Imagine This…
Review of Nathan Peters’, Your Imaginary Country, in Issue 2, Open Dialogues Flash Publication 2008.
Borderline Engaged
Response to Nathan Peters’, Your Imaginary Country, Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin blog, available at http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_628
Showing posts with label Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin. Show all posts
Caban Unnos Interview
Caban Unnos collaborators No Fixed Abode, Tony Broomhead amd Dan McTiernan, interviewed by CAM and Anga’aefonu Bein-Vete
INTERVIEW - CABAN UNNOS
No Fixed Abode, Tony Broomhead and Dan McTiernan of the project Caban Unnos, interviewed by and Anga’aefonu Bain-Vete and Charlotte A. Morgan, Berlin 5th June 2008.
Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Jonathon Groeger. Courtesy Wooloo Productions
Caban Unnos is a collaborative project between Sheffield (UK) based artist collective No Fixed Abode (Horatio Eastwood and Terry Slater), Tony Broomhead, architect and partner in Amenity Space, and Dan McTiernan, project manager of free online waste exchange whywaste.org.uk. The project is centred around the design and construction of a one night house in Alexanderplatz; Berlin, and is taking place as part the New Life Berlin festival, organised and facilitated by Wooloo.org. Assistance from participants and volunteers has been initially brought together through the Wooloo.org network. This interview takes place two days prior to the build, which is scheduled for 07.06.08.
Charlotte A. Morgan (CAM): Can I start by asking you to introduce the initial concept of the project and talk more about the folk tradition of the one night house?
Horatio Eastwood (HE): Well the reason that we say belief and not law, is that the one night house tradition doesn’t have any founding in law anywhere in the world though it is a worldwide phenomenon. It is believed that if you can construct a house between sunset and sunrise without being disturbed, you then obtain free copyhold of that land. Different countries upholding this belief stipulate different conditions, for example in Wales the house has to have smoke coming from the chimney by sunrise, and in turkey you just need to have a roof.
Anga’aefonu Bain-Vete (AB-V): Is there a specifically German one?
HE: Probably, we haven’t found one; it is all over Europe…
Terry Slater (TS): A lot of people seem to know about the Turkish one over here as there’s such a massive Turkish community, but we’re bringing it from a UK perspective I suppose, so it’s a contribution to what’s already circulating really.
AB-V: How do you see this project as being specifically relevant to the location of Berlin; having a one night house in the city? I’m thinking in terms of local people, beyond the actual build and inviting people to participate that way. How did you come to choose the location?
TS: I suppose there are a couple of things there. Initially we’d obviously been invited to do it here, and the relevance to Berlin came quite late through our research. We found books by certain people that were working in similar ways in Berlin just because of the nature of the city and how much disused space there is. The space is so contested and you don’t really get that anywhere else to the extent that you do here.
HE: One of the key things we’ve found, though we didn’t specifically intend to do the project in Berlin, is that there are a lot of spaces that are produced in a similar way through a community of interested parties, and they will claim land or buildings through various means. Something that’s happening in Berlin is that it’s starting to receive serious money and be developed because of interest in the art community, and the socially produced spaces or free open spaces are beginning to disappear. It’s completely by coincidence that we’ve come at a point, but then again you could argue that maybe it isn’t, and that this is the reason that the festival’s happening.
TS: This is one of the things, when you ask, ‘could it be done anywhere else?’ Well yes, it probably could…
CAM: …but it would have taken on other issues?
TS: It took route with us in Sheffield through long term research and we refined it into a project for Berlin. Sheffield has had major investment and all of a sudden is becoming a completely different place, and in many cities you may encounter similar issues. Even in terms of materials used, we’re looking for this urban vernacular material and they’re probably quite similar in many places.
Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Andreas Bastiansen. Courtesy Wooloo Productions
Tony Broomhead (TB): I think architecturally, the fact that the build is in Berlin was a big draw for me. It’s one of the few cities that have been split down the middle for decades and architecturally the two sides to the city are very different. In the last fifteen years or so that has begun to change; this new wave of development and gentrification, and of unifying of the two halves architecturally and in terms of city planning, have completely changed the nature of the city. Projects like this help people reassess what’s happening to their city, and by creating something that’s essentially made of scrap, rubbish or a material that everyone can identify with, quite interesting questions start to be posed as to what we’re building cities out of and how much control we have over that development. Plonking something in the middle of a main city square is quite provocative.
CAM: Tony and Dan, as you both come to this project as architectural or environmental practitioners, I’m wondering how this kind of project might open up possibilities for your own professional exploration that maybe wouldn’t be possible within your own practices. The notion of functionality is quite prominent within a lot of current discourse surrounding the relationship between art and architecture, and perhaps this project allows a certain amount of freedom from the legal and functional elements of your work that have real implications in what you can produce.
