” and also works of assemblage.”3 Surely, therefore, the readymade objects and compositions which Dahlgren appropriates can also be regarded as paintings?

With an education and background in painting Dahlgren has taken the genre out into sculpture, installation and performance works. Take for example I, The world, Things, Life, a vast wall of dartboards exhibited as part of the 2007 Venice Biennale. It evokes the colossal scale of the canvases of the American abstract expressionists. The audience is asked to throw darts at the wall, reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s action painting.

Painting is often seen as a solitary pursuit. Abstract painting in particular is crafted through a dialogue between the artist, the surface of the canvas and the paint itself. In contrast to the hermetical legacy, Dahlgren’s works thrive on participation and collaboration. Many of his works rely on the audience or participants to complete them either by throwing darts, carrying placards of Olle Baertling paintings on demonstrations, wearing striped outfits and gathering in shopping centres or simply by eating tinned food at dinner parties.

1Remake/Remodel (08/2010 - 03/2011) was curated by the National Glass Centre and Matthew Hearn. http://www.nationalglasscentre.com/whats-on/2010/10/14/re-make-re-model.html 2Jacob Dahlgren, 2007, Jacob Dahlgren3 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/neo-materialism-part-two-the-unreadymade/

Peinture Abstraite

Jacob Dahlgren, The Striped T-shirt and Thomas Whittle

I, the world, things life, Jacob Dahlgren (Venice Biennale 2007). Photo: Frame

Jacob DahlgrenFrom Art to Life (Sunderland)2011Food Cans and Steel206 x 250 x 350 cm 81 1/8 x 98 3/8 x 137 3/4 inJDA0060Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

I, the world, things life, Jacob Dahlgren (Toronto nuit blanche Canada 200). Courtesy of the artist.

Collaboration is key to Dahlgren’s ubiquitous t-shirt project where he himself becomes an abstract painting through wearing his own striped t-shirts:

“This is an on-going project in which I see myself as a geometrical painting moving about the world; I invite people from various backgrounds and areas of interest to curate shows from my

collection of over 1000 and I wear these each day for the duration of the exhibitions. Each day I take a photograph of myself wearing the shirts, these pictures together with accompanying abstracted

images of the prints from each of the selected shirts, the exhibition’s title and accompanying text, are formatted into documentary posters that act as archives for each curatorial project.”3

Peinture Abstraite is the latest collaboration in this series. For the 3rd edition of CANNED Magazine, Newcastle based artist Thomas Whittle worked with Dahlgren as a “guest curator” selecting which t-shirts the artist would wear for the duration of a week. The photographic documentation of Peinture Abstraite brings together Dahlgren and Whittle in a collaboration which produces both an exciting body of work whilst also giving an insight into the working relationship between artists and curators and what happens when the curator is also an artist themselves.

Dahlgren presented Whittle with a digital archive of 600 different t-shirts, which Thomas Whittled down to a selection of 16 (like a museum’s permanent collection with only a fraction on display at a time). These were presented as digital fabric samples, flat rectangles of stripes of different colours and widths where the link with abstract painting became even more apparent. All of the t-shirts in the collection were originally chosen, and are owned by, Dahlgren. Within this predetermined system Whittle has pushed the potential of his collaborative input further; choosing not only which t-shirts should be worn but also how and when Jacob will wear them.As of yet Dahlgren has worn his t-shirts as they were made to be worn, as a t-shirt. In a way the simplicity of Dahlgren’s t-shirt project (a striped t-shirt being a painting, him wearing the painting) is what makes it such a powerful piece. However under the instruction of Whittle, Dahlgren’s t-shirts will be warped to be worn in newly configured ways. Dahlgren took the humble t-shirt from its informal status as an item of everyday clothing, transforming it to the status of a work of art. In Peinture Abstraite Whittle is taking the work of art into the world of fashion again by curating Byronesque turbans and superman capes. Is Dahlgren going to have to visit the bank wearing a striped Neapolitan ice cream coloured bib? Maybe he will have to attend an important meeting whilst wearing the skirt and cap ensemble. How will Jacob find these unorthodox striped outfits fit in with his daily life, in what Dahlgren himself has labelled as a ‘crazy show’?

