In attendance:
Andrew Wilson - Artist (The NewBridge Project)
Rebecca Freeman - Artist (The NewBridge Project)
Aidan Moesby - Artist (Dundas Hall)
Henri Meadows - Artist (The NewBridge Project)
Helen Schell - Artist (The NewBridge Project)
Iris Priest - Writer/Artist
Laura Lancaster - Artist (36 Lime Street)
Peter Jackson - Artist (M.A. History of Art at York)
Cindy Robinson-Begg - Artist
Luke Mullen - Artist
Emily - Artist (Northumbria University)
Lee Smith - Artist (The NewBridge Project)
Toby Lloyd - Artist (The NewBridge Project)
Aaron Guy - Artist (The NewBridge Project)
Andrew Wilson & Toby Lloyd
Andy and Toby introduced their collaborative practice and the upcoming project ‘Convention, Habit or Custom’ to be held in The NewBridge Project Space with their open call for participation (“essays/articles/visuals/events/presentation/film/symposia/discussion”). Two slide shows - one showing ‘provocative’ images relating to the ideas to be explored in Convention, Habit or Custom and the the second relating to their previous work A NewBridge Enquiry - a three day project held in The NewBridge Space which transformed the gallery into a bar and function room with a 15 minute film showing continuously in the back room. The project playfully explored various aspects of collaboration, the creative process, conversation and the role of the art space.
For Convention, Habit or Custom Andy and Toby explained how they will again be remaking the “already established art space” as a bar - a means of inviting participation from a diverse range of people both within and beyond the purview of art (from passers by to scientists etc). The bar format, with ‘time slots’ for proposed events, is meant to develop a programme which maximises potential participation and the generation/discussion/sharing of ideas in a hospitable, accessible social environment.
H.S. asked why not hold it in a real pub, A.W. explained because they do not want it to merely be the recreational pub setting but a venue for serious conversation, debate and symposia as well. T.L. discussed the intention to create an environment where things can change and develop in an open ended way and without being overly loaded by the history/character of the pub.
P.J. suggested looking at what makes a good pub and what the topics of conversation are which people enjoy exploring in the pub.
H.S. expressed a difficulty in engaging with A NewBridge Enquiry as it wasn’t clear - upon entering the space - what the project was, why it was happening and how to engage. She suggested making this more explicit to visitors and also inviting specific people to put on events which may draw different groups in.
C.R.B and A.W. Discussed the delicate process of involving the people on the street outside the gallery, how to entice them across the intimidating gallery threshold.
L.M. Suggested finding a way to invite a regular pub crowd into the space as a way of engaging with the project but also looking at how their conversations/ dynamic may change in this new context.
A.M. Questioned how the ‘borrowing’ of the pub environment/identity may manifest in the type of language used through the project and whether it might be important to consider developing their own language (a hybrid of the existing and own?)
I.P. Asked how it might be possible to invite people into this (still definitively art) realm - by placing an advert in a local newspaper? What strategies would the project use to engage non-art practitioners through their own language/ everyday means of communication?
A.W. Said that working with external institutions (with a pre-established trust/ involvement with other individuals) would be a strategy for tackling this.
H.M. Expressed the importance in making the invitation to ‘discuss’ and ‘debate’ ideas in the project both clear, accessible and welcoming to visitors.
L.L. and I.P. Talked about different means to encourage ‘quieter’ voices and engagement from people who may feel intimidated by face-to-face conversation such as the invitation to graffitti (a more covert, personal and perhaps less pressuring) way of debating/ expressing opinions and sharing ideas. Twitter feeds and the blog may be another way of taking the conversation out of the immediate environment.
L.L. Suggested the idea of an open Jam session as a means to gently encourage conversation and collaboration or by holding events at the wrong end of the day e.g. Karaoke in the morning.
Henri Meadows
H.M. Introduced us to his work in progress; the adaption/ transformation of a small interior space within The NewBridge Project (a former office building, now occupied by a community of artists as studios) into a holistically ‘better’ space - spatially, aesthetically, architecturally. Through this empirical process of transforming the room H.M. trying to understand what ‘better’ actually means in terms of space.