AB-V: You’re also moving more into the realm of what I would consider to be art that architecture, because of the paradox of constructing a space of shelter and yet this space then being impermanent.
TB: I’d argue that this project is more relevant architecturally than most architecture projects are as it's driven by artistic desire and a sense of social responsibility. Also, the design has grown out of the materials that are being used, where it can be placed and how long it takes to be built. It’s taking on a lot of architectural issues; the difference is that normally there’s someone paying the bills, making demands that affect architectural creativity, and the social implications of placing a building permanently are far greater.
CAM: So this kind of project opens up a space for criticality in your work that goes beyond the structure itself?
Dan McTiernan (DMc): I think that architecture should do that anyway. Maybe the problem is that it doesn’t always, and this work is kind of pure architecture – it’s about what a building means in a space and how people interact with it.
CAM: When you speak of the networks or communities that you want to build or insert yourself into, what interests me is the mode of participation that you used and how important this element is within the work. Originally your call out through Wooloo.org and other networks seemed to intend to create a group of participants that would all influence the project in different ways, and this process would build some kind of shared experience. Perhaps the fact that Tony and Dan were personally invited makes them collaborators rather than participants.
TS: Definitely, yes.
Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Andreas Bastiensen. Courtesy Wooloo Productions
AB-V: How much of the participatory element is based on keeping the ball rolling and egging each other on throughout the night, and how much is conceptually based and focused on collective activity?
TB: Well it needs a lot of people to get it done.
DMc: The reality is that it has to be collaborative and it has to be organised.
AB-V: So if it was manageable with one or two people to do it alone?
DMc: But that’s the whole point; it isn’t, building never is.
AB-V: Conceptually though, how much weight does this have in the project; the participatory act?
TB: That’s the key thing; it’s literally the weight of the materials.
CAM: So they are just helpers then.
DMc: Of course they’re not because it is a collective endeavour, and building used to be a social endeavour as well and that’s what we’re generating. Even if it’s an imported Sheffield community I don’t think that matters.
TB: If you’re building a house for someone, everyone has input and that’s what’s important, even if it isn’t artistic input. They still take pride in the work.
DMc: That’s quite in-keeping with the notion of the one night house anyway isn’t it; it’s friends and family that would have pitched in.
CAM: A limitation of the Wooloo.org context may be that it wasn’t possible for you to put the call out to people from non-art backgrounds who may have been interested in helping.
HE: Martin [Rosengaard, co-curator of New life Berlin] did suggest that the community on Wooloo.org was not strictly art based; I can’t possibly comment on that really. We have tried to do a lot of participatory things and get people involved before, but we’ve learned to question why these people would want to be involved if they don’t necessarily have a vested interest or get any obvious benefit from it. We have worried what we are actually offering this group of helpers, but the majority really do just want to help; they don’t need artistic input.
CAM: It can mainly be other artists interested in the experience or the project. We’ve discussed many aspects of the project in its present sense now - how do you expect the build and the finished house will be represented in the future? There’s been some debate surrounding how the Wooloo.org site will be carried on - will the work receive any publicity outside of this context and how important is that to you?
Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Jonathan Groeger. Courtsey Wooloo Productions
AB-V: You’re going to start a revolution…
HE: It’s difficult to say as it is in the future… This is the first project we’ve done that we feel we could do again in another context where techniques can be refined or explored. We will archive it on our website and these guys [TB and DMc] might too, I haven’t really thought about it.
TB: When you’ve done something physical, it will lead onto other things. Even if the house falls down or whatever, we’ll have learned something from that, and the reason that everyone is sat around this table today is the desire to ‘build a thing in Berlin’. That’s incredibly credible by itself, but no doubt more will come from it.
Charlotte A. Morgan is an artist and writer, currently co-developing and curating Transit Projects, a mobile project space based in Sheffield UK and online.
Anga'aefonu Bain-Vete is a practising artist, collaborative curator and cross-disciplinary writer, currently completing a Master's in Visual Culture at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
www.angaaefonu.com
Please only reproduce this text with permission from the author and Open Dialogues. opendialogues@gmail.com
In Issue 1, Open Dialogues Flash Publication 2008 and online at
http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_584
I was always told not to eat standing up (link)
Critical response to Ali&Cia, Eat the Wall
http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_644
http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_644
When is an artist not an artist?
WHEN IS AN ARTIST NOT AN ARTIST?