Although Dahlgren’s t-shirt work has always evoked notions of fashion by the nature of him wearing an item of clothing, Whittle’s slant on the work has highlighted this element more so than usual. Whittle is twisting Dahlgren’s ‘paintings’ further into the realm of fashion and, in this week long exhibition, Dahlgren is almost becoming the fashion model. Standing in front of the camera every day to have his photograph taken these images can be seen as both documentation of the exhibition and as fashion shots. Art and fashion have often mingled in one another’s worlds. Mondrian’s infamous paintings were transformed into dress designs by Yves Saint Laurent and then copied by the mass market in to what has now become an iconic fashion item of the 1960’s. Dahlgren sees the t-shirt as a readymade painting. The case of the Mondrian dress is different because Yves Saint Laurent took a painting and turned into an item of clothing whist Dahlgren takes an item of clothing and turns it into a painting. Both are examples of the inter-mingling dialogues of art and fashion.

3 http://www.jacobdahlgren.com/works.htm

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Throughout the coordination of this project in emails and conversations I have referred to it as the curating of Dahlgren’s t-shirts. Dahlgren himself refers to them as curatorial projects. Perhaps it is more appropriate to state that it is two artists working together on one part of Dahlgren’s project. Whittle is a painter himself with his own art practice and through his suggestion the striped surface of the Dahlgren’s t-shirts are being moulded in new ways. Instead of being a curator who will choose an artwork and situate it somewhere within an exhibition where they can be viewed at their best, Whittle is in effect altering the paintings themselves as both a curator and an artist. If the t-shirts mentioned were physical paintings on canvases it would be the equivalent of layering them up, perhaps stacking one painting in front of the other to obscure parts of the one behind it. Maybe like putting the painting somewhere it was not intended to go such as on the floor instead of the wall. There is far more artistic input here than merely curating a show; Whittle is painting himself, coming up with new compositions. There is no longer such a clear role as artist and curator and in Peinture Abstraite the two are merging into one.

The artist and the curator may trespass into the others domain but this can be a tricky or even fraught negotiation. Recently Tate Britain bought 8 million of Ai Weiwei’s 100 million ceramic works from his 2010 Sunflower Seeds installation that was exhibited in Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. How should these seeds be presented? As a fraction of a whole they cannot be placed in their originally intended format: “the artist has suggested the seeds can be arranged either laid out as a square or, more dramatically, as a cone five metres in diameter and one and a half metres tall – as they have been displayed at Tate Modern as a loan from the artist from last June until earlier this year.”4 The seeds are Ai Weiweis’ work but the Tate chooses what form they take (albeit from two of the artist’s prescriptions). The artist is giving the curator or the institution a greater degree of control over the physical form of the work. Tate not only decides where in the gallery it will be situated, how much space it will be given, whether it will have its own room, and if it doesn’t what other work will be next to it or nearby but also on its intrinsic physical appearance. Tate, in a way, has the final decision in completing the work. This example is not suggesting that the curator is the artist as well but in situations such as these the art is directly changed by the way it is curated and in more than how it is exhibited. With artist/ curator collaborative projects it brings into question how much influence the curator can exert on how exactly a piece of work transpires. How much is the presentation of a work a collaboration between a curator and artist? And does the artist sometimes become the curator or the curator the artist?

Now more so then ever before the hybrid artist/curator is prevalent within contemporary art. They collaborate directly on projects together for example the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, during his Marathon series (where a 24-hour public event is held) also worked in collaboration with the artist Olafur Eliasson. With Eliasson, Obrist conducted the Experiment Marathon a coordinated event where artists and scientists demonstrated and talked about experiments in a pavilion designed by Eliasson. The artist no longer locks himself away, produces a work and then a curator comes along, decides the work fits in nicely with a show and exhibits it. Instead the contemporary artist often works in conjunction with a curator exchanging ideas, having conversations and creating work that is informed through an extensive, two way dialogue.

