Title of proposed project: A Room of One s Own

Transcription

1 imperfect CITY: A Utopian Process Guide to Proposals Please type and feel free to add pages to document Proposals may be ed to mhixson@thedcca.org Title of proposed project: A Room of One s Own Name of primary facilitator/proposer(s): Emily Artinian Number of people involved in producing the project, their names & their individual roles: Estimated: Artist 1 TBD Artist 2 TBD Artist 3 TBD Artist 4 TBD Artist 5 TBD Artist 6 TBD Artist 7 TBD Possibly more. Availability of primary facilitator between 2/9/2013 6/16/2013: 5/1 5/31, daily except Mondays First week in June, if needed Preferred days/dates/time/duration of proposed project (e.g., Mondays 3-5:00 p.m., April 3- May 6): 5/1 5/31, daily except Mondays (during DCCA opening hours) First Friday of June, if deemed appropriate by participants Is this a: Workshop Activity Performance Experience Other Will it involve a physical component in the gallery? Will wall space be necessary? If physical component is involved, please describe in as much detail as possible: A central feature of this project is the creation of both a social and a physical connection between the public space of the DCCA and the mostly private space of the artists studios zone in the building and the private space of my studio (2A1) in particular. To this end the specific physical component will consist of a means for the public to interact with a person who is in the studio from an area in the main foyer. The ideal build for this would take advantage of the felicitous fact that studio 2A1 shares a party wall with the vaulted north wall of the DCCA foyer: a window/cutout between

2 the studio and foyer could be created here, making a very immediate link between public and private spaces. (This could be a permanent alteration, or could be restored after the project.) Whether a window ends up being structurally and economically practicable, a channel of visual and verbal communication between the foyer and the studio needs to be made. This is achieved with the installation of 2 internet- connected screens, one on a wall in the foyer and one in the studio, with a Skype connection (this would be created even if a window is also installed to allow for verbal/visual communication). Proposed location (in DCCA Gallery or elsewhere): Party wall between studio 2A1 and foyer if possible, and: Studio 2A1 and wall space in some part of the foyer. Proposed spatial requirements: 5 10 wide wall space to accommodate a screen and text describing the project and inviting participation. List of necessary materials and supplies (include associated costs): Vinyl lettering for foyer giving overview and participation instructions/invitation - $150 or provided by DCCA workshop Paint to demarcate / highlight the screen and text - $50-75 or provided by DCCA Studio $0 (sponsored by me) Materials $0 (provided by me, participants) Video connection: two ipads or similar. I can supply one. DCCA may have a second screen if so, $0; if not approx. $ for a second screen and wall mount. Note that a larger (60-80 ) screen in the foyer would be ideal. Internet connection $0 (DCCA wifi) Skype $0. Window between studio and foyer cost and practicality TBD. (Consultation with Stephen Ruszkowski needed.) Workshop space - $0 could be in lecture hall or in Studio 2A1 Possible exhibition in Studio 2A1 on June first Friday - $0 to $50 (paint) Description or narrative of proposed project (1-2 paragraphs): A Room of One s Own explores several related phenomena. Firstly it seeks to highlight and to blur the boundaries between public and private by making new connections, literally and figuratively, between these types of space in the DCCA building. It also is set up to interrogate the idea of the artist s studio, exploring the meaning and function of this kind of idealized and usually private space of cultural production, and its current

3 relevance to contemporary art practice. The idea and role of the artist working as an individual is also brought into consideration. Through a workshop and discussions with participants, the project will also extrapolate these questions to society more generally, thinking about how atomized modes of societal organization sit with the utopia(s) under consideration in imperfect City. The core of the project will be participation by volunteers who agree to become the studio 2A1 artist for a short time. Specifically, over the course of May, the studio will be given over to members of the public to use as a room of one s own for the purpose of making art - howsoever they see fit to define that. The period for each person is flexible, but 2-5 days per person is suggested, in order to provide the experience to a larger number of people. Participants will be sought through an call and by word of mouth. 1 2 In order to explore the extreme flux in our understanding today of what constitutes an artist/maker/producer (with roots in Beuys proposition that everyone is an artist), preference will be given to those who do not consider themselves to be visual artists, and next, to people who do, but who have never had a studio space of their own. Participants will be asked to make something during their stay in studio 2A1, and will be able and encouraged to use any materials presently in the studio. They may keep said materials (or whatever they are transformed into) when the project is complete. They will be required to use at least one item in the studio in their work. They are allowed to bring in their own materials. (In connection to imperfect City, the video interviews that I have been collecting with Wilmington residents about the city in the project Wilmington will be made available though they do not have to be used.) I would induct each participant at the beginning of his/her stay 3 and also hold a debriefing session at the end of each session, both of which would include a discussion about the role of the studio, the artist, and general issues the project may raise. The working title s reference to Virginia Woolf is strongly deliberate: how necessary is autonomy and privacy in the making process, especially in a time when collaborative and participatory practices are so emphasized and, by all evidence, on the increase? To this end, the DCCA public is also brought in as participants and as a kind of foil to the privacy of the artist and to persistent romantic ideals of this figure as an isolated and even oracular being: the signage and video link installed in the foyer will encourage visitors to interact with the current occupant of 2A1 and to give suggestions, or perhaps 1 This process may involve a DCCA studio artists committee for approval of participants, if DCCA studio artists feel it is needed. 2 The visits would be during DCCA open hours only, for security/practical purposes. 3 I would be in the general vicinity (in Wilmington area) in case any assistance is needed, but I would not remain in the studio.