H.M. suggested that the room may become a sort of ‘living pod’ - a functional, inhabited hub within the larger city context that the inhabitant relies upon i.e. the cities utilities for washing, eating etc.
H.S. Mentioned an upcoming event at Northumbria University - https://www.balticmill.com/whats-on/symposia-forums/revisiting-form-architecture-socialism--modernism
A.G. Following on from the conversation upstairs was interested in why H.M. creating this space here... why not, if critiquing this industrial, brutalist, social architecture, create the work in a working men’s club in the North East (many similarly dark, windowless boxes)?
H.M. Told the group he would ideally like to talk to a neuroscientist, an architect and a designer to determine the different aspects (from functional operations to design details) of the space.
P.J. Asked whether H.M. is more interested in creating this ideal space rather than narratives about it (i.e. narratives which come about through habitation).
R.F. Suggested that the different experts (an architect, neuroscientist, designer etc) would all have different answers to this question of how to engineer a ‘better’ space and questioned how H.M. would collate and quantify their ideas, which would he choose to apply/reject?
H.S. and E.M. Suggested bringing another artist/ subject into the space to inhabit it in order to achieve greater objectivity/ another perspective.
A.G. asked whether the space was meant to be one which could evolve and then be redesigned after evaluating/ experiencing it or whether it was just a linear progression from concept to research, design and execution...
I.P. Mentioned H.M.s choice of experts as very scientific/cerebral collection - as though this selection a means of achieving ‘objectivity’, how would this be different if he’d invited a spiritualist/ Feng Shui practitioner to comment upon it?
P.J. Brought up the interiority of the architectural space and asked whether H.M. had considered exploring an exterior space and how this impacted on human bodies/psychology?
L.M. Asked whether H.M. intended to document his time in the space. P.J. Suggested cctv/webcasts. H.M. said equally he could equally document the whole process afterwards, condensed into a single image/sentance.
P.J. Expressed the sense that this was a project - in trying to make a ‘better’ space - that was inevitably bound to fail. H.M. said he definitely wasn’t aiming for a utopia but that it was an idealist action.
A.M. asked how important it is to be in this particular space (e.g. why not elsewhere or on the back of a lorry). This location is very much separate/self contained (physically, socially conceptually)? He also asked how H.M. would define the line between what is public and what is private in this project?
L.M. suggested inviting an audience to live alongside him for a week. A.G. suggested streaming over the web/ inviting people to watch and converse via the internet or invite the neuroscientist in to follow H.M.s progress throughout the time.
L.L. suggested that H.M. may have to consider what he means by ‘better’ and whether that is a subjective or objective better. If it’s objective/universal then why would he be the key/sole author? Why not allow other influences to define the nature of the space? She also mentioned the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi - the idea of perfection being imperfect.
I.P. advised H.M. not to worry about understanding and being able to justify all aspects of the project and ‘knowing’ them as the work would act as a microcosm.
A.G. brought up the parallel with travelling communities who move from place to place, changing all the time in order to achieve that ‘better’ living condition/space.
Aaron Guy
A.G. introduced a project proposal for a piece of work for the North East Photography Network’s upcoming festival ‘The Social: Encountering Photography’ from October - November 2013. He asked whether it is possible to conduct an objective photographic survey of a region and a people? He mentioned similar, existing projects (e.g. August Sander) which generally operate within a wider context/informational details and the relative problems this kind of survey entails. He drew a comparative parallel to the governmental reduction of people to a number (a statistical figure ‘determined’ by National Insurance number, postcode etc). He explained he was interested in whether it was possible to gather the visual and statistical information to map out a region and the underlying factors which inform a people.
The intention for the project would be published in a daily newspaper such as The Sunderland echo alongside a text, thus delivering the survey back to the people of the region as a means for addressing architectural, social and ideological issues stripped down or condensed into single images. He described this visual decontextualisation as being similar to Muybridge’s study of the movement of things, to take out all the details and ‘scientifically’ document each person as a subject.