4http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/mar/05/tate-ai-weiwei-sunflower-seeds

Peinture AbstraiteCollaboration between Jacob Dahlgren and Thomas WhittleCourtesy of the artists and Workplace Gallery

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Thomas Whittle is an artist living in the North East of England and working within The NewBridge Project

in Newcastle upon Tyne. Whittle’s work flits between performance, painting, photography and drawing, often

confusing categorisation by utilizing different media simultaneously. His work attempts to make sense of the

disparate influences and inspirations drawn from his surrounds and the artists place within society.

Whittle’s work has been exhibited both within the UK, in London, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne and

Worcester, as well as internationally in Toronto, Istanbul and Munich.

Collaboration does however raise the question of authorship. This has always happened in the arts. Take for example T.S. Elliot’s poem The Wastelands, the input by Ezra Pound was extensive and it has been suggested to be more of a collaboration than one peer’s input on another’s work. Yet it remains Elliot’s poem as the original idea and the basis of the poem were his. Pound made suggestions and refined it, he even got rid of Elliot’s original opening lines in favour for the now infamous line ‘April is the cruellest month’. With Peinture Abstract, it is a Jacob Dahlgren work with the input of Thomas Whittle. Peinture Abstract is Dahlgren’s idea, his work, but Whittle as an artist himself has added his angle and a fresh viewpoint to the project.

Things that cannot be done individually or things that would be better if others were involved require collaboration. Collaboration means a loss of autonomous control. You are putting the fate of your work into the hands of others, for better or for worse. Eliminating control can be freeing and take your work on previously un-thought of directions as well as offer new input and insight. We live in an age when collaboration occurs more frequently and is becoming more relevant. The cross pollination of ideas and experiences is expanding in our globalized world and interdisciplinary practices of people working together from different fields of specialism is at a peak.

Steven Wolf, when discussing Dahlgren’s Demonstration, (a protest march where participants carried Ohle Baertling paintings that Dahlgren had painted on to placards) remarked “Something equally rejuvenating occurs to Baertling’s paintings when they are put into the hands of the people.” 5

Putting work into the hands of the people is what Dahlgren does: involving others into his practice whether as a participant in pieces such as I, The world, Things, Life or as a collaborator on part of a project such as Whittle in Peinture Abstraite is exciting. He mashes up art and life by inviting people to dinner parties to devour tinned delicacies and asks people to choose what t-shirt he should wear resulting in potent works with a history of people and conversation.

5http://www.jacobdahlgren.com/texts/StevenWolf_text.htm

Holly Watson is an artist and writer based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Since graduating from Newcastle

University in 2010 she has been involved in projects with Visual Arts in Rural Communities and has had a solo

show at 36 Lime Street, Newcastle upon Tyne. She holds a studio at The Newbridge Project and is a contributor to

CANNED magazine.

http://hollywatson.wordpress.com

Jacob Dahlgren is an international artist living in Stockholm, Sweden. He has recently become represented

by North East based Workplace Gallery. Dahlgren’s work encompasses painting, sculpture, photography and

occasionally protest. He often takes the everyday object multiplying it several, sometimes hundreds of times

until it becomes another entity removed from its original signifier. Dahlgren’s work has been exhibited widely in

Europe and America, most notably at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.