30 Days
Two anonymous cartographers
30 days prior to the closing of the New Life Berlin festival.
The two cartographers behind the 30 Days project casually make their way across a courtyard, between two flat roofed buildings and back towards the main road. Over the disused railway track opposite, they were told by the previous gallery’s assistant, a row of small art spaces inhabit the glass-fronted elevation of another vast converted industrial building. Shadowing them, I enjoy this sense of discovery and the unknown route ahead - a process invariably more interesting than much of the work on show.
Photographs and notes are taken upon entering the galleries, which are assessed according to a scale known only to the cartographers. Acting as anonymous practitioners, these cartographers aim to infiltrate and subvert Berlin’s local art networks and create, over thirty days, an alternative map of the city’s artistic landscape, which can then be used and added to by future visitors. Both cartographers originate from the USA, and through their position as relative outsiders, they also aim to connect organisations by pairing up the mapped spaces and encouraging them to collaborate on a future project. These pairs would not normally work together – perhaps because of preconceptions about each other’s work, different commercial agendas, or lack of inclination to direct resources towards small, experimental projects. The results of the cartographers' activities are one Google map of locations and two collections of textual or image based information that exist online via Wooloo.org. The resulting institutional collaborations will be followed up by the cartographers at a later date.
The cartographers admit that their categorisation of the galleries is subjective, and explain that any map-maker’s cultural background influences the maps that they produce. Talking to these map makers, it is clear that they are highly educated art practitioners who have de-classified themselves as artists in favour of the title ‘cartographer’. However, they say they aim to tread lightly over their chosen terrain, creating altered perspectives and relations amongst its potential visitors or inhabitants, whilst maintaining a critical distance and leaving no trace of their presence. Referring to the project in cartographic terms is therefore problematic because, by nature, the traditional cartographer stamps their ground a little, forming a subjective overview of place that is open to misinterpretation or generalisation. Cartography produces space, defining identities through difference. The inhabitants of the landscape being mapped (in this case, artists/professionals/galleries) then locate themselves within these identities, by which they define the outsider. Therefore, if the 30 Days online site and maps are to gain the level of interest and visibility that their creators aim for, the cartographers have the potential to mark their influence on the identity and boundaries of the Berlin art scene.
Another subjective element of this project is the classification of artistic activity. When do we cease to define activity as artistic - when working artists lose physical proximity to each other? When they all go out for a coffee? Perhaps the cartographers are being knowingly playful with the elusive nature of the artistic act, but if so, this could be reflected more in their results. In fact, the map shows established galleries for the most part and a lack of artist-led initiatives, studio groups, temporary spaces, events or individual artists’ activities. This is probably because less formal additions would be harder to fix geographically, which would interfere with the easy use of the maps as guides.
But the maps’ status as guides is also in doubt. In order to dispel the fixedness of the cartographers’ definitions, it is crucial that the maps can be adjusted by future visitors. Therefore, the project’s priority must be to provide a model for visitor re-structructuring (by adapting the original results online or creating a new map), rather than to create a definitive guide. However, the maps need to be visually clear and accessible to enable visitors to contribute. Although one of these maps is available through Google search, most of the information is stored on Wooloo.org with no direct link from the homepage (though this may be out of the cartographers' hands), and it is also unclear how the maps could be adapted. The mapped spaces are presented through an inviting visual display, yet remain separate and difficult to understand in relation to one another. Without clear links given between them, they are rendered isolated, cut off from the flow of movement in-between which defines them as destinations.
On a practical level, the artists claim that adopting the title of cartographer allows them more freedom to work within the networks they are navigating, which suggests the art institutions they visit may treat artists using ’non-art’ processes more suspiciously than their professional counterparts. Perhaps as artists have historically taken the institutional framework of their working environment as subject for analysis, they seem likely to have a more complex critical agenda, and as they don’t represent the views of a corporate employer, artists are allowed a more critical position than other professionals. The re-positioning of roles also denies any distinction between the artists' work and that of other practitioners and professionals in whose fields they may be working; when acting as artists, the cartographic process may be seen as a tool in the realisation of an artistic idea, but when acting as cartographers, the emphasis shifts to the product of their activities – the map itself. This role play also enables potential audiences to engage with the maps outside of an artistic context, which, the cartographers assume, would only complicate the situation. By enforcing the cartographic status of the project, its members make sure that the map readers are simply reading maps, and not partaking in a work of art.