T.L. mentioned that it may be problematic to - through an open call - achieve the kind of objective survey of people as it would depend on respondents (who would likely be informed by their choice of newspaper/interest/mobility etc). Compared the idea to the eugenics of Victorian photographs of criminals.
C.R.B. Asked whether A.G. had a belief in what the outcome may be before beginning the project.
L.M. asked whether there was any particular reason for the choice of Sunderland as an area to survey. A.G. responded that it was to do with it’s industrial history and also a citation in the Independent which mentioned that the price of a family house in Fulham was equivalent to a whole street in Sunderland and what this implied about economic conditions in both the North and South. T.L. mentioned a thinktank which had proposed that everyone from Sunderland and Middlesbrough should simply move to Cambridge http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/13/conservatives.regeneration
A.G. expressed a concern for what the future holds in an ever-expanding city with no concrete plan for raising the living standards and addressing the underlying problems.
H.M. asked what the slice of society was that A.G. was looking at. A.G. responded that he was interested in a larger social geology and social strata (experienced through Ashington).
L.M. asked whether, by reflecting this study back to the people of the region, whether A.G. was inviting them/encouraging them to engage in some sort of social change/action?
A.G. expressed the hope that, if presented in a very pared down way, the images of a large demographic of people would be various enough that it couldn’t be ‘condensed’ into ‘simply’ statistical headlines - that the underlying issues at play could be appreciated as multifarious and complex.
A.W. made the comparison to history and culture’s shifting ideas of what the norm is e.g. when societies in the past have revered the overweight people as it was a sign of affluence whereas now it tends to be the less privileged in society who are affected by issues surrounding obesity.
A.G. mentioned the idea that the images may be strategically presented (e.g. as fly posters and in the newspaper - this being the largest conduit for communication between people/people and their place) but that it was important they remained outside of the gallery context.
I.P. said that it was a very delicate balance to be struck in this kind of survey as it could easily stray into the territory of historical models of anthropology - of condensing a people and their problems due to cultural/ environmental factors (i.e. the position where ‘culture’ came to replace the idea of ‘race’) - and how this could potentially be dehumanising/delimiting particularly in the context of a newspaper where information tends to be condensed and hyperbolised so the capacity for having a holistic and delicate investigation here could be difficult.
A.G. questioned whether the ‘dehumanising’ process of these photographs (in a ‘sterile’/ ‘scientific’ format) may be necessary in addressing the concerns of the investigation.
A.G. Mentioned an interview with Olafur Eliasson in which he discussed a collection of landscape photographs he made as he walked through the countryside - not necessarily making aesthetic decisions but simply documenting instances in the landscape as a collection, which in retrospect became a survey. A.G. wondered whether this ‘chance aesthetic’ could be a kick back from/ way of escaping genre photography. He also wondered what the role of photography was in 2013...
H.M. Said he didn’t think it was helpful to get distracted by the medium of photography.
A.W. Suggested downscaling the project - beginning with a house, a tower block, a street etc...
C.R.B. asked how clinical A.G. envisioned the photographs being and how clinical they needed to be.
L.L. suggested that simply taking someone out of their context/ paring down the image of superfluous details wasn’t necessarily ‘clinical’ (whereas asking people to dress in a standardised uniform may be) and perhaps it’s simply a case of negotiating that impossible line - in trying to achieve objectivity whereas in fact so much influences every single decision we make.
T.L. brought up the newspaper advert and suggested this in itself may be a way of allowing a chance element into the project - the respondents to the ad would not be hand-picked by A.G. L.L. also mentioned that it was perhaps important to decide what you were deliberately going to choose to include or leave out.
E.M. said you just need to start.
H.M. asked whether it would help to talk to invite/people directly rather than ask them to respond to an ad or flyer.
L.L. asked whether A.G. could perhaps construct a photo booth as a way to take A.G. as photographer out of the situation in order to let those more ‘natural’ expressions manifest. A.G. mused that he could create a booth with several photos which take a picture, simultaneously, from all the different angles.
L.M. suggested contacting local community centres as a way of tapping into existing relationships and accessing people in a comfortable context. A.G. added to this that it could be useful for the engagement aspect of the project too in terms of a discussion/event.
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