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The other point of view‘One who passively accepts his alien daily fate is thus pushed toward a madness that reacts in an

illusory way to this fate by resorting to magical techniques. ’ 1Guy Debord

It is apparent that the constraints caused by spectacle2 culture are as visible in this economic climate as ever. The onslaught of magazines such as Look and Reveal affirm countless TV reality shows which insist on telling us: ‘you must one day be famous and get rich if you are to matter ’! So despite time-old warnings from the political left about alienation and reification, society endeavours in pursuit of fame and fortune. Such commodified spectacles have a recognisable bearing on behavioural patterns and relations, as they do perspectives on art and aesthetics. When concerned with opinions which oppose contemporary fine art (relative to spectacular culture especially) the examination of spectacle in,or as,art becomes a factor also.To examine such issues specifically, I shall use this text to explore whether the spectacle can be used effectively in fine art by positioning it against the philistine as the ‘definitional other of art and aesthetics’. 3

As recognised by Dave Beech and John Roberts, the philistine does not describe a single person or group of persons, but is importantly an ‘empirical and discursive construction’4. However, they maintain that ‘the body in the philosophy of aesthetics is emptied of the contingencies and conflicts of the everyday’5 .If aesthetics is taken as non-exclusive to the fine arts alone, but as a field of philosophy that concerns one’s sensory engagement with the surrounding world aesthetics can include everyday experiences6 as well. This view is reinforced by the very concept of a definitional other of art which must recognise the existence of an artistic aesthetic as distinct from other aesthetics (otherwise the other of art would be the other of everything encountered sensorially). Beech and Roberts also write that the philistine is aptly placed to ‘bear on art and aesthetics the cost of their exclusions, blindness and anxieties’7 ; it is therefore an excellent tool for examining art. If the philistine is considered as socially and aesthetically conscious it provides a distinct framework by which art’s relationship to society and its own aesthetics can be challenged.When incorporated within spectacle culture specifically, the philistine becomes a social and aesthetic representation of commodification and reification and maintains this position(similar to that of an aesthete8 ), against art and art’s aesthetics. How the philistine is to be placed in a social context will depend on the social climate in which it is analysed. It will vary in economic downturn as opposed to periods of economic boom and in discussing encounters with artworks, will depend entirely on the artwork in focus and the nature of the environment (to name two variables). The way that the philistine perceives art in any given situation however, remains consistent. The philistine by definition cannot, prior to viewing an artwork, have gained a sense of understanding with its display other than a form of contempt. It remains ‘insensitive, uncouth, and brutal especially in matters relating to art’9 and therefore has no want to be grounded in art or its aesthetic concerns. Admittedly; an exhibition can be an ambiguous place. From humble shows by recent graduates to those of larger institutions, contemporary art contains a wealth of curatorial and artistic divergences. Yet divergences, when inaugurated into the routines of spectacle culture, can be ground for the development of artistic discourse with the philistine.

1Guy Debord, The Society Of The Spectacle, 5thEdn, Michigan: Black & Red, 2010, Section 219, p.117 2In the context of this discussion I recognise Debords use the term spectacle directly, as that which denotes the ‘heart of unrealism’ of capitalist society (Ibid., section 6, p.7) 3Dave Beech & John Roberts, The Philistine Controversy, London: Verso, 2002., p.45 4Ibid., p.45 5Ibid., p.14 6This is perspective is similar to that of Allen Carlson’s perspective of aesthetics as explicated in Nature, Aesthetics and the Environment, London: Routledge, 2000, p.xvii 7Dave Beech & John Roberts, The Philistine Controversy., p.45 8 For whom “the moment is everything, and in so far again essentially nothing” Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D.F Swenson & W. Lowrie, Princeton University Press, p.2659Dave Beech & John Roberts, The Philistine Controversy, p.44