This cloaking of the artist has implications within the network of relations existing between artists, art institutions, audiences and publics. As the New Life Berlin festival has exemplified, many artists position themselves in diverse roles, employing processes traditionally associated with other areas of study or professional work. Shouldn’t the artist’s role be declared in order to promote contemporary art practice as multi-faceted and inter-disciplinary? In fact, New Life Berlin was structured to promote just this kind of interdisciplinarity, among its communities of artists and participants. Also, though the artists have masked the project’s status as a work of art, the project is dependent on the artistic context of this festival for its promotion and dissemination, and so 30 Days’ separation from the art world is only fleeting.
Perhaps then, alternatively, the cartographers’ choice not to be deemed artists within the festival’s publicity material offers a critique of some participatory and interactive projects, whose claims of shifting and merging the roles of the artist and audience are unfounded. In denying the role of the artist the cartographers suggest that, as artists, the distinctions will always remain.
For now the project stands on ambiguous ground. Much like the dried out areas of land that interrupt the sprawl of Berlin’s urban system, the maps’ function is unclear. They are available for use, yet the user has an uncertain amount of freedom within them and relies on mediation for access. When the festival ends, and the cartographers remove themselves from the physical location of Berlin, the map they are offering will show its full subversive potential.
Charlotte A. Morgan
Charlotte A. Morgan is an artist and writer currently co-developing and curating Transit Projects, a mobile project space based in Sheffield UK and online. charlotte.anne.morgan@googlemail.com
Please only reproduce this text with permission from the author and Open Dialogues. opendialogues@gmail.com
http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_651
30 Days
Two anonymous cartographers
30 days prior to the closing of the New Life Berlin festival.
The two cartographers behind the 30 Days project casually make their way across a courtyard, between two flat roofed buildings and back towards the main road. Over the disused railway track opposite, they were told by the previous gallery’s assistant, a row of small art spaces inhabit the glass-fronted elevation of another vast converted industrial building. Shadowing them, I enjoy this sense of discovery and the unknown route ahead - a process invariably more interesting than much of the work on show.
Photographs and notes are taken upon entering the galleries, which are assessed according to a scale known only to the cartographers. Acting as anonymous practitioners, these cartographers aim to infiltrate and subvert Berlin’s local art networks and create, over thirty days, an alternative map of the city’s artistic landscape, which can then be used and added to by future visitors. Both cartographers originate from the USA, and through their position as relative outsiders, they also aim to connect organisations by pairing up the mapped spaces and encouraging them to collaborate on a future project. These pairs would not normally work together – perhaps because of preconceptions about each other’s work, different commercial agendas, or lack of inclination to direct resources towards small, experimental projects. The results of the cartographers' activities are one Google map of locations and two collections of textual or image based information that exist online via Wooloo.org. The resulting institutional collaborations will be followed up by the cartographers at a later date.
The cartographers admit that their categorisation of the galleries is subjective, and explain that any map-maker’s cultural background influences the maps that they produce. Talking to these map makers, it is clear that they are highly educated art practitioners who have de-classified themselves as artists in favour of the title ‘cartographer’. However, they say they aim to tread lightly over their chosen terrain, creating altered perspectives and relations amongst its potential visitors or inhabitants, whilst maintaining a critical distance and leaving no trace of their presence. Referring to the project in cartographic terms is therefore problematic because, by nature, the traditional cartographer stamps their ground a little, forming a subjective overview of place that is open to misinterpretation or generalisation. Cartography produces space, defining identities through difference. The inhabitants of the landscape being mapped (in this case, artists/professionals/galleries) then locate themselves within these identities, by which they define the outsider. Therefore, if the 30 Days online site and maps are to gain the level of interest and visibility that their creators aim for, the cartographers have the potential to mark their influence on the identity and boundaries of the Berlin art scene.
Another subjective element of this project is the classification of artistic activity. When do we cease to define activity as artistic - when working artists lose physical proximity to each other? When they all go out for a coffee? Perhaps the cartographers are being knowingly playful with the elusive nature of the artistic act, but if so, this could be reflected more in their results. In fact, the map shows established galleries for the most part and a lack of artist-led initiatives, studio groups, temporary spaces, events or individual artists’ activities. This is probably because less formal additions would be harder to fix geographically, which would interfere with the easy use of the maps as guides.
But the maps’ status as guides is also in doubt. In order to dispel the fixedness of the cartographers’ definitions, it is crucial that the maps can be adjusted by future visitors. Therefore, the project’s priority must be to provide a model for visitor re-structructuring (by adapting the original results online or creating a new map), rather than to create a definitive guide. However, the maps need to be visually clear and accessible to enable visitors to contribute. Although one of these maps is available through Google search, most of the information is stored on Wooloo.org with no direct link from the homepage (though this may be out of the cartographers' hands), and it is also unclear how the maps could be adapted. The mapped spaces are presented through an inviting visual display, yet remain separate and difficult to understand in relation to one another. Without clear links given between them, they are rendered isolated, cut off from the flow of movement in-between which defines them as destinations.