4 to offer words of encouragement, or criticism, during the making process. The artist can ask for guidance, and might even choose to come down to the foyer to discuss the work in progress. Perhaps they would need to leave the studio for longer, as part of the making process. The project would culminate in a workshop (suggested - Friday May 31 or Saturday June 1) with studio 2A1 participants, and this would be open to all foyer participants and the public: this will focus on experiences in the studio and on the question of the role of private studio space and of the individual artist in our current context. It will also review what was produced in the studio, and if it is collectively felt that an exhibition of said work would be relevant and meaningful, this will be built collectively the following week and held in Studio 2A1 on the first Friday in June (June 7). Please answer the following questions regarding the conceptualization of your imperfect CITY project (include as much detail as possible): 1. How is your proposal intended to be interactive? Who is the audience? Interaction happens on a number of levels between the sponsor (myself) and the participating artists, between DCCA visitors and the artists, and amongst the artists themselves and the public at the workshop and possible exhibition. Participants in and sponsors of other imperfect City projects and events may also form an audience and be participants, and it s hoped that some of the other projects could overlap and intermingle with this one (someone returning from a run downstairs might for instance communicate something about the outside city to the artist on duty that day, which could feed into the studio practice, for example, or perhaps the 2A1 artist will make something on request for one of the concurrent projects, etc.) 2. How is your proposal geared toward or related to the particular space/locale where the activity is to be held (e.g. Bieber Ham and DuPont II galleries at the DCCA and/or offsite locations in the city of Wilmington)? This proposal turns on divisions and dissections of space, especially institutional space. It gives a nod to the history of the DCCA, originally an artists collective with a much looser (or even non- existent) division between arts center and the artists studios. The process might open out a dialogue about an institution s changing nature over time, and in further, a consideration of institution as a schema or microcosm of city and framework for thinking about city. 3. How does your proposal acknowledge particular art historical and cultural precedents? Specific recent projects and theoreticians working today that can be seen as referents

5 will be highlighted, perhaps through a reading list and through an introduction to the workshop (by me). To the extent there is time, and desire on the part of participants to consider these, we will discuss these in the induction/debriefing sessions, and in the workshop. To name a few who could be foregrounded: Josef Beuys practice and emphasis on prioritizing the act and process of making over the product of making, and his concomitant emphasis on placing everyone in the role of artist I see as a key moment of paradigm shift, that continues to reverberate and challenge today. This proposal is in part a continuing exploration of that idea. Lucy Lippard s essay The Dematerialization of the Art Object has had a similar and related influence. The work of Carolyn Christov- Bakargiev, curator of Documenta 13, is an important reference; she has questioned whether art as we currently conceive of it with sets of producers and receivers (audience) will continue to exist very far into this century, and her Documenta itself took a position of challenging not only the agency of the artist and artist- collective, but going so far as to place agency in the power of animals and further, of inanimate objects. In imperfect City we re talking about collectivity Christov- Bakargiev s ideas can open this out to thinking about collectivity of human beings and even non human and non animate actors. (A connection to the Bruck proposal could be interesting to make here, thinking about water as a collaborative being with agency.) From my own personal background in Russian studies Mikhail Bakhtin s Problems of Dostoyevsky s Poetics is an important guide: this was an early study in the multi- vocality of Dostoyevsky s writing especially as contrasted to the singular authorial voice of Tolstoy. The concept and term of the dialogic, which has had common cultural currency over at least the last half century, is developed first (I believe) here. Ultimately this project can point to more politicized considerations, through the extrapolation of its challenges to the idea of artist as authorial / oracular figure to authority and hierarchies generally. This is something that wouldn t be particularly emphasized during the project itself, but that could be drawn out at the end, and could take into consideration writers such as Gayatri Spivak and studies in post- colonial studies, in particular her essay Can the subaltern speak?. Another focal point could be Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt s work, particularly Empire (2000), with its challenges to global hierarchical structures and emphasis on more diffused and extended alternatives for societal constructions. 4. How does your proposal critically and creatively initiate a dialogue with the premise of utopia as a collaborative process and intentional community?

6 It centers on exploring the tension between private space / autonomous activity and public space / collaborative activity. See last point in #3 above in particular. Another very accessible referent could be Yevgeny Zamyatin s 1921 dystopic science- fiction novel, We, with its implied critique of the Soviet experiment (a utopia turned dystopia). 5. How does your proposal favor a collective or social approach to artistic expression (i.e., does it involve multiple artists or assistants who help realize the work)? A core of the proposal is the premise that something that can be called artistic expression is happening everywhere, all the time, and in fields not thought of as art practice. An emphasis will be placed on finding participants who are working under titles not typically connected with the arts and who may be open to the idea of foregrounding what they do as art we might imagine 2A1 being inhabited by an accountant running up financial reports for a couple of days, or a telemarketer making cold calls, for instance. This will be encouraged. The proposal also emphasizes the social nature of creating, particularly in the invitation to the public to advise and have input in the process. The workshop brings participants together and can be a forum for focusing on what it was like to be alone upstairs in 2A1, making, enacting the role of the romanticized garret artist. 6. Is your project both educational and pleasurable for the viewer? How so? The artist participants should derive both learning and enjoyment (and probably some frustration too) from having the studio experience. A public who engages with them I believe will enjoy and learn from seeing the process that is usually happening behind closed doors. 7. Does your proposal include a realistic assessment of your ability to complete the activities you are proposing? Please consider: staff, time, gallery space, materials, and visitor attendance. I believe so.