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It is uplifting that, as a result of the recession, there has been a trend in the emergence of temporary art spaces. Abandoned shops, office blocks, restaurants and so forth now regularly house exhibitions and art-related projects. This opportunism is not necessarily a form of institutional critique, but the use of non-institutional spaces in such cases highlights how urban surroundings and non-art spaces can impact upon larger audiences and hence philistinism. If to the philistine a museum represents a place of negativity (owing to associations with art and the aesthetics related to art) a place of commerce can be a reprieve. A shop for instance, which functions within the routines of spectacular society, holds its own aesthetic connotations. It is part of day to day living and is oriented in the course ofspectacular routine. Resultantly the environment ofexhibitions held within commercial settings may pose less of an aesthetic challenge to the philistine than that of a gallery or traditional art-space because the barriers between what is deemed conventional to art aesthetics and other spectacle aestheticsis made less clear.Conversely, the confusion developed by the break of routine may solidify philistinistic views toward art. The commercial object which the space should relate to is not only missing but is replaced with a negative force as recognised by the philistine: that being art. There is a loss involved through the disuse of the establishment as it was previously intended and an act of upheaval in the artistic occupation. The philistine does not recognise the aesthetics of art, so an exhibition being in conflict with the idea of a proper environment for art (such as a museum) is a perversion of cultural aesthetic order as appropriate to the philistine. However,if the problem is not the spectacle environment but that the environment lacks its proper display thena more appropriate question is whether artwork can be adapted to hold more aesthetic appeal to the philistine. In order to incorporate spectacle there must be a distinction between the aesthetics of art and the aesthetics of spectacle comparatively. If art is spectacular then to suggest it break with the spectacle brings into question the issue of autonomy. As discussing arts autonomy is a much debated and perennial matter (which would require extensive discussion and would deviate from the current subject of the philistine) it is presumable at least that art has an aesthetic language different from that of other facets of spectacular culture. As Debord writes, ‘all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles’10 . There is not one all-consuming spectacle aesthetic but a vast number. When we view an art exhibition we know it is precisely an exhibition of artwork and are able to differentiate this aesthetic experience from that of entering a shop (which has a different aesthetic). There can be crossovers, and in many cases complex relationships between aesthetics allow the boundaries between art and alternate aesthetics to become less certain. Yet as previously noted, the philistine must recognise a difference between the aesthetics of art and that of other things in order to maintain the position of the other. Art therefore, can welcome spectacle or represses it to an extent, though how it effects the philistine is dependent largely on the type of spectacular aesthetic art includes. Viewed in context, it is difficult to argue against the fact that an artist such as Damien Hirst employs the use of spectacle more emphatically than, well, everyone else really (sorry Koons). In a recent article for the Guardian which discussed Hirst’s ‘capitulation’11 , Adrian Searle recognised that Hirst aims to give his audience an ‘art of spectacle and the tokens of spectacular wealth’12.One look at the lavishness and pomposity of Hirst’s £50million diamond encrusted skull, aptly entitled For The Love Of God (2007), and it is hard to refute Searle’s claim. Whether or not Hirst’s work should be seen as a criticism of the art market and the spectacle itself, his ‘pandering to the vulgarity of super-rich collectors or to the perversity of the art market’13 has provided celebrity status and house-hold recognition of his work.This can be viewed as both negative and positive in approaching philistinism.

10Guy Debord, The Society Of The Spectacle., Sec 1, p.611http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/apr/02/damien-hirst-tate-review12Ibid13Ibid

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RESPONSE a Rural Urban Conversation Eldon Square Shopping Centre