On a practical level, the artists claim that adopting the title of cartographer allows them more freedom to work within the networks they are navigating, which suggests the art institutions they visit may treat artists using ’non-art’ processes more suspiciously than their professional counterparts. Perhaps as artists have historically taken the institutional framework of their working environment as subject for analysis, they seem likely to have a more complex critical agenda, and as they don’t represent the views of a corporate employer, artists are allowed a more critical position than other professionals. The re-positioning of roles also denies any distinction between the artists' work and that of other practitioners and professionals in whose fields they may be working; when acting as artists, the cartographic process may be seen as a tool in the realisation of an artistic idea, but when acting as cartographers, the emphasis shifts to the product of their activities – the map itself. This role play also enables potential audiences to engage with the maps outside of an artistic context, which, the cartographers assume, would only complicate the situation. By enforcing the cartographic status of the project, its members make sure that the map readers are simply reading maps, and not partaking in a work of art.
This cloaking of the artist has implications within the network of relations existing between artists, art institutions, audiences and publics. As the New Life Berlin festival has exemplified, many artists position themselves in diverse roles, employing processes traditionally associated with other areas of study or professional work. Shouldn’t the artist’s role be declared in order to promote contemporary art practice as multi-faceted and inter-disciplinary? In fact, New Life Berlin was structured to promote just this kind of interdisciplinarity, among its communities of artists and participants. Also, though the artists have masked the project’s status as a work of art, the project is dependent on the artistic context of this festival for its promotion and dissemination, and so 30 Days’ separation from the art world is only fleeting.
Perhaps then, alternatively, the cartographers’ choice not to be deemed artists within the festival’s publicity material offers a critique of some participatory and interactive projects, whose claims of shifting and merging the roles of the artist and audience are unfounded. In denying the role of the artist the cartographers suggest that, as artists, the distinctions will always remain.
For now the project stands on ambiguous ground. Much like the dried out areas of land that interrupt the sprawl of Berlin’s urban system, the maps’ function is unclear. They are available for use, yet the user has an uncertain amount of freedom within them and relies on mediation for access. When the festival ends, and the cartographers remove themselves from the physical location of Berlin, the map they are offering will show its full subversive potential.
Charlotte A. Morgan
Charlotte A. Morgan is an artist and writer currently co-developing and curating Transit Projects, a mobile project space based in Sheffield UK and online. charlotte.anne.morgan@googlemail.com
Please only reproduce this text with permission from the author and Open Dialogues. opendialogues@gmail.com
http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/s3Blog.php#ANC_651
Project Outline
Open Dialogues:New Life
New Life
New Life Berlin
Transnational Communities. What do ‘community’ and ‘identity’ mean today? Presenting projects from both artistic and sociological starting points, New LifeBerlin
Artistic Social Responsibility. What is the relationship between cultural practitioners and corporate entities in the new millennium? How does contemporary cultural production relate to the concept of “Corporate Social Responsibility”?
Participation and Intervention. How do participatory arts practices affect the socio-cultural environments in which they take place? How and why can local audiences become involved in artists’ projects, and what does their involvement mean in terms of civic engagement and social empowerment?
For New LifeBerlin BERLIN Berlin
Writers committed to one full day’s writing workshop (31 May), two 2 hour peer-critique sessions, at least one OPEN DIALOGUES: NEW LIFE BERLIN event (7th June) and to writing at least three texts throughout the festival, yet we spent many more hours working and interacting socially as a strong community than either the writers or the organisers had anticipated. For texts see http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog
Transnational Communities. What do ‘community’ and ‘identity’ mean today? Presenting projects from both artistic and sociological starting points, New Life
Artistic Social Responsibility. What is the relationship between cultural practitioners and corporate entities in the new millennium? How does contemporary cultural production relate to the concept of “Corporate Social Responsibility”?
Participation and Intervention. How do participatory arts practices affect the socio-cultural environments in which they take place? How and why can local audiences become involved in artists’ projects, and what does their involvement mean in terms of civic engagement and social empowerment?
For New Life
Writers committed to one full day’s writing workshop (31 May), two 2 hour peer-critique sessions, at least one OPEN DIALOGUES: NEW LIFE BERLIN event (7th June) and to writing at least three texts throughout the festival, yet we spent many more hours working and interacting socially as a strong community than either the writers or the organisers had anticipated. For texts see http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog
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