Peer, Collaborator, Comrade, Friend! – Entanglement for Survival in Contemporary Art Worlds
In a sphere where professional and social codes continually merge, what kind of allegiances do artists form to survive, to make space for reflection, identity and support? How does the nature of artists’ bonds affect self-organisation, progress and practice within and outside of art communities?
In a day length symposium Megan Wakefield (Spike Island/UWE), Andy Abbott (Black Dogs & Leeds University), Sophie Hope (Birkbeck, University of London) and artist Marko Wilkinson will discuss the different formations of pier support and identity within contemporary art communities.
About the Speakers
Sophie Hope’s work inspects the uncertain relationships between art and society. This involves establishing how to declare her politics through her practice, rethinking what it means to be paid to be critical and devising tactics to challenge notions of authorship. Since co-founding the curatorial partnership B+B in 2000, Sophie has gone on to pursue her independent practice, with projects such as Critical Friends (2008-2011), a participant-led investigation into socially engaged art; The Wild Spirits of Efford (2010), her first radio play, and Het Reservaat (2007). Sophie also writes and facilitates workshops, dealing with issues of public art, the politics of socially engaged art and curating as critical practice and recently completed her PhD on Participating in the Wrong Way? Practice Based Research into Cultural Democracy and the Commissioning of Art to Effect Change at Birkbeck, University of London where she works as a lecturer.
Presentation:
Cameron’s rhetoric of the Big Society expects us all to be socially engaged, for free. These current shifts in political ideology are giving rise to urgent questions and creative struggles that address meanings and experiences of professionalism and volunteerism; the effects of unjust employment conditions and more broadly, the privatisation of culture and education. How do we position ourselves critically in this new terrain?
Andy Abbott is an artist, writer, musician and educator. He is currently undertaking practice-led research for a PhD in Fine Art at University of Leeds focused on socially-engaged, political and activist art exploring the boundaries of that which we might consider a socially transformative praxis. A critique of capitalism, waged-labour and work permeates his activity. His interests are primarily in Postanarchist, Autonomist Marxist, and Situationist theory .
Since 2003 Andy has worked as part of the artist collective Black Dogs and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent Black Dogs projects
include the initiation of Black Lab, an autonomous knowledge production project in South Leeds, and a dialogue-focused exhibition at MK Gallery that asked Milton Keynes residents to imagine and describe a future city situated on the recently discovered planet Gliese 581 g. Andy’s individual practice has ranged from the organisation of public events working with amateur and hobby groups in postindustrial towns (e.g. the Festival of Pastimes projects) to self-contained video and book works.
Andy continues to play in bands that tour the global DIY network and releases records through his own imprint and other independent labels. He lectures part-time in Fine Art on the foundation course at Leeds College of Art and is a steering group member of Leeds Creative Timebank, a project that alternative non-cash economy to help support artistic activity in the city, and Art in Unusual Spaces, a Community Interest Company that helps make vacant and disused city-centre spaces available to artists.
Presentation: Andy’s presentation will aim to contextualise and unpick self-organised artistic activity in terms of its potential as a practice of non-capitalist ethics. In discussions on art as a socially-transformative praxis, a recurrent theme is that of the production of a post-capitalist or non-capitalist subjectivity. How does the experience of producing and engaging with art offer a break from, or rupture within, the logic of capitalism? What radical qualities can be extrapolated from the experience of collective, not-for-profit creative activity? What implications and extensions exist for the values and practices of sharing, transparency, generosity, friendship and love that are common to much DIY activity? What room for antagonism, dissensus and criticality is offered in this and how do we make a bridge between these seemingly uneasy bedfellows? Andy will discuss the above in relation to his experience working with the artist collective Black Dogs as well as referencing his experience in both institutional and extra-institutional pedagogical projects.
Megan Wakefield is currently pursuing a written PhD in collaboration with Spike Island Associates programme and University of the West of England. She works with the Associates, where she helps to coordinate peer critiques, workshops, talks and events for a membership group of 90 artists, curators and writers, and facilitates a monthly reading group. Megan has interviewed members of the Spike Associates a number of groups around the UK. As well as this she reflects on her own participation and on her collaboration on projects like Tertulia (Arnolfini, ongoing since 2010), Reading for Reading Sake (Islington Mill, Salford and Bristol, 2010) and Art & Writing, Spike Island, 2009). Megan also gives regular lectures and talks on these themes both in academic and artist-led contexts. Her academic background is in art, language and literature and she also writes about practice for artists and journals.
Presentation: Megan is interested in peer learning as entanglement, emotional as much as intellectual, in levels and intensities of affiliation for survival and pleasure, as well as knowledge acquisition and in ways in which artists might construct time and space for their own experimentation, reflection, and development and as a strategy for managing the pressures of precarity.
Marko Wilkinson is a Bristol based artist who is particularly interested in what people do with their bodies in social and political spaces. He’s an active volunteer at Bristol’s collectively run Cube Cinema. In 2010 he went to Port au Prince with the collective’s Haiti Kids Kino Project taking a free childrens’ cinema around post-earthquake tent cities. He is also the co- curator of an ontological cinema project which specializes in staging free events, which include audio installations, performance and artists film in outdoor spaces.
The day is free but places are limited and booking is essential. Reserve a place by ringing 0117 929 2266 or email admin@spikeisland.org.uk