Image photographed by Lauren Healey2011

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However trivial the representation and discussion of artistic activities in places such as tabloid newspapers and the internet, it allows for a contact to be created between art and the philistine. Entering the realms of social and mass media, artists and related arts issues such as auction selling, generate discourse about contemporary arts practice. That said, although it allows more access to contemporary art the disseminating of such information through mass media does not mean that all audiences will respond positively to art being available to them. Contemporary art is readily thrown into the media, both positively and negatively.It is part of a routine which is expected. The artistic occupation of a shop is challenging in regards to philistinism precisely because it breaks with routine and allows for chance encounters to occur, yet the media and the celebrity are thrust upon society constantly. Celebrity has its own spectacular aesthetic, existing to ‘act out styles of living’14, as does the media which has numerous spectacle aesthetics. In fine art, celebrity is often correlative with commercial successes and even if it would have an effect on philistinism (influentially for example) its status is not easy to attain. For emerging artists to try to adopt the role of celebrity as an approach toward philistinism is not a viable option in the short term due to the difficulty of this task. However, this conclusion is concerned only with artwork that makes direct reference to the spectacle by enacting its visible activities and aesthetics. It does not consider spectacle culture experientially. Celebrities, mass media and commodity culture are all forms of entertainment which characterise social routines. These activities, which are commercial and fetishistic, are experientially immediate and illusory in nature. Walter Benjamin’s use of the term ‘Erlebnis’15 is appropriate as a way of defining such interactions; that being the negation of consciousness of human history in favour of immediate consumption and repetition. For instance, the activity of shopping is a constantly changing spectacle which exists solely in the present as a fetishistic and repetitious process. If artwork is made to reflect the traits of the industries as opposed to making direct reference to the industries themselves,the boundary between the experience of art and other spectacle routines haze into the realms of ‘leisure and vacation’16. Although this may sound negative, art’s access point with the spectacle aesthetic does not inhibit artistic responsibility17 . That a work is immediate or experientially associates with spectacle culture is often a result of an artist’s labours as opposed to intentions. Consider Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project (2004) at the Tate Modern; a huge illusion (or rather non-illusion due to its disclosure of the apparatus involved) of a sun inside a building which was immediately captivating. Audiences lay down, bathed in the light and were willing to give time to the work for its sensory impact and the associated spectacle (to follow the oxford definition of ‘a visually striking performance or display’18). Eliasson’s use of phenomenological principles to provide a bodily experience and development of a relationship between viewer and the natural environment were not inspired by spectacle culture directly, but do refer to it. Eliasson claims, ‘I’m trying to figure out how the art world...engages with the rest of society that is completely concerned with commodification of thought processes and experiential matters’19 . The audience knows first and foremost what a sun is,knows what it is like to bathe in hot sun and for the most part, probably associates sun with leisure. Experiencing such a spectacle falls into realms of fantasy which is comparative to the illusory nature of spectacle society and also existential reality through the phenomenological dialectic that ensues.Concerning the philistine it is an interesting paradox.

14Ibid., Sec 60, p.3015Erlebnis describes “the loss of experience characteristic of our age. Activity in modern industrialist society is unable to draw upon a store of knowledges and skills built up by past activities” (Pauline Johnson, Marxist Aesthetics, Routledge&Kegan Paul plc, 1984 p.52)15Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle., Sec 153, p.8417By responsibility, I simply mean the aims and methods of an artist’s individual practice appropriate to them. 18http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spectacle?q=spectacle19OlafurEliasson., p.86

Olafur EliassonDouble Sunset, 1999scaffolding, steel, Xenon lampsDimensions variable; disc ø 38mInstallation at Panorama 2000, Utrech, The Neatherlands, 1999Photo: Hans WilschutCourtesy the artist, neugerriemscheneider, Berlin and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York© 1999 Olafur Eliasson

Olafur EliassonDouble Sunset, 1999

scaffolding, steel, Xenon lampsDimensions variable; disc ø 38mInstallation at Panorama 2000,

Utrech, The Neatherlands, 1999Photo: Hans Wilschut

Courtesy the artist, neugerriemscheneider, Berlin and

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

© 1999 Olafur Eliasson

The work is relative to the philistine empirically by adhering to desires of the aesthete in society, yet presses its message via artistic aesthetics and hence is repulsed. Furthermore,The Weather Project was exhibited in an arts institution which is a place of aesthetic negativity with regards to the philistine20 A better example might be Eliasson’s Double Sunset (1999) where a similar sun-like mirror was on display in the open city in Utrecht. Its situation as part of the urban landscape carries different connotations in regards to philistinism than that of The Weather Project by being released from the aesthetic context of an institution.However, this brings into question the role of “public” artwork in regards to the philistine; the problems of which amount to defining what a public artwork is, where it is situated and, more specifically, who the public are. In discussing a criteria for public art Cher Krause Knight states that ‘since art is “broad and heterogeneous,” speaking to wide though not necessarily large generalized audiences, it would be best to define a “new public” for each work’21 . Even when accepting the public as the philistine (to maintain the discussion at hand) there are issues surrounding the manner in which each public work is situated and the type of works which can be associated as being public. Some artworks such as Thomas Heatherwick’s Blue Carpet (2001) can become ‘so completely absorbed into the surroundings they literally escape notice as “art”,’22 while others, newly incorporated into city culture, are more confrontational with the routines of spectacle culture.As recognised by Knight, ‘the contours of art’s publicness are continually assessed on its physical location’23. It is presumable that in order to meet the aesthetic desires of the philistine a public work would need to deny arts aesthetics and in some way become integrated in spectacle aesthetics (as does Heatherwick’s work by becoming integrated with function as furniture and pavement); though as the environment of public art cannot be linked to a more definite aesthetic, it is difficult to comment on the nature of the spectacle environment which the philistine will encounter. As maintained throughout, these reflections are based on the idea of the philistine as the discursive other of art, contextualised socially and aesthetically within spectacle society. That this discussion recognises the benefits of a populist approach to contemporary art practice is a consequence of the philistine being the subject of analysis and does not attack artwork or artists’ methods in any sense. It is obvious that many artworks - made after years of education, experimentation and conceptual and practical exploration – will not be understood by all, and to attempt to make a work which would appeal to the tastes of everyone is impossible. Moreover the philistine is a resolute subject. It’s taking the position of the other of art will necessarily entail that the further art moves from being art (experientially and aesthetically) it will be more appealing. This is not a criticism of the philistine, for negativity shown toward contemporary art is a friction artists are faced with through natural course of exhibition and discussion.Art is involved with audience as well as the self and to consider the views of the other (discursively or actually) allows the communicative potential of art to expand. Spectacle society inevitably affects social judgements as it does judgements within and to do with art. As Beech and Robert write, ‘judgements in art have to survive in the same world as other judgements’24 ; whetherf avoured as elitist or populist, art still faces the challenge of the other and social constraints which impose negativity upon art, regardless.

20As recognised by Nicholas Serota, it is impossible to ‘ignore the fact that the institutional frame conditions the way in which people experience and, indeed, understand the work’ Ibid., p.8321Cher Krause Knight, Public Art, Theory, Practice and Populism, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008., pp.viii - ix22Ibid., p.2223Ibid., p.viii24Beech and Roberts., p.47

Rory Biddulph is an artist, writer and editor working out of The NewBridge Project in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Since graduating from Newcastle University in 2010, his writing has been featured in publications such as The

Spectrum Almanac and The Glass Network. Recent projects have included exhibiting with Visual Arts in Rural

Communities and commissioned writing for Vane Gallery.

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In the summer of 2010 the East Devon village of Farringdon began a conversation with me. I had been invited by Martha Crean, projects programmer at Spacex, to make new work in the residential areas surrounding Spacex1 when this exchange began. Farringdon’s website documented its common resources, the village, its history and its natural springs. The website had been set up partly in protest as Farringdon had recently undergone a struggle to shift its demarcation in the city council’s “Core Strategy Report” as a “greenfield site with no community no activity”2 .This report had culminated in “a spatial portrait for Exeter ”3 which had cited Farringdon as the most suitable setting for a “re-designation for future role of landscape” .The village had reacted with a number of self organised activities to make themselves visible. My approach to collaborative art practice could be described as a hacktivist one4 an acknowledgement of culture as a political space, with the possibility of decentralized, autonomous and grassroots participation. This attitude comes out of my participation in the early peer to peer movement and Free/Libre/ Open Source Software communities (F/L/OSS). After our conversations began we felt there were interesting parallel concerns to be drawn between the progressive corporate takeover of hacker counterculture through the centralization of user generated content5 the institutional takeover of participatory art practice and the proposed take over of the land in Farringdon. We wanted to ask questions on participatory democracy, and the production of knowledge: what kind of knowledge gets supported, for whom, by whom and why? This really is the political question. We were interested in how we might think of knowledge as a common matter and as Spurse collective describe as matter of concern. “A matter of concern in this sense is not necessarily something in crisis with which we are concerned.

Matters of concern are our everyday collective becomings – the micro institutions of entangled practices, discourses and things -- rituals of coffee, habits of walking, public space etc” 6

I spent some time in the village discussing and developing various ideas and tactics of what and how we might work together. Something that emerged from our discussions was an interest to make visible the various interesting practices, professional and amateur in the village. So together through discussion we developed a structure based on the familiar, everyday model of OPEN culture - recipe sharing. Recipe sharing is interesting as situated detailed information is broken down into a series of sequential steps and shared socially. However a recipe is more than just a simple set of instructions. Historically cookbooks contained the writing of women who took the time and energy to formulate written discourse to express their collective value systems and desires for innovation and style 7 . Through the dissemination of the cookbooks groups of women established connections between public places and community meetings and the private space of one to one conversations between women in their homes. Their voice was heard in public and within their personal communities8 .

A Conversation of Things: The (Farringdon) Recipe Exchange

1http://www.spacex.co.uk/2Exeter City Council (2006)Core Strategy Draft Preferred Options Paper, Exeter City Council3Op. cit4Bazzichelli, T (2010) Aesthetics of Common Participation and Networking Enterprises, The Aesthetics of Digital Urban Living”, Aarhus, Denmark5Op. cit6http://www.spurse.org/spurse/circulation%3A_research_projects.html7Bower, A (1997) Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories University of Massachusetts Press8Op. Cit

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Expanding on the notion of a ‘recipe’, we developed ‘The Recipe Exchange’ as a structure that drew on the tradition of the community cookbook, the Fluxus score and the F/L/OSS code repositories. Recipe sharing has often been used as a way to describe sharing code in F/L/OSS communities and the form of recipes has of course also been explored in contemporary art in the event scores of Fluxus.

We set up a number of different ways for people to share recipes for how-to’s, we designed a website for the village residents to post and read recipes and installed post boxes in the villages. The recipes could be food related but they could also be instructions for making or doing something entirely different; such as farming lavender or collecting bio data. We also shared recipes through conversation. As the project evolved ‘How-to’ events started to emerge - as Alan from Farringdon History Society described “they started to self organise”. The structure of the project we had initially set-up became modified and re-modified by everyone involved. Recipes were shared in a series of Recipe Exchange events run by residents such as ‘How-to Clone Plants’, ‘How-to Spin wool’ & ‘How-to negotiate with land-owners’. Participants shared more than just the ‘actions of doing’ they shared the socio-cultural aspects of know-how and a particular landfulness.

‘The Recipe Exchange’ attempted to adapt to the local conditions and focus on a distributed rather than centralized authorship, which enabled the project to adapt to the participants and fluidly change as the events evolved. The recipe is a thing and when shared, enacted and modified it enters into dialogue with other stuff (things, non human animals, machines, language, institutions). These practices seem to move across cultures and natures and brought into focus specific entanglements, as collective institutions of human and non-human agents. Expanding our concept of participation and social exchange and generating energy through the co-production of knowledge.

Helen Pritchard is an artist and researcher in Social Exchange, Digital Technology & Innovation. Her projects

explore the potential of ‘Being Open’ as a way of ‘Being Together’ through public activities of making, sharing,

assembly and conversation. Her work has been exhibited at galleries, festivals, and museums internationally,

including Writing Machines (HK), East Street Arts (UK), Sonic Peripheries (DE), Transmodern Festival Baltimore,

(USA), Teak (Fin), UKS Oslo, (N), RKS Stavanger (N), Spacex (UK), Conical Gallery (Aus), ACA Florida, (USA)

and National Review of Live Art (UK). She is currently PhD candidate in the HighWire Doctoral Training Centre

at Lancaster University and an associate lecturer at University of Plymouth.

www.helenpritchard.info

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